An open letter to R____

Dear R____,

It's okay. You can come out of the closet. You'll be much happier.

I know you're reading this, since you seem oddly fixated on "rebutting" things I write. It mostly seems to consist of half-demented scribblings and drawings of yourself looking like you're about to snap and bite the head off a kitten, which you then post as if you've really shown me a thing or two. I hate to break it to you, but I am not offended, though I am moderately amused, in that way in which watching someone unravel is amusing. I further hate to break it to you, but I am not actually the liberal establishment. Though I am flattered that you seem to think I'm their spokesperson.

My favorite was that one where you called me a "wet-nosed, androgynous little metrosexual." In fact, that's my favorite insult anyone's ever tossed at me. If you were somebody who mattered I'd quote it on my next book jacket. I hate to break it to you, though, that your terminology is wrong. Metrosexuals like girls. The word you were actually looking for was probably "queer" or "tranny." There's a rich tapestry of offensive words that apply to people like me. I'm sure you can do better if you try.

Anyway, the point is, for whatever reason, I seem to have your ear. So I'd like to use that peculiar privilege to say this to you: you aren't fooling anyone who's really paying attention. (I don't know how you've managed to fool anyone at all, but then, you do seem to have fooled a small audience into thinking you're a cartoonist.)

I've been exposed repeatedly to your anti-gay shriekfests for going on a decade, now, dating back to when you used to rant in all-caps on the Ozy and Millie mailing list about how sick and disgusting and unholy and horrible gay people are, sometimes apropos of nothing, and then threaten acts of violence against people who disagreed with you. That isn't normal behavior, though at the time I kind of thought you were just a colossal prick.

But, having a few more years behind me, and having seen the exposure and fall of such fellow ranting homophobes as Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and Jim West, I see it differently.

The pieces all fit. For one thing, you exhibit, and sometimes even admit to, the kind of misery that can only come from intense self-loathing. For another, you exhibit a fixation on homosexuality as a uniquely dark sin that, again, seems to be born most often of intense self-loathing. For yet another, if I understand correctly, you're unmarried and almost twice my age. I mean, big hairy spittle-emitting humorless redneck troglodytes aren't my type, personally, but I'm sure they're someone's. It's a big, overpopulated world out there.

Basically, you act, in every respect, exactly like a textbook tormented, self-hating closet case.

Come on out of the closet. Admit guys turn you on. It's not so awful as all that. God will not drop a piano on your head, I promise. And, the thing about being a tormented closet case is, there's no other kind. If you want to stop being miserable (and inflicting your misery on whoever lacks the good sense to ignore you), you have to start being honest with yourself.

This is the one and only time I'm ever going to address you, R____, but, really, come into the light. Life on the outside has so much more to offer.