Spin Control (13 page)

“P-F-L-A-G. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.”

“We thought you’d enjoy sitting in on a meeting while you’re home,” Gabrielle adds, pushing open the back door and leading us down a semidark hallway. I’m getting a real queasy feeling, and she must be able to tell, because she looks over her shoulder and adds, “You don’t have to participate, just listen. I think, if you allow your heart and mind to stay open to the discussion, you’ll come to understand that you’re not alone in your world experience. That your mother is better for coming out, and that you’ll be better for it, too, in the long run.”

I’m so not wanting to hear Gabby’s psychobabble. As if my mind needs more opening to world experience. I mean, what does she think I got being shipped off to live in
Schwerinborg?
!

And BETTER FOR IT? How in the
world did she say that with a straight face?!

I put my hand on Mom’s elbow to attempt a last-minute appeal. “Can’t we—”

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Mom opens the door to a brightly lit room with about a dozen people mingling inside and drinking coffee from a big silver urn. A guy who I’d put at about seventeen years old waves to Mom. She gives me a little push into the room, then introduces me to “John” before I can even argue. “I’m sure you two will have a lot to talk about,” she says.

I mumble something vaguely polite to John, because Dad has drilled
polite
into my head from birth, but I can’t focus on John at all. I’m still trying to process Fee-Flag and the fact I’m here and simply
do not
belong. I mean, PLEASE. My mom has definitely flipped out this time.

This is way worse than a self-help book.

“Hi, Valerie!” one of the women says as she bounces—and I do mean bounces—across the room to stand beside John Boy. Her smile is totally Joan Rivers fake—as in I’m wondering if it’s been surgically uplifted—and it’s clear she knows Mom (and who I am) and that this whole
PFLAG ambush has been planned.

“Great, you’re here!” Mom says to Bouncy Lady. “I’ll be back in an hour for Valerie—I know she’s in good hands.”

“You’re leaving?” I hiss, trying not to be rude but really not caring at this point. How can she LEAVE ME here?

But she and Gabrielle scoot out the door without even bothering to answer me, and I’m stuck all alone in a room full of strange people. Worse, every last one of them is staring at me like I’m the newest attraction in the National Zoo’s primate exhibit.

Great.

I glance toward a wooden rack on the rear wall of the room. It’s filled with brochures about the church. I focus on one with a little cross on the front, mostly so I don’t have to look at Bouncy Lady and John Boy and let them see my panic.

God, get me through this, please,
I scream inside my head.

Because if I don’t end up on some psychiatrist’s couch soon, it truly will be an act of God.

Eight

“I’m Yolanda. I’m the group leader,” Bouncy Lady says. I wonder if she’s on uppers or something, but decide that no, she’s just one of those fidgety people who hops around like a little kid her entire life. Like she’s on a permanent Kool-Aid rush.

“Hi, Yolanda. Nice to meet you.” I shake her hand, but I feel like a complete idiot. A
trapped
idiot. I tilt my head toward a bunch of gray metal folding chairs, which are arranged in a C-shape in three rows at the other end of the room. A couple of people are sitting there with their coffee, but most of the chairs are empty while everyone
stands and yaks in little groups. “Um, should I just sit?”

“Sure, make yourself comfortable. Well be starting our meeting in just a minute. There’s coffee and soda, if you’d like a drink”

I tell her thanks, I’ll grab a Diet Coke (because I need one, bad), but then she gets all squealy as someone else—a woman about my mom’s age—walks through the door.

It’s the freaking Twilight Zone in here.

John pops the top on a Diet Coke and hands it to me. In a hushed voice he says, “Yolandas always like that. The rest of us are much closer to normal.”

I take the drink and give him a grateful smile.

“Your mom just dumped you here without warning you, didn’t she?”

“It’s that obvious, huh?” I can’t help but like the guy. I get the impression he’s being genuinely nice—that he hasn’t been coached to say this stuff just to make me comfortable.

He shoves his hair out of his face. It’s scruffy brown and too long to be stylish,
and he’s wearing a Kenny Chesney T-shirt. He’s not bad looking—he’s got a killer bod and a decent enough face—but he’s definitely not the kind of guy who hangs with the “in” crowd.

