Walking back to the hotel through the soft Southern California evening, could see how a guy could get used to this. It’s a city too, though, and like any city in this country that’s going to mean panhandling and relatedness. I have yet to get comfortable with that because I don’t want to presume to know how a person winds up asking for money on the street but I also don’t feel good, or doubt I could afford, to give money to everyone who asks. So I do give to things that help people who are homeless or hungry or whatnot, but it’s still awkward most of the time.
Especially when people say random things at you, which I suspect happens less to me as a guy than it does to all the ladies in the place. But there was this guy right by the hotel who randomly asked, in a fairly strong tone, if my parents would love me if I were gay. I think he was trying to shake me up, but I was immediately comforted by the knowledge that I knew the answer to that one.
I think Mama was always a little disappointed not to have a gay son. Not that she ever made us feel guilty about it, but she made up for it by doing a bunch of things that brought her into contact with the gay community. Maybe she was just a hag. For a long time, I would have assumed that my dad would be just the opposite.
Then one night in college (isn’t this how all these stories go?) I was at dinner with my pops and two friends at T.K. Tripps. Yes, I know, but this was the early 90s and there was not a whole lot to choose from. So, we are in Tripps and my dad makes some comment about the last time he was there he was introduced to a future daughter in law. I immediately pointed to the guy sitting across the table from me and said “Well, Lee and I have something to tell you.”
It was a good joke, yes? I’m not sure my dad got it totally. The following summer I spent with him in New York City, and one Sunday he suggested that we visit the famous Riverside Church. I can’t ever remember his being all that interested in church, but whatever. It turned out to be pride Sunday, and the visiting preacher, who had probably been kicked out of the Presbyterian ministry for being out, told the story of the bedside she had just come from where a young man lay dying because he was too afraid to come out to his parents and decided to suicide was easier. On the train ride home, my father could barely get out that he would never want to lose a child that way.
I’m not so sure that we wound up in Riverside Church that Sunday on accident, and I don’t mean that “there are no coincidences.” I think my father wanted me to know that, if there were one shed of reality in my joke, it was ok. Not that he would have known what to do with that, but he would have been willing to figure it out. He didn’t need to, but I have always been grateful that he was willing to go there.
So when the crazy guy on the street asks if my parents would love me, even if I were gay, I know the answer in an instant. Of course they would.