From Two Worlds to None

How acceptance has challenged my gay identity

“What brought you to L.A.?” She asks. 

It’s Thanksgiving morning, and I’ve just finished breakfast with my husband and his parents in their peaceful home at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac in Northern California. I can see Dennis through the sliding glass doors, outside in 50-degree sunshine, skimming leaves off the pool while chatting with his dad. I’m inside petting a purring cat in my lap while chatting with my mother-in-law as she putters in the clean kitchen. 

I suddenly realize this is the first time in the four years we’ve been sharing the holidays that I’m alone with her. 

How can I tell a former Reagan Republican turned Clinton Democrat that the man who is having sex with her HIV-negative son came to Los Angeles because of a bad breakup, an abandoned professional ballet career, and the 1991 realities of being HIV+? 

This type of situation is why I stopped going “home” for the holidays 25 years ago. 

Gays keep their world and the straight world separate. I’d held that standard with every previous interaction with my mother-in-law. Gays had their own territory, cultural rituals, and idioms, and non-gays had theirs. 

In his 1984 book Nights in Aruba, Andrew Holleran captures the liminal space a gay man occupies while traveling on an airplane to visit his bio-family, a limited period where he is neither in his gay life nor his straight-washed life.

"Maybe it was merely the chance to rest, the fact that only in the airplane was I momentarily free of the two lives I tried to keep separate on earth.”

When we were forced to interact with non-gays, we deferred to the norms of hetero-supremacy. We straight-washed ourselves to avoid drama. Reality and the truth were less important than keeping the hetero-normative boat from rocking. We changed pronouns (before pronouns were complicated) to create a lie that we were dating the opposite gender (before gender was complicated). We didn’t mention the antics that had occurred during the high gay holy days of Gay Pride, Halloween, or Folsom. 

I didn’t tell them about staying up until 1 AM using magic markers to transform an old pair of white tights into a rainbow masterpiece with the parade’s theme, “Pride Equals Power,” arching over my ass and a pink triangle highlighting my crotch. I didn’t tell the story of the wig shop on Hollywood Boulevard not having my wig ready the first time I did drag. They were never told about me being the center of attention as International Mister Leather during Folsom

We didn’t tell them how we had found dignity, purpose, and camaraderie in our status of “otherness.” 

They didn’t hear about the joy we felt being loud young queens, feeling the intoxication of being free of hetero norms for the first time, getting drunk in bars, using lots and lots of unnecessary sibilant Ss, how we bonded over stories of cruising encounters in the bushes at the beach, or the dignity we’d developed during the time spent in hospitals and funerals caring for our kind as they wasted away in hospital beds because, as Senator Jesse Helms said, "The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct." We didn’t tell them about joining hundreds of thousands of queers during the LGBTQ National March on Washington and lying on the street in front of the White House chanting, “Every 7 minutes, someone dies of AIDS!” or becoming a member of the mile-high club flying home from that trip.

1993 March on Washington. The "die-in" with ACTUP in front of the White House and marching with my boyfriend John Nieto

That history. That reality. It was something hidden from our non-gay bio-families. We did it to protect them from being uncomfortable. We did it to protect ourselves from retribution. We did it to preserve the revolutionary beauty of our otherness status. 

*****

In the late 80s, during one of my first trips home for the holidays, my older brother and I were hovering near the dinner table as the Christmas feast was being readied. “Are you dating any girls out there in California?” he asked.

Overhearing the question, Grandma Gerle said, “Mike, can you please come in here and help me with this?” She was not particularly gifted in the culinary department, and she really didn’t have a task for me, but she skillfully steered me away from the question. 

Grandma Gerle was highly adept at keeping the vibe chill and upbeat during all our family gatherings. She and the rest of the family had adopted a hip attitude of tolerance with regard to my gayness. 

Like tolerating a fart in an elevator, my gayness was deemed invisible. It wasn’t discussed. I wasn’t confronted or directly shamed. 

That was the best I could ask for. 

Until I decided it wasn’t. 

Every time I hid something, every time I lied, every time I let the conversation veer away from the life I was actually living, a piece of my dignity died. It hurt.  

I delved into that pain with a therapist, human potential retreats, a 12-step program, and lots of discussion with friends while taking in the sun on the wide sidewalk in front of Starbucks, known to many gays as WeHo Beach.

This led me to new, revolutionary ideas. 

My life deserves respect. My relationships deserve respect. I deserve respect as a person.  

