Am I gay enough?

My family had a 12 hour car ride today, so Lisa and I had plenty of time to talk and we somehow got to reminiscing about the first few years of our relationship. It was a thrilling/scary period in my life, because I had the tandem events of falling in love and coming out at the same time. The falling in love part, of course, was incredible. The coming out part was a little more challenging. I finally had to accept what I (and even a former boyfriend of mine) had suspected for years. I was gay. Then, I had to navigate through the entire coming out process - first to my vet school roommates, then to my friends, then to my brother, then to my ex-boyfriend (who was obviously not surprised), then to my parents. And then my friends and family had to come to terms with that information and then out me to their friends and family. And the tide continued until pretty much everyone in my life at the time knew. 

But as any gay person will testify, you have to keep coming out your entire life, any time you meet someone new and choose to tell the truth about your family. I admit, I don't tell every person I meet - I have been known to lie by omission if the situation warranted it. But I am continually meeting new people, and most of them (especially since I have kids) assume I am straight. Here we go again. That awkward moment of me explaining my family, followed by the awkward moment on the other person's part, where they apologize for making a wrong assumption. And I never really know how they feel about it, do I? Are they ok with me being gay? Will they still bring their pets to me? Will they allow our kids to play together? Will they still want to hang out with me?

So, being gay is challenging. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. For one thing, if I weren't gay, I wouldn't be with Lisa, right? For another, I belong to a minority group, with its own culture. I am "in" with the gay/lesbian crowd because I am one of them. I get it. You can be as gay-friendly as you want, but if you're not gay, your not 100% in. And it's sort of cool. I can go to Pride events as "one of them". I can bring my kids to Rainbow Family conferences and talk about what it's like to be a gay parent, and what it must be like to be a kid with gay parents. I can play in lesbian softball league (which is where I met many of my lesbian friends).

However, I am not as gay as I was 15 years ago. Not that I am not as attracted to women as I was (in fact, the opposite is true - the more comfortable I am with my sexuality, the more I am open to being attracted to members of the same sex). The thing is, I am no longer really living the gay lifestyle. We don't go to gay bars, I stopped playing lesbian softball years ago (too much drama!), and now that we have kids, we have more in common with our straight married-with-kids-and-possibly-even-Republican-suburbanites than we do with some of our gay friends. And to be honest, the Rainbow Family conference scares me a little - too many crunchy lesbians raising their kids with a vegan diet and no TV. What do I have in common with these people??

Lisa used to have a rainbow flag hanging on our wall and a rainbow triangle on our car. Now we don't have any of that. I think it's because when you first come out, you want to announce it to the world. And you also want to find others like you. But then we kind of became comfortable enough in our sexuality that we didn't feel we needed to wear it on our sleeves. And maybe having kids changes things a little too. I don't know. 

But I miss it. I miss the camaraderie. I miss going to gay bars and being able to dance with my spouse without anyone giving it a thought. I miss being able to talk to gay people about what it's like, or not having to talk about it because they get it too. I miss not having to explain my family, because it's already assumed that I'm gay.

Anyway, Lisa and I decided to jump back into the fold. We're going to a gay bar Saturday night. Who's in? Or better yet, where can we find one?