The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (5 page)

I was so very angry. Standing alone, here, on my
corner. A moment ago I’d been fully dressed, now I was suddenly stark naked,
exposed for all my neighbors to see. I escaped into the house, and climbing the
stairs to the privacy of my bedroom I was overwhelmed with such sadness, it was
close to grieving. As I lay down on the bed, I wept rivers.

Within minutes, my sorrow turned to rage. I
directed it first at Rhoda, which was ridiculous. I felt betrayed, because she
knew something I didn’t. Something I
should
have known. I wondered how
many others knew. For years after that, every time I saw her, I was very
apprehensive. I was experiencing a textbook case of displaced anger, though for
all my training and experience, it proved so much easier to diagnose a patient
than myself.

How could my neighbor know this most personal
news, when I didn’t? Of course, the signs had always been there. But
discovering for myself that Andrew was gay was like studying for a difficult
course. I’d gather information, and try to digest it. Only it wouldn’t sink in
at first. I’d have to re-learn the same lessons over and over again before I
could make sense of it all.

About three years and two therapists later,
Andrew and I were riding together to dinner, just the two of us. He’d just
turned twenty-three. It was winter and we were driving across Mount Royal in
the family’s beat-up second car, an old Honda. We were on our way to meet
Sheldon and our other kids at Moishe’s, the see-and-be-seen restaurant for
Montreal’s Jewish community.

Andrew and I were running five minutes late, as
usual.

“I’m happy. Things have really changed, and I
feel much better,” he told me.

“I see that. I’m happy too. I’m happy for you.”
I glanced over at him quickly, then back at the slightly icy road.

“I’ve really changed,” he said again.

For the next minute or so, he dropped that
phrase a half dozen times, like a mantra, a code.

“You’re trying to tell me something,” I
observed.

There was silence in the car. We weren’t more
than a few minutes from the restaurant. If there was a revelation to be made,
it had better happen soon. It was time to take a big risk. Really, I can’t
believe I asked it so bluntly.

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re gay?”

He acted really taken aback, although I think it
was a performance. I could swear he set me up.

After he let out a little chuckle, he said “Yes.
 I am. How did you know?”

“Well, I’ve watched you grow and develop, seen
you being tortured by something and I figured there had to be something major
going on to affect you the way it did. Also, there was a kind of pattern to
this. I’ve been preparing myself all along for it. I’m so glad you told me.”

Andrew looked relieved.

“I’m so glad you accepted this about yourself.
You know I love you. This is not going to be a problem for me. If I had my
druthers, of course I wish you were heterosexual. That’s a normal expectation,
isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“But don’t worry. We’ll deal with it. It’s more
important that you’re happy about yourself and your life.”

We pulled up at the restaurant. In the car, it
was just the two of us, sharing this earth-shattering information. Now we had
to get out and face the Moishe’s crowd. Before this bombshell, I was prepared
to be
on
; now I felt defenseless. I’d just heard this tremendous
revelation that left me totally at conflict with myself. Lord knows that in
this instance I would have welcomed being wrong. Still, this was a confirmation
that my long-held hunch was right.

As we got out of the car, I said to Andrew,
“Ready or not, we’re going to dinner.”

“Please, don’t tell anybody now.”

“Don’t be silly. But you’ll have to tell Daddy
later,” I said.

“No. You tell him.”

“I’ll help, but I think you have to tell him
yourself.”

ANDREW   
The truth of the matter
was, I was stoned.

Why else would I blurt out to my mother, “I’m
gay”, then laugh out loud once I realized what I’d done?

We were driving to dinner, and she had prodded
me in her intrusive way, “How’s your therapy going?”

“Fine.”
Enough about therapy
, I said to
myself.

We were heading down, on the other side of Mount
Royal, overlooking the city. I wasn’t particularly enjoying the view this
evening, but it was easier than looking at my mother while she headed into the
unwelcome vicinity of my therapy, and next, my sexuality: “Have you been
talking about relationships?”

Stop with the grilling, already
, I
yearned to shout.
You want to know what I’ve been talking about in therapy?
All right...

“I’m gay.”

My words hung there between us, splattered into
the air, too late to reclaim. When my breathing slowed, I was numb, in a state
of shock. I couldn’t fathom that I’d actually said the words. Certainly, none
of this was planned.

But oddly enough, my mother seemed less stunned
than I was. Her reaction was tempered. No histrionic outbursts. No “My God!” Or
even “Dear, I love you so much!” Instead, at first, she just stiffened a bit,
and exhaled, “Oh...”

Of course, when she rebounded from the surprise,
she said “I love you no matter what.” And “I’m glad you told me”.

I was relieved… but still freaked out beyond
belief that I’d done it.

For a moment, I wished I’d never started smoking
the stuff. But marijuana was helping me drown out the anxiety I’d been feeling.
The whole process of smoking had become, for a time, the easy escape from
reality. I’d been at war with myself for years, part of me struggling to get
out, another part fighting to hide. It was like there were two of me. The boy
who desperately wanted to fit in, and this other person I didn’t want to know.
I tried to turn my back on this stranger, maybe because he scared me. All this
inner turmoil left me simultaneously weary and agitated, eternally on edge.

The conversation in the car couldn’t have
happened, pot or not, just a year or so before. No amount of loosening up could
have made me divulge something I hadn’t accepted internally. Now here I was,
twenty-two, just out of school, and suddenly facing the rest of my life. I’d
worked so hard to obtain my B.A., finally the good student my parents always expected
me to be. I’d invested myself totally in the experience, studying feverishly,
pouring myself into it. But now that it was over, what was I left with? Without
school, I was left with just
me
... and the frightening question, who
was
that?

