A Mysterious Record of Life

In the past ten months I have given allot of thought and energy to my relationship with my father. This was spurred to a large extent by his accident, but even before his accident, just over a year ago my father went above and beyond what I ever expected of him by bear-hugging me and my partner Jason together and telling us he loved us and that we were his boys. This openness contrasts so starkly with my relationship with my father as I was growing up. We had a real love hate (emphasis on hate) relationship up until I was sixteen. At sixteen things changed because my father turned out to be human too. He was caught in an extra-marital affair, which turned his world upside down and changed his relationship with my mother and I in many ways. All of the changes stemming from this discovery were good, at least as far as I could see. So my relationship with my father has improved step-by-step from one that was terrible as a small child to one that was tolerable in my teens to one that has been exceptional in my twenties and into my thirtieth year.

Changing gears, I want to look at my continuing relationship with my mother. In many ways I could say my relationship with my mother has been the inverse of my relationship with my father. I was very close to my mother as a child. I remember feeling that she would take care of me no matter what. She was my shield against all that was rough and tumble in the world. As I grew older, my mother had two more children. My little sister and little brother made it a total of nine children which had issued forth from her body. With nine children, you might wonder how my mother had the time and energy to make sure that we each had enough time and energy and love. Perhaps some of my older siblings did not get enough of her time or attention, but I know that I always felt loved, even when I was banished to my room for the night at age five.

My childhood relationship with my mother went well; except that I began hiding things from her once I progressed in school. What good would it do to tell her how I was picked on by my classmates at Catholic school? It would only make her sad, and I didn't think she could realistically do anything about it. Besides, she had my little sister to deal with and my baby brother who was still nursing. So began the growing distance between mother and son from about the second grade.

As things at school got worse and worse I continued to be her smiling shining boy, always with a smile for Mom when she asked how I was doing. At school I was suffering intimidation and daily acts of violence for being weak and feminine. My father at this time was my own personal ogre. He was determined that I must act the way he wanted me to and do what I was told. Of course between the two of them, it was a no-brainer; my mother still had cooing words for me and told me I was a good boy and that God loved me.

Gradually as school year passed into summer, passed into school year, I grew older and more aware of my feelings, there were more things to hide. In addition to being picked on, I was feeling new sexual feelings. These were not the type of feelings I had learned about in my "Family Life" sex education books, or rather they were these sorts of feelings, only directed at male and female persons. How could I tell my Catholic mother I had a crush on my gym teacher when he was a he? By seventh grade, I was certain that she would send me to some sort of shock therapy or that my father would kick me out of the house, so I remained silent about my newfound affections.

I remember hearing my mother talk about "those dirty filthy homosexuals" on several occasions. My mother belonged to several church organizations that target abortion and homosexuality as two of society's worst ills, and in fact she still belongs to such organizations. I can remember making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as she watched Jim and Tammy Fay Baker discuss the damnation of the gays. Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and other men all seemed to have nothing but fire and brimstone and hell and fear to pedal when it came to mentioning homosexuals. I heard my mother agree with everything they said. I saw my mother write thousand dollar checks to right-wing organizations that condemn gays to hell. I held this secret deep inside me, a secret that I would not let be true, except of course that it is true: I am queer.

Strange as it may seem, each week I went to church with my parents and I begged Jesus to make me heterosexual. I begged and I pleaded every time I lay me down to sleep. For years I prayed to this God of the Hebrews as I grew from a seven year old to a seventeen year old until I realized that all the praying in the world was not going to change how I felt about men. Of course I hid this struggle, and increasingly everything else from my mother, she who knew me so well as a five year old did not know me at all by my twenties, she only knew the smiling boy face that I wore as a mask so that she would not know the true me that I was sure she would call dirty and filthy or sick.

I went to college and came to grips with my sexuality personally and then publicly in the campus newspaper. I told my friends and my closest siblings, but not my parents. I was promiscuous but very safe, as these were the days of HIV education where we were taught that sex equaled death and so if you did not want to die a shriveled up person of the "gay disease." I also came to be an atheistic mystic with Buddhist and Hindu leanings... which would not be easy to talk to my mother about either.

