The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (20 page)

DOUG   
Stunned
doesn’t begin to describe my reaction.
What would you like us to do?
I
almost asked.
Have a hearty handshake? Or a high-five perhaps?
I looked
to Andrew, hoping he’d know how to handle this, but he looked dumbfounded.
Someone had to say something, so without thinking first, I spoke slowly and
decisively. “We really are anxious to talk about all of your concerns. But
there’s nothing to say on this one issue. It’s our
wedding
. Of course
we’re going to kiss.”

SHELDON   
If we’re each going to
close discussion on a topic we don’t like, what’s the point of talking?

ROSLYN
   
“Does
it have to be a long kiss? Can it be… brief?”

ANDREW   
Give me a break! This is
the mother who taught sex education in high school, the one with all kinds of
sex manuals scattered around the house, the one who I was able to approach in
my teen years about sensitive sexual topics, and she was caught up with how
long the kiss would be? Or maybe she was just wondering if we were going to use
tongues! This line of questioning had gone as far as it could go. “We’ll just
have to see how we fee at that moment. But don’t worry, it’s not going to be
some big sloppy thing.”

ROSLYN
   
Even if
the boys didn’t respond well to my question about the kiss, at least they knew
I was conflicted.

SHELDON   
I aired my concerns
about speeches turning toward the political.

            “I
don’t want this to become a platform.”

            And
I mentioned our concerns about behavior that might come as a shock to the older
crowd.

            Doug
offered something far short of an assurance. “You’ve met most of our friends,
you know what kind of people they are. We can’t tell them what to say, what not
to say. You’ll have to trust them.”

            OK,
that’s a logical answer, but it’s not too comforting.

DOUG   
I recall answering Sheldon this
way: “Do you trust Andrew and me to behave in a way that will be respectful of
your concerns at our wedding?” Sheldon nodded yes, and I went on: “You know
most of our friends. Do you believe that you can trust them as well?” When he
said, “Yes…” and shrugged, it practically screamed, “
But can I have it in
writing?”

            What
kind of behavior,
I wondered,
did Sheldon, Roslyn or their
friends imagine they might witness at our wedding?
I shuddered to imagine.
Surely,
I thought,
Sheldon and Roslyn know us better than to suppose some steamy
porno flick would be reenacted at our nuptials?

            As
to Sheldon’s “political” concern, I took “politics” to mean “approval”; in
other words, a “political speech” was, I imagined, one in which a friend might
imply – or state outright – that gay marriage was a fine thing. Andrew didn’t
have an answer to Sheldon on the “political” point, so my response stood as the
last word, for the moment.

SHELDON   
In the end, we talked a
lot, but most of our questions went unanswered, because they themselves hadn’t
figured out a lot of the details.

ANDREW   
Although a lot of
specifics needed to be ironed out, I was relieved by the fact that my father
was no longer floundering alone, feeling abandoned and misunderstood. My
parents were finally allies and not opponents. This was a significant step for
me in relieving some of the guilt I had been feeling about the mounting tension
in their relationship.

ROSLYN
   
Even if
that first group session didn’t resolve much, the fact that Sheldon and I were
final able to work together made it OK to talk about the ceremony in public
again. At the big Passover seder held that year at the Montefiore Club, I felt
free enough to make an official announcement of what everyone at the table
surely knew already. “We’re celebrating the commitment of Andrew and Doug, and
we’re expecting you’ll all join us.” Sheldon may have wanted to crawl under the
table, yet he sat up straight, and together we projected a new kind of unified
front: one of support. Despite my misgivings – or maybe because I could finally
admit them – I was able to join with Sheldon and speak the truth plainly for
the whole family. I felt a fresh determination to find common ground where we
could stand together as a family, and I resolved that this ceremony, in
whatever form it took, wasn’t going to be a secret – it was going to be a
celebration.

            Most
everyone gathered around the table offered a “
mazel tov”
or a smile.
Even if no toasts were made, it was a positive response.

DOUG   
I was working in
Chicago the week after our first group meeting, so when I parted from Andrew I
had time to think things over by myself on the plane. Sheldon’s continuing
worry about politics nagged at me. I wondered,
If his friends heard someone
stand up and say, “The marriage of two people who wish to be publicly bonded is
good for society,” what would happen? Does Sheldon imagine he’ll be viewed as a
conspirator in some great gay underground cabal? “And so what if he is?”
I
answered, in my fantasy dialogue.

            Though Sheldon had never said the words “homosexuality
is wrong,” it dawned on me that perhaps he harbored that belief, yet held it in
reserve, so as not to injure Andrew. And while I didn’t see it then, I had, in
effect, morphed Sheldon into a walking metaphor in that moment.

            He became homophobe-
lite.

            Sheldon is anything but a homophobe. And yet I had -
on a subconscious level - begun to see his inner conflict as symbolic of
society’s struggle to fit the once comfortably invisible homosexual into the
world order.
What would it take to make him see us as a couple, two people
in love?
From this point on, I had a hard time seeing Sheldon’s struggle
for what it was: one good man’s effort to balance his love for his son with the
pressures that engulfed him. Instead, it came to represent something bigger and
far too unwieldy for one man to bear.

