The Last Time I Went "Home"

This post, a response to Ben's call for essays on home, was submitted by Corey, a Georgetown student who blogs quite a bit on politics, gender issues, and queer/gay studies stuff.

The eastern half of Connecticut is mostly farms, small towns, and stony beaches on the Long Island Sound. I grew up in the very southeastern corner of the state, with the ocean a few miles to the south and Rhode Island a few miles to the east.

It’s a small town named Stonington, filled with people I like to think of as “blindfolded liberals” – they’re progressive in theory, as long as they don’t have to see a liberal society themselves. They aren’t racist, but they only know white people; they’re cool with abortion rights as long as you don’t talk about it; and they’re fine with gay people, as long as it’s not their kid.

My parents are one step to the right even of this. This, for my parents, is progress. That I can have a gay man and women in the extended family and my father doesn’t insult them to their faces is an improvement over what probably would have happened had they come out a few years earlier.

I am twenty-one now, and my parents would do anything in the world for me – except to acknowledge the fact that I’m gay. Everyone else in the family could tell years ago, many before I knew myself. But I haven’t even tried to explain this to my parents, because they have rejected all of my hints and let me know what kind of response they would give.

I came home for a university break in 2007, which ended up being my last visit home before I started coming out to people. We went out for dinner one night at a new restaurant in town – me, my mom, my dad, and my eighteen-year-old sister. Suddenly my dad started asking me about how things were going with “girls at school,” a subject that I obviously had pretty little to talk about.

“I don’t know,” I said without looking up. “Not really a priority right now.”

“Just look me in the eyes and swear to me that you’re not gay,” my dad said suddenly, his voice completely serious.

I was stunned. My heart stopped. I had no idea how to respond, so I simply said, “What?” and tried to ignore the stares that were coming at me from all sides of the table.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said, maintaining his stare. “Just look me in the eyes, and swear to me that you’re not gay.”

I might not have been straight-forward (no pun intended) with my parents for all of those years, but I also had never lied – mostly because I never had to. Suddenly I wanted more than anything to slide under the table, disappear beneath the floor, and to find myself anywhere else. I also knew that if I dignified what he had just said – not a question about my orientation, but an order to give the answer he wanted – that I would be crushed.

“I’m not going to answer that,” I said finally, in a quiet but resolute voice.

“Why not?” he demanded, the tension growing.

“Because that is an incredibly degrading thing to make me do.”

“Fine, then look your sister in the eye, and tell her you’re not gay.”

I looked to my sister for only a moment, to see if I could detect judgment in her eyes, or sympathy, or maybe even support. I saw nothing, and so I looked back to my father. “I’m not going to do that either.”

“Why not? If it’s true, then just say it.”

I hit the boiling point. I knew there was only one way to make this end, and that was to threaten to take the blindfold off my parents – to open them up to the scrutiny of those around them. My father had no doubt chosen a public place so that I would not be able to back away, but I knew that he and my mother also couldn’t stand to be embarrassed in front of all those people, to have other folks wonder what kind of family we were, and what kind of gruesome things we might be fighting about.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up,” I said, loudly enough so that those around us could hear. People turned towards us and I felt myself shaking, as if the pressure was weighing down on me was fifty thousand gallons of water rushing in on all sides. I thought back to all of the things my father had ever said about gay people – about how they disgusted him, about how he would kill himself if his children were gay, about how they deserved to burn in hell (which was most puzzling of all, given that he is an atheist.) I thought about how much hatred must be in his heart, and it pressed in on me, threatening to break at any second.

But I had won this hand. He said nothing in response. He just stared, cold and angry, and hoping to avoid further attention we finished the meal in silence.

Later that night my mother came to my room. “Your father wants to apologize,” she said. “He didn’t mean to upset you. He knows you’re not gay.”

After all that, they thought the reason I was upset was that the implication that I was gay was so despicable, so harrowing, that I was infuriated at them for even suggesting it. How could they be so stupid? But then I remembered – when people don’t want to see something, they can do incredible things to keep themselves blind to it. If they couldn’t have the son they wanted, they would just imagine it, and learn to live in the dark.

I have been back to Connecticut many times since then. I have stayed in that room, in that house, with that family. I have come out to my sister and my aunts and a few of my cousins. But that was the last time I would ever think of it as “home.”


NOTE: It's funny that I would write this about an hour before hearing that Connecticut courts universalized marriage rights today. Can't wait to hear my parents' take on that...