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The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties: #2

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2. I Come Out to My Parents
August 19, 1999
Age: 25

I actually had to come out to my parents twice. The first time was when I was 19, two days before returning to school for my third year of college. It was an impulsive action; I realized that I wanted to tell them in person, and that if I didn’t do it now, I’d have to wait until Thanksgiving. So around midnight, I knocked on their bedroom door, sat down on their bed, and told them. They were stunned and not happy. The following evening my mom asked me to go for a walk with her, and she told me that she couldn’t accept this.

It wasn’t that I was unprepared for my parents’ negative reaction, but I was unprepared for the intensity of it, and more than that, I was unprepared for the discomfort I myself felt at upsetting them. I wanted them to love me. I wanted them to be happy. Would they hate me now? I wished I hadn’t told them. So I resolved not to be gay. On that evening walk, I told my mom that I was probably mistaken, that I’d go back to school and see how things went. This was easy; when I returned to school, I was already going to be moving into a dorm on the other side of campus. Not too many people knew about me anyway, and after making new friends I rarely saw those people again. From then on, I was alternately asexual or confused, and I hid this from everyone I knew.

Almost five years later, during the summer after my second year of law school, my confusion finally disappeared and I realized I was gay. I came out to everyone I knew at school — I spent my entire last year of law school out of the closet — but I still didn’t tell my parents.

I ended law school with no job lined up, because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I remained at UVa through the summer to study for the New York Bar Exam; my plan was to take the exam in August, then temporarily move back into my parents’ house in New Jersey and look for a job in New York.

That summer I decided I was ready to come out to my parents again. I’d resolved my confusion, I’d been living an active and open gay life for a year, and I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of hiding it from them anymore. I’d already told my brother several months earlier, and he was totally fine with it. I thought about writing my parents a letter that summer — I even drafted it — but then I decided they deserved to find out in person.

When I moved back home in August, however, I kept putting it off. I felt guilty enough about living at home without a job, and I knew it irritated my parents, too; coming out to them might just make things worse. And I wasn’t yet financially independent; what if they reacted badly?

While beginning the job-hunting process at home, though, I made a new friend. I met him in a chat room. I fell for him, and I was spending lots of time with him and some of his friends. My parents must have thought there was something funny going on, because everyone I knew back home had moved away, and I didn’t have any friends left, and yet now I was going out all the time. They must have wondered who this guy was and how I’d met him.

One Thursday afternoon, while getting ready to go out to meet my friend, my mom came up to me in the dining room. We talked about my evening plans, and then, almost casually, she asked how I’d met this guy. “He’s just a friend of mine,” I said. She asked me a few more questions and I continued being evasive. “Okay,” she said, and walked into the kitchen. I could feel so much tension between us.

I went into the den and sat there. She knew. She had to know. Fine, we may as well talk about it. So I walked back into the kitchen.

My mom was pouring herself a glass of soda. I stood there and looked at her.

Suddenly she turned to me and spoke, angrily. “What? You’re gay. That’s what you want to tell me, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

We went into the den and talked. She didn’t like this. Her eyes got wet. But this time, unlike six years earlier, I was ready. I knew who I was now. I wasn’t turning back this time. I told her I’d tried to change, that it hadn’t worked, and that I was happy now. I’m your son, I said. Don’t you want me to be happy?

She told me that she was happy for me, that she was glad I was happy, but that she wasn’t happy for herself.

Soon after that, I went out to meet my friend. I knew my mom would tell my dad that night. I dreaded the next time I’d have to see him. I was scared of him. It was bad enough that I was living at home without a job, but on top of that, I was gay?

I managed to avoid my parents for three days. I’d leave the house early in the day and come back late at night. Finally, on Sunday night, I decided it was time to stop avoiding it. I’d been at a bookstore. I came home, walked in the door. My parents were in the den. “Hi,” my dad said, before I could run again. So I went in and sat down with them. I asked him how he felt about all of this. “I’m crushed,” I remember him saying.

The three of us talked for a long time. My dad said I was just confused. He mentioned something about the “homosexual lobby.” I didn’t know how to keep arguing with them — I knew I was right. Eventually my brother came home, and he saw us there. He knew what was going on. My mom said he could come in, but he said he didn’t want to. He said he didn’t see what the big deal was or why they had such a problem with me being gay. Bless him.

Things remained tense after that night. Two weeks later, on a Friday night, my mom confronted me again. Earlier that day, she’d had to listen to one of her unknowing friends refer to someone as a “flaming queen,” and she decided to take it out on me again. She couldn’t deal with this. She told me she was sick of looking at me. Well, fine. I took some clothes, went to my car, and drove to my best friend’s apartment nearby. I was near suicidal. I had no job, no future, and my parents hated me. I slept on my friend’s couch overnight.