            As I tried to piece together evidence to make sense of
the riddle Sheldon had become for me, I recalled a night three years earlier
when Roslyn, Sheldon, Andrew and I had been out to see a play in New York. It
was the story of a pregnant woman who learned, with the help of
Brave New
World
Technology, that her fetus would grow up to be gay. To abort or not
to abort, that was the question. After the play,
Twilight of the Golds
,
Sheldon asked Andrew and me, over coffee,
if we were given the choice, would
we rather be heterosexual?

            I answered him quickly, to erase any impression that I
had a shred of doubt. “No, I wouldn’t change.”

            “Even with all the difficulties? It’s harder living in
this world and being gay, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be easier if you were
heterosexual?” Sheldon asked sensibly.

            “Easier, maybe. Better, no,” was the best I could do
in the pressure of the moment. But sitting alone on the plane, contemplating
the conversation, I added a coda to my response that I hoped might sway
Sheldon.
Yes, I might have been spared tremendous pain and cruelty at the
hands of fools and bullies. But the previous lessons I’ve learned have forged a
far better person. Now I understand the pain of others. I chafe at injustice,
because I know what it is to be judged unfairly. You know the saying “What
doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”? Well, without my struggle I’d be a far
weaker, lesser man.

            Even if I could manage to spit all that out, would he
hear me? Could I ever speak such abstract stuff to Sheldon, who is so well
grounded in reality? No. But I saw the wedding as the simple truth that would
speak to him of the proper place Andrew and I deserved at life’s table.

ANDREW    
It was a
month before our next session with Dennis, and in the interim we talked again
with Rabbi Bolton. We came up with an idea that would help the entire gathering
of friends, family, Jews and non-Jews, gay and straight, follow the ceremony.
And we narrowed down a prospective list for the walk down the aisle. Diane,
Maxine, Debbie, and Anita would walk down the aisle first, step up to the top
of the stairs, and raise the
chuppah
. Louie would walk next down the
aisle. He would be followed by my grandmother and my uncle Ivan, then our
siblings and their spouses. We wanted their children to follow, but we weren’t
sure how everybody would react to that idea. Then, if Doug’s parents made it as
planned, they would be next. My parents would be the last ones down the aisle
before Doug and I walked together to our place under the
chuppah
. Other
traditions were incorporated and transformed. And a significant one got dropped
altogether…

DOUG   
Roslyn’s question
about the same-sex dancing made me consider one tradition Andrew and I had
never discussed. The first and only time I’d ever ask him, we were back in New
York.

            “What about a first dance?”

            “No. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that,” was
Andrew’s lightning quick answer. “Would you?”

            “I guess not.” I wasn’t fully comfortable with the
mental image either, but I ached to live in a perfect world. Hearing Andrew
admit the truth rubbed my nose in reality. The issue was dead.

            The thorniest matters had been addressed, and we were
ready for Sheldon and Roslyn.

ANDREW   
Dennis
suggested that my father and I come an hour early before the next group
session. This would be followed by another two-hour session with my mother and
Doug, making it a three-hour marathon for me and my father. I had noted his
connection with Dennis in the last session. Perhaps that’s what helped him open
up. In that last meeting, my father seemed in touch with his own feelings, and
I’d never seen that before. It was clear that he was making a serious attempt
to work this through. Therapy with Dennis was obviously helping him both to
express himself and to resolve the problems he was having about the wedding.

            I hoped a meeting alone with him and Dennis would help
us discuss the problems I was having with his reaction. My father was forever
complaining that we weren’t complaining or taking his feelings into account.
But I saw it as a difference of opinion. I was, in fact, trying to make
compromises. I felt, however, that
compromise
meant something very
specific to my father. The compromise I believed he sought was an entirely
different kind of affair than we had planned, a very small ceremony, out of the
public eye.

            For years I had felt my father was disappointed that I
wasn’t interested in sports, in being a lawyer. And that I was gay. All these
things I thought he saw as shortcomings. Now I wanted to broach a deeper topic:
the suspicion that my father’s anxiety about the wedding video and photographer
were masks for his own anger and disappointment that I was gay.

            Going into the room, just the three of us, was
strange. I knew we needed to deal with the suspicions I was harboring, and
because of the honesty my father had shown in the last group session, I trusted
that he’d be honest with me here. But I was still scared. It reminded me
 of a time six years prior when my father took me for lunch at a
neighborhood deli, where the agenda was to open up the lines of communication
between us about my being gay. My father meant well and it felt good to know
that he was making a serious effort at improving our relationship.
Nevertheless, I remember feeling extremely uneasy and guarded during the meal,
since we weren’t used to communicating in such a vulnerable way, essentially
one on one. This same feeling came over me again in the session with Dennis,
although this time I had years of individual therapy behind me and was ready,
willing, and anxious to hash out all my feelings and possible misperceptions.

SHELDON   
The
conversation generally revolved around the fact that the only topic of conversation
between Andrew and me seemed to be money. I recall saying that although I
recognized my obligations as a parent and intended to fulfill them, and in
particular to provide Andrew with the best education available, it was somewhat
frustrating to have the feeling (true or imagined) that for a person who
necessarily was relying on others for financial assistance, he could better
manage his limited resources.

            There was also the thought that I should spend some
social time alone with Andrew, lunch for example, and without Roslyn - because
with Roslyn the time would be mostly spent with the two of them talking shop,
and me as the third-party outsider.