In the last decade, I’ve come out hundreds — if not thousands — of times. To doctors, coworkers, customers, readers, family members, to friends new and old. To the Uber driver who tried to set me up with his niece, the student who asked me what I write about, the barber who wanted to know if I’d “smash” Cersei Lannister with her pixie cut. I thought that not correcting people who assumed I was straight was tantamount to turning my back on the brave queer activists who paved the way for my liberation. Harvey Milk’s infamous call for every queer person to come out emboldened me even if, at times, doing so put me at risk. He dared a generation of queer people to reveal themselves in 1978. More than 20 years later, my mother sent me to Nicaragua on the slight suspicion that I was gay.

When I finally did come out to her, I didn’t have a backup plan. I was 16 with no supportive relatives who would let me crash with them if she kicked me out, no savings, and no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t have much but I had luck. She loved me and over time, she learned to love all of me.

Of course, visibility is important. I know this because I learned how to have gay sex from an insult. “You take it up the ass, bro!” a boy in high school had said to me. “No!” I replied, out of habit. But, Ohhh, I thought. That’s how that works.

As an out adult who is occasionally mistaken as straight by strangers — whether because I’m in a gender-flattening work uniform or because heterosexuality is assumed by default — I’ve overheard the way people outside of the queer community speak about us, and I understand Harvey Milk’s challenge. We are more terrifying in the shadows where we could be anyone and anything, than we are when we reveal ourselves to be people you know and love: your neighbors, teachers, or the person in your barber chair.

The author at age 12.

I want to believe it’s as simple as more queer visibility equals more minds opening, equals fewer 10-year-olds sobbing on their shower floors. But that assumes that the root of homophobia lies in simply not knowing enough queer people.

Just like there are a host of factors a person should take into account when making the decision to come out, there are just as many reasons some straight people hate gays. In an ideal world, after turning down my Uber driver’s offer to go on a date with his niece, he called up a long-lost gay cousin and rekindled that relationship. The truth is, we mumbled a few awkward pleasantries and then didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. I put myself in an uncomfortable situation by outing myself and I can’t help but wonder what good — if any — came of it. Maybe the few laughs we had before the silence proved to him that no matter who I like to have sex with, we have a shared humanity. Maybe. Probably not.

A friend recently described the process of coming out as a gay Groundhog Day. Queer people are obligated to continuously come out in what feels like an endless loop, with very little change, and for seemingly no reason, for the entirety of their lives. It’s not that I’m scared to (well, sometimes I’m scared), but I’m exhausted by the notion of telling one more stranger something they will either respond to with, at best, ambivalence and, at worst, anger. For what? My life’s purpose as a gay man can’t be to prove my humanity to straight people. I don’t want to have to come out. I just want to exist.