QueerStory

My stepfather once said, “I used to have an uncle who was queer – he was a pedophile too, and the family don’t talk to him anymore.”

My stepfather was always kind of an ass. He was the icy cold Midwestern father figure, the type that some might use a more romantic term like “stoic” to describe. But really, he was just callous and short-tempered, with anger as  his only visible emotion. Luckily he wasn’t around very much (a construction worker who would be gone for months at a time, then home for a few weeks and off once again, leaving my mother to essentially raise us alone), but when he was, it was unfortunate for me… especially after I came out.

I had just worked up the courage to come out to my mother earlier in the day. I had spent years grappling with my queer identity, cursing myself and letting my conservative Christian upbringing guilt me half to death.I had finally started to come out to a very few close friends at the tail end of middle school / beginning of high school. When I finally felt like I had the emotional support to fall back on  if my family took it badly, I at long last took the plunge.

Mom had been washing dishes. I don’t know why anymore, but I know I had come up from my room and decided that this was the time; it was now or never, or so I must have told myself. She never looked me in the eyes, just started to scrub more aggressively at the dishes in the sudsy sink; she swore that I wasn’t in my right mind, that it was a phase, that she could talk to our pastor about finding a way to fix it. With mom, I could stand my ground, even if the tears were welling up. I had done it, a massive weight lifted from my chest.

I was fifteen at the time, and had been working at Culver’s on the other side of town, which meant I would need a ride to my shift that day; I believe I had initially timed my coming out so that I could escape any chance of my stepfather finding out before he had to leave for work again – why I didn’t just wait until he was gone to come out to my mother I don’t recall, although its seems incredibly stupid in retrospect. But better to rip the bandaid off than let the unbearable need to express my identity fill me up inside until I burst.

Mom must have told dad in the short time that it took me to change into my work uniform and trudge out to the car; I can imagine her now as having ran to him as soon as I left the kitchen, arms still covered in suds, needing to tell someone to get it off of her chest, much like I had needed to exorcise it from myself.

My stepfather was his usual cold and icy self, but my gut dropped as I stepped into the car; he had volunteered to take me, even though I had thought he was too busy packing or staring at some dumb sports game or who knows what. I just knew that he knew, and even though our ride was completely silent as usual, I felt paralyzed and eager to get to work. So when he pulled up in front of Culver’s to drop me off, I reached for the door handle to eagerly run to my shift.

And so he told me suddenly about some relative of his who his family had disowned; my stepfather gave me the briefest but also one of the most emotionally painful lectures of my younger life in the minute that followed; something about how I was purposefully trying to tear the family apart, trying to hurt my poor mother, how he didn’t want me to talk to him until I had fixed myself; I blotted the details from memory afterwards. I do remember choking back tears, face burning with anger and grief and frustration, refusing to look at him as he lectured me. I went to work, mopping up my tears with my shirt sleeve, trying to shove past the emotions and just work to distract myself.

I almost never talked to my stepfather after that; not only was I hurt, but later, I would tell myself, I didn’t respect him anymore to even bother. I had friends who treated me with more love and kindness than he had shown me the entire time he’d been in my family.

Mom came around eventually – and then went back to not being okay with it, and came around again, an eternal zigzag of proud mommy of a gay boy to tentative conservative parent who quietly  asks if I “have a friend” instead of whether I have a boyfriend, that sort of thing.

I didn’t even have it that bad, honestly – one of my best friends was literally dropped off on the side of the freeway by his father, later locked out of his house and forced to fend for himself until some fairy drag queen godmothers took him in.

Many LGBTQ youths struggle with crippling depression, and a litany of other emotional and mental health issues, and I can say from personal experience that the betrayal of one’s’ own family is certainly a big part of that. Suicide and homelessness are comparatively high among the youths of queer varieties when compared to their cis/straight counterparts.

I’m not wallowing in any pity; that was years ago, and my coming out barely defines me anymore, except when it does – when I’m quietly reflecting on many stupid decisions I made in my young adulthood, how emotionally screwed-up I was for so many years. Then I remember it hurt an awful lot to a naïve fifteen year old in the early aughts.

I don’t have some mystical wisdom or mind-blowing closing thought, but if I can share one little thought related to this short story from queer childhood days past:

There are queer folk all around you, many still suffering in silence. What you do and what you say matters, an awful lot, to someone who is facing emotional betrayal from their own family and loved ones. Your kindness and acceptance and advocacy can mean the difference. It really can, honest to goodness, no matter how cheesy and motivational poster like  it sounds.

Even in the small stuff, do what you can to make it better for just one little queer you may never get to know, but whose life you can positively change.

~ Gary Naud

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