Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Coming Out
“Would you care to tell me why your friends are under the impression I’m dying?” Mom asks, one hand on her hip and her cell phone in the other. She’s got one brow arched very severely, which she turns to me with suspicion.
I nearly choke on my coffee as I sit at the counter, eating the scrambled eggs and toast she made for breakfast. Even though it’s technically lunchtime, I didn’t wake up again until noon.
“Um…” I cough, looking down at my food with a frown. “Who is asking if you’re dying?”
“Well, Marcus asked if you made it here all right when you weren’t responding to his texts. Then he sent me a bunch of heart emojis and said, ‘I hope everything is okay with you. Please feel better.’”
She shoots me a stern look, and I shrug, still avoiding her stare. That’s not too incriminating.
“Then, both Ben and Eric spammed me with hearts and crying faces and, I quote, ‘Noooooooo Mrs. C, you can’t die. Live, damn it. Think of your children!’ Just what the hell did you tell those boys you were coming down here for?”
“Jesus Christ,” I groan, dragging my hands down my face. Why do they have to be such idiots sometimes?
“It’s sweet that they think of themselves as my children.” Mom chuckles. “But my only real child has some explaining to do.”
I sigh. “I may have lied and told them you were sick.”
“Ethan.” Her voice is stern and admonishing, and I flinch.
“It was the only way I could get the emergency time off work, and I really needed to get away for a bit to…deal with some stuff,” I defend, flinching again.
“And you couldn’t have told your friends what was going on? You lied to them, too?” Mom frowns, looking at me closely.
“They wouldn’t have understood, and I didn’t want them asking too many questions. So, I just kind of panicked and went with it.”
“Sweetie, what are you running away from?” she asks gently, giving me a softer look.
I push my plate away with a sigh, folding my arms on the counter and putting my head down. “I feel like an idiot. Can we leave it at that?”
“Nope. Not in this house.”
Groaning, I sit up and open my mouth to reply, but my throat suddenly goes tight, and I can’t get any words out.
Fear and anxiety surface as I realize I’m about to come out to my mom.
There was never a doubt that I would when I came down here, but I didn’t think it would be this hard to talk about it either.
My heart is racing, and there’s this overwhelming sensation that I’ve done something wrong and am about to confess my crimes. Is that normal?
Growing up, I read a lot of coming-out stories online that ended with parents disowning their children because they found the concept of being homosexual immoral and disgusting.
It didn’t matter if the kid was only sixteen or twenty-three.
They were kicked out of their homes and thrown out of their families like they weren’t living, breathing, human beings, but trash instead.
A child raised from infancy, suddenly discarded.
Like coming out as gay was the deal-breaker to their parents’ love. Conditional. Heartbreaking.
I remember reading thread after thread of stories like this and crying for these strangers on the internet because I couldn’t even begin to imagine what I would do if my parents disowned me for something like that.
Something that wasn’t a choice. I knew my mom and dad’s views on gay rights were very progressive compared to most people, but it didn’t stop me from wondering if they would react similarly if their only son turned out to be gay.
As if their positive views would disintegrate the moment it actually happened to them.
I just never imagined that there might come a time to test it out.
It's irrational, but I can’t fight the dread creeping up, telling me that this may be the moment my mom decides she doesn’t love me anymore.
But then I have to remind myself that this is my mom.
The woman who has stood up in countless marches and protests throughout her life, fighting against injustice.
The same woman who had a framed picture in our guest bathroom of her mugshot from her first arrest in the 70s, protesting the Kent State Massacre and the Vietnam War.
My mother, who flew to Washington DC by herself for the Women’s March in 2017, protesting among almost half a million people wearing a hot pink Pussyhat with pride.
That woman would never disown me for something like this.
I take a deep breath, dragging my hands through my hair and over my face. I can do this.
“I like someone,” I say grudgingly. It still feels strange admitting it out loud.
Mom processes the words for a second before scrunching her face in confusion. “You lied to your friends and ran away to visit me because you like someone,” she says, seeking confirmation. “Who is this girl, and what has she done that’s gotten you so worked up?”
I swallow hard and clarify, “He.”
“He?” Mom frowns, cocking her head to the side before her eyes widen, and she snaps upright with new understanding. “Oh. Oh! He? Really?”
I nod sheepishly.
“God damn it!” she exclaims, taking me by surprise. At first, I’m nervous that I was right to be worried, but then she continues. “If your dad were alive, he’d owe me fifty bucks, the son of a bitch.”
“What?” I recoil, blinking with confusion. Of all the things I could have imagined she would say after learning her only son likes men, that wasn’t one of them.
Mom groans—rather dramatically, I might add.
“We had a bet when you were younger. I was convinced you might be gay, but your dad always thought I was delusional. So, ha! Fuck you, Theo, if you’re listening!
” Mom laughs, shaking her fist toward the sky.
Then she turns to me, grinning excitedly. “So, who is he? Tell me everything.”
I stare at her with a slack jaw, dumbfounded. “Wait. Go back. You and Dad used to bet on whether or not I’d be straight? You knew there was a possibility I might like guys?”
“Well, it wasn’t like I knew for sure. But ever since you were a kid, I noticed little things where I always thought, ‘maybe.’ But then, you never seemed to pursue it. I mean, for a while, I was convinced you had a crush on Marcus, except I never doubted he was straight.”