The next day I decided to drive down to Princeton, where my best friend’s parents lived. They’d known me since I was three years old, and I was practically their own son. When I found them that afternoon, it turned out they already knew I was gay — my friend had apparently told them months earlier. And they didn’t care at all. They said I was welcome to stay at their house for a couple of nights if I wanted. So I did. I slept in their guest room, I watched movies from their movie collection. A couple of nights later I went back to my parents’ house.

Things with my parents slowly got better. Apparently my friend’s mom talked to them, which must have helped. My dad made a point of telling me that he still loved me. A couple of months later I finally moved out, having gotten a job. The night before I moved, my mom made us some sandwiches for dinner. She said she’d miss having me around.

My parents have made so much progress. A couple of years ago my mom told me she wants me to find someone and be happy, and that if I were dating someone he’d be welcome at family events. She went back to school for a master’s degree in art and one of her best friends in the program was gay. A couple of weeks ago my parents came to my Gay Gotham Chorus concert. I’m sure deep down my parents still wish I were straight, but they’ve accepted that this is who I am, and they want me to be happy. My relationship with them today is the best it’s ever been.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to bring a new human life into the world, to raise a son, to teach him things, and then to see him turn around and teach you right back.

Coming out to my parents was something I’d dreaded for years, as far back as adolescence. Even when I wasn’t thinking about it, it was always there. I always knew I’d have to deal with it someday; it loomed over my life like this big mountain.

And then I finally told them, and the mountain disappeared. I’d lived with it for so long — and then it was gone. It was one of the most momentous events of my life.

I’m so glad it’s behind me.

The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties: #3

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The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties

3. My New York City Life Begins
Fall 2000
Age: 26

I was born in Manhattan, and I grew up about half an hour outside the city. My parents took me there all the time. But I never really explored it much on my own. Then, when I was 14, we moved to Tokyo, and after finishing high school there, I wound up spending most of the next eight years in Virginia. I’d occasionally see Broadway matines by myself during breaks from college and law school, but when I did, I rarely ventured outside midtown.

When I graduated from law school in 1999 at age 25, my plan was to get a job in Manhattan and move there. But things took a strange turn, and I wound up working and living in central New Jersey for almost a year instead. I was perhaps a 75-minute train ride from Manhattan, which meant that I could only visit the city on weekends. And I didn’t even go every weekend, so New York remained on the periphery of my boring life — some distant Emerald City that was close enough to entice me but too far away to be convenient.

And then in May 2000, I received a call from the New Jersey court system, to which I’d sent my resumé the previous August. I’d never heard from them, and I’d completely forgotten about it. But then out of the blue they called with to interview for a clerkship up in Newark. I interviewed and I got the clerkship, which was to start in August 2000. I was thrilled — I could finally move back up to New York again. For the clerkship, I had to remain a New Jersey resident, but I’d heard that parts of Jersey City had become popular, and it was right across the Hudson from Manhattan, so it seemed like a good place to live.

I didn’t actually get to move into my first apartment there until October 30, but my life began to change once I began working in Newark. From Newark it was worlds easier to get to Manhattan on a weeknight. In September I attended my first Twentysomething meeting and promptly made a good friend.

Once I moved to Jersey City, things got even easier. I could now take spontaneous trips across the river via the 24-hour PATH, so I was in Manhattan all the time, sometimes even more than once a day; I never had to worry about catching a “last train” home; I finally figured out the subway system. I became familiar with more and more neighborhoods. I started going out, going on dates, making new friends, meeting lots of people. I even got myself a therapist in the Village.

My new Twentysomething friend told me I should keep a journal of my “first year in New York,” but that statement puzzled me. It wasn’t my first year in New York. Was it? Hadn’t I grown up around here? Hadn’t I always enjoyed feeling so cultured and so superior to my Virginia friends because of where I was from?

But perhaps I hadn’t been as familiar with the city as I’d thought. Sure, I’d always known the theater district, and I’d gone into the city with my parents all the time. But it had never really been my city. And yet my feelings of superiority had always kept me from admitting that I didn’t know New York as well I’d thought. It had kept me from exploring New York, from seeing it as a newcomer. I was afraid I’d look like a tourist.

But when my friend referred to my “first year in New York,” I realized he was right. This really was, in a way, my first year in New York. (Even if I technically lived in Jersey City.)

