Halloween May Be Over, But November Haunts Me.

Every year the first week of November stops me dead in my tracks as I run headlong into a brick wall. I stagger to my feet, stunned, brush the grit off, and start the familiar shuffle down the same path I did back in November of 1991 when I was 15 years old. I can't believe it was 19 years ago. Nineteen, which is almost 20. Sounds like a lot. It is a lot. So why, then, does it still plague me? Why won't it go away? Well, because my gay dad isn't going away. He's still my dad. Our family is still our family, however atypical and foreign to some.

Nineteen years ago this week, my dad spilled his secret out onto the floor of our living room. Like a pool of blood, crawling and seeping all over clean, shiny floors. I drowned in it, choked on it. I'm back now, but I'm still changing, morphing, blurring, reaching, and becoming. I stare out my kitchen window watching the leaves drift down and listen to the trees laughing, dancing and whispering their secrets.


I'm instantly transported back to that day, like a time warp. A scratch on a record blip...blip...blip or a cd that's on repeat. Rewind, play. Rewind, play. Pause. Rewind, play again. You might be talking to me, but my brain goes somewhere else for a few minutes. I'm flooded with memories that seem so close and tangible, like bubbles I can pop; yet a part of me wishes them far away, out of reach, locked up in a box buried a million miles under the sea.

As soon as the secret was out and I'd gotten permission, I fled the scene of the gory crime--the butchering of our white picket fence family.

I'm being butchered this Friday. There's a hole in my gut (an umbilical hernia), similar to the one in my heart/psyche. The hole in my abdomen will be repaired. Yet I'm not sure if my soul will ever mend? Can mesh, stitches and Percocet be the salve to soothe my other gaping wounds?

This wound is not new, this hole in my abdominal wall. I had it last year, and it was repaired. Now it's back (cue scratched record: blip...blip...blip). What is it with this repetition in my life, patterns, things that follow me and won't go away?

I had my first hernia fixed in August 2009, and it was horrifying. I've had surgeries, but this? I woke up still intubated. And paralyzed-- I couldn't even blink my eyes open or force my lashes to flutter--all I could feel was something huge jammed down my throat. Something I was supposed to just swallow. Only it was too much. I wasn't in control, I couldn't do anything. Frozen for what seemed like forever in a stony sarcophagus.

After what felt like an eternity but was likely only a matter of minutes, someone pulled the tube out. I still couldn't move my body, but somehow tears flowed and I felt them drip down my cheeks. When a nurse came to check on me in the recovery room, I was at last able to make my lips and tongue move enough to slur, "I want my husband." I'm sure it sounded nothing like that, given the drug haze, and I had to repeat myself. Once The Father Load appeared, I lost it. Still unable to really move, but I could speak---I had a voice. I went on and on about how someone messed up and I woke up with the tube still in my throat.

I am terrified this will happen again on Friday. I am terrified I am losing my voice. There is so much I want to say. I am making a promise to myself that during this hiatus while I am healing, I am going to write. You may not see it all here, but I have to stop making excuses. I think writing will heal my wounds and without a tube stuck in my throat, I have a voice, and it needs to be heard.

Are you willing to listen? Are you silencing yourself? Are there things you wish you could say? Leave them in the comments.

The Biggest/Scariest Thing (Vlog) I've Ever Done.

It's no surprise that I'm a techno-moron, so bear with me. I have no clue how to combine the two clips below into a single vlog. I wouldn't be ballsy enough to post this if I hadn't gone to CIP. These are some major revelations and it's a huge deal that I'm even sharing this drivel. Oh, and I blink a lot while I vlog, apparently. I frequently pause while I'm formulating thoughts. Get over it. You know you love me!

**I should preface this by saying I love my dad dearly. I realize these clips could easily be misinterpreted, but I wouldn't be the person I am today without him (i.e. his disclosure about his homosexuality). I am far more open-minded, educated, and real as a result. And perhaps I am a little more brave because of him, too.

Watch this one first:



And if you're still awake, please watch this slightly longer one:



If you've managed to sit through these (combined it's about 7 minutes of video), you are my hero. And if you were bored out of your mind, I completely understand and no hard feelings. Really.

