I had already seen my parents at the Seder earlier in the week, but I had to do some laundry. That, and I really wanted some matzoh brei. It's one of those seasonal Jewish dishes that only I happen to like, so my mother makes it for me. She is very good at it. It's the sort of thing that you probably only like because it reminds you of your childhood, and because the person who made it loves you. Essentially matzoh brei is like french toast only it's made with matzoh and tastes nothing like french toast except that it benefits greatly from a flood of maple syrup.
The way my mother makes it, it covers an entire frying pan and it covers your entire plate in a big circle. And with that sort of task in front of me, I was her captive audience. Mom was full of leading questions. She would have made a good assistant district attorney.
"So what about girls?" She was leading the witness. I usually got away with either a glib retort or an evasive maneuvre.
Why would this morning be unlike any other?
Let's back-track, shall we?
I had met Knucklehead more than a year and a half earlier. After three months we moved in together. We bought furniture together, we went on vacations together. We were out to friends, but not family. There were problems. "It was a dark and stormy relationship." But, after more than a year of living together, things seemed to be getting better. Even a recent vacation to Bermuda a month before went (almost) completely without incident. Things were going well enough. I was 25 years old. What the hell did I know?
So how do you live with a guy for more than a year and not come out to your parents, or think they don't know? Well, with a tough realty market, having a roommate and just starting my "career" as a technical editor at a whopping just-above-poverty-level salary made a roommate an easy explanation. Never mind that there had never been a girlfriend on the horizon and never mind that girlfriend scare of 1985/86. My parents were near complete hysteria about the possibility of a black female friend becoming Mrs. Seth J. Bookey. Their jumping to conclusions and apparent possible racist reaction didn't really encourage me to come out.
Meanwhile, Knucklehead was not a complete secret to them either. Knucklehead was introduced to them both. Knucklehead helped me move my things from my childhood bedroom to his apartment in Woodhaven, Queens. My mother took Knucklehead shopping at A&S, where the lure of her 10% employee discount was too great to resist. Oh yes, my parents were well-acquainted with his six-foot-plus copperhaired Irishness; but not as well as I was. Who knew that I would be a sucker for red-hair? I already knew I was a sucker for height. What I didn't cotton to was the lying.
So, I said to my mother, "Ma sit down..."
So I told her flat out that I was gay and that he was not just my roommate.
"I know," she replied.
"So if you knew, why did you keep asking me questions about girls?"
"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable."
Coulda fooled me.
My mother worked in the fashion industry for years, and I have to assume she knew a few homosexuals in her day. That morning she told me a story. She used to take one of those Norweigan cruise lines down to the Carribean. She went to lots of islands. She was in Havana in 1958 when a department store was blown up. She got around.
On board, a man who was obviously gay to her asked her to dance, while his partner stayed behind at their table. Mom said that while he was very nice and very charming (as you know all gay men are nice and charming; that's always been my experience), it was as if she was dancing by herself. It was as if he was not with her at all. So I took that to mean that she understood a lot more than I ever expected her to.
A funny little interlude occured. Mom questioned me about my friends. She was sure they were all gay, since we were always together, and not a girl in sight. One by one, I defended their heterosexuality. Why yes, even the one who loved theatre was not gay.
"So who's gay then?" Mom wondered.
"Just me."
So she told me to tell Dad myself, and that I should finish my matzoh brei. And while I finished my matzoh brei, she went and told my father herself. After I finished the matzoh brei I went to talk with my father. I don't really remember all that much his exact words, but I remember saying something along the lines that I was happy and that I found the person with whom I planned on spending the next 70 years. I was rather confident in that, actually. I had had a lot of doubts until just that month, but I was very sure. I shouldn't have been, but I was. After all, there had been talk. There had been the notion of having children one day, though he was primarily a child himself. There had been the dream of buying a place. Perhaps one of those condos on Queens Boulevard, the ones with the balconies and the single blue light bulbs illuminating them.
When my mother asked me why I had waited so long to tell her, I mentioned the paranoia, the Fear of a Black Grandchild. My mother had a logic that almost makes sense. A black wife and half-breed grandchildren would cause all sorts of problems, but being gay? Well, that was so outside of matrimonial and childrearing reality that all the laws and standards, apparently, were out the window. Gayness was so without standards that the normal laws of man, nature, and physics ceased to apply. And what makes sense in this is that she was right. Gay people, free of any real adequate role models, were free to make their own blueprints. No matter how much ink got spilled.
And when I left that day, with the untenable conditions of no public displays of affection in front of them, and not to tell any of the relatives, I went home to Woodhaven. I had already put in a call to Knucklehead; but I was sailing into unchartered territory. But the hardest coming-out scene had happened. If nothing else, getting that source of anxiety out of the way was worth celebrating. In the end, the worst thing of all was my own fear. But Love won out over Fear, in that round.
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