Coming Out Day: Straight Friends React

My great friend Danny Sullivan (the world's foremost search engine expert, not the race car driver) is among the many I heard from today in regards to my own coming out story. Danny, who now likes in the UK with his family, has some clarifications as to exactly what happened on that sailboat in Newport Harbor when I sprung the "Yep, I'm gay!" news on him more than a decade ago. He blogs about it at: http://daggle.com/061011-142318.html.

Here's a taste of it:

"Every gay person has their coming out stories. I've always wanted to start a site for the opposite, friends of gays to share how they learned. There's probably a site like that out there somewhere. I think we have fun or interesting stories to tell as well.

Greg came out to me an entirely different way. First we were coworkers, and soon after he moved in with me and another friend to share an apartment in Newport Beach. For two years we lived together, me never knowing he was gay. He kept it well hid...

Several years later -- me now living still in Newport but with my wife -- I had a day off from work. Greg was meeting me to hang out, and I suggested we go sailing. I rented a small 14 foot boot to tool around Newport Harbor in... Greg had mentioned he wanted to talk about something, but he hadn't gotten to that. So in the small talk, I asked him what was going on with another friend and joked I thought he might be gay. He was, Greg said -- and so was he, he told me.

I was completely shocked. Not upset -- just shocked that I hadn't seen it coming. I may have even dropped the tiller. In short order, I was trying to get the boat under control. Greg exaggerates it -- we never were going to head out into the Pacific. We barely had any wind. But I did spend an intense 10 minutes tacking as best I could to get past the ferry and back to the dock, so we could talk properly with solid land underfoot!

Greg was transformed when he came out to his friends. He became more confident, happier and something just felt right that I could never put my finger on. That wrong thing, of course, was that he was having to hide is true identity all those years."

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Danny does have a way with words. He's just lucky I didn't share other stories like when he lit my Bart Simpson poster on fire or hurled my Mickey Mouse statue (bought in Tijuana for maybe $3) off the second floor balcony followed by a broom for me to sweep up the broken pieces.

Good times.

To read a nice profile of Danny in USA Today, click HERE.