Introducing Crying in a Foreign Language; The Deities That Answered My Plea.
From the moment I arrived in Japan in 1988, I knew that my sexuality’s closet was as layered as my friend and college chaplain, Carol, had suggested it would be. Four years later, as year five (of ten) in Japan began, a conversation with a stranger ended in another realization: my dreamt-of relationship existed in its own constructed isolation, one that separated me from joy as much as it had separated me from love.
The closet was an essential for me during the 1980s and 1990s. The beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic resulted in a horrendous upswing in anti-gay discrimination. Gay men lost their homes, their jobs, and their families as we lost our lives, one after the next. Crying in a Foreign Language: The Deities That Answered My Plea describes the biggest closet I’ve ever had: my choice to live in Japan from 1988 to 1998. At the same time, I discovered safety and authenticity outside of myriad other closets, including the ones I constructed for grief, relationships, and vulnerability.
Writing this memoir, however, reminded me of how recursive a closet can be. Sometimes, I needed to rebuild layers of privacy, safety, and security after breaking one or two down. And many times, the closet was not about my sexuality. I spent nearly all of the first twenty-five years of my life, including four of my ten years in Japan, in a closet designed to isolate me from grief.
Coming out as a rainbow-dweller in North America in 2024 remains terrifying. An increasing amount of legislation targets drag queens and trans folx, as vocal minorities push queer people back into closets as vociferously as they did to me and my coevals in the 1980s. Crying in a Foreign Language is part of a much-needed second wave of coming-out stories, one that not only normalizes queer lives beyond the closet but also shines a light on the possibilities a closet still holds.
During my ten years in Japan, any number of my assumptions—about the value of grief, about my sexual identity, about my understanding of relationships, and even about my reasons for going to Japan in the first place—were proven false. Those abandoned assumptions and revolving-door closets brought an unexpected truth to light: No matter what happened, no matter the closets I rejected or maintained, I found a way forward.
The descriptive yet snapshot-like narrative chapters comprising Crying in a Foreign Language are interwoven with snippets of flashbacks and short citations from medical, historical, and cultural sources. Readers will experience a tapestry rich in details, rife with both humor and sorrow, yet ultimately uplifting. Taken in total, my memoir imparts hope for a better future, one that I looked forward to then, for my own sake, and one that I look forward to now, for the sake of everyone living life on the rainbow in these combative times.