But this is me.

This.
Is.
Me.

In all my glory.
So take it or leave it.
Thoughts? Comments?

Pouring My Heart Out: A Bad Day in 1996, My Journal Entry

I'm Pouring My Heart Out today with Shell over at Things I Can't Say.

Most of you know my dad is gay and came out of the closet when I was 15 years old. If you didn't, please peruse some background here, here and here. I believe his revelation will always impact me in one way or another, and over the years how it has affected me has ebbed and flowed. The major blow was the day he told us his secret and the few weeks/months afterwards. Next came college, where I lived on my own for the first time and really began to process the issues that resulted from his revelation. Below is a very graphic journal entry written from that time period; a time when I had so many powerful emotions swirling around inside that I didn't know what to do with them all. I took my anger, depression, anxiety, and confusion out on myself. If you are not familiar with the concept of self-harm or self-injury, you can read more here. 


The most important thing to realize is that self-mutilation is not about suicide, and I have not harmed myself in over 10 years. If this is too disturbing, please do not read it. And as always, remember that you don't have to like me or agree with me, but you do have to respect me. This is my space. My blog is growing, changing, and soon you shall see less randomness and more reality. This is life, people. We all have skeletons in the closet whether we admit it or not. I am admitting it here.

Moving on. Below begins the actual journal entry from Fall, 1996 (I was 20 years old):

The brand new silver blade bit into the white, trembling skin of my left wrist.


I crouched on the green bath mat just outside the shower stall, trying to make myself small.
My hair was freshly washed, still wet and clinging to my cheeks and the back of my neck. A whiff of Herbal Essence shampoo. It was late on a weeknight, I'd planned it out somewhat.


My heart thundered in my chest and I felt the searing, slicing and it felt good. So I did it again. And again. With immense relief and disbelief at the same time.


Blood, red and thick, flooded to the surface and ran down the side of my arm, dripping.


Drip. Drop. Drip.
Plit. Plat. Plit.
Watching. Like slow motion. Numbness. A separation. Pieces of myself. Breaking off.


Red, paint-like splotches on the grey tiled floor of the shower. My nose was running and tears blurred my vision. I wasn't crying for the pain on my arm, but for the pain in my heart, my soul. Each time the razor sliced into my flesh I felt relief, release, rebirth, a newness. I felt purged and holy and clean. Bloodletting.


The blood flowed freely as I stayed quiet, hovering. I heard nothing save the sound of my own breath and the throbbing beat of blood pumping in my ears.


Pain---what is it, after all? This was a self-imposed pain, so it didn't count. There was a gauzy bandage wrapped around the site of my pain for a while, and now there are long sleeves conveniently covering my pain. But still, that's just the outside pain. There are two kinds, you know. The other is internal, deep inside my heart. It never goes away. I tried to make the inside pain go away by creating a pain on the outside. But that pain proved to be only a temporary distraction.


I'm tired of pain. I think a lot of people don't understand where my pain is coming from. Maybe I don't really understand, either.


It's hard to write about pain. I know it by heart, but I've always had trouble putting it into words, vocalizing it. Yet I don't mind putting words on paper. It's easier than talking about the pain, that's for sure.


Pain is a looming, growling monster that gallops after me. He chases me until I am too tired to run anymore. I trip and fall down and he jumps upon me, howling and writhing and fierce and mad. He won't let me get up and he chokes me, latches onto me. He follows me everywhere, taunting me in foreign tongues. I try not to listen.


I know his words are bad.

(end of journal entry)


And here is a Sylvia Plath poem that speaks to me in many ways:

"Cut"

What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

My Name is Larry, and When I Was 42, I Came Out of the Closet

**If you missed the previous posts in this series by me, my mom, and my brothers, please go here, here, here, and here to catch up. Below is my dad's version. Dad is an attorney specializing in maritime and personal injury and recently moved to Mississippi from New Orleans. He and his partner, Kory, have been together for many years and had a civil ceremony in Stowe, Vermont in 2001.**


The day my family has already written about was easily the worst day of my life, and the second worst was about two weeks earlier when I had to tell my sweet wife of 20 years, Julie, the same thing. As difficult and painful as that was, telling our children was magnitudes worse. Imagine knowingly and intentionally plunging a knife into your child, not impulsively or carelessly, but because you felt you had no choice. That's what it was like for me. I was going to hurt and scar forever the four people I loved most in my life because I'd been a deceitful fraud, but the hard truth finally had to come out.


