Grief and truth. (my perspective).

Timing is everything when you come out to your parents. I found that out the hard way in college. It started on the day a cop interrupted my English class. A cop! The whole class froze, knowing something was terribly wrong. He said, "Is there a Michael Alvear here?" The professor, trying to protect me, turned to the cop and said, "No. He's not."

Goody two-shoes that I was, I knew I hadn't broken the law, so I started to get up. But I realized that if I did, I'd make a liar out of the teacher. So I raised my hand and said, "No, I'm here. You didn't see me."

The cop asked me to step outside the class. In the hallway he looked at me with sadness and handed me a note: "Call your sister."

I raced to the English department office and grabbed a phone. I was shaking as I dialed. My sister answered. She was crying. "There's been a horrible car accident."

All I can remember is the rhythm of my head knocking against the wall as if I were an autistic child trying to understand what's being said to him. There were always four kids in our family. Now there were three. There was no older brother to look up to anymore.

The funeral was in Orlando, Fla., so my sisters and I shared a hotel room next to my mom's room.

It was then, I think, that I first realized how out of control I was about sex. Well, not really about sex but about wanting to be touched by another man.

I told my sisters that I had a good friend in Orlando who knew Bob, my brother, and that he and I were going to have drinks.

"Don't wait up," I said.

I had no such friend. I ended up in a gay bar, looking to alleviate the grief in the only way that made sense to me at the time.

So I hit on this one guy at the bar. When he asked me what I was doing in Orlando, I lied.

When we were finished in bed, when I was lost in his embrace, in his tenderness, I cried and cried and cried. I cried about my brother's death, about being in a stranger's arms the night before his funeral, about being so desperate for a man's touch that I would leave my sisters and my mom alone in a strange city on what was surely the worst night of their lives.

But mostly I cried because the brother I adored had died without really knowing me.

I remember panicking as his casket was lowered. "You can't die without knowing me, Bob, you can't," I said under my breath, over my tears, beside my sisters. I saw the milky white smoke of my secret wiggle its way into the casket and whisper into his ear so that he would know it as he rose to heaven.

But the vision helped for only a minute. My brother died without really knowing me, and whatever fear I once had of his reaction to my awful secret, it paled next to the grief of knowing he'd died loving me as the person I wasn't.

When the casket hit the ground, it triggered a horrible obsession in me.

Who's next? was my compulsive thought. Who in my family will die next without really knowing me?

I had been wanting to come out to my mom for a long time, but I could never muster the nerve. I knew she'd have a bad reaction, and I just could not put myself through it. But after Bob's death, I couldn't bear the idea of her dying without knowing.

I really thought it would bring us closer, but all I managed to do was convince her that her only remaining son had been taken away too.

Fortunately, my mom eventually came around. But she still hasn't forgiven me for my timing.

We all ask ourselves the same questions before we come out to someone: Is the other person ready to hear it? Am I ready to say it?

But it's one thing to ask yourself if you're willing to pay the price of honesty. It's another to ask if you're willing to pay the price for silence. For me, the question wasn't, Am I prepared for the consequences of outing myself? It was, Who am I willing to bury without giving them a chance to love me for who I am?

Alvear writes for Salon.com and contributes commentary to NPR's All Things Considered. He can be reached via www.advocate.com.