Many might think that coming out of the closet and admitting one’s gay is a lot easier to do these days than it once was, but that isn’t always the case, and the film “Love, Simon” is the perfection depiction of this ongoing struggle for so many.
“Love, Simon” stars Nick Robinson as the lead character Simon, a senior in high school who’s been living for over four years with a secret he’s way too afraid to tell anyone, that being that he’s gay. No one has any inkling about it, not his father Jack (Josh Duhamel), his mother Emily (Jennifer Garner), his sister Nora (Talitha Eliana Bateman) or even his three best friends Leah (Katherine Langford), Abby (Alexandra Shipp), or Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.). That’s solely because Simon has spent years doing what everyone else does, like going to the school dances with girls or pretending to like girls that others find attractive, especially when the only openly gay guy he knows is constantly made fun of by fellow classmates. One day though, that all begins to change when Simon discovers that another guy from his high school has placed a message out on an open chat forum under the name Blue, about his own sexuality struggles. Suddenly, Simon has a spark of hope and in a flash of courage one evening, he decides to create a private e-mail address solely to send a letter to Blue under the name Jacques. As Simon fearfully hits the send button and makes his very first step at peeking out of the closet, he awaits anxiously for days afterward for a response. When he finally gets one, his heart leaps for joy, as that internal loneliness finally seems to have a single ray of light shining into it. Soon the conversations draw deeper between Blue and Simon, leaving Simon to constantly day dream about who Blue might really be. But one day that single ray of light that’s been causing Simon to glow, gets covered up under a pile of tremendous fear when a fellow classmate, Martin (Logan Miller), accidentally reads Simon’s private emails on a library computer after Simon forgets to log out. It’s then that Simon realizes the reality of remaining anonymous is no longer possible and it may actually be the very thing that forces him to come out, much to his utter horror.
I truly loved this film and am grateful that Hollywood is finally now making mainstream movies that accurately depict the full spectrum of what’s it like to be a gay individual in this world. For the longest time, the only way a gay man seemed to be portrayed on television or in film was as an extremely flamboyant, overly promiscuous type of individual, like Jack (Sean Hayes) in Will & Grace. Yet, that’s not how every gay man is and is definitely not how I have ever seen myself as. That’s why I really connected to Simon’s coming out story, because it ultimately reminded me a lot of the one I went through between the ages of 13 and 23.
I lived for that entire decade in a closet of hell, where I seemed to keep falling for my closest guy friends over and over again. Like Simon, my true sexuality existed more in fantasy than in reality, simply because I was afraid I’d be completely rejected by the world if I ever came out. I ended up dating a number of women because of it and even had sexual experiences with a few of them along the way, just to keep up an appearance. But what was even harder to face during this period was the notion that the only type of guy I ever found myself being attracted to was heavyset. I honestly thought it was a curse at first and that God must have somehow made a mistake. It was hard enough being gay in this world but being interested in only chubby guys was even harder.
It wasn’t until I became besties in college with a stocky guy during my senior year, who I’ll label as “R”, that I began to be propelled into my own emergence from the closet. “R” was the first person I ever fell in love with and it was my intense feelings for him that caused my alcohol and drug addiction to skyrocket. I heavily drank alcohol and took many drugs to cover up my feelings for “R” until my life started to totally unravel because of it. It’s then I began to believe it was the alcohol and drugs that were actually making me feel the way I did about “R” and with guys in general, so I sought God out to find sobriety thinking it would fix my sexuality crisis. After several months of sobriety, my feelings for “R” only intensified, yet through a great therapist I discovered I wasn’t the only one in this world who had the same type of attraction as I. And once I began to meet others like me who had already emerged from the closet and were out living happy lives, I slowly began to take steps to do the same. But sadly, I received plenty of rejection along the way, from churches, to my mother, to friends, and even “R”. Thankfully though, my father was a diamond in all that rough, telling me that he would unconditionally love me no matter who I was attracted to.
Nevertheless, coming out of the closet often seems to be a very difficult thing to do, even to this day, for plenty of individuals. People still face rejection from judgmental family members, friends, and many other loved ones. Far too frequent, the Bible and other religious books keep on being thrown at gay people, claiming it’s a sin and that God abhors it, which I believe to be quite far from God’s truth. Regardless, many continue to be ostracized by their families and numerous others they care about because of this. This is why so many choose to remain married to the opposite sex, even in today’s progressive age. And if you don’t believe me, all you need to do is peruse through the countless gay sites out there, as there you’ll find them littered with countless closeted married men who are deathly afraid of emerging fully from the closet and instead opt to have anonymous sex outside their marriages.
This is precisely why I hope that many more movies will begin to emerge like “Love, Simon” or the recent Oscar darling “Call Me By Your Name”, or last year’s best picture winner “Moonlight”, as each help to break down all those fears that keep people in the closet, living out those anonymous sexual-based lives that only end up toxifying and lowering their spiritual vibration in the long run.
Nonetheless, “Love, Simon” is a beautiful coming out story for the movie ages. In the end, it truly helped me to have appreciation for what I had to go through 23 years ago, when I faced and fully embraced my own sexuality and attraction to heavyset men. If you happen to be someone who’s still living in the closet, like I once did in great fear, please know my prayers are with you. I do understand and hope that one day, movies like “Love, Simon” and stories like my own, will end up providing you enough courage to eventually create your very own coming out story…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