I love New York. I love it. It’s where I was born, it’s where my parents grew up, it’s where my grandparents lived. I love the theater, the restaurants, the parks, the diversity, the vitality, the spontaneity of the streets, the chaos and convenience, the skyscrapers and the subway, the lack of history and the history hidden in plain sight, the extreme gayness and the straightness and the sexual confusion, the unwavering avenues that let you see Times Square and Central Park from 30 blocks away, the disorienting patchwork quilt of streets in the Village.

I love New York. It’s my city. I’ve learned so much here. And there’s so much more to learn — about the city, and about myself. I hope it never stops.

I can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s good to be home.

The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties: #4

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The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties

4. My Uncle Dies of Cancer at 60
March 30, 1997
Age: 23

When I was growing up, my aunt, uncle and cousin lived just seven blocks away from us. I was lucky — some people live far away from their extended families, but mine was in the neighborhood. We belonged to the same synagogue, my cousin and I went to the same schools, and although we travelled in different social circles, we knew lots of the same people. (She was six months older than me.) My aunt, uncle and cousin were not just members of the family, but also neighborhood friends. My grandparents — my dad’s and my aunt’s parents — lived in Queens, so we all used to get together for family occasions. We seemed like a stable, unchanging, eternal unit, the nine of us: my grandparents (the fulcrums), my aunt, my uncle, my mom, my dad, my cousin, my brother and me.

My uncle was born in the summer of 1936, shortly before FDR was reelected in a landslide, and he was named after the president. In contrast to my aunt, who can be quite reserved, my uncle was talkative and funny and charismatic. He lit up a room. He could be corny, and he’d tell the same jokes and stories over and over, but it was all part of his charm.

Sometime in 1995, he learned he had cancer. I think it was lymphoma, but I’m not sure. He tried lots of different treatments. He’d get better, and then he’d start to do poorly again. Throughout his illness I never heard him complain; if he was scared, he didn’t show it. He always projected optimism.

During my first year of law school, his condition got worse. The last time I saw him — I didn’t know it was going to be the last time — was when I was home for spring break. I went to my aunt and uncle’s house to visit, and he seemed fine. We sat in the living room and talked. I’ll always remember one thing he told me during that conversation: the New York Times crossword puzzle gets harder as the week goes on. I couldn’t believe I’d never realized this before. It was such an elegant idea.

After spring break I went back to school. A couple of weeks later, on a Friday, my dad called to tell me that things weren’t looking good. My uncle was in the hospital and he’d gotten much worse. I asked my dad if I should come home. He said I didn’t have to — he might pull through, after all, and my aunt didn’t want it to seem like we were coming home to wait for him to die. So instead I called the hospital in New Jersey and talked to my uncle very briefly. He was somewhat out of it. The last thing he said to me was, “Have a good weekend.”

The weekend continued. Friday night, Saturday. Then, on Sunday afternoon, my dad called again to tell me I should come home. My uncle didn’t have much time left, probably less than a day. Maybe less that that.

I threw some clothes into a bag and tossed it in the trunk of my car. I tore up the Interstate from Charlottesville to New Jersey, faster than I’d ever driven before. It was a seven-hour trip, 400 miles. I didn’t stop until after 300 miles, and that was only to get some gas and a candy bar before hopping back on the road.

I got to the hospital around 7:00 that night. It was Easter, and there weren’t many people around. I went up to a reception desk and said, “I’m trying to find my uncle. He’s a cancer patient.”

Then my dad appeared in the lobby. He saw me, too. He came up to me and put his arm around me. “Uncle Frank died,” he said. He’d died less than an hour earlier.

Jewish funerals are supposed to happen within 24 hours of death, but my uncle had died in the evening and there wasn’t time to prepare for a funeral the next day. So instead we did it the following day, April 1. It snowed on the day of his funeral. I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be funny if this were all an elaborate April Fool’s Joke? Imagine if we’d invited all these family members and friends and members of two congregations (my aunt and uncle had since joined a different synagogue) and assembled them all here, all of these sad, teary people, and then my uncle jumped up out of his coffin? I wonder how everyone would react.

I wonder if they’d all hate us.

I’d lost a grandfather before, but I’d never seen him all that much. My uncle, on the other hand, had been a regular part of my life. Forever. My aunt and uncle were inseparable in my mind — auntmarianandunclefrank. But not anymore. Our group of nine was broken. No more stability. No more balance.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. In fact, it wasn’t supposed to happen. Some things weren’t supposed to change. Right?

My family structure developed a crack that day. Sicne then, it’s only gotten messier: my cousin had a baby out of wedlock, then got married, then divorced. Last year my other grandfather died, and we’ve just put my grandmother in a nursing home. There are all these holes in my family now. Scars of people who are missing.

That’s how life works, I guess.

I just didn’t realize it until my uncle died.