I’d begun exposing the answers to myself, but I
wasn’t prepared to make this revelation to my mother. By this time, she was
grilling me.

“Are you going to tell Daddy?”

I tried to ignore her, staring out the window.

“Well, when are you going to tell him?”

“I’ll tell him, O.K?”

 “Soon?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

“You really should tell him as soon as
possible.”

I was getting mad, because I wasn’t ready to be
pushed. The fact that we were having this conversation was a fluke in the first
place, now here was my mother, dictating my next move.

“Just don’t tell Daddy. I want to tell him
myself.”

ROSLYN   
On the ride back from
the restaurant 1 was silent and thoughts were racing through my head...
I
won’t have any grandchildren from Andrew... He’ll never walk down the aisle...
Now I’ll only get to make two weddings...

When we got home, I was the one to give Sheldon
the news. I told myself I did it to pave the way for Andrew. Truthfully, I felt
the need to unburden myself. Who else was I going to talk to?

I saw a wave of pain wash over Sheldon as I
broke it to him. After the initial shock, I could sense his tension ebbing.
Although I could see for myself how he felt, I pushed him to talk about it.

SHELDON   
It was the day of the
Super Bowl, coming home from a restaurant, Roslyn told me outright, Andrew is
gay. It was a real shock, although I suppose it shouldn’t have been. Years
before, when Mitchell told us he was gay, I almost took it in stride. But
finding out I had
two
sons who were gay really depressed me.

Even though I was fully cognizant of the
prevailing scientific view that there are genetic causes to homosexuality, I
still felt a sense of guilt. Here I was the father of two gay sons, and
Mitchell was adopted.

Each of them came from different genetic
backgrounds, so either the odds were just stacked against me, or I had to ask
myself, could I have contributed somehow to this? How could I ignore the
possibility that environmental matters entered into the equation?

I won’t give myself a gold medal as a father,
though truthfully, I really thought I was above average. I certainly wasn’t a
disciplinarian, aggressive or domineering. On the contrary, I would usually
give in to my kids’ every request, perhaps to a fault. My friends make fun of
me, in fact, for the time I’ve spent with young kids over the years. I seem to
have more patience with children than I do with adults. Now that Roslyn and I
are blessed with grandchildren, I spend the whole day with them when we visit
Toronto. Other friends of mine say they love to visit their grandchildren, but
after a half an hour, they’ve had enough. Not me. So I’m certainly not the
“absentee father” some claim contributes to a gay male’s sexual preference. Is
it possible that I was a good father, and still raised two gay sons?

In
addition to my own guilt feelings, I worried about their future. It’s tough
enough to succeed in our sophisticated and complicated world. Why did both of
our sons have to carry this extra burden? Being gay could only make their lives
harder.

ANDREW   
I know she told him
anyway, even though she promised she wouldn’t. My plan was to tell him when I
was ready. But, truthfully, I wasn’t ready as soon as I thought I might be. The
way my parents remember it, I turned around and told my father in a few days.
But as I recall, it took a couple of months. It’s funny how some recollections
get compressed, or smudged until they’re almost obliterated. I don’t know if
this is just one of those details that fades with time, or if they blocked the
memory.

In any case, I certainly wouldn’t blame my
parents for not wanting to recall the scene that played out when I summoned the
courage to tell my father myself. Or, I should say, when I made my first,
failed, attempt.

ROSLYN   
Like Sheldon, I was
concerned about what barriers might be put up before both Andrew and Mitchell,
just because of their sexual orientation. I could relate to that fear on a very
personal level, because twenty-five years earlier I’d had my own experience of
failing to live up to society’s expectations. We adopted Mitchell because I
hadn’t been able to get pregnant.

A little over two years after Sheldon and I were
married, we planned to start a family. It never dawned on me that I might not
be able to have a baby when I wanted one. After many months of trying, it became
clear, it wasn’t working. My
body
wasn’t working. There comes a moment
when you say...
What’s happening to me? What’s wrong with me?
I would
compare the panic I felt at that time to what somebody feels when they first
think they might be gay.

Then there was the anxiety I felt over telling
people about my infertility. I think that’s a lot like what drives gay people
into the closet. I feared I’d be humiliated if people knew the truth that I
couldn’t conceive. So I kept it secret, and created a “closet” of my own. And,
of course, keeping the secret made everything worse.

Because of our secret, I’d have to take
insensitive comments, like one day, sitting at the hairdresser, held hostage in
curlers, a woman said to me, “What are you waiting for? You’re too into
yourself!”

The most innocent question could drive my shame
even deeper. We’d be gathered around the table on Sabbath dinner. “So,
nu
?
When are we going to become grandparents?” Sheldon’s mother Goldie would ask. We’d
be at a bris. “So, when by you?” an old aunt would ask, expecting a firm answer
that we knew we couldn’t give. Another relative would approach me. “So, next by
you?” I just smiled and shrugged.

Meanwhile, my friends were almost sadistically
prolific, multiplying like mad. After two years of seeing them, and their
friends, and their friends’ friends, all celebrating baby-centric occasions, from
bris to birthday parties, I wanted to punch them. I longed to scream, “What do
you think?
Don’t you know I want to have a child?”

And of course, as I got more frustrated, I got
more tense. While my anger and resentment mounted, my chances of conceiving
certainly weren’t getting any greater.