Which, of course, means he probably realizes I’m not exactly cool either.

“My parents brought me without telling me what it was all about the first time either,” he explains. “My mom’s not here today, but she still comes sometimes.”

How do I ask this? “So, is your dad, um—”

“No. My older brother, Brad. He came out last year.”

“Oh.” I can’t imagine a buffed-up, grungy guy like John with a gay brother—let alone a gay brother named Brad, which sounds like a pretty non-gay name. He just doesn’t look the type.

Then again, what’s the type? Do I look like the daughter of a lesbian?

I take a long sip of my Diet Coke, telling myself that I must be way more shallow than I thought for making such an asinine snap judgment about John. Or for making judgments like that about anyone.

“The group’s not so bad,” he says, keeping his voice low. “The first time I came, I was pissed off like you wouldn’t believe. Couldn’t believe my parents were dragging me to something like this. So I know where you’re coming from.”

“And you’re here by choice now?”

One side of his mouth crooks into a smile. “Yeah, believe it or not. I don’t come to all the meetings, but most of ’em. I’m going to NYU next year, and between making college plans and everything that’s been going on with my brother, I’m completely stressed out. This helps me keep my head on straight.” He pauses for a sec, then adds, “So to speak.”

Did he just make a gay joke? In a room full of people who’ve got to be sensitive to the issue?

“I was planning to share an apartment with Brad in New York, since he’s already at NYU, but now I’m not sure, you know? I mean, what if he gets a boyfriend or something?”

“Yeah, I can understand that.” That would suck way worse than my situation.

Yolanda starts herding everyone toward
the folding chairs, so I quickly grab a seat as far back as possible. It’s a small room, though, and with only a dozen people in it, I can’t really hide out.

Especially since Yolanda is now POINTING AT ME. “We have a new member today.” Her voice reminds me of a varsity cheerleader. Or worse, a wannabe varsity cheerleader. “Everyone please welcome Valerie!”

There’s a murmur of hellos, then Yolanda says, “Valerie, why don’t you tell us why you’re here today?”

“Ummmm …” Because my mother TRICKED ME? And what about Gabrielle telling me I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t want to? I want to give Yolanda the Valerie Shrug, but every single person is staring at me.

I’m going to KILL my mother.

“I guess I’m just here to listen,” I finally say.

Thankfully, Yolanda seems to accept this, and moves on to talk about her week. Apparently, her daughter, Amy, is gay. Sounds like they get along well enough, but Yolanda’s worried about Amy moving
into a new apartment complex—and that Amy’s older, more conservative neighbors will treat her differently or will say nasty things when they discover she’s not coming with a nice young husband, 2.5 kids, and a minivan.

“Amy doesn’t seem too concerned, though,” Yolanda tells the group. “She admits that the neighbors will probably react badly, but she doesn’t think they’ll pay enough attention to her to figure it out right away. So I’m just trying to trust in Amy, and trying not to worry.”

A few people offer encouragement, which makes Yolanda smile. “So, anyone else with something to share? Anything happen in the last two weeks?”

She points to a guy in the front row with his arms crossed over his chest who’s raising a finger in the air. Not a hand, just a finger. He says his name is Mel (for my benefit, I’m sure, though I can guarantee I won’t remember his name five minutes from now). Mel, a balding guy with a beer gut and tattoos on his knuckles, talks about meeting his son’s new partner for the first time last weekend. How he felt
strange seeing his son kiss another man, even though there wasn’t full-on tongue action or anything.

“Caught me completely off-guard, I’ll tell ya. I guess I should’ve seen it comin’, though,” he says with a sarcastic laugh. “Ever since Jake was little, I figgered the day’d come where he’d call and tell us he met a young lady—someone from college or from his fancy office—and that he wanted to get married and give me and my wife a bunch of grandchildren.”

Mel scratches his chin for a minute, then adds, “I’ve adjusted to the fact he ain’t never gonna have a wife. But seeing him kiss another man just—” He stops for a second and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he says, “I guess it just hit home all over again that everything I pictured for my boy ain’t gonna come to pass. I drove home from the restaurant mad. Real mad.”

