Hi, I'm Roxanne. I'm 29, I'm a paralegal in Columbus, Ohio, and I came out to my own family at Thanksgiving of 1993, between the turkey and the pie, which in hindsight was poor timing on the pie. So when I heard Ellen Morgan was going to come out on network television, in prime time, on purpose, I knew I couldn't watch it alone. Nobody I knew could. So we didn't.

This page is about the show, the episode, the party, and what it felt like. If you had a party too, please tell me about it in the guestbook.

(Everybody on this page is first names only. Some of us are out at work and some of us aren't yet, and that's everybody's own business.)

It started in the spring of 1994 on ABC as These Friends of Mine, and by the next fall it was called Ellen. Ellen DeGeneres plays Ellen Morgan, who runs a bookstore and coffee shop in Los Angeles called Buy the Book and is surrounded by friends who are all a little crazier than she is: Paige (Joely Fisher), Audrey (Clea Lewis), who is the most cheerful person ever put on television, Joe (David Anthony Higgins) behind the coffee counter, and her cousin Spence (Jeremy Piven).

For three seasons Ellen Morgan dated men, sort of, and never seemed very interested. A lot of us watched those dates and thought, well. We know. Then last fall the rumors started that she was going to come out, and all season the show was dropping little jokes about it, and in April Ellen DeGeneres came out herself, on the cover of Time. I bought two copies. One to keep, and one to leave on the break room table at work.

It's called "The Puppy Episode," and it ran an hour. I'm not going to tell the whole thing, because I want you to see it if you missed it, and I hope they rerun it this summer. But here's a little:

• Laura Dern plays Susan, who's in town on business. Ellen likes her. A lot. And has no idea what to do about that.
• Oprah Winfrey plays Ellen's therapist, and she is wonderful, and when she first came on, Joy's whole living room clapped.
• There's a scene in an airport that I will not spoil, except to say a microphone is involved, and that I have never heard forty people go that quiet and then that loud.
• Lots of famous faces drop by. k.d. lang and Melissa Etheridge are two of them. You'll laugh.

What got me most wasn't any one joke. It was how ordinary it was. She was scared, and she was funny about being scared, and she told the truth, and then the people who loved her had to catch up. That's every coming-out I've ever heard about, including mine. And there it was on ABC, on a Wednesday night, in everybody's living room.

The paper said something like forty million people watched.

Where: Joy's house on the north side, because Joy has the big-screen TV and the biggest living room any of us has, and because Joy says yes to everything.

Who: Forty of us, give or take. Mostly women, a good table of guys, two straight couples who are better friends than I deserve, and Kelly's mom, who drove up from Dayton with a cake because Kelly told her what night it was.

The countdown: Rhonda made a poster for Joy's front window two weeks ahead that said how many days were left, and she changed the number every morning on her way to work. On the last day it just said TONIGHT in purple glitter. The mailman asked about it. Joy told him. He said he'd be watching too.

The rules: No talking during the show. Commercials only. Tissues on every table. (We needed them.)

Who cried: Short answer, everybody. Long answer: Sheri, when the show started. Dwayne, who is six foot three and fixes diesel engines, at the airport. Kelly's mom, at the therapist scenes, which made Kelly cry. Me, at the very end, sitting on the floor with my back against Joy's couch, and I didn't even try to stop.

When it was over Karyn opened the champagne and Joy made a toast, and I won't try to repeat it because I'd get it wrong, but it was about all of us who had to say it to our families without a laugh track. Then we all went in the kitchen and ate everything.

When I got home I called my mom. It was almost midnight. She'd watched it. She said she thought of me the whole time. That's all I'm going to say about that.

I work at a law firm downtown. I've been out at work for about two years, mostly, in the way where people know and nobody says anything. Thursday morning I walked into the coffee room on four hours of sleep and two of the secretaries were already talking about it. One of them turned to me and asked if I'd watched. I said yes, with about forty of my closest friends. She said, "I thought of you." That's twice in twelve hours somebody said that to me.

One of the partners stopped by my desk at lunch and said only that his daughter had made him watch it. Then he stood there for a second like he wanted to say more, and then he went back to his office. I'm counting it.

ABC hasn't said yet whether Ellen will be back in the fall. Please, please, please. It would be awful to finally get here and then have it end. If you feel the same, write to the network. Nicely. I did.

Season premiere party: If the show comes back, we're doing it all again in September, same place, same rules. Joy already said yes, of course. I'll post the date here as soon as we know it, along with a write-up of the night.