I'd known I was different from childhood. At puberty things got worse and I deceived myself about my true nature until I was 19, when I finally realized I was attracted to men, although I was entirely inexperienced. By that time I'd had several girlfriends and plenty of good, old-fashioned heterosexual sex. I believed that although I was physically attracted to both sexes, I could not possibly feel anything romantic toward a member of my own sex as I had with women, including Julie, whom I was to marry at age 22 in 1971. I took my vows intending to keep them and believing I could.
If this sounds naive and stupid today, remember what a different world it was in 1971. For me, gay people were more of a despised urban legend than a reality. In a letter to Harper's Magazine in 1970, Joseph Epstein wrote:

Private acceptance of homosexuality, in my experience, is not to be found, even among the most liberal-minded, sophisticated and liberated people. Homosexuality may be the one subject left in America about which there is no official hypocrisy...Cursed without clear cause, afflicted without apparent cure, they are an affront to our rationality, living evidence of our despair of ever finding a sensible, explainable design to the world.

Clearly I had a lot of incentive to believe anything but the truth.

I was also reasonably bright and ambitious. I didn't have a lot growing up and had visions of luxury cars, big houses and swimming pools propelling me to the American dream of a successful career and a picture perfect family. All I had to do was round off my corners so I could fit into one of the world's round holes just like all the other round pegs. I worked really hard at that, believing I was doing the right and honorable thing for nearly 20 more years. I cannot tell you in a few words why it quit working; only that it did. Suffice it to say I was faithful to Julie until just before I came out. Being a self deceiving fraud was one thing; living an intentional double life was quite another and my nature did not permit it. I reached a breaking point and felt I was coming completely apart. I just could not keep going, not another day and not another minute. I was willing to risk Julie, Erin, Mark, and Kevin, my entire family, my job and my career for my freedom...for one breath of the air of my truth. It was a wholly selfish and ruthless act, but an act of pure survival.

Those two horrible days, and indeed the weeks before and after, were like a slow motion nightmare that never seemed to end. I knew exactly what I was doing and the pain it has caused is something I live with every day. None of my four so loved ones deserved any of this and all would have been justified in never speaking to me again. I asked them to understand and with their love and commitment we have remained a family, if one of a different sort. My husband, Kory, whom I've been with for 18 years, is also part of our family now. I suppose they are all stuck with me in spite of what I did to them. I like to think they have forgiven me, but I know they can never forget. We are family and I love them so. Their love for me brings me to tears, for I know what I did to them.

My name is Julie, and When I was 41, My Husband Told Me He Was Gay

**If you missed previous installments in this series, go here, here, and here. My mom, Julie, is currently a clinical social worker in New Orleans. She has not remarried.**

I had an old girlfriend from Oklahoma visiting for the week. One day while she was with us, Larry (Erin's dad!) insisted we three visit an up-and-coming local artist’s studio (Michalopolous). He suggested I select an original from the works in the studio, and said it was for our 20th wedding anniversary! I joyously chose what I thought would be a daring, eventually valuable (a semi-nude portrait, when this artist specialized in upward perspective paintings of New Orleans architecture: homes, buildings, etc.) painting. This painting would come to serve as a striking reminder for the next decades of an extremely excruciating, sharp detour in the path of our lives.

I took my friend to the airport early that Sunday morning, bid her farewell, and returned home to find my husband fully showered, shaved, dressed, pale, nervous, and with some papers in hand. He asked me to come and sit in the den, as the kids were still asleep. I followed him with some trepidation into the bleak, desperate hours to come.


He had been feeling ill the past few weeks with some unexplained ailment. He never liked me to “hover” (his word) around when he was sick, so I hadn’t pushed the issue. My fear was that he was about to announce our entry into a world of medical confusion, terror and treatment. I instantly assumed that he was about to tell me he was dying.

