National Coming Out Day: 5 characters who could have used the support

The colors are changing, the air is more crisp, and the hinges on closet doors everywhere are getting ready to burst wide open. Yes, National Coming Out Day is here (October 11), that special time when gays all over the globe grab their literal or figurative cojones and declare their queerness to whoever cares to listen. While many are lucky enough to have their coming out met with a shrug or a hug, some have a harder time, and still others are compelled to continue a life in the closet.

Last year, Lyle did a nice piece highlighting some of the more heartwarming gay coming out stories that we’ve seen in television and film, but this year we‘re going to do something different. This year more than ever, gay visibility is a game-changer, and one of the strongest tools we have to combat discrimination, so pardon us if this year's discussion is a tad more cautionary. 

Coming out is hard for anyone, but these characters found that the alternative can often be even harder. These are the guys who didn’t come out soon enough.

                                    Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) in The Talented Mr. Ripley

Life was hard for that gawky young sociopath Tom Ripley, for not only did he have to lie, cheat, and manipulate in order to gain access to high society, he had to keep his deepest desires under wraps. Although he wasn’t without his share of attention from women, there was only one person for him. While Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf had a certain feminine charm, he was definitely all man, and Mr. Ripley definitely took notice.

Their scene in which Greenleaf bathes in front of Tom is fraught with all kinds of erotic tension, and right then and there Tom’s love that dare not speak its name is practically on the verge of shouting it, which of course would end his ascent into the upper-class. Unable to deal, he follows the logical thought process of a repressed gay sociopath, proceeding to murder the object of his affection in order to steal his identity and, ultimately, his life. Simple enough, right?

Perhaps it was ... until he then had to murder Peter Smith-Kingsley (Jack Davenport), the one man who fell in love with him, just so that he could cover up all of his previous discretions. Wow … what a tangled web and all that. I think the moral here is that coming out, even in the 50‘s, would‘ve been infinitely easier than all the murder, backstabbing, and identity-theft it took just to cover up the gay, don’t you think?

                                      Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli) in The Sopranos

Vito Spatafore’s life of organized crime, murder, and generally antisocial behavior made him one of the gang in his world, well, that is until his head was caught popping up from another guy’s lap in the pre-work hours at a construction site. And then there was that time some other members of the mob “family” caught him walking from a gay club holding hands with another guy.

Vito wasn’t just a murderous thug, he was a closeted gay murderous thug which was somehow infinitely more unacceptable to his coworkers in organized crime than the bullet-riddled corpses and badly beaten bodies he left in his wake while working. Fearing for his life, he fled to New Hampshire, and while most gay boys learn enough social skills to avoid sucker-punching guys who try to kiss them, Vito never learned this lesson.

Luckily, his cruisy new love interest Johnny didn’t bruise or offend easily, and Vito got his first boyfriend and a shot at a new life. Unluckily for Vito, he couldn’t handle it, and left the first man to love him and drunkenly drove to New Jersey where he was accosted and beaten to death by his mob cohorts. Yikes. I bet you thought your coming out story was rough. Coming out sooner would’ve saved this one the trouble of seriously considering the mob as a viable career path. For some reason, I think he would’ve been a great florist.

More cautionary fellas after the break...

                Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) from Brokeback Mountain

Yeah, I said it. Our favorite poster-boys for smoldering glances and forbidden, tragic love are included on this list in all their closeted glory because they denied themselves true happiness by staying in the closet for so long. Of course wives and girlfriends and society’s rigid constraints were thrown into the mix, but if all these things weren’t getting in the way of these two being with one another, I fail to understand why these two never made the next move. Besides, perhaps Alma and Lureen could’ve comforted each other and given our friends at AfterEllen a little something to smile about.

In those days, surely a simple note would’ve sufficed and left our heroes free to ride out into that house in the woods Jack talked so much about. There could have been a future for these two, and while Annie Proulx doesn’t like the mere thought of it, that future lives on (and on and on) in the Brokeback slash fiction that litters the net. While we all know the fates of Ennis and Jack (a lifetime of crushing loneliness and a life ended by a crushed skull, to be exact), perhaps these are the two characters out of all the characters who didn’t come out soon enough whose fates can be rewritten by you, me, and anyone else with a basic level of literacy. Go on, have at it ... but if Annie comes a-knockin’, you didn’t hear it from me.

                   Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) of The Office (Season 3, Episode 1: Gay Witch Hunt)

Starting with being called “faggy” by his unwitting (and witless) boss Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), Oscar was pulled into a day of backwards diversity training culminating with the most comically awkward man-on-man kiss in history, all because he didn’t come out to his lame-brained coworkers soon enough. Imagine people dumb enough to believe that a metal detector constitutes an official gaydar machine and that one forced kiss with another man can negate a lifetime’s worth of casually homophobic remarks, and you would have a pretty good grasp of Oscar’s co-workers.

It wasn’t so much that they were shocked by his being gay that they were completely taken by surprise by the revelation, and we all know what idiots do when taken by surprise, don’t we? In Oscar’s case, it was the office-politics equivalent of being kicked in the chin after sneaking up behind a horse. In essence, an entire day’s worth of side-glances, asinine comments, and bizarre sexual revelations from a decidedly unsexy group of people could’ve been avoided by a simple declaration by Oscar at the beginning of his career at the paper factory.

However, unlike some of the rather tragic fates of the other long-closeted fellows on the list, this gay got the last laugh on a three-month paid vacation offered by a few panicked upper-management suits in exchange for not suing the company for the many litigation-worthy events of the day. If only combating workplace discrimination was this easy or funny in real life…

So there you have it, five characters who definitely would’ve benefited from coming out sooner, or in some cases, at all. Although their fates ranged from the comedic to the sad to the outright tragic, the point (and I do have one) is that our lives are happier and fuller when they’re lived out of the closet. 

This was all very tongue-in-cheek, but of course there are many of us out there who are facing these choices every day. Celebrate Coming Out Day by being there for a friend who’s at that stage, appreciating your life as an out and proud gay man, or, if still closeted, by gathering enough courage and support to take a step (however small) yourself. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that doing so may save you from a life of identity-theft, murder, tragic love, or a really, really bad kiss with your casually homophobic boss.

Have another idea for a character who should've come out sooner? Share it in the comments!