Coming Out

After graduation and military service I got my first job as engineer when I was 25 years old. I was not happy about it, the work was boring and 9 to 5 was different from the free life as student. When summer came I had not been employed long enough to get a paid vacation but I was offered the opportunity to take vacation without pay, which I took. I went to France for two weeks. One of the last days in Paris, I saw a young black man in the Metro. We were alone in the compartment, and we looked each other in the eye. He was rather tall, dressed in jeans and a light sweater, and held a book in one hand. His skin was light brown, and his features Egyptian: large almond shaped eyes and full lips with sharply defined edges, smiling. I smiled back, but then it was my stop. I left without suspecting how this short meeting would change the course of my life.
On the way back to Denmark everybody had to get out of the train at the Danish border to check their passports. I stepped out in the corridor of my car and as I looked down at the platform, I saw the young man from the Metro passing. Without giving it a second thought, I rushed out and got in line behind him. He must have felt my presence, because he turned around and we smiled again.
Back on the train, he came to my car, and we began to talk in the corridor where we had relative privacy. His name was Robert, he was American, a classical pianist, going to Denmark to stay with a friend, but more than give information he asked questions. Soon his questions became very personal, and for once I didn’t hide anything. He asked if I was happy with my life, and I had to admit that I was not. We talked all the way to Copenhagen. I did not meet his friend before we were saying goodbye on the platform, but as we parted I got their phone number and we agreed to meet again.They had a small room in the inner city. I went there in the afternoon, when his friend was at work. Robert was home; I sat down, but there was nothing I could say. I got up and went over and sat next to him on the bed; he put his arms around me and a great peace filled me. From that first embrace everything became clear and simple; no words were required. The bliss of finding fulfillment in love, to totally open up, was overwhelming, and I knew nothing could ever be the same again.
After the lovemaking we talked, and he said: “If you dream of something different in your life, you must do something about it. What is it you want?” I did not know exactly, but he would not let me off the hook. So I said I wanted to be a painter, because I had a friend who had quit his job as an apprentice in a grocery store and started at the Royal Academy of Arts. This was the least scary choice; as a painter one is solitary.
Now Robert explained to me that he was not free. He had come to live with his friend and he could not be my boyfriend. Once in a while, maybe, we could meet, but I should not count on him. Even this could not bring me down, I guess I had known, and I was so thankful for what he had already given, that the ‘once in a while’ was enough to keep me happy. There was much to do; my whole life had to be turned around, and he was still there, within reach.
I gave in my resignation at the engineering firm and they asked me to finish the assignments that I had been working on. This solved the problem how I should earn my living. I gave up my elegant room and found a small and cheap one. I told my aunt, who was my closest relative, that I wanted to be a painter and that I was in love with a man, and that was how I had always felt. At first she could not believe me, and she said: “But you had a girlfriend!” When I reminded her of my many attachments to boys, she did understand and accept. I also told my cousin and a few other good friends, who all were very accepting, but I did not radically come out; my father, for instance, I never told.