I’m Coming Out!

The Confession of a Closeted Writer

“To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” -- e.e. cummings

This is the story of my fight.

Like most budding writers, I took a lot of shit from my parents when I told them I was switching majors on my first day at UCLA. At seventeen, I had decided math was no longer a fun game; I was going to study English lit and become a Rockstar Poet.

My dad smacked his forehead; my mom slapped both hips. How would they explain this to the family, their card-game friends, our tightknit Persian-Jewish community in Los Angeles?

My mom had always envisioned a more upstanding career for me.

"Like what," I would ask.

"How should I know?" she’d say, and in her broken English she would add, "If you can’t be Doktor, you should be Office!"

My dad, thoughtfully stirring sugar cubes into his morning tea, explained: “My son, we don’t sit on pillows all day writing sad songs in little notebooks every time we get a bellyache,” squiggling his finger-pen in the air, contorting his face to imitate a whining poet. In his own broken English he added, “We are not Writers; we are Earners. We are Business.”

“Baba Jan,” I protested, “poetry was invented by Persians.”

“Not by Persian Jews,” he countered with a slurp of tea. “You are our horizon; we are depending on you to bring us up, not take us down. Those Persian poets all died hungry.”

So, like most struggling writers living under the weight of parental disapproval, I moved out and spent my twenties doing odd jobs to support my craft. I’d come home sweating pizza grease, my tips stuffed into a cigar box on my desk with a rubber band around the wad representing my share of the rent. It was the 80s and my 20-hour work week was enough to cover rent, tuition, a bus pass and anything else an aspiring writer needed. I was living my Plan A, the Writer’s life! And while friends pursued stable careers in Office or Business trying to make sense of my choice, deep down I knew they wished me well.

Like most failed writers still working restaurant jobs at thirty, I went to law school. My parents were thrilled; their card-game friends nodded approval; our Persian-Jewish community began reconsidering me as a prospect for daughters and nieces. And to be honest, it felt good. Not having to explain myself, to look down and mumble “I’m a Writer” to non-Writers was a relief. And I got to use the line I’d heard so many others use in social settings: "I’m in law school.” I was going straight!

Of course it was a hustle.

Writing, like any calling, is a core existential Truth for the individual being called. It doesn’t wash off. I was a Writer. A Writer with a secret plan:

Law school would be a detour; practicing law, a front. I had been making $9.75 an hour as a line cook and $20 an hour as a private investigator’s assistant, eking out a living while being dismissed by my community as a broke wannabe writer. As a lawyer I'd make ten times that and, to the relief of parents, family and community, I’d finally be Office. But when nobody was looking, when everybody slept, I would be myself - Rockstar Poet. Closet Rockstar Poet.

Law school was an odd place with few students actually interested in becoming lawyers. Infested with frustrated writers, filmmakers and musicians, it seemed like the entirety of the incoming class of Tulane Law in the Fall of ‘95 was made up of failed artists, and a few future politicians. Were they all planning the same hustle as me? Did they all harbor secret strategies to keep their Plan A’s intact? Or were these frustrated artists marching off to law school in surrender? Waving the white flag and starting their Plan B’s?

I stuck to my plan.

But after three years of intense reading, an intense summer of studying, taking and passing the California bar exam and months trying to get a job, something revealed itself to me one night as I finished my dinner, washed my dish and sat down to write.

I couldn’t.

My eyes burned, wrists sore, brain fried from spending all day twisting logic, stretching precedent, redefining simple words like “occurrence” or “damage” and stumbling over rigid procedures. The only things I had energy for at the end of a workday were sleep or blowing off steam drinking at L.A. hipster bars full of a constantly younger crop of new professionals.

I was burning out.

Did I get hustled by my hustle? Over the course of four years - from applying to law schools to getting a job and paying off huge loans – had I gotten lost in my own detour? Old mates, parents’ card-game friends and our Persian Jewish community had all stopped asking about my writing aspirations, except to confirm “you don’t write anymore? You’re Office now?” It stung at first, but I pretended it didn’t matter that what had made me Me was fading. I had indeed become Office. From aspiring Rockstar Poet to SBN 197863, I had stumbled into Plan B.

*

Like most Plan B’ers living the lie thrust upon them by social externalities rather than the Truth they were meant to live, I gingerly squeezed into that life of quiet desperation. I suited up each morning, drank coffee, read the paper, railed against the government, the Dodgers, opposing counsel, uncooperative court clerks, clients with unreasonable expectations. I was angry all the time. And on Sundays I’d pretend to be a Rockstar Poet, sitting on a pillow writing sad songs in my little notebook bellyaching about Life just like my father had envisioned.

I even fell in love and married an Earner, an Office, living her Plan A life and making an insane salary at a Fortune 500 company, complete with health plan, gas allowance and retirement fund. She was happy and energetic, working in her chosen field with interesting people on interesting projects that she would talk about enthusiastically each night. I, on the other hand, had nothing to say at the end of each day, dourly slogging through dinner in silence or whining about hating my work. On the couch after dinner, she excitedly worked on her projects while I read new writers whose work had been accepted by the New Yorker, Paris Review, Granta, Bomb. The writing world had moved on without me. I had missed my chance, like a surfer who didn’t catch the big wave he’d been waiting for having to watch other surfers shred, cut and tuck into majestic Coke-bottle-green tubes, playful angels in their heavenly element.

I had been left behind.