*****

In the fall of 1998, I was following a well-practiced protocol of chatting with the parents who raised me, each of them on their own landline receiver. Our conversation covered the weather, some talk about computers, and an interesting anecdote about my older brother Rick’s girlfriend and her two dogs. When asked if I was coming home for Christmas, I said, “No.” 

I saw an opening to hurt them in the way that I felt hurt by their gay-tolerant attitude. I recapped the details in which they had told the story of my older brother’s girlfriend, her name, the dogs' names, and the activities they had engaged in. I then reminded them that I had shared information regarding a guy I’d met and liked and was considering visiting his family for Thanksgiving. 

Then I asked the question, “What’s his name?” They couldn’t answer because they had decided the weather was more important to talk about. 

This was the opening salvo of a cold war of silence that lasted for years. 

My mind is an emotional and factual blur about what occurred during that war. All I remember is not going “home” for the holidays for years. Birthday and holiday cards were rare. I’d like to remember that it worked both ways, but I can not be certain. In the search for dignity, I was grappling with my own shame, and people who do not love themselves are capable of real meanness. 

Keeping our two worlds separate, the hetero-parental world and my gay world, provided room for my dignity to grow. Free of the shadow cast by the moral imperatives of churches and hostile government operatives, the healing light of West Hollywood’s celebration of the way I love provided comfort. 

Our separation was a blunt and effective tool for preserving my emotional health. 

Us versus them gave me a solid identity. I’m different. I’m right. They are wrong. My pain is their fault. If my absence causes them pain, it is pain they earned. It’s well deserved. 

*****

During a conversation with my best friend, I leaned heavily into the righteousness of my position, listing lots of reasons my parent’s way of doing things was wrong. He listened carefully, then said, “When are you going to accept their lifestyle, Gerle?” 

That shook me to the core. It’s what I’d been demanding with my silence. 

A thaw in the cold war began when my younger sister and I conspired to surprise my parents for their 40th wedding anniversary. I didn’t tell them I was coming. The event was being held in a recreation room at a Mormon church, and my sister brought me along to help my parents set it up. 

My parents were just getting out of their car when we arrived. As I got out of my sister’s car, my parents’ faces had a brief moment of confusion, followed by smiles, joyful tears, and hugs before we went inside to ready the space for the event. 

Less than 20 minutes later, in the church’s kitchen, while helping my mom unpack food, she asked, “Who are you dating?”

The truth was that my dating life was a shit show. One guy had tried to kill himself after we broke up, and another was a stunningly beautiful meth addict. My dating life was the last thing I wanted to talk about. 

The irony was not lost on me. I thought, with a smile, can’t we just return to how it was? I’m not sure what I said back to her, but I hope she understood how grateful I was that she’d asked.

A family photo that was taken at my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary.

I’ve changed, the law changed, and my parents changed. With my dignity well stoked from structured self-reflection, I had room in my heart to accept my parent's lifestyle. Queer legal victories made me feel safer, and my father had narrowed the focus of his faith. “If the conversation is not about love and kindness, I’m not interested,” he said. That included open conversations about my life and who I love.

We had eleven good years before my father’s death this year in March. In my final conversation with him, I told him how proud I was to be his son and that I was grateful for all that he had taught me. 

“I could have done better.” He said. And it breaks my heart every time I remember that moment.  

*****

Now, my mother-in-law is asking me a simple question, and I have to make a choice. Keep her in the dark, or be honest.

I was honest, and she was beyond tolerant. She was loving and empathic. She heard me and acknowledged how difficult it must have been for me during that period of my life. 

Now, I’m out and accepted by my bio-family and my married family. I accept them in return.

The drama, pain, and velvet rage have dissipated, but I can’t help feeling lost. 

Who are my people now? 

On the six-hour drive south back to Los Angeles, we stopped at a crowded rest area where I noticed two tall, lean men a bit older than me enjoying the sun. They were gazing at us, but I didn’t give it much thought. 

While walking back to our cars, which happened to be parked next to each other, I noticed that they had a small car even more sporty than our own, which was different from all the large, family-friendly vehicles packed into every other available parking spot. 

As I put on my seatbelt in the passenger’s seat, I caught the eye of the driver next to us. We nodded. Of course! They were gay. The only gays I’d seen in four days. They were fellow travelers during the holiday season. The nod was an acknowledgment of our queer connection, of camaraderie, a brief moment of knowing. 

Neither of our bio-families understands the tension in our queer hearts during this season more than these gays navigating the same space as us. 

But we are not othered like we used to be. And with our acceptance, we have lost a bonding agent that sustained me for decades.