Okay, I thought my big comeback post would be something silly. I had something in the works about CATS! Which, let's be honest, all the big Ds love a good cat story.
But, having read all of TB's recent posts about her emotional coming out story, I felt like that would be disrespectful. So I thought I'd add my own coming out story to the mix, and it'd be a week of fun "how we made our parents get ulcers" stories.
So ... picture it, Sicily, 1922. Wait, no. That's a Golden Girls episode. Picture it: Western Pennsylvania. Wait, wait, no: picture it, Western Massachusetts, my liberal alma mater, a few months before.
I made the decision to go to my liberal alma mater because of a GIRL. The girl was my first girlfriend, and she ended up at much more liberal school very near mine. I one-upped her by deciding to live on the big ol' GAY AND LESBIAN floor at my school. I felt rad and progressive and kind of punk rock.
Fast forward to moving in day, where everyone was introduced with the horrible ice breakers and the awkwardness. Turns out I wasn't so rad and progressive. Out of all of my floormates, I was the only one who wasn't out to my parents. I was the only one who hadn't been out since, like, birth. I hadn't started a gay-straight alliance in my high school, I hadn't been some kind of queer youth activist, I hadn't written a book (!) about my experiences.
Less rad, less progressive. So, I kind of freaked out. I had known that I'd be moving into that floor since summer orientation and, when I actually moved in, I had a friend come from Pennsylvania and made my parents stay home. Closet for the WIN.
And fast forward again to Thanksgiving vacation. The First Wives Club was on rerun on some station, and I saw that one of the characters had an OUT KID ZOMG. Catalyst. I freaked out. I went into the den and drank a couple of my dad's beers and smoked about 10 cigarettes. I smoked a few more. It's gonna happen, son.
I went upstairs, where my mom was chopping something for dinner (I remember it as broccoli, but hey, who knows). I said the following incredibly guilt-inducing and shitty thing to her:
Mom, will you still love me no matter what?
And my mom froze like a small-town mom in headlights. She said yes, because really? Really. What shitty mom is going to say no to that?
I told her that I needed to tell her something important. My mom said that she already knew what it was, that I didn't need to tell her. I told her. She chopped broccoli frantically. We talked for a bit. She said some good stuff ("I still love you") and some bad stuff ("Don't tell a lot of people because I still have to live here").
Later, she blamed my 'mo identity on the fact that she and my dad had let me play Little League with the boys. Jesus, ego much, ma? But it went on. She and my dad, many years removed, are still weird about stuff, good about other stuff.
I'm the youngest of three kids, by a lot, lot, lot of years. I came out to my oldest brother, the punk rock one with the hipster wife, years and years before I ever said anything to my mom. And he's the one that I talk to about my prospective mates and my current mates, because my mom always (still!) makes some kind of non-committal noise and doesn't want to talk about anything. At the same time, she very much wants for me to meet GRAD STUDENTS and LAWYERS and DOCTORS 'cause I'm the little one in her head. I need a nice girl with a HUGE income, so that I can ... what? Be a housebutch, apparently. The parents, they never stop worrying.
So, I did say that my brothers are a billion years older than I am, right? A couple of years ago, after I'd moved the the lovely D.C. metro region, my oldest niece, the daughter of my Brother Who Often Doesn't Understand Stuff Like This, sent me a MySpace message:
"So ... are you gay?"
And how do you deal with that?
"Uh ... yes?"
And how does she deal with that?
Cool! I thought so! What does your girlfriend look like? Send me pics!
I have a ton of hope based on that, and I'm not sure why. "Meh, can I see pictures?" is the raddest attitude ever. It makes me hope that the next generation of people in their teens and twenties are going to get a whatevs and a canIseepics instead of a pleasedon'tdothistome.
Let's hope, huh?
(xoxo, Brit, for being so rad should you ever see this)