At our kids’ school events, I’d stand in a corner bracing for the question I finally had an acceptable answer to, but which I now hated. “I’m a lawyer too.” If there was a follow-up, like “What kind of law do you practice?” I’d get agitated. Hadn’t I sufficiently answered? Couldn’t I be left alone? Needless to say, we didn’t make many “parent friends” and spent most Saturday nights alone. My wife grew concerned over my antisocial attitude.

My dad, not satisfied with me becoming Office, continued to offer advice: “These lawyers put their pictures and numbers on billboards and busses. You should do that. All you need is a phone number. People call, you settle with insurance, get half. Easy money. You’ll make millions! More than you’re making now.”

I was still angry at him for not supporting my Rockstar Poet dreams, and he was still critical of me even though I had abandoned those dreams and taken the path he preferred. “That’s not the kind of law I do,” I’d say, trying to mask my resentment as righteousness.

“Too good to be a millionaire, eh? What kind of law do you do?”

I did the kind of law that helped people live their Plan A lives, while I got older and angrier living my Plan B life.

Eventually, my existential angst became more than my wife could bare. I groused as I shaved, sneered in the mirror while tying my tie, cursed the traffic on the drive downtown to argue and haggle with judges and lawyers and clerks - a parking lot owner in a dispute with his tenant, both having decided it was better to do things via secret meetings in underground garages and cash in paper bags instead of written contracts. I do this kind of law.

“Go write!” my wife finally said. “You’re a Writer. Get up earlier. Spend a couple hours in the morning writing, then go be Office to help with the bills. Deal?”

A huge burden had been lifted; a boot removed from my neck. “Deal!”

I was free! I took myself on Artist Dates at lunchtime; bought books by new writers at Book Soup; took writing workshops at UCLA. I pulled some old stories and polished them up for class, earning the respect of instructors and classmates. I began submitting again. Suddenly, being Office wasn’t so bad - I had access to, and could afford, a postage meter, a never-ending supply of envelopes, a copy machine. No more sneaking into copy rooms as a temp; no more being summoned by the Post Office to pay postage due for a rejection from Zyzzyva. I still got rejections, but handwritten ones from the likes of the New Yorker saying my story was “compelling and skillfully written.” The New Yorker! One story won “Best New Fiction” in American Literary Review’s 20^th Anniversary Issue. It came with a check for a thousand bucks – my first payment as Writer. At forty-six I was on my way.

But not so on my way that I could stop being Office. Not so on my way that I would openly call myself Writer. In a world where titles mean something and unconventional ones risk judgement - or at least snickering behind the back - I felt the need to maintain my façade as an upstanding – though somewhat antisocial – member of society. I kept the Writer in the closet.

*

Writing and trying to get published is hard. Doing it in secret while maintaining a front as Office is harder. Being unavailable from 7am-10am, suspiciously shutting my laptop when seeing clients or colleagues at Starbucks, it felt like I would forever be Office, living my Plan B while my Plan A remained hidden in the closet.

Therapy helped. Some argue as to what therapy is, is not, or should be. Some argue a person who helps you identify and overcome the many real and imagined obstacles standing between you and your Truth is not a Therapist but a Life Coach. But as long as it gets you where you want to go, who cares? My therapist helped me to not give up the fight, to show up daily, to honor my calling. Writers write and live the Writer’s Life – a curious and creative search for Truth. You can’t escape who you are; or ignore a calling. You honor it. I did.

But that’s just half the battle. The other half, the obstacle my therapist could not help me with, was coming out – to family, friends and community. After being Failed Writer in my 20’s and Frustrated Office in my 30’s and 40’s, I didn’t have the stomach for it. I worried about what everyone would think. What may have been marginally acceptable as the aspirations of a naive youth thirty years earlier, could be seen as the desperate delusions of a man in his fifties. So I continued to toil in secrecy, each victory and defeat mine alone.

In 2017, I started an online literary quarterly, the Thieving Magpie. A steady stream of rejections and technological advancements brought out the entrepreneur in me (after all, “we are Office; we are Business!”) so I decided to create my own platform and publish my own work. I included my work in the first few issues under a nom de plume, still lacking the courage to come out. But as the submissions grew, I stopped including my work, staying safely in the shadows as anonymous Publisher and Editor-in-Chief and giving a platform to other aspiring writers.

As EIC, I read every submission with a simple standard: Is it good writing? Does a Truth emerge from the words, the characters’ actions, the story? Submitters’ bios are only reviewed after. Over the past seven-plus years and 30 issues, I have learned something. These good people who put in the time to create, edit, revise and perfect their art; who make themselves vulnerable, exposing themselves to the world; who honor their Calling - are all Earners, Office, Business, Law, Doktor, Nurse, Teacher, Lab Technician, Clerk. Their lives as Artists are neither threatened by these other titles, nor do these other titles specifically exclude the title of Artist. In fact, their art bears the authenticity of having been informed, layered and built on the experiences that come from these other titles. How could I in good faith judge their efforts and still be afraid to put my name on my own work, to emerge from the shadows, to come out to say I am Writer? But also Law. And Office. And Business. I can be all of it too.

So here I am at sixty-one, a Writer who has finished a novel. I put my name on it. I published it under my own imprint and sent it into the world. It is not about the struggles of a Rockstar Poet. It is not about a parking lot owner’s dispute over cash in paper bags. It is about a kid on a playground, trying to admit who he is, and honor his true self.

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