Coming Out Again

At 62, I am reminded that coming out isn’t something you do just once.

Saturday morning, 7:00 a.m. I called an Uber into town because I needed to visit the electric company. As you might recall, a new account had been set up two months earlier, and I needed to retrieve the account number so I could pay the bill before it slipped into default and sent me spiraling into another round of Mexican utility nonsense.

My driver was Jaime: a handsome man in his thirties with an easy smile. He was practicing his English. I was practicing my Spanish. Between the two of us, we managed to have a surprisingly good conversation.

He told me that, in addition to driving for Uber, he had a fleet of cars and vans. When I asked how many passengers the vans could hold, I told him I might need his services when I brought a group to San Miguel for Day of the Dead.

There were smiles. There were glances. There was that little current of possibility that may or may not have been real—but was certainly entertaining me for the entire ride.

Was Jaime gay? Was he flirting? Was he simply a handsome Mexican man being friendly to an older gringo who was mangling the Spanish language?

I had no idea.

Naturally, I considered all three possibilities.

Then he dropped me off, handed me his business card, and drove away.

Only after he had left did I discover that the electric company was closed on Saturdays.

I could have called another Uber. Instead, I texted Jaime and asked if he would come back for me.

He said, “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

He was.

We laughed about my mistake as he pulled back to the curb. The morning was beautiful—clear, bright, and still young enough that most of San Miguel had not yet begun making demands on anyone. So we continued talking.

Jaime told me that he had been deported from the United States six months earlier. He knew he had been there illegally, he said, but he had been in the process of getting his papers. Now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back.

“Sometimes you have to leave home,” he said, “and go someplace else to find out how good it was to begin with.”

How very Dorothy Gale of him.

He was enjoying the slower pace of life in Mexico. The money wasn’t the same, but neither were the expenses. There was something in the way he described it that I recognized—not the details, exactly, but the feeling.

Sometimes you leave the place that made you and discover that distance is the only way to understand what it gave you, what it took from you, and what you no longer need from it.

I kept trying to find a way to invite him to one of the first naked gatherings I’m hoping to host here. I wanted to say, casually, “You should come sometime.”

I wanted to make it sound like an ordinary invitation, even though I was still trying to determine whether I was inviting a potential friend, a potential flirtation, or simply a very attractive man with a van.

Then he asked about my family.

I told him my parents were dead and that my brother and I were no longer close. San Miguel, I said, was perfect for me.

He told me that he was here, but his partner was still in Texas.

That word—partner—hung there between us.

I wondered if he was offering me a little piece of information. Was “partner” deliberately chosen? Was he talking about a man? Were we playing that familiar, ancient game queer people know so well: placing a word on the table and waiting to see whether the other person recognizes it?

Then, eventually, he referred to his partner as “she.”

My heart sank a little.

Not dramatically. Not heartbreakingly. Just enough to remind me that hope can be embarrassingly quick, especially when it arrives in a handsome package at seven in the morning.

Still, I thought, straight men enjoy naked time with other men too. The invitation remained possible. The conversation continued.

Then Jaime asked about my girlfriend.

And I said, “Oh, no. I’m not partnered to a woman. I’m gay.”

There it was.

Coming out again at 62.

I waited for a reaction—a question, an awkward joke, a reassuring statement about gay friends. Maybe even that sly little wink that says, “I know what you’re saying.”

But Jaime didn’t do any of those things.

He simply kept driving and talking.

No approval. No disapproval. No performance. No sudden transformation in the atmosphere.

I had given him a truth about me, and he accepted it as one more fact in a conversation that already included dead parents, estranged brothers, deportation, the price of living, the possibility of returning home, and the strange beauty of starting over.

Eventually, we arrived back at my home. We said goodbye amiably. I paid him, got out of the car, and he drove away again—this time, I hope, toward an open business or at least a passenger who knew where he was going.

What stayed with me was not whether Jaime was flirting. It wasn’t even the small disappointment of learning that his partner was a woman.

What stayed with me was how quickly I had begun editing myself.

At 62, I have been gay for a very long time. I have done the dramatic coming out. I have done the fearful coming out. I have done the coming out that changed everything, and the coming out that changed nothing.

I have said the words to family, friends, colleagues, strangers, doctors, hotel clerks, travel partners, and men whose names I never learned.

And yet every new place creates the possibility of another closet.

A new country. A new language. A new social code. A new person sitting behind the wheel.

You find yourself wondering:

Is it safe to say?

Will this change the way I am treated?

Do I need to explain myself?

Should I wait until I know more about the person in front of me?

The truth is, I didn’t come out to Jaime because I needed his permission.

I came out because I was tired of arranging my words around the possibility that someone might not like the truth—and because there was another possibility I couldn’t ignore.

What if he was gay too?

What if the smiles, the glances, and the careful word choices meant something? What if there was an opportunity here—not necessarily for sex or romance, but for recognition, connection, or an unexpected friendship?

My curiosity led me down that path. Desire may have nudged me along, too. At 62, I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

I was open to the possibility that something unexpected might be waiting on the other side of honesty.

That is one of the unexpected gifts of getting older. You begin to understand that your life is too valuable to keep submitting it for approval.

You stop treating your identity like a delicate object that must be carefully unwrapped for other people.

You simply set it down on the table.

This is who I am.

You may pick it up. You may leave it there. You may keep driving.

But I am no longer hiding it in the glove compartment.

The electric company was closed that morning. I didn’t get the account number. I didn’t pay the bill. I didn’t accomplish the errand I had set out to accomplish.

But I did something else.

I walked through San Miguel in the early morning light, speaking bad Spanish with a handsome stranger, making room for uncertainty, and saying the simplest truth in the world without apologizing for it.

At 62, I am still coming out.

And perhaps that is not a sign that I am stuck in the past.

Perhaps it is proof that I am still entering new rooms.