The Todd Glass Situation (18 page)

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it more than once.

Leading up to the day, I had doubts that I'd even be able to do it the one time. I was scared shitless. Part of it was my fear of the unknown: I was forty-seven years old—is that really the time in life to shake everything up and hope for the best? Was I really about to let go of the lie that had been with me for my whole life?

How were the people around me going to react? I knew most of my friends were going to be okay with the news, but there were a couple of people—including comedians I love and respect—who had made homophobic comments around me in the past, unaware of my
situation
. How weird and strained were those relationships going to be?

Would audiences respond differently to my jokes? I wasn't
a household name, but I still had a fan base, and they were going to have opinions. It was going to feel mighty strange for complete strangers to know intimate details about my life.

But my biggest fear was that my intentions would be misunderstood: What if people thought that I was coming out publicly as a form of self-promotion?

The day before Marc's show I went for a walk along the beach with my friend Daniel Tosh. I knew that he'd be brutally honest with me.

“I just don't know,” I confessed. “Is this a cheesy or a selfish way to do this? Am I going to sound overdramatic?”

“Look, Todd,” Tosh said, “not to make you feel bad or paranoid, but people have asked me about you.”

“They have?”

“Not like every twenty minutes or anything, but a decent amount. They don't care in the way you think. They mostly feel bad that you feel like you have to hide it from them.”

It suddenly dawned on me that hiding who I was from people, especially the ones that already knew, was totally delusional. And self-delusion is not a quality of a good comedian.

•  •  •

I
didn't sleep much the night before Marc's podcast. I tossed and turned thinking about what I was going to say and how it was going to come off. I knew I'd only get one shot at it, so it was very important to me that I said everything I wanted to say and not sound angry or bitter.

For the last few weeks I'd been carrying around a piece of notepaper, a place for me to jot down my thoughts about what I
was going to say. But the only thing I ever wrote down on it was “Talk about people that knew.”

I didn't want the headline the next day to be, “Todd came out on Marc Maron? Big deal, like we didn't already know!” I suspected that, like Daniel Tosh, a lot of people in the comedy business already knew about me.

I reminded myself that I wasn't coming out for these people. This was about the people who didn't know, whose lives might get a little better if they did. And this was about me being completely honest with myself for maybe the first time in my life.

I finally quit trying to sleep. Instead I plowed through It Gets Better videos on the Internet, watching teens and even preteens bravely share their stories. I remember one kid who couldn't have been more than twelve. He was sitting on a bed with his dog, talking into the camera about being gay.
Look at that dog,
I thought.
He doesn't care at all. The dog just loves this kid for who he is.

I was way too nervous to drive, so my friend Brian offered to give me a ride. It was about a thirty-minute drive to Marc's house. Brian made a few jokes to lighten the mood, but we didn't talk much. I was too busy thinking about how I was about to pull the curtain back on forty years of lies in front of 250,000 listeners.

I walked into the garage where Marc records the show. It was warm and inviting, filled with books—stuffed on shelves, stacked on the floor, crowding the desk where he sits during the interviews. I sat across from him, shifting nervously in my seat . . .

MARC

I have Todd Glass in my garage. We've been exchanging phone calls and he wanted to talk about something and he decided that this was the place to do it and I appreciate that. I don't know if I'd call it a delicate matter, but I thought the phone calls were fun, Todd.

TODD

Oh my God. How long do we make people . . . It's not a big deal. But I was nervous.

MARC

You had a particular . . . You were ready to tell the world something. And I think we should just do it and work back from there.

TODD

That's exactly what I was just thinking as you said it. Because then what we're working toward makes sense.

MARC

There's no reason to drag it all out. But it's interesting . . .

[TODD AND MARC PROCEED TO DRAG IT ALL OUT, HEMMING AND HAWING FOR ANOTHER THIRTY SECONDS. FINALLY . . . ]

MARC

So what's up, Todd?

TODD

Oh! I just wanted to come on and promote my podcast.

MARC

Oh shit! I had no idea that's what we were doing here.

TODD

Oh yeah! What did you think?

MARC

I thought you were gay!

TODD

Are you shitting me?

MARC

Yeah. Isn't that weird? I'm sorry.

TODD

Oh my God! Did you really think that?

MARC

Yeah!

TODD

Why?

MARC

Because we had these phone calls . . .

Finally, I was ready to break character. And when I say “break character,” I mean the role I'd been playing for most of my life.

“Okay, let's cut the shit here. Let me just say this. I have a very hard time saying that. I've always had trouble using that term . . .
Gay?
Fuck that, I'm not
gay
. What the fuck do I have to tell people I'm
gay
for? I'm not fucking
gay
. I'm fucking Todd Glass. I gotta go up to people and tell them I'm
gay
? That's a fucking lie!”

I paused to take a breath, then added: “But it's not.”

I don't know what I expected to feel after the show. Relief. Catharsis. But mostly I just felt numb. Marc gave me a sympathetic look. “If you're not ready, and you want me to sit on this episode for a few weeks, that's okay.”

“Marc, I've been sitting on this for forty-seven years. Please don't let me stop you.”

That night I lay awake in bed again, replaying the interview in my head. Did I say everything I wanted to say? Did I sound articulate? Was I funny? But eventually I realized the most important thing: It was done. The biggest secret of my life was no more.

A
few nights later, I walked into the Improv with my head down.

I've performed hundreds of sets at the Improv. The place that gave me my start in Los Angeles. My home. I've never once walked in with my head down.