“Marcus?” I nearly shout in dismay. My childhood best friend, the one I’ve grown up and done everything with since we were six? The man who kept me alive when I was at my lowest point? There’s no way I was ever interested in him… Was I? Oh, god. I can’t handle thinking about that right now.
With my outburst, Mom seems to realize I’m not taking this as jovially as she is. She walks around the island and sits in the chair beside me, gently rubbing her hand on my back, her brows knit together with concern.
“Are you just figuring this out?” she asks softly. “You never considered it before now?”
“No! And apparently, I’m the last to know! Why didn’t you ever talk to me about it if you were so convinced?”
“I wanted to, but your dad told me not to interfere. It was the kind of thing you’d come to us with when you were ready. But as you got older, you only seemed interested in dating women, so I figured it wasn’t worth bringing up. Like maybe I misread it. You’re truly just realizing it?”
“Yeah.” I drop my head in my hands, groaning miserably.
“Is that what’s got you so worked up?”
“I guess. Maybe? Fuck, I don’t know. It surprised me. I mean, shouldn’t I have always known I was into men? Gay guys always seem to know right away that they’re gay. I’m thirty-five and just figuring it out. Does that mean I’m broken?”
“Of course not, you doofus,” Mom chides, lightly hitting my arm. “There’s no right or wrong timeline for coming into your sexuality. Even if you are thirty-five when you’re first discovering it. And it’s understandable, honestly.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first of all, you do like women, do you not? You’ve certainly been with enough of them, so I think you’d know if you weren’t sexually attracted to them.”
Something about this conversation is borderline embarrassing to think that my mom has been paying attention to my sex life, but I power through it and nod.
“Well, think about it. That follows the cultural standard of what ‘society’ expects of you as a man. So, you fit into the box they made for you, which meant you didn’t need to question whether or not there was anything else outside of it.
People who don’t fit in with the ‘traditional’—" she air quotes and rolls her eyes with the word “—roles of sexuality are the ones who generally understand more quickly that they don’t tick the marks in those little boxes, and it’s easier to know why that is for them.
But if you’ve never experienced a connection with someone of the same sex before now, then it makes sense why you wouldn’t have known objectively. Because you’ve never had a reason to.”
Mom tries to smile reassuringly, but I frown. “It kind of makes me feel like a fraud.”
“Honey, anyone who makes you feel less than for something like this is an idiot and an asshole,” she says earnestly.
“Your awakening to it now is just as valid as it would have been if you were sixteen when you found out. Or if you were sixty-five! And you know, it’s not like you had a lot of role models to look up to back home. That’s one of my biggest regrets.”
“What is?”
“Your father and I raised you in a place where something like being gay or bisexual was practically unheard of or squashed down by small-minded idiots. Small towns have a bad reputation for being closed off from the rest of the world. We didn’t do you any favors living there, but we didn’t have a choice at the time.
We couldn’t afford to move when you were growing up, and by the time we could, you were already established with your friends, and we felt it wasn’t worth making you give them up to go live somewhere more diverse. ”
“Okay, but I’m not closed-minded. I had you and Dad teaching me not to be. Even though I grew up knowing all that, why didn’t I ever question it with myself?” I ask miserably. “Thinking back, it feels like it should have been obvious, but I was oblivious.”
“As much as your father and I openly supported gay rights, we were your only exposure to that kind of culture, and we could only do so much on our own. For Christ’s sake, the only other representation in the media actively villainized queer people.
There weren’t many movies or TV shows with happy endings for anyone who was gay for you to reference, and even less with bisexual representation.
It was mostly a ‘one or the other’ kind of thing.
I’ve seen a lot more coming out now and couldn’t be happier.
But you have to give yourself some space to realize that you didn’t have it as easy as the kids are starting to have it now.
Even twenty years ago, things were not as good for queer people.
Don’t you remember hearing about that poor kid who got bullied when he came out back in your high school? ”
My brows arch with a mind of their own. She’s talking about Luke. I can’t believe she remembers that whole situation. I doubt she recalls exactly who he was, but how odd is it that we’re actively having a conversation about the same person, and she doesn’t know it?
“That was the culture you grew up in,” she continues.
“It wasn’t easy living authentically, and many people didn’t because they were afraid of being ostracized.
There have been a lot of positive changes in the last decade, even though we’ve still got a long way to go.
If anything, you’re lucky coming into it now instead of when you were a kid.
Adolescence is hard enough without adding that into the mix. ”
I realize she’s right. Everything she said rings true, and there are some solid points I never considered that make perfect sense. Although I still think I’m an idiot for not recognizing any of this sooner, I can’t deny she’s made me feel better about the whole thing.
Sighing, I rub a hand along my neck and lean back in the chair. I meet my mom’s eye, and she smiles, her face softening. She seems to be able to tell that I’m no longer on the knife’s edge, and she pats her hand on my back, standing up again.
“So, tell me about this boy who’s made you question your reality,” she says in typical nosy mom fashion. “What’s his name? Where’d you meet him?”
I roll my eyes. “At work. His name is Luke.”
“Have you told him you like him yet, or did you run away from him, too?”
I groan and drop my head on the counter again, wrapping my arms around myself tightly. Mom just laughs at my pain.