The only two parts of the next hour that I recall were his first words, well-rehearsed:

“Into each life, some rain must fall."

Well, my little shower turned into a hurricane of untold proportions. I do remember somewhere in his “opening statement” (he used to rehearse his opening statements for court, and elicit my critiques in just the same way), the word “gay.” Honestly, it didn’t really register. All that registered was the fact that he wasn’t dying. I cried and cried with relief. I think in hindsight he must have thought I was crying in reaction to his announcement.

It wasn’t until hours later that his “announcement” really hit, and HIT it did! I fell apart in our bedroom, alone. We couldn’t tell the kids because he insisted he had to remain in the closet with the exception of our divorce! I also wanted time to digest this stunning news and all of the implications. We told the children I was not feeling well (the absolute truth), and I began the grieving process. Embedded in this decision (not to tell the children at that time) was the fact that Erin had her very first Homecoming Dance coming up in two weeks. We didn’t want that joy, preparation and life-launching experience to be ruined.

We had agreed months before to couple's counseling. We saw the therapist one time together, only to be instructed that we were more in need of individual work than sessions together. So we saw the therapist individually.Turns out Larry told the therapist he was gay during his very first session! NO ONE ever told me! Apparently they were working on his “coming out," and I thought I was working on our marriage!

In the ensuing weeks I found my strength and I absolutely INSISTED he come out to the children as soon as Erin’s date had happened, and the earliest possible time for us all.

I based my argument on the fact that the therapist KNEW, his law partner KNEW (and had encouraged him to remain closeted, for the sake of the law practice), I KNEW, and it was only a matter of time before the children would find out. In that scenario, they were likely to find out from someone other than their parents. I could not tolerate that! If honesty was to be the new policy, than the children, above anyone else, deserved that honesty. That brings us to “the day," shortly after Halloween, 1991, that my children's lives changed forever.

Now you have it (sort of)! You have each of our experiences, in a few paragraphs, with the exception of dad himself. I guess that may be to come.

Kevin is correct: the Best family keeps on! I haven’t the vocabulary to express my feelings about Erin, Mark and Kevin. Their own life paths took an extremely sharp detour on the day they found out, but with that detour, they have each managed to sharpen their life skills and their wits.“Proud” just doesn’t seem to cover it. I watch their lives unfold, and I am in awe.

To all of you following Erin, thank you for your lovely, thoughtful and encouraging responses to her writing. I agree she has a book in her, but she is doing it her way, and in her time!

My Name is Kevin, and When I Was Nine, My Dad Came Out of the Closet

**If you missed the first two parts of this fascinating new mini series, please go here and here. Below is my youngest brother Kevin's account of that same day. Kevin is six years younger than I and owns his own business, Dibbz, in New Orleans.**


Unless you grew up idolizing Babe Ruth, eating smores in a tree house, and playing baseball on your own private field, your childhood had nothing on mine. Nothing. I was the oldest member of an adventurous and nearly inseparable group of neighborhood kids. We rode bikes without wearing helmets. We climbed trees as tall as the rooftops of the block’s first few McMansions. There was a ditch full of murky water, populated with exotic turtles, which separated us from the railroad tracks that helped to flatten our boring pennies into Picasso-esque masterpieces. Moms, including my own, dealt with the ensuing piles of muddy shoes and frantic snack breaks we required to maintain the frequency of our high adventures. Dads came home from work around five or six, calling us all back home to ourrespective dinner tables, marking the end of a full day. This was life as I knew it at nine years old, and it was great.


From my perspective, things didn’t change dramatically after the infamous Sunday morning family meeting, which might explain why very few details stick out in my memory about that day. It began when I was briefly pulled away from my friends and a game that might have resembled soccer on a neighbor’s lawn. My dad actually came outside to get my attention, which was rare. He also used the term “family meeting” which was equally unprecedented. Those were for Kevin Arnold’s family in The Wonder Years, not Kevin Best’s on East Livingston Place in the real world. Inside the house, there were tears, but they weren’t mine. I was actually in a rush to get back out there and explain to my neighborhood friends how I had just become one of those kids – the ones with divorced parents. I went to grammar school with many of them and it seemed more normal than having a traditionally intact family. I also remember asking my parents if they would ever get back together. It wasn’t complete unfamiliarity with the idea of homosexuality so much as a miscalculation concerning the significance of one fact versus the other. My nine year-old brain processed the idea of divorce immediately, but it had yet to tackle what it would mean to have a gay father. I had never been exposed to an opinion, positive or negative, concerning the homosexual label so it flew under the radar. When it came right down to it, I never expected either of my parents to stop caring for me or to disappear so that was that. I went back outside to play.

