Michael's Coming Out Letter from
More Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
I have always treasured this and I am posting it here so it might inspire a new generation.
There are parallel stories here - one is fiction, the other non-fiction. The fiction comes from the daily newspaper serial story that a young Armistead Maupin wrote every weekday in the San Francisco Chronicle. (These stories were gathered together in the books
Tales of the City and
More Tales of the City.
More Tales of the City
It's the late 70s and Michael (nicknamed "Mouse) is a young gay man in San Francisco. We have followed his friends and adventures over a couple of years, but at various points we are reminded that he has never told his parents back in Orlando Florida that he is gay.
But now Anita Bryant is crusading in Florida to overturn gay rights, and he has heard from his parents about what that nice lady on the orange juice commercials is doing for the good Christian people of their state.
Mouse realizes that he can't put this off any longer and he has to let his parents know that he is one of the people that Ms. Bryant is condeming. So, at long last he writes his letter back home.
Art Imitates Life
In real life, Armistead Maupin hadn't come out to his parents, either. His father was politically powerful in North Carolina, and a card-carrying KKK member. Maupin has spent most of his life trying to please him and live up to expectations, including volunteering for Vietnam and choosing dangerous missions.
But he knew that his parents read his columns in the paper, and that he couldn't write Mouse's letter without exposing himself. So, two weeks before the letter would appear in fiction, he sent it to his parents. It was the same letter.
The Letter