Chapter One: A Digression

My mother died in a freak, wallpapering incident. She had been placing a three-toned blue, sponge-painted looking wallpaper in the bathroom and had covered up the light switches, which I guess is what one does when wallpapering. To make the hole she took an Exacto knife and cut through the wallpaper. The wet paper, electrical socket and metal Exacto knife were apparently not a good match. As she cut through the cord, by accident, mind you, the electrical voltage, amplified by the water that soaked through the wallpaper, surged through the metal handle of the knife and entered her body at thirty thousand volts. I’m not an electrician, and I was only seven, so I really have no idea how many volts entered her body, I just assume it was some high number and thirty thousand seems like a lot. My father was quite shocked by the alleged, grisly details as reported by the coroner. Little did I know at eighteen, which is when I finally learned completely what had happened, that high-level electrical shocks cause a complete lose of all bodily functions. I don’t think I need to describe what actually happened, but I think that we were all thankful that if it was going to occur, might as well take place in the bathroom with it’s off-white tiled-floors, which, if I recall properly, were quickly replaced after the incident.

My sister and I were raised under the iron cane of my grandmother and the rubber fist of my father until we graduated college. Well, actually, my father raised us until we graduated college, my grandmother had past away about six years prior. From them we learned right from wrong, especially when it came to wallpapering and other fundamental house repairs. He always told us that if we were going to die young, it wouldn’t be from improper house repair work. I’m grateful for learning basic house repair as I don’t have to call on Landen if the sink is dripping or a light bulb needs changing. I do call on him for yard work and the like. Call me crazy, but he usually works with his shirt off and there’s just something about watching him do yard work bare upper torsoed.

My father’s pretty cool as far as fathers go. I came out to him when I fourteen, but he was half asleep and didn’t remember it the following day. So I told him again. He didn’t freak out or beat me, or anything of that nature as I was kind of expecting. Not that I was expecting him to, but one never knows. He kind of brushed it off with little more than, well, a brush off. Not really a negative brush off, just an okay, type of deal. Given no real mother figure in my life, I have a much better relationship with my father than most gay men. He actually discussed my boyfriends with me throughout high school and college. He never commented on the attractiveness of them, but he was at least willing to talk about them.

My grandmother reacted a little differently. I kneeled down next to her, she would always sit in a recliner and watch the CBS soaps, and told her I was gay. She proceeded to hit me with her cane. Originally I just thought that this was normal, spastic reaction that she had, she’d frequently lash out uncontrollably with her cane, especially towards the end of her life, and remember, this was a mere two years before she moved on from the earthly plane (that just sounds better than died). But looking back on that moment, she had remarkable precision that she never could have repeated upon my telling her. She never seemed ashamed of it. But then, she never seemed anything but interested in the latest love triangle between Steve, Alicia and Joe, or whoever the storyline of the moment was. I think she would have TiVoed every soap if it had been invented in her lifetime.

My sister already knew. At least she claimed to. Not that I was particularly masculine in my youth, or my adulthood to date, not that I consider twenty-seven an adult by any stretch of the imagination. So I suppose that it is completely possibly that my sister did in fact know the truth. Regardless of whether she knew or suspected, she responded as I had hoped she would.

My mother’s ashes remained on the ground when I told her, although I couldn’t actually see them, given seven years of rain and wind that I’m sure had long since carried them away. No bright light, no swirling of dirt, no burning bush, no acknowledgement from her bodily remains. Which I can deal with. The best part of having a parent die when you’re still seven is that you never have to deal with the idea that they may not have been proud of you, or were ashamed of you, or didn’t love you. I like to think that all parents love their children when they’re seven. The children, not the parents.

My friends seemed okay with it. Especially the girls. They quickly, and proudly, took up the reigns of fag-hag, two of them remaining my favorite hags to this day. Even the one straight male friend that I had, who played lacrosse, a widely played sport in the Mid-Atlantic region, was okay with it. I think that he saw the potential of benefits without me telling anyone. And while I would have been okay with that, I never pursued it, and he never mustered the balls to ask for any favors, so I never delivered. Although rumor has it that there was a guy on the lacrosse team that took care of those issues for the team, especially on long bus rides. The only one that had a problem with it was the closeted gay friend that I had. He seemed shocked, disgusted and appalled, redundant, I know, by it all. I tried to gay him forward throughout high school to no avail. I’ve been told that he’s since come out of the closet. I wasn’t shocked, disgusted, appalled, or interested, when I heard that news.

I spent four years of high school teaching myself in the School of Hard Knocks. Lucky for me, the classes rarely got in the way of regular school. Hard Knocks was also kind enough to have given me several similar classes at the same time. One of my personal favorites, if you could only hear the sarcasm in my head voice as I type this, was the Self-Deprecating Homosexual 101. You know the one. Okay, so maybe you don’t. It’s the “I-Hate-Being-Me-Because-I’m-Attracted-To-Other-Boys” attitude that I think most gay men go through at least one point in their lives. Despite the fact that I dated on numerous occasions, I many of my thoughts reverted to that theme. I was, however, the first person to take someone of the same sex to prom, and still be elected Prom King. Actually, I was both, the first to take a member of the same sex and be the first openly gay man elected Prom King. Before you ask, no, my date was not a drag queen and no, he did not win Prom Queen.

While living right outside of DC has definite advantages: a diverse environment to grow and develop, the thriving gay community of Dupont Circle, lots of gay people to make you realize that you’re not a horrible person because of the way that God made you, it still took time to create my own individuality and both acceptance and separation from my homosexuality. As a result, the School of Hard Knocks tended to give me far lower grades than my actual high school. It wasn’t until I was a junior in college, studying in Ireland that I finally pieced my life together enough so that I could function and only attend one school: the one my father was paying out the ears for. Of course, once you get into the “real world” there’s a different school, same name, different classes. Slightly harder, different classes: Fundamentals of Relationships, Dealing with Hair Loss, and my personal favorite, Paying the Bills without Whoring Yourself 301 and 302. Landen and I are taking the first, third, and fourth classes together. It’s much easier to go through the classes with someone, than having to figure them out for yourself.

Coincidently, much of my settling and full discovery of myself occurred just before I met Landen. As he enjoys telling me, we’d actually met earlier two months earlier than I claim we did, I was simply at a place where I wasn’t ready to meet him. But I digress, as that story is for another time. Although, I guess technically it isn’t a digression, given my explosion of exposition from the get-go. I promise, there won’t be near as much exposition in the future, I know, nothing destroys a story like too much exposition. I just needed to get all that off my chest, I feel better now. I guess you really didn’t need to know all that stuff given the fact that you won’t meet most of the people aforementioned later in the story since their lives have no impact on mine, and really, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Run on sentence…my English teachers would kill me. For instance, my mother and grandmother, well, they’re dead, you won’t get to meet them again. The lacrosse friend and closeted gay ex-friend are unimportant in the further development of the plot. My father and sister you’ll get to read a line or two here and there, mostly at holidays.

I’m digressing again, aren’t I?