"God. Am I actually going to do this?" I say to myself. With the hours, minutes, seconds until the end of the year quickly diminishing my self-imposed deadline draws ever nearer. I must have seemed a bit out of sorts because even Mother Ray could tell something was different.
"What's wrong, honey? You seem anxious." she inquired.
"Um, oh, it's nothing." I lied, but it was enough to sustain her and she walked off to do something else in another room.
Now I'm pacing—literally pacing, like in the movies or a soap opera kind of pacing—in the living room. I can feel a growing feeling of nausea brewing in my gut. I can hear each second tick by even though the clock on the silently says 8:55pm. I tell myself, "OK, just do it at 9 o'clock and that way you can still make it back to The City in time for New Years."
I go to the bathroom to splash some water on my face, and to have the toilet handy just in case my nerves get the better of me. I'm surprised by how nervous I actually am. For the past weeks, if not months, I had been building up to this, running the countless possible combinations of admissions, replies, apologies, rejections, and even approvals through my mind. And I'm at the point in my life where I feel as though it's time to start living my own life, not the one that my parents think I should have. I'm ready for this. "What's the worst that could happen?" I muse. My self confidence begins to return, and just in time as the clock behind me reads 9:05pm. (My mom has clocks everywhere, yet our family is notorious for struggling to get places on time.)
I dry off my face, take a deep breath, track down my mom who is folding towels in the master bedroom with my dad watching sports on TV. I ask them if I can see them in the living room for a minute, that there's something I need to talk to them about. "Sure. Let me just finish folding these towels and we'll be right in," mom almost cheerfully replies. I begin to feel guilty now. My folks are so happy-go-lucky most of the time, and now I'm getting nervous about ruining that for them. But rather than cop out, I walk into the living room and take a seat in the swivel chair, my fate just moments away from being revealed.
Why is it that people set deadlines like this? After the hecticness of the holidays, why put a stake in the ground of midnight on New Years Eve when in reality the next day is just that, another day. Time hasn't truly advanced a year, it's just progressed as it always has, just the label has changed. And somehow that's supposed to make all the difference, like magically we'll be transported through time and everything will be different in the new year. I had be putting it off for long enough and back when I'd made the decision to talk with my folks NYE seemed so far away. Now it's less than 3 hours away and knowing that my folks liked to go to be early, I really had less time than that.
"Ok, honey, what's on your mind?" mom says, interrupting my thoughts. Dad says nothing, which is his style—a man of few words.
They take a seat on couch opposite me, looking quizzical, concerned. Shit! Say something! Why didn't I think of an opening? No wait, I do have an opening, hundreds of them, but what should I say now, in this moment? I can feel myself getting overwhelmed. I don't want to be emotional, not now.
To be honest, I don't really remember exactly what I said leading up to the two words that would change our family anticipated history, but I guess that doesn't really matter, those leading words sure didn't… Looking down at the carpet I finally begin to speak.
"………I'm gay." The words hanging in the air for what feels like an eternity. Like a slot machine, all the different scenarios I had played out in my mind previously are flashing in front of me... which would be the one? Finally the silence is broken.
"Oh no, Kenny, not gay," my mom gulps, her voice low, sad, and the word "gay" dripping with disgust and horror. It sticks like a dagger in my chest and my mind reels. I was not expecting that. Of all the possible things I'd imagine her saying, I never expected that. I wanted to die.
She started talking but I don't hear what she's saying. Her voice is beginning to tremble, but her first response is still playing in my mind, over and over, my brain trying to analyze what she said, and what it means. "Oh no, Kenny, not gay." The only meaning I can conclude is that substituting any word other than "gay" would have been perfectly find to say to them.
"Guess what? I'm a serial killer." … "That shows pattern recognition and problem solving, you're very smart! Just don't kill anyone we know, Kiddo."
"I've been meaning to tell you, I'm into hardline drugs and sold your car to support my habbit" … "That's OK, we'll just say it was stolen and get a new one with the insurance claim, Sport."
"Did you know that I'm in a cult and poisoned the raspberry lemonade you drank at dinner?" … "We're happy you're making new friends and have a hobby."
Anything would be better than saying I am gay.
After my brain completes the analysis, I realize that mom is kneeling beside me and about to put her arm around me. Dad is still sitting on the couch, looking very absent from the whole affair. I finally register what she's saying through choked back tears, and she's asking me to pray with her for God to heal me and make me straight again, to bring her son back to the ways of the righteous, to help me resist the demons that are preying on my impressionable mind, and to not let anyone else find out less it cause the family shame in the eyes of the church. I've got to hand it to my mom, she really knows how to pull the rug out from under me. "Heal me?" "Bring her son back?" Clearly all the positive signs I had seen in my mom in the past few months when discussing gay-related subject matters we would see on the news together completely vanished, that she didn't really understand what it was to be gay, and that the media really owned her impression of what it was to be a gay man.
And then she asked me if I had AIDS. WTF?! That is her definition of a gay man, that they have AIDS. Oh, and that they were going to hell. And are child molesters. I can't defend myself against a belief system like that, I'm too emotionally drained, I need to get out of the line of questioning because I know where this is heading. Holding back my emotions the best I can I stand up, detaching her from my body. Dad doesn't look up, his gaze transfixed on his shoes. I say I need to head home to The City for New Years and have to leave now if I want to make it in time and head out the door. "Don't tell your sister! Or anybody. The pastor will know what to do." she calls out as the door is closing behind me.
The night air is cold and razor sharp but I'm in my car and driving off before it really stings. My mind starts replaying the entire evening from the start and by the time I'm making the first turn to head to the freeway the floodgates open and I'm sobbing. Sobbing so hard that I'm barely able to see, my body heaving so hard it makes steering almost difficult. The logic in me is saying to pull over until it's safe to drive, but everything else in me is saying to put as much distance between me and that house as possible.
I end up navigating my way to the theater I used to manage, the one where me and Sparky chased each other through the empty halls, the one where I had come out to him just a few months earlier. Some of my friends were waiting there for me, just in case I ended up not going back home to The City. One of my best friends, Dice, said I could crash his folks' house and he took me over. I found myself welcoming in the New Year alone, on an unfamiliar sofa with only a collection of vintage Barbie dolls to watch over me as I eventually nodded off to sleep, unsure of the consequences of my actions, but deep down inside happy that now everyday after would be my own.
Happy New Year.
This took place 10 years ago tonight. Apologies for my lack of keeping the tenses consistent, this was more or less a stream of conscience entry.
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