10/10/09 Coming Out Day

10/10/09

As soon as I got to his house today, Dad announced, “Thank goodness you’re here, now I can get some rest!” and headed off to bed. About an hour later, he emerged. “Are you up?” I asked him. “I don’t know if I’m up, down, or sideways,” he replied.

I tell Dad the story of Pax’s tail-vs.-flypaper incident this morning, but I had to describe flypaper to him: “it’s a strip of paper coated in glue so that bugs will stick to it and you can get rid of them,” I carefully explained. When I got to the part about Pax trying to outrun the flypaper wrapped around his tail, Dad burst into laughter.

Later, he asks me what kind of work I do. “I work with young people,” I tell him. “So you always have people alive,” he observes. “There’s not much you can do for people who aren’t alive,” I respond, trying not to laugh. “Except bury them,” he says.

Continuing on the same general subject, Dad says, in a confused tone, “people who are alive live longer than people who are not alive, is that it?”

Dad is obviously searching for something, feeling various objects in his vicinity. “What are you looking for?” I ask. “Any idea where a posture, a commonplace, is?” he responds, unhelpfully. When I don’t respond, he elaborates, “something to put over me?” “A sweater?” I ask, bringing him one. “Yes.”

“Where are we now?” Dad asks, while we are sitting on his couch. “In your living room,” I tell him. “I know that,” he says, impatiently. “Where are we technologically?” I am at a loss.
“What do you think the percentage is of people who don’t get born, but come alive?” I think of Frankenstein. “Zero,” I say. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

After dinner, Dad gets into a thoughtful mood. “In a sense, I’ve been ashamed all my life,” he says. “Ashamed of what?” I ask. “Everything,” he says.

“50 years ago, people thought about it, but didn’t talk about it, but now they talk about it. If you talked like that 50 years ago, you’d get fired,” says Dad, rather mysteriously. “Now, they don’t care. ‘I’m not normal’ ‘oh,OK, teach your class, everyone’s a little different.’ But 50 years ago you had to shut up and I’m so old I don’t give a damn.” Am I hearing right? Is my Dad talking about being a closeted teacher?

“Some people are absolutely against all of this and the moment there’s any suggestion of –‘out! Get out!’” he continues.“Nobody’s going to kick you out or fire you now,” I reassure him, since he seems genuinely alarmed at the thought. “No, of course not, not in this City. They might have been the best teachers around, but bang!” he says.

“Tomorrow there’s going to be a big march for homosexual rights in DC,” I tell him, purposely using the word that he and his octogenarian friends tend to prefer. “Really?” he asks. “I’d like to see that. And I bet nobody throws anything at it, but 50 years ago . . . “

This is not the first time in his post-Alzheimer’s life that Dad has raised the issue of his own sexual identity, and it really confuses me. I always thought he was straight, but then again, people have a way of not noticing things that are under their own noses. Was I in denial? His many gay friends, his total acceptance of me and my queer friends, the money he gave to ACT UP and GMHC, the gay pride parades . . . those could all be seen as clues.

On the other hand, what about the collection of black cheerleader porn? Or his love for Andy Dupee (who herself married a closeted gay man)? Or my mother? I only saw him touch her in a romantic way once, but it was undeniably genuine. On the morning she died, when he came to relieve me after I’d sat with her all night, he climbed onto her hospital bed, gathered her in his arms and began kissing her gently all over. I fled the room, went home and fell into bed, and he was the one who was with her when she took her last breath.

I guess it’s really not an either/or situation – I, of all people, should know that sexual identity is a spectrum and he has said himself that he never knew whether he was straight or gay. At the time, I thought maybe that wasn’t really what he meant, just the dementia mixing up his words, but now I wonder whether what’s actually happening is that the dementia is lifting away his inhibitions, making him free to come out.

Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day.