But I didn't know what to expect. I felt naked. I was trying not to make eye contact with anyone, but Jeff Garlin spotted me from across the room. “OH MY GOD!” he yelled. “TODD GLASS, MY FAVORITE GAY COMIC!”

I felt a sharp pain in my stomach.
No, Jeff, no!

But I quickly realized that this was just his way of sending some love my way and reassuring me that nothing had changed. It was great that he was making a joke about it. In a
matter of seconds, I went from total embarrassment to absolute relief. I gave Jeff a big hug.

Before I came out, a lot of people told me how big a relief it would be, like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I knew these people meant well, but I thought that they were full of shit.

Being gay wasn't a plight that I had to get over. I already felt okay with myself. I started to worry that I was going to let everybody down by not having some kind of amazing epiphany.

But then the responses started pouring in. Two days after Marc's podcast dropped, I'd received several hundred emails. Heartfelt messages from friends who were excited to invite me and Chris to stay with them for the weekend. Total strangers telling me how hearing about my situation encouraged them to reexamine the way they were living their own lives. “More power to you,” a teenager tweeted at me. “Live the real life.”

“Hey, Todd,” Jim Gaffigan said. “Just heard your
WTF
. I'm proud of you. One question: Does your roommate Chris know?”

Jim was joking, but over the next few days I heard from a lot of people who had really believed that Chris was my roommate.
Roommate?
I was in my forties! I hadn't been able to tell people that I was gay, but I was okay with them thinking I had a roommate?

“Hey, Todd, it's Dave,” began a voice mail from David Spade. “You really . . . This is not good. This is not going to look good for me. Maybe I can still spin this and make it work. Do you have any black friends? Because maybe if you, me, and a black guy walked around together we could get some press. Call me. You know I'm your friend and as your friend we can fix this.”

Jimmy Pardo sent me a text that was short, sweet, and
extremely kind. The next day, when I ran into him at the gym, he shook my hand and leaned in to whisper in my ear, “I can't get AIDS from doing this, can I?”

This is how comedians act sweetly toward one another. Keep in mind that most of us use funerals as a last chance to roast our dear, departed friends.

I
remember going back to Philadelphia a couple of weeks before coming out on Marc's show. I don't want to make the experience sound too much like a bad movie, where the fate of the hero gets forestalled by some kind of sappy montage, but as I looked around the city, I couldn't help but think:
This is the last time.
My last chance to experience my old life as a (pretend) straight guy. I tried to imagine how my experience was going to be different once everyone knew the truth about me.

The reality—at least as far as Los Angeles was concerned—had been overwhelmingly positive. I couldn't believe how many messages I was getting from complete strangers who'd been affected by my story. Did someone send me a passage from the Bible and call me a sinner? Okay. Did I get a few negative
tweets? Sure. But those were the exceptions—almost all of the responses were warm, positive, and kind. I got brilliant emails from kids in high school about how hearing me made them feel a little bit braver about their own
situations
. Others were from people who weren't gay but were living with secrets of their own—a DUI or a drug problem. The details of my story might be different from theirs, but something still resonated with them. It made me feel great that, by doing something healthy for me, I was able to help other people.

But going back to Philadelphia was going to be another story. This was the town where I'd lived with my lie for the longest. There were bound to be uncomfortable encounters with my old friends.

One of the first calls I got was from Tommy Ryan, one of the other Ryans from Smokey Joe's. I remember sweating as I listened to his voice mail. “Hey, Todd,” he began in his thick Philly accent, “Tommy Ryan here. Listen, buddy, you had a great run as a straight guy, but let me tell you something: You weren't fooling anybody.”

I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. “Can't wait to fucking see you next week,” the message finished. “Love you, buddy.”

Tommy's message made me feel great. But as I got ready to do
Preston and Steve,
the morning show I'd done probably a dozen times as a “straight” comedian, my stomach started to ache again.

Preston and Steve
had always been one of my favorite shows to do. They move easily between funny and serious, acting incredibly silly one minute, baring their souls the next. But this wasn't like any other appearance I had done with them. We had
never talked about something this serious or personal before. There were a lot of different ways my visit could play out.

It couldn't have gone better. For the first forty-five minutes, we talked about my coming out. Then we did another two hours where they didn't mention it once—we did bits, we acted silly, and carried on like none of it made a difference. Everyone associated with the show handled it with so much grace that I didn't want to leave the studio when it was over. The lie was over and done with. I didn't have to be exhausted anymore.

I should add that the next time I went on their show, we didn't get into my sexual identity at all. The time after that, Preston and Steve only mentioned it because they were doing the news and gay marriage came up—giving me the opportunity, for the first time in my entire life, to weigh in on the subject in an honest way. To have people know why I got so emotional when I talked about it. To speak from direct experience, rather than hiding behind the façade of being a particularly open-minded straight guy.

So thank you, Preston and Steve, and Kathy and Casey and Nick and Marisa and everyone else who works on the show. Your acceptance meant the world to me.

•  •  •

I
want to reiterate something before moving on to this next part: Coming out has been an incredibly positive experience. It was the right thing to do and not a day goes by where I regret it.

But there have been a few bumps in the road along the way.

I was onstage in Las Vegas when I made a joke about going to the gym. And I could hear some guy mutter from the first row, “That's 'cause you're gay.”

I didn't have any time to think about it in the moment. My heart was pounding. I felt miserable. I struggled through the rest of my set without acknowledging that I'd heard the comment. I realized later, in hindsight, that it was the first time someone from the audience had made a disparaging remark toward me that had nothing to do with anything I'd done onstage.