I’d like to speak to the manager!!!
It’s 2009. I’ve met a wonderful guy named Adam.
He’s surprised that I’ve never actually told my mother or my family for that matter, that I was gay.
I explain that it’s because she doesn’t really ask about my life.
She couldn’t tell you one class I took in high school. College. Grad School.
She didn’t know what I did when I worked at my corporate job. She barely knows what I do now and I’m a waiter.
It’s a week before Valentine’s Day and he says to me, that he’ll cook me dinner BUT only if I tell my mom about him and make sure she knows that it’s not just a friend, but a boyfriend.
What’s funny is that I’ve never kept it a secret. I’ve lived in one-bedroom houses with a boyfriend, and had the family over for dinner. She’s met so many friends of mine who were super gay. I never hid the Advocate magazine, or taken the rainbow postcard off my fridge.
I’ve just never bothered to say the words, or invite them in to my private life. Seriously. Because most of my family didn’t like me. And the ones that did never questioned me.
It didn’t take much thought to know what I had to do.
I was standing on the corner of 49th Street and 8th Avenue, on a winter night, when I said to my mother, I have a date on Saturday night. His name is Adam, and I think I like him.
She was not surprised. She was not outraged. She was not angry.
We talked a few more minutes; I told her I loved her and we hung up.
I was 44 and after being out of the closet for 22 years, I’d finally told my mother I was gay. I have no idea what she thought. I had no idea if she cried when she got off the phone.
What I do know, is that for the following 9 years, she never, ever, ever, ever asked about Adam first. I’d bring him up and she’d engage. He’d say to tell her he said hello, and she’d say hello back. But she never, ever, ever asked about him first. And if I didn’t bring him up, she never mentioned him. All the way till the day she died, she was never interested in my personal life.
I'd Like to Speak to the Manager!!! 