Why is it so hard to come out at Harvard?

“I was straight when I was in college.” This is what I like to say whenever I speak to students about my experience as a Harvard undergraduate in the early 1990s.

I’m a provocateur. I was the boy who got detention in elementary school for telling tall tales about my grandparents’ dolphin (they didn’t have one). I was the kid who almost got kicked out of Sunday school for asking tough questions about Mary’s virginity. I was the man who got “blacklisted” by Lynne Cheney for asking even tougher questions of the Bush Administration after 9/11. My nickname in graduate school was “OTT”: Over-the-Top Timmy. I suppose I’ve always been something of a diva.

But I haven’t always been “out.” When I returned to Harvard to teach in the fall of 1998, I was in a serious relationship with a woman—so serious, in fact, that I’d begun to shop for an engagement ring. Back in college, I spent my time playing basketball, not planning BGLTSA events; I was far more likely to march in anti-apartheid protests than in gay pride parades.

Despite the fact that I had my first gay sexual experience when I was fourteen, I spent most of my teens and twenties terrified that someone would find out the truth about me. And so I told a lot of lies—to friends and loved ones, to complete strangers, and to myself.

Today, whenever I tell students that I was “straight” in college, they laugh—some of them uncomfortably (I suspect my story hits a little too close to home). During my second “Harvard experience”—the now decade or so I’ve spent as a tutor, advisor, and lecturer—I’ve been mostly “out.”

But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing.

After breaking up with my girlfriend, I slipped into a deep depression; I battled body image and the bottle, enduring dark thoughts through sleepless and sometimes reckless nights. Looking back, I don’t really know how I got through it, how I came out on the other side of things, but I suspect it had a lot to do with my Harvard students, who cared for me in crucial ways during those difficult times. I doubt they’ll ever know how much they helped to save my life.

As I’ve grown more comfortable in my own skin over the years, I’ve become a more visible member of Harvard’s “queer” community: I’m on the WGS tutorial board; I’m a member of the LGBT Faculty and Staff Committee; I advise LGBT students and groups; I serve on the board of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus; and I teach LGBT texts in my courses on American history and literature. My students and colleagues are often amazed when I tell them I spent most of my life in the “closet.” I guess one does get a second chance to make a first impression.

My relative comfort these days does not erase the deep discomfort my sexuality has caused me over the years. I grew up in a working-class, Irish- and Italian-Catholic family in upstate New York. I was an only child and grandchild, adopted at birth, who went on to become a standout student-athlete; my father was my high school basketball coach and, at times, my toughest critic.