Growing up over the next twenty years was relatively easy and I remained emotionally unscathed. After the divorce, my parents conducted themselves far better around us than many of my friends’ married parents. As cheesy Lifetime movies often remind us, life doesn’t always work out as planned. It certainly didn’t play out the way any of us expected it to before the family meeting, but Mom and Dad managed to hold us together and the Best family continues onward…

My Name is Mark, and When I was 13, My Dad Came Out of the Closet

**If you missed my version of the day my dad revealed he was gay, click HERE to read it. This is my brother Mark's perspective on that very same day. Mark is two years younger than I and is an attorney in New Orleans.**

On a bright sunny Sunday morning, my father announced that he and my mother would be getting divorced.


On Sundays in our household, one could always count on two things: the mail would not be delivered, and we’d have “Sunday breakfast.” There would always be eggs; mostly sunny-side up, but scrambled was not out of the ordinary. There would always be bacon; mostly of the pig variety until we became more health conscious in the late '80s and switched to turkey bacon. There would always be homemade biscuits with jam/jelly, or my personal favorite, butter and honey. However, it was not unusual for mom to make blueberry muffins, complete with a startling blue color created by adding the blueberry juice into the batter. There would always be seasonal fruit. In the summer we’d have cantaloupe or honeydew melon with the rinds cut off. But most of the time we’d each have a half of a grapefruit sprinkled with sugar and topped with a maraschino cherry. My mom would cut and separate the individual triangles of fruit from the interior skin so that we could easily scoop out a piece at a time with a spoon. We’d always have milk and orange juice, and my dad would have coffee. I always had to remember to drink my glass of milk entirely before I got to the grapefruit. If you eat the grapefruit first, the milk will taste spoiled. Although my mom would occasionally mix it up by making pancakes in the shapes of the first letter of our names, the Sunday breakfast itself was a given. It was something I could count on.

On that strange morning after we’d had Sunday breakfast, my brother and I went upstairs to brush our teeth and recommence the inevitable Nintendo gaming. My sister likely returned to her room and closed the door so she wouldn’t have to listen to my brother and me. However, it’s just as likely that she stayed downstairs to help with the dishes. At the time I thought she would do things like that so whenever my mom would call us out for not pitching-in enough at home, she would always have to add “except for you Erin, you’re always a big help.”

The house had an intercom system so my mom could talk to us in our rooms without leaving the kitchen. My brother and I got the call to come downstairs. I don’t remember who actually asked us to come down, but I imagine it was my father given that my mother could hardly speak a word that morning. My dad had revealed to her that he was gay around two weeks prior to that Sunday morning; a fact I did not learn until much later. How she made that breakfast knowing what was about to happen, I’ll never know.

When he called us down, he said we were going to have a “family meeting.” We never had “family meetings.” Of course, we’d sit together and talk over a meal or something, but we never had to call it anything. When he said “family meeting” I guessed we were all going to be assigned chores to do, like pulling weeds and washing cars. We took our spots on the couches in the den where my dad was already seated looking at a legal pad. I’m fairly sure he was looking at page two when I sat down. He always uses the legal pads for work when he needs to organize his thoughts. He wouldn’t have needed a legal pad to tell me to pull weeds, and he certainly would not have needed two pages. This was so out-of-the-ordinary, I stopped my mind from guessing. My mom’s eyes were red.

My dad cleared his throat with a short gruff bellow. I remember him trying to compose himself and having immense difficulty doing so. I’d like to tell you that I remember the words he spoke next. I wish I could quote him exactly so the words would be famous and familiar in my own mind. You know when you hear someone utter the famous phrase: “a date that will live in infamy,” you already know the date of the event, the identity of the speaker, and what happened there. When it comes to that Sunday morning, I can’t remember the date, the identity of the speaker was shattered, and I don’t remember much about what happened.

