And all the past; it lingers. But it fades ...
“I’m gay.”
The words had come out of my mouth without any real thought behind them. I generally didn’t use the word. ‘Gay’. I used to say, ‘I like men’. I guess I don’t see the point anymore. I’m not sure why exactly I chose those words on that particular that day, and no matter how much I tell myself it was just to avoid confusion, I know that wasn’t the case. I was afraid to use it. I was afraid to let it brand me. You weren’t gay in the FBI. Or if you were, you damn well kept it under wraps. Prejudice, who us?
She stared at me. I was sure she’d known (your mother is the one who knows you best, after all, or at least, she was supposed to) but the look that flashed in her eyes made me pause and rethink it. I remember her hands fiddling with the dishcloth like she could wipe the words away by scouring her hands one last time. She was so quiet that I could hear myself breathing above the whir of the little heater they’d put in the kitchen.
Then she said; “Don’t tell your father,” and she turned away from me, going back to drying the dishes.
I didn’t know what to say to her. I’m sorry? But then I would be apologising for who I was and I had worked so hard to be happy with that, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Can you forgive me? That was worse. That was like admitting I was purposefully lying to her when I wasn’t really. Maybe I had hidden it from myself, but I sure as hell hadn’t done it on purpose. I didn’t choose to hurt people. Why won’t you look at me? Yes. Yes, that would have done. But when I opened my mouth to speak I found that my voice had given up on me.
I waited for her to turn around. Even if it wasn’t to look at me, she had to put the dishes in the cupboard. But she just kept drying until the draining board couldn’t take anymore and she was actually piling plates and cups on the other side. It was ridiculous but I wanted to offer her a hand. I wanted to pretend I hadn’t said it, or at least pretend that it didn’t matter. But how could I? It was who I was, it was her son. Whether she liked it or not, it was who I’d always been. Will Graham, darling boy, straight A student, first in his class in the Academy, top of his division. A faggot.
I stayed waiting. I watched every forced little movement. The double checking everything, the looking at the plates that were sparkling and the dumping them back in the dirty water. Like she would clean the pattern off of them as long as she didn’t have to look at my eyes.
And she never turned around. Not once.
So I got up and found my jacket. What else could I have done? Maybe it would have been better if she’d suddenly said, “Oh. Yes, dear. Pie?” but she didn’t. She pretended that I didn’t exist. She tried to erase her short term memory. I realised right then that I’d done what I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t do. I had married my mother. She liked her fantasy. Just like Molly. She was content to stay there. She was happy to pretend I was something else. It suited her just fine when I was a heterosexual guy, even a divorced one. But gay? Nope. No thank you. She didn’t raise her eyes to me when I paused at the kitchen door. It was the first time I’d ever left the house without kissing her, saying I loved her. That bothered me more than the silence. When the door closed, I looked into the window, expecting to see her gazing after me. Maybe all those things she hadn’t said would be in her eyes.
She wasn’t there.
*
I spent Christmas on my own.
I wasn’t sure whether I was angry, hurt or disappointed, so I settled on a mixture of both. I wasn’t purposefully brooding but when I’m hurting, I pull back. Not exactly cut myself of, I’m still there if you look, if you speak to me. But I don’t go looking for company. And I was hurting. I’d lost a home, security, Molly, part of Josh’s life and the man who I had fallen in love with had tried to get a serial killer to rib my guts out all three bullets, a slash wound and a month long hospital stay. Rejection from the woman who gave birth to me and was supposed to be there for me when I needed her was the last thing that I needed.
Still, I wondered if maybe telling her was selfish. After all, she couldn’t be feeling much better, right? She was powerless to help as the divorce papers were signed and even though Hannibal never brought it to the court’s attention, I think she knew that I hadn’t been entirely faithful to Molly. But she was my mom. I was confused, I didn’t know who to go to, and the closer I got to Jack (after all, I was living in his house) the more I worried about our reasons for it. If it had been a woman, I would have been able to talk to her about it. So why did the fact that it was a man change things?
It did hurt, I decided finally. I had no right to be angry, I’d absolved myself of that right when I’d slept in someone else’s bed and got myself into the mess I was in, but I was hurt. And a little scared. Me and my mom hadn’t been amazingly close when I was growing up but after Josh was born and we started to take him for visits, it seemed to work itself out. I was used to having her only a telephone call away. What if I didn’t have that now? I was all but isolated from everyone I’d cared about now. Where did I go to say I was in pieces?
