I’m 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 don’t know the full extent of my ordeal. While I shared the letter with my supportive brother, I’ve hesitated to show it to my parents, who are in their 70s. They claim ignorance (“We didn’t know you were suffering!”, “You never told us you were gay!”), yet they acknowledged long ago that I was “different” from toddlerhood, and they often criticized my “un-boyish” 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 “warts and all” talk with my parents to understand their perspective. Should I open Pandora’s 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.
Pandora’s 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 things. When my brother turned thirteen, he asked for tickets to a Bears game at Soldier 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 first national tour of A Chorus Line at the Schubert Theater.
My parents aren’t much older than yours, PBO, and I was about seven years old — just like you — when other kids started calling me a faggot. When I was ten, my homeroom teacher called me a faggot in front of the class because I said “baking” 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 — despite me asking for those Chorus Line tickets, despite all those faggots and sissies, and despite the obvious ways I wasn’t like other boys.
My parents were kind and decent people. It sounds like yours were too. My parents didn’t bully me, but they didn’t help me. I don’t 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 didn’t think — they didn’t let themselves think — that Liberace was a homosexual. They certainly couldn’t let themselves think one of their own children was a homosexual.
Like your parents, my parents criticized my un-boyish behaviors. They thought they were helping. All they knew about homosexuality — besides that it was a sin — was that it was something a child might drift toward and that a soft boy who seemed to be drifting that way 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 — even if they could’ve said it out loud to each other when I was seven — 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 — if they had attempted to initiate a conversation about it — all I would’ve heard was, “So, you are a faggot then, Danny, aren’t you?” And I would’ve denied it and retreated even further into the closet. It probably would’ve 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. He was beaten up countless times, thrown through a plate glass window once, and had his face ground into the ice and rock salt in the school parking lot. When his parents finally complained, the principal blamed Terry. None of this would be happening, he said, if Terry didn’t act that way. He didn’t use the word, but he might has well have: If Terry didn’t act like such a faggot, other boys wouldn’t beat him up for being such a faggot. It meant so much to Terry — decades later — when the school’s principal apologized to him on behalf of the school. So, I understand why that apology meant so much to you and why you want one from your parents.
I had some “warts and all” 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 didn’t know what they couldn’t know. They were doing their best in a world before Will & Grace and Ellen and PFLAG and the It Gets Better Project. Unlike today’s parents, our parents couldn’t 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 I’m sure your parents do. But what I saw in time was that they were set up to fail me. They weren’t intentionally, maliciously awful to me, they were just — in this regard — incapable of helping me. They didn’t have the tools.
Still, if there’s something you need to say to your parents, you should say it. If it’s 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 your parents. I was an angry teenager when I came out to mine, PBO, but you’re a grown man. You don’t 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 didn’t have a lot of money. They both came with me to the show. It took me too long to see that I wasn’t 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. We’ve been talking for about three months, and we see each other almost every day. She leans more on the timid side, and I can’t tell if she wants to sleep with me or not. I think we’re both kind of weird about intimacy and afraid to make each other uncomfortable. I’m not sure how to initiate things with her without stepping out of line. If I had to guess, I’d say we’re 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, “kiss the girl,” I mean, “ask the girl if you can kiss the girl.” Don’t lunge at the girl — no lunging, never lunging — but Jesus Fucking Christ, ask the girl already. It’s the only way you’ll find out whether she’s interested in you sexually (and so GenZ paralyzed by the fear of a moment’s discomfort that she won’t make the first move) or she isn’t interested in you sexually (and that’s why she hasn’t made the first move). Someone always has to make the first move — someone has to take action based on their best guess about another person’s interest — before anyone can get laid. It’s 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 — with as much objectivity as we can possibly muster while cockstruck and/or cuntstruck — how the other person might be feeling. But being so self-conscious that you can’t bring yourself to ask the girl isn’t good. If you guess wrong and she’s not interested, SWITCH, you didn’t “step out of line.” If she tells you she’s not interested (directly or indirectly) and you keep asking, then you’ve stepped out of line.
This is a question you frequently get but from a different stage of the process: My partner’s asexuality came out AFTER we got engaged (long story) but BEFORE we got married. I found myself at the “cheat or leave or ask” point more quickly than I’d ever expected to. And I did ask, and the answer was, “Sure, if that’s what it takes,” and we’re a year into opening our relationship. It’s probably gone as well as it could, but now I’m faced with the decision of whether I positively choose a companionate marriage rather than settling into one over time. It feels like we speed-ran the process to what you call “sibilingification,” which near as I can tell is where she WANTED to get to as quickly as possible. My questions for you: Do you know anyone who chose something like this? Can it work? Would you recommend it?
Completely Overhauled Marriage Proposal
My answers to your questions: No, yes, maybe.
My question for you: Is it working?
You say you’re a year into opening the relationship. So, have you actually dated and fucked other women? Or are we talking about a relationship that’s open in practice or only open in theory here? Because if you haven’t already dated and fucked other women — if you’re still negotiating terms of your surrender — you don’t know how your fiancée will react to when you actually start dating and fucking other women, COMP, and that’s something you need to know before you get married.
There are two important reasons why you need to stress-test your relationship for actual non-monogamy: calling off an engagement is a lot easier than ending a marriage and you need to see — with your own eyes — that your fiancée is cool with you getting your sexual needs met elsewhere. She may have some big feelings after you’ve fucked someone else for the first time, COMP, and you will need to talk through things, set and re-set boundaries, and make sure she feels like she’s always your first priority. But if she has a meltdown or picks a huge fight about a seemingly unrelated subject every time you date and fuck some other woman, COMP, that’s not something you’re going to be able to make work.
P.S. I keep hammering away at “dating and fucking,” COMP, because there are very few women out there who will risk having anonymous sex with straight men. If your fiancée is asking you not to get emotionally involved with the women you fuck on the side, then she’s asking you to be functionally celibate, and I definitely don’t think that will work for you.
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