I think I came-to when he said, “if you all have any questions, please feel free to ask me…anything you have on your mind…your mother and I are here for you…nothing will ever change the fact that we love you and will always love you. Do you have any questions?” I don’t know if anyone asked anything. I just know I didn’t. “If you guys want to go play or go to your rooms or ride bikes or something, that’s fine.” My sister popped up with tears in her eyes and ran upstairs to her bedroom. I went to my room to lie on my bed. I remember thinking, “I know I’m supposed to be crying right now.” I tried to force it, but with no result.

It’s easy to cry when you understand the full import of a tragedy. I had heard the words, but I had not (or perhaps would not or could not) visualize the end result. I heard him say that he would be moving out, but I didn’t know at the time how weird it would be to visit him at his warehouse district apartment with all the street noise, the different smell, the different furniture and décor. I heard him say that he would continue to attend my basketball games, but I didn’t know at the time how uncomfortable it would feel to have a teammate ask me just before tip-off “is that your dad’s boyfriend?” I heard him say that he and my mother would remain friends, but I didn’t know that resentment between them would still bubble up through the surface many years after that day. I heard him say that he was gay, but I didn’t know he would appear on TV to proclaim it. I heard him say that things might be difficult for a while, but I didn’t know I’d be shoving some derelict kids who cornered and harassed my brother because they “heard your dad is a faggot.” Had I known, I’m certain I’d have cried. A lot.

A long time has passed. I’m no longer a 13-year old adolescent. I’m a 32-year old father and husband. I have known my gay father and lived as a son of divorced parents for far longer than I lived in a “normal” family environment. The experiences that I had in the years following that strange Sunday don’t make me feel like crying today. Looking back at them, all I see is the same overcoming of hardship that we have all had to face in some form or another in our own lives. If you have not yet experienced something that the majority of society would consider difficult, then it is likely that three things are true: (1) you probably haven’t earned much respect, (2) you probably have a lot of self-doubt and (3) you are probably a teenager.

I’ve experienced several additional and entirely different hardships since my dad came out and my parents got divorced. Each of them made me feel sad, stressed and very depressed. And each time I knew that things would gradually get easier. When (not if) things take a tragic turn in the future, things will get easier. That is something I can count on, just like Sunday breakfast.

Hi, My Name is Erin, and When I Was 15, My Dad Came Out of the Closet.

When my parents announced that Sunday morning that it was time for a "family meeting," my stomach lurched and the golden, glistening fried eggs I'd just eaten threatened to reappear. My younger brother, Mark, and I jeered and jabbed at each other on our way down the stairs, but part of me knew something wasn't right. While we joked in whispers that we'd better start doing our chores more diligently, the silent scream in my head warned me to stop time, to take the brittle hands of the clock and snap them like sticks, freezing us in this moment forever, untainted.

As soon as we sat down on the couch across from my parents, we knew this wasn't a meeting to assign more chores or rake us over the coals about something we'd done wrong. Mom was crying. Ever the lawyer, Dad was pacing with a legal pad and it wasn’t long before he began his opening statement. He was preparing to defend himself. “This is about honesty, integrity, respect, and my love for all of you,” he began nervously and somewhat formally. I suddenly couldn't stop looking at the dirty off-white carpet beneath my feet, its fuzzy fibers unraveling in places. I felt myself unraveling, too, things inside me twisting and pulling against each other. I wanted to take a loose loop of wool and run with it, clamp my hands over my ears and shout, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU," like a young child often does when there's something she doesn't want to hear.

