saw the way you were looking at her, you should go ask her out.” I was nine.
They wouldn’t let me have friends who were boys over, just girls. It became clear to me by the time I was fourteen that they were hoping for something to happen—like it would change me.
I think a lot of parents would be horrified if their 14-year-old son got a girl pregnant, but not mine. They would have been relieved—like it was the goal the whole time.
My mother went to a PFLAG meeting one time, but she never told me. I guess she was scared I would have thought she finally approved. I found out later, and it was whispered to me by someone else, like a dirty secret.
My dad didn’t fully come around until I was in my thirties. My mom never will. Which is weird to me, because they knew who I was since I was a toddler. I never had to come out, because I was obvious and oblivious to it being something to be ashamed of. I’m grateful I never thought of being gay as something “wrong” because my parents would have only been too happy to set me “right.”
When I was thirty years old my dad came out to visit me and my husband. It was the first time he had visited me—ever. He wanted to apologize and he did. I had already forgiven him years ago, for me, not for him. And now it was for him. He told me he didn’t know how to handle “my problems.”
I’m not a parent, though I hope to be one day, but isn’t this parenting in a nutshell? Not having a clue. I think as long as you love and accept and try—you’re good. But my dad back then, he didn’t even try. And so many of my LGBTQ friends, their parents didn’t try. People would say things like, “Your mom/dad is doing the best she/he can,” but that isn’t accurate. Doing the best you can requires effort.
Charlie Bondhus, New Jersey
I came out as bisexual in the late 90s. Or more accurately, I was outed by my brother—nine years older—when he found gay porn under my bed. Being the generally terrible person that he is, my brother stomped out to the yard where I was mowing the lawn, handed me the magazine (Blue Collar Tales—Erotic Fiction. It wasn’t even real porn!), and said “Thanks for breaking my heart.” I was the queer one, but it seemed my brother had claimed the role of Madame Butterfly.
When he told our parents, it set off a weird, painful weekend in which everybody kept breaking into cancer diagnosis-level tears. My sister-in-law’s sister—who would later go on to marry a wealthy Boston Republican—was also visiting, so there were all these absurd attempts to conceal from her what was going on. I remember the four of us screaming and crying in the living room while she and my sister-in-law were out shopping. When we heard their car pull into the driveway, everybody started shushing everybody else. When they walked in, we were figuring out dinner plans.
Things got still more interesting the next day, when my heterosexual Catholic family decided to educate me on gay sex. My brother—who’s basically a nastier version of Alex P. Keaton—trotted out the “AIDS is god’s punishment” line, which had been a cliché since at least Jesse Helms. My parents provided some much-needed comic relief when my mother, in impeccable Faye Dunaway, shrieked “Do you know what gay men do? They put their weenies (yes, she said “weenies”) up each others’ butts!” True to form, my dad was less fiery but more awkward, staring at the floor and mumbling “So the idea of… rectal sex… appeals to you?”
At the end of the weekend, my sister-in-law’s sister departed, politely feigning total ignorance of the blood tragedy that had been unfolding around her for three days, and my exhausted parents asked me if I wanted to see a psychologist. At first I thought it was because they were afraid I’d been traumatized by hearing my Dad say “rectal sex,” but then I realized it was because they were, like so many other parents of LGBTQ kids, hoping a shrink would fix me. I said yes, not because I felt like I needed to figure out my sexuality, but because I knew I needed to talk to somebody who would help me deal with my family.
Since my parents were concerned that a psychologist might somehow let slip my full name and professed sexual orientation while he was in line at the deli, they made sure to get a guy whose practice was over an hour away from where we lived. They also paid him cash, since if there was a paper trail, it could come back later and damage my political career (a path I had not once expressed interest in, but hey, you never know).
The psychologist was fine. To my parents’ chagrin, he supported my expressing my sexual identity. It was nice to be validated by an authority figure, but he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
Despite all this, I still retreated into the closet for a few years, having convinced myself that, as much as I liked dick, I would ultimately marry a woman and be happy with that. Naturally I kept sleeping with men, but that seemed irrelevant. Like many men, I never had much trouble separating love from sex.
It took me until sophomore year of college to finally admit I was not straight, not bi, but gay. I was watching Edge of Seventeen, a cheesy coming-of-age flick set in the mid-‘80s where a twink sings along to “Hey Mickey You’re So Fine” and still manages to shock everyone when he comes out as gay. About 30 minutes in, the “Hey Mickey” twink goes to a hotel with one of his coworkers and the two share a hot, shirtless kiss before the scene fades to white. That kiss was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. The moment I realized that, it was—“Whoa. I’m gay.” No doubt.
I managed to keep it from my parents for a while, but from time to time they hinted that they knew. The kitschiest moment was when I was getting ready to meet a guy I was secretly dating and nonchalantly said, “I’m going to see Adam” and my Mom sadly said, “I wish it was Eve.” All the skirting and veiling ended junior year of college, when Mom found in my room a business card for an LGBTQ youth center. There were more traumatic/ humorous attempts to straighten me out, including a trip to a priest and my mother pointedly commenting on every attractive woman we passed. (She gave that up when I lisped, “Oh yes; she’s SOOOO statuesque!”)
It took them the rest of my college years, but they finally came around. In their way. Dad shocked me by telling me that he’d respect any boyfriend/husband I ever had as a son-in-law. Mom scandalized some of the women at church by saying she felt there was “nothing wrong” with gay men becoming priests. My (now ex) husband came to all our family gatherings and was treated well; ditto for my current partner. And even at the worst moments, I never had to worry about being disowned. It was hard, but I know I had it easier than some queer kids.
But here’s the thing; on the one hand, I respect my parents’ working through their limitations to reach a place of decency. But that’s just it. It’s decency. They don’t deserve medals for learning to treat me and the person I love with the same outward respect as they treat my brother and his wife with. However, holding onto my resentment is far more damaging to me than it is to them, so I try not to do that either.
Writing as an almost 35 year-old, I think my parents and I have come to recognize that our lives and values are quite different, and it helps to keep the peace if we pretend that we fully respect each other. There is, for a variety of reasons, a considerable gulf between us—three days visiting with my parents is my max—and it’s hard for me to look at their in my opinion very limited lives without feeling critical. Likewise, things they’ve said and the general vibe they give off tells me that they don’t “get” my life and, as a result, find it suspect. I don’t doubt they would turn me straight in a heartbeat if they found that proverbial magic wand. But again, that’s more a function of their limitations than it is outright selfishness; they likely genuinely think that my life would be better if I was more like them.
My current therapist tells me that one of the best markers of mental health is not letting
