Saturday, July 2, 2011

Dropping G-Bombs



My relationship with my parents very much resembles the state of the US Military, prior to this year.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

So long as I’m silent and keep any and all details of my life a tightly pressed secret, then we can pretend to get along amicably. Leave it to Beaver, Little House on the Prairie amicably. It’s like we are constantly on camera, choosing our words carefully and shifting our weight uncomfortably as we walk through the hot coals until it’s time for me to go home. Don’t get me wrong. I love them to death and I love spending family time, but it’s just that it gets really difficulty trying to wrestle all the colors of a wily, bucking rainbow back into a cramped closet.

My Mom is the best. She’s trying to get comfortable with the idea that her daughter is a flaming hot lesbo. Little by little she has been progressing towards the G-word. She asked me if I was going “to that thing in San Francisco”? She admired all of the little rainbow souvenirs I had brought back from Pride this year, saying she liked the colors and she would wear it (gasp) but did it strictly mean that she was… you know? (Hesitation. Uncomfortable eye shifting.) Gay?

My younger sister started laughing uncontrollably, knowing that this was the first time she had finally let the little G-word trickle, however uncomfortably, from her lips. I wanted to answer the question seriously but then they both started cracking up and I couldn’t hold it in any longer. We laughed long and hard and it was amazing. The ice had been broken just a little bit more. Making way for bigger and better progress.

And so, as my Mom, Dad, sister and self are all gathered around either side of the breakfast bar in the kitchen Mom drops this little ribbon-wrapped atomic bomb.

“Hey, that new gay bar is open in downtown!”

Dead. Silence. Even the crickets are leaving the war zone.

I don’t even bother looking at my Dad. I don’t even want to see what his expression is. I can already envision the disgust and the clenched jaw and the flared nostrils. And that little vein above his eye that I hate with a passion.

“Why? Did you apply?” his question is not directed at me at all, but as a joke towards Mom, who is a lifetime waitress and restaurant manager.

Wtf?

“No. But it’s open now. It’s supposed to be cool,”

I feel like I’ve just stepped onto the set of Punk’d. I’m waiting for the host to rush out with camera men and tell me I’ve just been had.

But no host, no cameras. The uncomfortable (but suddenly not intolerable) silence is lifted by my amazing sister changing the topic with her woman’s intuition of perfect timing, and I breathe a little easier.

My brain does an instant replay as I recap what just happened.

Mom said the word Gay. And the world didn’t end. Dad didn’t spontaneously combust.

Maybe there is hope for my little family yet. Maybe I’m the one who has been too afraid to broach the subject. Maybe the only reason progress hasn’t been made is because I haven’t been reading the signs of change.

Maybe… it’s time.

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