Iâm a gay man in my fifties, comfortable in my skin, but I suffered severe bullying throughout school, which was often abetted by teachers. A recent class reunion prompted me to write a tell-all letter to the current school director regarding that trauma. His gracious response was incredibly healing.
My family has accepted me since I came out in my 20s, but they donât know the full extent of my ordeal. While I shared the letter with my supportive brother, Iâve hesitated to show it to my parents, who are in their 70s. They claim ignorance (âWe didnât know you were suffering!â, âYou never told us you were gay!â), yet they acknowledged long ago that I was âdifferentâ from toddlerhood, and they often criticized my âun-boyishâ behavior when I was a child.
To give you one concrete example: some older kids called me a gay slur when I was seven. I asked my mother what it meant. I can still vividly picture her shock and horror. So they knew I was gay but never initiated a conversation with me about it, and I was too ashamed to speak up back then. Since writing to the school, I feel an urge to finally have a âwarts and allâ talk with my parents to understand their perspective. Should I open Pandoraâs box with my elderly parents now, or leave things be for the sake of family peace? What is the best approach to having this conversation? Thank you in advance for your perspective.
Pandoraâs Box Opener
I have three siblings, PBO, two older brothers and a younger sister. When we became teenagers, our parents gave us experiences for our birthdays instead of toys. When my brother turned thirteen, he asked for tickets to a Bears game at Soldiers Field; when my other brother turned thirteen, he asked for tickets to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.
When I turned thirteen, I asked for tickets to the national tour of A Chorus Line at the Schubert Theater.
My parents arenât much older than yours, PBO, and I was about seven years old â just like you â when other kids started calling me a faggot. When I was ten, my homeroom teacher called me a faggot in front of the entire class because I said âbakingâ when we shared our hobbies. One of my uncles called me a sissy at family gatherings. But my parents were surprised when I came out â despite those Chorus Line tickets, despite all those faggots and sissies, and despite the obvious ways I wasnât like other boys.
My parents were kind and decent people. It sounds like yours were too. My parents didnât bully me, but they didnât help me. I donât think they could. Because my parents, like other kind and decent people at the time, believed the worst thing you could possibly think about a person was that they were a homosexual. My parents didnât think â they didnât let themselves think â that Liberace was gay. They certainly couldnât let themselves think one of their own children was gay.
Like your parents, my parents criticized my un-boyish behaviors. They thought they were helping. All they knew about homosexuality â besides that it was a sin â was that it was something a child might drift toward and that a soft boy who seemed to be drifting in that direction just needed a gentle little shove in the right direction. They pushed me to play sports, which I hated, and my dad made his views on homosexuality clear to me. They believed these were loving things to do. But each one of those shoves, however gentle, opened a wound that left a scar.
I was angry when I came out. I had been miserable for a long time, and I thought the reason seemed obvious. Years later, they would both say they always knew, deep down. But even if they had allowed themselves to name it at the time â even if they couldâve said it out loud to each other when I was seven â what could they have done? Every time I got called a faggot by another kid or a teacher or a relative, I denied it and retreated more deeply into the closet. If my parents had come to me when I was twelve or thirteen and asked me if I was gay â if they had attempted to initiate a conversation about it â all I wouldâve heard was, âSo, you are a faggot then, Danny, arenât you?â And I wouldâve denied it and retreated even further into the closet. It probably wouldâve taken me longer to come out to myself, much less to them, if they had asked me if was gay before I was ready to tell them myself.
After my husband and I founded the It Gets Better Project, we returned to the high school where he had been bullied. Heâd been beaten up, shoved through plate glass windows, and had his face ground into the ice and rock salt in the parking lot. When his parents complained to the school, the principal blamed Terry. It was his fault for acting that way. It meant so much when the schoolâs principal apologized to Terry on behalf of the school decades later. So, I understand why that apology meant so much to you and why you want one from your parents.
I had some âwarts and allâ conversations with my parents about how alone I felt as a child. And I could sense the shame they felt before I came out. That was part of it too. But they didnât know what they couldnât know. They were doing their best in a world before Will & Grace and Ellen and PFLAG and the It Gets Better Project. Unlike todayâs parents, our parents couldnât get online and read about homosexuality and figure out how to help us. My parents felt awful about the way they failed me as a kid, as Iâm sure your parents do. But what I saw in time was that they were set up to fail me. They werenât intentionally, maliciously awful to me, they were just â in this regard â incapable of helping me.
Still, if thereâs something you need to say to your parents, you should say it. If itâs an apology you want from them, you should ask for it. But I would encourage you to go into that conversation ready to do what it took me years to do: forgive them. I was an angry teenager when I came out to my parents, PBO, but youâre a grown man. You donât have to be the adult in the room, but you need to be an adult in the room.
My mom and dad got me those tickets to A Chorus Line. They got three tickets, actually, even though they were expensive, and my parents didnât have a lot of money. They both came with me to the show. It took me too long to see that I wasnât as alone as I thought when I was a closeted and miserable gay kid. My parents were there. I suspect yours were too.
Hey, 24-year-old cis lesbian here. I recently started talking to a girl at my university. Weâve been talking for about three months, and we see each other almost every day. She leans more on the timid side, and I canât tell if she wants to sleep with me or not. I think weâre both kind of weird about intimacy and afraid to make each other uncomfortable. Iâm not sure how to initiate things with her without stepping out of line. If I had to guess, Iâd say weâre both switches. The lack of communicating sexual interest is making me kind of self-conscious. How do I go about bringing it up or finding out just how interested in me she is?
She Wonders If This Could Happen
Kiss the girl.
P.S Point of order: by âkiss the girlâ I mean âask the girl if you can kiss the girl.â Donât lunge at the girl â no lunging, never lunging â but Jesus Fucking Christ, ask the girlalready. Itâs the only way youâll find out whether sheâs interested in you sexually (and so GenZ paralyzed by the fear of a momentâs discomfort that she wonât make the first move) or she isnât interested in you sexually (and thatâs why she hasnât made the first move). Someone always has to make the first move â someone has to take action based on their best guess about another personâs interest â before anyone can get laid. Itâs especially important for lesbians to learn how to make the first move, SWITCH, for reasons so obvious you should be able to work them out for yourself.
P.S. Being a little self-conscious is good, SWITCH, because a little self-consciousness motivates us to scrutinize our own feelings and take a moment to assess â with as much objectivity as we can possibly muster while cockstruck and/or cunt-struck â how the other person might be feeling. But being so self-conscious that you canât bring yourself to ask the girl isnât good. If you guess wrong and sheâs not interested, SWITCH, you didnât âstep out of line.â If she tells you sheâs not interested (directly or indirectly) and you ask again and again, then youâve stepped out of line.