Her words had cut deep. Don’t tell your father. What did she expect me to do with that? I’d expected … it wasn’t what I would have chosen for you … or maybe even … have you been lying all this time? But no. She’d told me to hide it. Bury it. Forget it. Like it was a shameful thing. Something to hide. But it wasn’t. I was sure it wasn’t. I had worked so hard to make peace with that part of myself. It couldn’t all be for nothing.
The affairs, the wanting, the needing to be away from Molly and in someone else’s bed should have alerted me to the fact that something was wrong much earlier than it actually did. I had been in limbo for so many years. Three short affairs and then Hannibal. Even when he was behind me, covering me, pushing into me … I never used the word ‘gay’ because I didn’t think that it described me. It wasn’t what I wanted to be. Bisexual. Yes, Christ please let that be it. Let it be just a passing interest. Let it be my respect for him leaking into a sort of wanting that should have been forbidden. Let it be that, let it please be that.
But it wasn’t. I was blind. For a while it had been purposeful blindness. Subconscious, purposeful blindness. I fell for him. So hard that I couldn’t see the bottom of it. I fell for him the way that I fell for George. I threw everything I had into him. Everything except the energy that I saved for Josh. I gave him my heart and he cut it out and squeezed it beating above me. Squeezed it so hard that it forced a confession from me. I can’t count the times that I whispered, ‘I love you,’ into the dark before I let the confusion overwhelm and smother me. Asleep in his arms. I didn’t want it to be true. Afterwards though, after the sentencing … I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I liked men. The tightness in my belly was forced with Molly but it came almost unbidden to me when strange men smiled across rooms. Fuck. I was gay.
That’s probably what she was saying, in her head. My mother never cussed but I could imagine her doing it now. I could imagine the words slipping from those delicately painted lips. “Fuck. My son is gay.” It fitted well. But I thought she was supposed to be there. I thought that was what you did when you were a parent. I thought that you listened, learned, accepted and supported. This wasn’t what the script had promised. This wasn’t fair. My whole life had gone to shit and all I wanted was my mother to sit down and tell me it was alright. She didn’t call. Not for weeks. And when Christmas day rolled around, I didn’t care anymore. Or at least, I’d convinced myself that I didn’t care. Naturally, it wasn’t true. But if she could have illusions then so could I, right?
Josh, however, did call that morning. “It’s Christmas, dad. Will you come and have dinner?” I begged off, saying I’d come the next day. I was in no fit state to sit under the Christmas tree and unwrap snowman covered gifts because I wasn’t sure that I could bring myself to meet Molly’s eyes. I went into the kitchen and looked around for something to eat. We had bread and cheese. Great. I’d unwrapped the cheese and was half way through cutting it when it hit. It came from nowhere. The tightness started, like a constricting band around my chest. No tingles, though. No heart attack, no stroke. Just the tightness. It squeezed until I couldn’t breathe anymore. My throat closed, wouldn’t open, wouldn’t let me suck in the air that I needed. Tears, stinging, but the room was swimming already. Dizzy from lack of oxygen and scared shitless, I hit the kitchen floor and an unholy cracking noise rang in my ears.
When I woke up Jack was leaning over the top of me. I remembered this position. I’d died on Jack’s lap after Hannibal had stabbed me. He’d pulled me up, ever so gently, and I’m not sure whether it was my inability to see straight or his inability to hold it back, but I was sure he was crying. And my heart had stopped. Right there. He looked just as panicked this time. I blinked a little bit, but I couldn’t see straight. I recognised red. And I passed out again.
The second time my eyes opened, I was in an emergency room. You can imagine my utter joy at being back in hospital. “Concussion.” Oh. Was that all? Really? “And you sliced open your arm with the bread knife. I think you fell on it.” Knew I couldn’t get away with it. I’d bled all over his shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed and just looked at me. “What happened?” Something happened? Oh. Yes. Panic attack, I told him. “Said I’d look after you, you skinny bastard, don’t you make a liar out of me.” I stared at him. And the stinging in my eyes started again. I broke down on Jack’s lap and cried like a baby. Cried like I would have been doing on my mother’s couch. Except she didn’t want me. Cried like I would have done in Molly’s arms. Except she hated me. Cried like I would have done in Hannibal’s bed. Except he’d tried to kill me. (Spot the odd one out there.)