Dad announced he was moving out, his sentences littered with awkward but telling third-person references “Your mother and I are getting divorced because your father is a homosexual.” He couldn't own it himself, the secret he'd just spilled from his lips. It was like he was speaking about someone else who wasn't there. He said he'd known he was gay since he was 12 years old, but thought he could hide it, squash it down, and lead a normal life. He thought he could pretend it away by marrying Mom. I tasted my breakfast in the back of my throat. I hoped that this was either a very realistic dream or April Fool's in November. Of course it was neither. As the tears threatened to roll, all I could think about was that I needed to get out of that house. I needed a friend. I needed air. I needed to think. This couldn’t possibly be happening. A lot of my friends’ parents were divorced, but mine never seemed like potential candidates---they always got along so well and things seemed relatively normal. I was also quite certain none of my friends had a gay parent.

As soon as they were done talking to us, I tore upstairs and called my best friend *Michelle. She was out of town at a soccer tournament. I called *Joe next. I think I blurted out, “My parents are getting divorced.” He suggested we meet at the nearby park and do homework together. I borrowed Mom’s car and left as quickly as I could. I think Mark retreated to his room, and only Kevin, the youngest of the three of us (nine years old at the time), remained with my parents to ask lots of questions I don’t think they were prepared for.


I got to the park and could barely speak. Just lots of tears, sobbing, and snot. I remember copying some of Joe's Latin homework. Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, my dad is gay? My brain wouldn’t process anything, especially not Latin vocabulary and verb conjugations. I was on auto-pilot. Miles upon miles of senseless thoughts raced through my mind, colliding and causing traffic jams. Joe lent me an old handkerchief he found in his jacket pocket. At 15, he was ill-equipped for such an emotionally charged situation, but he did the best he could; he held me while I cried and he tried to make me laugh. As the afternoon sun waned and the skies began to darken, I knew I'd have to return home and face the challenges ahead.
 
Stay tuned for the next installment, my brother Mark's perspective on the very same day....
 
(*Some names have been changed.)

Writing Prompt: Polka Dots

My friend Ami's blog, Writing Out Loud, recently featured a post entitled "Polka Dotted Dreams." I was instantly inspired by her vivid description to write my own post based on her prompt over at her Creativity Corner. Go check Ami out now & follow her--she's such an amazing writer and a dear friend to boot. My own rather lame attempt is below. Please pardon my crooked pics!


A photo taken with my parents on the night of the Homecoming Dance.

My sophomore year of high school I decided I was going to the annual Homecoming Dance come Hell or high water. I'd missed it the year before because no one had asked me and I wasn't brave enough to do the asking. I mustered up every ounce of courage I had to call this guy. I blurted out in a breathless rush, "I-know-we-haven't-talked-in-forever-I'm-sorry-and-I-know-you-probably-don't-want-to-but-I'm-dying-to-go-to-this-dance-will-you-go-with-me?" He said he would, and I eagerly commenced making all the plans: who we'd double with, where we'd go out to dinner beforehand, and who'd be doing the chauffeuring.
I had to have this dress. It could have been worse, I suppose, but it sure was poofy on top. The large polka-dotted bow detracted from my annoyingly flat chest (or so I thought). I'd fallen in love with the polka dots. I had to have it.

The night was fun, but nothing especially memorable. A ton of hormonally-charged teenagers crowded in some rented room at a country club, dancing and laughing. I vaguely remember feeling self conscious, being rather quiet, and awkwardly making conversation with my date.

This polka-dotted dress symbolizes the end of my innocence. No, I didn't lose my virginity that night. But the morning after the dance my dad sat us all down and told us he was gay. And then he packed up and moved out.

The very same dress I'd loved and worn and shimmied on the dance floor in only the night before now sat in a rumpled heap on my closet floor. I couldn't look at it. It made me remember my other life, the life that had existed just hours prior, a life free from anger and resentment and shock and sadness.
I never wore it again. It's still hard to look at these photos and remember.
A practice run & dance lesson in the dress after we'd bought it.

Guest Post---"One Truffle At The Ritz" by my dad

Hello dear readers!

My mom is in town visiting and we've been quite busy. With Halloween coming this weekend, I confess I haven't got much time to write anything thoughtful; however, I wanted to share this lovely tidbit with you in the interim. I didn't even ask permission, but this is a short essay my dad recently wrote and submitted to Saveur Magazine. I think it's a great piece, and perhaps it will be a welcome change from my boring stuff! Would love to know what you think.

