Mom?

I had a disturbing dream last night. I dreamed that I found out that my dad had had an affair with a woman a very long time ago, and it turned out that this woman was actually my real mother, instead of the woman whom I’ve come to know and love and cherish as my mother, and that everyone had hid this from me. In the dream, the mistress and my dad told me the news together. I was crushed. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

The three of us were driving along in a car — me, my dad, and this strange, evil woman — and I was trying not to be upset. But as the woman was talking to me, I realized that hiding underneath the dashboard was the woman whom I’d always thought of as my mom. I made eye contact with her and I wanted to cry, but I didn’t say anything, because I was afraid of what the strange woman would do if she knew she was there. But my dad knew that she was hiding there also and didn’t say anything because he didn’t want the mistress to know. Apparently, he was really on my side and disliked the strange woman as much as I did.

I woke up feeling really uneasy. What the heck? How do you know that your mother is really your mother?

When my mom and I brought the dog to the vet the other day, it was a real bonding experience. We were hugging each other and crying and then afterwards we had wine in the backyard. On the drive back to the house I felt moved to tell her how much I love her, how much more I feel like I connect with her than I do with my dad or my brother. I really and truly love my mother.

And dammit, I just know she’s my mom…

“One of the hardest moments for me and, perhaps, other gay men and women is the first time you actually say out loud to another person ‘I am gay.’ You hear it inside your head a lot and you think it will be easy. And you’ve constantly been saying, ‘I’m not gay,’ so one might imagine that excising an apostrophe and a single three-letter word and inserting an ‘a’ would be easy.”

“It’s not.”

— from “The Very Last Life Serial”, in Glassdog

On My Honor as a Student…

This may seem odd, but a day after putting the dog to sleep, today was my brother’s graduation from NYU. I didn’t go, because he was only given two tickets – which went to my parents, of course – but I met up with them for lunch afterwards at the Gramercy Tavern. I’m not a restaurant critic, so I’ll just say that the food was delicious and the company was great. The Gramercy Tavern is elegant and classy, yet trendy, modern, and relaxed. Just like a restaurant should be.

In other news, my double alma mater, the University of Virginia, is dealing with a cheating scandal. Yay. Some 122 students in an introductory physics class called “How Things Work” have been accused of plagiarizing substantial parts of their term papers, despite the school’s honor code, in place ever since, according to legend, a student shot a professor on the Lawn back in 1841. I could be wrong, but I think that UVA has the oldest honor code of any American university and that most other schools with honor codes have modeled them on ours, sometimes with modifications. We have a “single sanction” system: if you’re charged with lying, cheating, or stealing, and then, following a hearing held by the student-run Honor Committee, the charges are determined to be true, you are expelled. Done deal. Just like that. There have been many student referenda over the years that have attempted to create a dual-sanction system, with some lesser penalties for certain offenses, based on the belief that people refrain from turning in cheaters because they don’t want to see their fellow students expelled. These referenda have always failed.

On the night of our convocation as UVA students, in the fall of my first year, we all had to sign our names in one of several big books, pledging to follow the honor code. And on the last page of every exam you take and of every paper you turn in at UVA, you must write the following sentence: “On my honor as a student of the University of Virginia I have neither given nor received aid on this exam (paper) (assignment).” Then you sign your name and turn it in. It’s assumed you’re telling the truth.

I never cheated at UVA, and I personally don’t know of anyone who did, but it does happen, and certainly not just in some gut of a physics class. Still — 122 students in a single class?

Throughout most of my years at UVA, and especially in the couple of years since, I’ve been proud to be a ‘Hoo. A Double ‘Hoo, at that. So, although this doesn’t at all surprise me, it does sadden me.

Wahoowa.