I start thinking about Mom kissing Gabrielle, and I can totally identify with this guy. Even if he is, like, sixty or so. And I’m willing to bet he has anger issues regardless of his son’s sexual orientation, if
his deep frown lines and rough voice are anything to go by.

“Did the kiss make you question your love for your son?” A woman sitting in the front row, on the opposite side of the Cshape from Mel, asks.

Mel thinks about it for a moment. “I don’t think so. I love the kid, no matter what. But I sure was angry. I wanted to take a swing at his … his
partner
… just knock the fag’s head off. Never would, course. I know in my gut that this is all
my
problem—not Jake’s, and not his partner’s. But ya know, people just didn’t
do
this sort of thing where I was raised. Ya went to school, worked hard, and got married. Period. I guess what I’m saying is, I still have days where I feel like Jake’s intentionally trying to ruin
my
life. So that’s why I came this week, even though I ain’t been here in a couple months. To try not to be so damned angry.”

To my left, I hear John clear his throat. “I was really ripshit a few months ago—you know, wondering if I was going to have a place to live after I made all these plans. I wanted to call up my brother in New York and just tell him off.”

Wow. I wouldn’t use the word “ripshit” in this crowd—let alone that we’re in the basement of a
church
—but no one even blinks when John talks this way. As I look around and listen to the people whispering, I realize they all pretty much talk however they want to, and all seem to accept how everyone else talks. Even Mel calling his son’s partner a fag, which is another word I’d never use around this crowd.

Not that I’m going to actually
talk
. But it is interesting.

“Anyway,” John says, “I read somewhere that a good exercise is to put all the things that bother you about a person down one side of a paper, and all the things you love down the other side. So I made myself do that before I picked up the phone.”

Like a pro and con list? someone asks.

He nods. “It sounds stupid, because you sort of know it all in your head already, but when I listed everything out on paper, I could see exactly what was bothering me about my brother, in black and white.”

“And it helped you deal with those issues?” Yolanda asks.

“Exactly. And it’s been good having a concrete list of things I love about my brother, ’cause I can read it whenever I need to remind myself to chill out.”

He leans forward in his chair and pushes his hair off his face again. “Having a gay brother is really small stuff when I think about it. I mean, I’d choose having him tell me he’s gay over telling me he has cancer any day. Like Mel said, it reminds me that I’m the one with a problem, not him. It’s just part of who he is.”

John’s use of the phrase “small stuff reminds me of the self-help book Mom sent to me in Schwerinborg a few weeks ago, and of course, that reminds me of the ridiculous cheese book. The one that said I have to anticipate change in the same way I’m supposed to anticipate that the cheese in the fridge will go bad, and go out and get new cheese. Or something.

But now that John’s talking, I’m thinking that even though the cheese book sounded pretty bizarre, the small stuff book was kind of useful. Maybe I should give John’s list idea a chance too.

I’m not one for exercises. I mean, I hate taking those quizzes in teen magazines that are supposed to tell me what kind of guy would be perfect for me, what kind of clothes fit my personality, or all about my dosha. But this exercise seems to make sense, because as John tells the group about what he wrote on his lists, I find that I’m mentally making lists for Mom. When I can’t keep track anymore, I pick up a Methodist church flyer that’s lying on the floor under the chair in front of me and scribble, keeping the print super-small so no one else can read it.

The Cons:

•
Gabrielle (I think. Jury’s still out.)

•
Probably lied to me (about being gay, about cheating)

•
Put Dad through hell, and he did NOT deserve it

•
Explaining everything to my friends blows

•
Sends self-help books in (misguided) attempt to make me happy

The Pros:

•
She loves me.

•
Didn’t mean to lie to me (or lied for the right reasons?)

•
Brought me here, and I never would have come on my own (Possibly a con? Probably a pro, since I’m making this list.)

•
Trying to be open with me now

• Trying to treat me like an adult (with exception of today’s kidnapping)

•
Told me I could choose where to live, with her or with Dad (understanding that the choice should be MINE)