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ONE TRUFFLE AT THE RITZ


True food lovers are always ready for that singular new experience, whether it is the rare and exotic, the voluptuous and excessive, or simply the soul satisfying richness of the best of the tried and true; that moment,that first bite can be almost paralyzing in its intensity and, if the planets are properly aligned, can be relived and savored for a lifetime. I count myself among those fortunate (and perhaps relentlessly inquisitive enough) to have had several such food moments. One of my favorites was the experience of a unique dish at the Ritz in Paris in February, 1980.


I was a 31 year old lawyer in Paris for only the second time and on a side excursion after a London meeting of the American Bar Association. My wife, Julie, I and another couple, had decided to stay at the Ritz, certainly an extravagance, but one quickly and eagerly justified as a once in a lifetime experience. After all, what better time to go than with good friends; besides, Julie was seven months pregnant with our second child, so a little indulgence could be justified.


We arrived a little before check-in time and our rooms were not yet ready. Even without a room, we felt welcomed and cosseted by the hushed quietness of the public areas richly carpeted in plush oriental rugs on gleaming stone floors and furnished with rare and carefully polished antiques. It was winter and the hotel was sparsely populated, its silence punctuated only with the staff's murmurings and the quiet rustling of the maids' black taffeta skirts as they went almost invisibly about their duties. We had certainly "arrived," but were doing our best not to look as overwhelmed and intimidated as we felt. We tried to behave as if all this was second nature to us so as not to betray the "country come to town"reality of this group of four young people from Houma, Louisiana.


That night we decided to dine in the hotel as tired travelers (and pregnant women in particular) sometimes do. The large formal dining room was empty when we arrived. While we missed the energy and excitement of a crowd, there was still something almost reverential about the room. The linens, crystal, sliver, silk drapery, flowers and candlelight watched over by several tuxedoed staff members created something resembling an empty stageset. We had to choose whether to be lonely guests in an empty hotel restaurant, or instead the stars of our very own opulent production. We quickly chose stardom and a bottle of champagne as the useful accelerant.The occasion was extraordinary and demanded no less.


We studied our menus at length with the much needed assistance of Julie's still quite good high school French. This necessarily took quite some time and, after all, we were not in a hurry. It was then that I began eyeing a beautifully presented whole smoked salmon lying in state on a gilded baroque sideboard across the room. As soon as had I began to whisper of this delicacy to my companions, a waiter glided up with a substantial portion for us to sample. I had not yet read or heard about Cesar Ritz's famed table radar, but had just experienced it firsthand. The service continued with our needs being met almost before we recognized them ourselves, and all this was done from a respectful distance without intrusion.


Eventually we made our selections. With Julie's help and some charade-like communication with the waiter, I discovered a hot appetizer described as a whole truffle baked and sauced in a puff pastry. My experience of truffles at this point was confined to tiny specs in pates.The specter of a whole truffle was mesmerizing. I loved their smoky, earthy flavor. The idea of a whole one all to myself prepared and served in this temple of opulence and excess was too much to bear. Unfortunately, so was the a la carte price of $50.00, a staggering sum indeed to a young lawyer in 1980. I agonized only briefly before resorting again to my tried and true justification of excess. When, would I ever have such an opportunity again? Wouldn't I forever regret any penurious cowardice?

Of course I would! And so the battle was won (or lost depending on one's perspective) and I placed my order.


The dish arrived plated on heated Limoges. I knew because I had already peeked at the bottom of my bread plate proving once again my lack of manners and proper upbringing. The golden square of pastry rose several inches from the plate and was topped with a circular dome hinting at the prize within. When I broke the very crisp and layered croissant- like crust with my knife and fork, a small cloud of pungent steam rose as I waited for the dish to cool. Despite my best efforts to savor it slowly, the deliciously sauced and spongy golf ball sized black truffle, along with every crumb of the pastry seemed gone in no time at all.


I do not remember the other courses, or what everyone else had during our long and very French dinner. I do, however, remember one very special glittering evening of splendor and luxury with my lovely wife and two dear friends, all of whom kindly indulged me in my quest for memorable excess. We had an exceptional evening and I have Proustian memories of it even now, and without ever again biting into another whole truffle.