"I'm a ba-a-a-ad son"

30 December, 1998

When I was studying debate in college I was taught that, unless you can understand the other guy's opinion well enough to argue his case in a court of law and win his case, you don't have a right to an opinion on the subject. I've tried to live by that. In the previous essay I talked about holiday tensions for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people; specifically about those tensions in my family. But that was just one side of the story.

When I took my stand with my family I made some very melodramatic pronouncements. Some of the things I said sound downright silly, now. "I don't need anything from anyone except love and respect. If you can't give me that, you have no place in my life." (Bonus points if you know what movie I stole that from!) "The freeway runs both ways. It's just as easy for you guys to come visit me as it is for me to visit you."

Love and respect are complex issues. Most of my family felt that they were making very simple requests. When I tried to explain how outlandish those requests felt to me, they didn't get it. My one aunt, for example, thought she was treating me exactly the way she treated her unmarried straight son. "I don't let him sleep with his girlfriend when he comes to visit my house," she said. Which is where the difficulty lies. To them, even something as little as I and my boyfriend calling each other "honey" was as shocking and unusual as a couple of people screwing on the dining room table during the family dinner. In their frame of reference, I was the one who was refusing to respect simple propriety.

Travelling is not a simple matter either. My mother is a single woman. She's middle-aged and she's a very small person, physically. She drives an older car. If she did decide to drive the 150+ miles to come visit, I would be a nervous wreck the whole time, fearing that might get stranded on some lonesome piece of highway. My grandparents aren't in the best of health, so travel for them is sometimes an obstacle. My aunt and uncle have some health problems, as well. For all of those relatives, it isn't completely fair of me to have said it was just as easy for them to visit me. My cousins and nearly-cousins who complain about me not visiting don't have those excuses--but that's another issue for another time.

Relationships, like freeways, do travel both ways. I have to aknowledge that some of my family's difficulty stems from a lack of communication and openness on my part. I've known I was gay since I was eleven. For nearly 20 years I actively hid that from my family. I got used to withholding a significant portion of my life from them. So it wasn't that difficult for me to cut them off a little more. From their view, I'd had suddenly revealed a shocking secret about myself. A year later they were still disoriented and trying to adjust to the news. And then I was demanding that they let me do vile things in their homes! When they objected, I threw a temper tantrum and walked out of their lives.

Looked at that way, it isn't all that surprising it took some of them six years or so to finally take a step toward compromise. Once those first steps were taken, Ray and I took a couple of steps ourselves. The slow process of building a relationship was begun.

It was all put on hold last year when Ray passed away unexpectedly. This last Christmas the tension was higher than any of us would have liked. If something isn't done, we'll be trapped in this uncomfortable position forever. And, as I said, relationships run two ways. I need to take an active role in building the bridges of understanding.

If I don't, then I truly am a ba-a-ad son.

This page is copyright 1998 by Gene Breshears. Photograph is copyright 1998 by Julie Rampke. All Rights Reserved.