I traveled to live in Holland for a year during my time at University and lived like a rock star. One night my promiscuity saved my life. A man I had brought home from a bar was studying to be a doctor and after our passion, he told me that a mole on my back looked dangerous and that I should go have it examined. A couple of months later while home for my sister's wedding, I did just that. I learned that I had cancer: Melanoma, This was not a good kind of cancer to have, if there is such a thing as a good kind of cancer. The doctor told me that if my cancer was as bad as he suspected, that I had between three months and three years to live.

Over the course of a few days, and with the help of my closest friends, I came to terms with my mortality. At twenty-one years of age I went from an invulnerable internationalist globe trotter to pathetic powerless cancer patient in a scant few days. I decided I would not keep any secrets from anyone I cared about anymore. I would wait until after the wedding, but I decided to tell my family everything.

My sister’s wedding went well and then came time to tell the family. It went something like this: I love you. I have an unorthodox sexuality. I don't have HIV/AIDS, but I do have cancer.

My sisters and my mother were stunned, but immediately told me they loved me. Then they said they wanted to pray with me to Jesus. I politely refused since I did not and do not believe in their god, but I told them they were welcome to pray after I left if they so chose. This was a turning point in my relationships with members of my family.

Two days later I had surgery to remove skin and lymph nodes to check if or where the cancer had spread. My parents and sisters were there for me as I knew they would be. Eventually I returned to Amsterdam to finish out my school term there.

As I understand it, a few weeks later my mother asked my younger sister what else I had said when I told the family about my cancer. My sister said, "He said he is gay."

"No" replied my mother, "he couldn't have said that," and so began my mother's slow coming to terms with her queer son.

This piece is about my relationship with my mother, and I can’t help but notice that a few paragraphs ago it stopped being about my mother and it started being about me. That is also true about the way I began to relate to my mother after my cancer. It stopped being about trying to please her with my good little boy act and to start pleasing myself with honesty instead.

I am sure all this came as a shock to my parents and I am also sure that my parents experienced being in the closet about having a gay son, as I had experienced being in the closet about being gay. I don't think they had many people tot talk to about their new found experience of having a gay son, perhaps they had only each other to talk to each other about it.

As my father slowly became more comfortable with my declaration, I felt that my mother did not and has not. My mother's prejudices would come up when I would talk about myself as a queer or lightly refer to myself as light in my loafers. She would say, "Don’t put yourself down like that." I told her that I was proud and here and queer and that I was not going anywhere. I am not sure if she understood. I told her I am not ashamed of whom I am and that it is ok for me to be with a man if that is what my heart says.

I only brought home a couple of boyfriends, and she was polite, but she never seemed to warm them. My partner of five years now tries with my mother when he sees her, and she is always polite.

My brother and I had a good discussion with my mother a few months ago where my very well-spoken younger brother explained very succinctly why he is not a Christian. My mother listened very well and I believe she heard him and respected what he had to say, but in the end she said, "But you are wrong."

There it stays, with my mother focused on the evils of this world and going to heaven, and me living my life in this world and making the most of the days I have walking the earth or sitting for hours at my computer screen. My mother and I are at a philosophical impasse which will reach resolution perhaps only upon one of our deaths. I have made it clear that I do not want a Christian burial and she has made it clear that she hopes I recant my beliefs and become a heterosexual Christian so that I can see her again in heaven. I told her I believe that when I die I go in to the earth and that is it, no afterlife, no ice cream cone in the sky.

There we sit.

When we speak on the phone it is nice and gentle, but mostly about my father. She does not tell me much about picketing abortion clinics and I do not tell her much about my relationships with the two men I love. It seems we could have a much deeper relationship if we tried, but perhaps neither one of us know how to get deep without exposing our deeply held world views to each other. Perhaps this is ok. Perhaps this is sad.

I know that one day I will not have my mother around. As quickly and as easily as the tree fell, almost knocking the life from my father, a passing car or a broken blood vessel or any number of things could steal my mother away from me. Then what will I think? How will I feel? I guess our disagreement will be resolved, but I think that something that could be, which is not, will be forever lost.

I love my mother. She is a good woman and a kind person. I just wish we could be closer for the little while that we both dwell on this earth.

I'll call her in the morning.