Apparently, National Coming Out Month was the cue for Donald Trump to fully expose himself as a foul, preening gas-bag. And like so many folks say when their friends and relatives eventually come out, we’d known all along.

As for lewd speech, Trump’s 2005 hot mic rant certainly qualifies, but not with the ferocity it might have if it’d actually made anatomical sense: You can’t really grab a woman by her pussy. I questioned this on social media. For the record, I’m not a “gold star gay”; I’ve spent some time with the female anatomy and, though many years ago now, I don’t remember a handle or dangling protrusion large enough to actually grab. The best we could come up with was a joke about bowling balls. 

He can’t even locker room banter right. Fail, Donald. Bigly. 

Although Trump’s heinous reveal is the headline news, most of us associate National Coming Out Month with the LGBT community. For me, coming out wasn’t a one-shot deal. I wasn’t able to just rip off the Band-Aid and saunter out into the street. The first time a boy approached me sexually, I was nine. Somewhere around 15, I was aware of a distinct, permanent difference in my sexual perception. Between then and 22, it’s all grey area. There were numerous false starts, retreats, back-burners, and oops-I-did-it-again’s along the way.

While National Coming Out Day and the month surrounding it are both designated as ways for the bolder, perhaps braver members of our community to act as leaders (and there’s nothing wrong with that), I don’t think that coming out has gotten much easier than it was 30 years ago, especially for teens. It’ still plenty traumatic and best handled carefully, slowly. My instincts tell me that rushing through the process only leads to trouble. 

The second season of ABC’s American Crime deals with this. Having just binge-watched it over the last two weeks, I was struck by the juxtaposition of Coming Out Month with the show’s storyline, in which two teens are outed as part of a rape investigation. 

Mind you, American Crime is heavy. I call it “anvil television.” The show, created by John Ridley, uses a recurring ensemble cast to play out a different crime each season, anthology style. It exposes the far-reaching effects of crime in our culture, beginning with a large-scale investigation that splinters off, exposing other law infractions as it moves along. Race, class, and gender politics all come into play as relationships, families, and institutions fall apart in the wake of a dysfunctional judicial system that steamrolls everything in its path. It feels valid and relevant, but it’s also extremely depressing. Seeing how weathered Timothy Hutton looks nowadays doesn’t help.

I would never want to erase the courage that some young people muster, coming out as teens, consequences be damned. These are those rare individuals that exude such high levels of personal integrity that they manage to emerge from the closet at 16 with their heads held high. Bullies seem to instinctively know to leave these types alone — there will be no satisfaction, so don’t even bother.

But what transpires in the American Crime plotline oozes with nasty consequences for both teen males in question, and while some of it can be attributed to the show’s heaviness (it is fiction, after all), I think it’s truer to real-=life experiences than any candy-coated horseshit that portends otherwise. 

Just because we now have out-in-the-open continuums of both sexuality and gender at play in urban culture doesn’t mean that kids are any less cruel than they were 30 years ago. Political correctness is so obnoxious and annoying, it begs to be mocked, so don’t count on any protections there. And the fact of something like legalized gay marriage doesn’t mean a whole lot to kids (and their parents) who find otherness threatening. The reasons why don’t really matter. Knowing that the cruelty you’re enduring might be caused by your assailant’s own insecurities doesn’t soften the blow at 17 when you have to change in a locker-room of straight boys just waiting for you to stare two seconds too long before they feel justified in a violent strike. And nowadays, if a peer can’t express their hate to your face, they can hide behind social media platforms and torment you that way. No, coming out before college is complicated. 

And even within the context of college’s heady freedoms, there are no guarantees. I made a pass at a basketball player my freshman year of college and all hell broke loose. Granted, it was 1988. I sent him a mix-tape called “Basketball Anyone?” with a graphic of Marcie and Peppermint Patty pasted on the cover. I thought I was pretty freaking clever. But the team captain behaved as if my pass (at a guy who was fairly fey in his manner—I wasn’t just groping in the dark) somehow insulted the integrity of the entire club—as if questioning one teammate’s sexuality would tank the entire operation. My dorm hallway went on an unofficial lockdown for fear of a violent rebuttal. It was terrifying. And so much for keeping it “just between us, sir.”

This brings up another reason why American Crime spoke to me so intensely: It involves a high school basketball team. And they got it right. After watching it, I could almost understand the team captain’s reaction to my pass, some 28 years ago now. 

The scenario involves an annual sports-related bash where high school kids are served alcohol. The party in question is a tradition and is thought of as harmless fun—one of those times in privileged youth when adults look the other way. But when pictures from the party surface online of a boy in his underwear, obviously intoxicated and unable to help himself, rape allegations follow. Male-on-male rape allegations. One of the males is on the basketball team. 

What ensues is jaw-dropping and awful for all concerned. The victim doesn’t want to pursue a legal case, but his mother does, and she starts talking without thinking, too late to turn back. Then it comes out that the boys in question have been texting prior to the party, and that the victim has kinky tastes. Essentially, he asked for a rough, relentless screw and encouraged the other guy to choke him. 

Both of these young men have to deal with owning these behaviors in front of adults, all of whom react badly to the sexuality, rape allegations aside. Having sex isn’t simple in a world where boys regularly start seeing hardcore porn at 14. Whatever innocence may have once characterized teen sex is long gone. Now we have choking, bukkake, chemsex, gang rape. And at times during season two of American Crime, it seems like maybe a gang rape took place, with several members of the basketball team potentially violating the one boy in question, though this never gets completely ironed out. Eventually, the perp tries and fails to kill himself, returning to his team outed and hated just a few weeks later. The victim goes on to kill another student. Everybody loses. 

There’s irony here. More than 35 years ago, gays freaked out about so-called negative portrayals and stigmas associated with the film Cruising, written by William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist) and starring Al Pacino. In it, Pacino plays an undercover cop mining his way through New York City’s seedy gay leather underground to try and catch a serial killer. But there was nothing in the film that was too terribly off-the-mark. So, while LGBT activists might argue that American Crime perpetuates negativity in a similar light, they’d once again be trying to stifle ugly truth.

Coming out is frightening, painful, and potentially devastating. Let’s not pretend otherwise. And yes, it definitely does “get better,” as the media campaign reassures. But what about that time in between? Sensitivity goes against the grain of human nature at 16, sad but true. No need to rush. Coming out before you’re ready never leads to good things.