And I thought about Josh. I thought about what would happen if I wasn’t around. If Dollarhyde had managed what he’d set out to do. I thought about missing out on his next Christmas, his next birthday, his first day of high-school, his graduation. I thought about it all and I promised myself then that I would never do that to him. Never do what my mother had done to me. Whether he decided he was gay, into cross-dressing or wanted to become a monk … I’d support him. I’d always be there for him. I’ve let him down a little since then, but only in small things. Being a day late. Phoning him in the evening instead of in the morning. But always apologising, always explaining, never talking over his head. I don’t want him to have something important to say one day only to not be able to reach me, metaphorically or otherwise, not be able to let me in, keep it and hide it from me.
I don’t want him to think I’d turn my back on him.
*
I slept in Jack’s bed many times after that night. If I was lucky, he’d still be there when I woke up. If I was really lucky, he’d actually let me hold onto him, let me lay in his arms, and he wouldn’t kick me out on my ass five minutes later. I used him the same way that he used me … to stop feeling. To block out everything. To kill off the horrors. He was transferring to England. A new liaison branch. Would I come with him, would I help him? Sure. It was pointless retiring. I’d tried it before.
Molly wasn’t happy. But we were talking again. Gay, I’d told her. I’m gay. I know, she’d replied, do I look blonde to you? Huh. I decided not to analyse that comment too closely. Josh wasn’t happy that I was leaving either. But he understood. I took him out on the boat for a week. The last week I’d be free to do anything with him for a while.
“What do you think of gay people?” it was a leading question, fair enough, and he sat looking at me for a long time. Then he shrugged. “They’re just people.” That didn’t seem to satisfy him though and he thought about it for a little longer. “People who like other things.” Molly was right when she said to me that he’d taken a lot from me. An enquiring mind. “Why?” How did I explain it? I couldn’t just blurt it out again. Not like I did with my mom. “What would you say if …” but he grinned. “Are you gay?” I wasn’t sure what to make of the grin. I hesitated but it was for too long and he just laughed at me, getting up to find his fishing rod. “Cool.”
And that was that. The only time he brought it up again was to ask how gay people had sex. He listened, nodded, asked cheeky questions and went away giggling. But he’s never made anything else of it.
It was two months after I’d moved to England, moved out of Jack’s and bought myself a house that my mom called me. “I’ve told your father.” That was the first thing she said to me. Not hello, not how are you, just that. She’d told him. So what was I supposed to do with that? She kept dumping things on me and expecting me to do something about them. What was I supposed to say? Thanks, you’ve ignored me for the better part of a year, but I can cope with it, so long as you’ve told dad. Nah. “What did he say?” I settled on it because it was neutral. “He asked if you’d be coming home for Christmas. I told him I didn’t know. Will you be?” and in a small fit of nastiness, I asked her if I still had a home. She hesitated and for once, outright cried. She used to try to hide it. But not now. So sorry, please come back, love you, other things. I was sorry I’d inspired tears, but strangely gratified to hear it. Sorry. Yeah, so you should be. Sorry. Yeah, I’ll let you away with that. Sorry. Okay.
I did go home for Christmas. Two months later I met George. And everything started to happen so quickly. But I found time, no I made time, to call my mom. I dumped it in her lap, waved that multi-coloured flag in her face, made her deal with it for a change. And she had. Remarkably well. In fact, my dad keeps telling me to bring him home. He’s going to get a shock when he discovers that George doesn’t wear pink or talk with a lisp. I’ll be entertained, anyway. Mom says she’ll make special brownies. ‘Cause they cure everything, right?
I’ll never have a family like George’s. I’m never going to have cousins like Charlie (most of my cousins think I’m a stuck up shit) or brothers and sisters (“One was enough, William!”) or the closeness that they seem to take for granted. I’ll never have a mother who can smile and flirt and giggle and dance and love and accept the son-in-law that should have been a daughter-in-law. I’ll never have a father that can admit in conversation that yeah, his son is gay. But I have Josh. I have a son who adores me. I have George. I have a man who loves me. They accept me. They protect me. They clean up my mess. They kick my ass when it needs it. They’re everything.
It took me a while to realise but … that’ll do me fine.