The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (22 page)

            Over the summer I tried to keep her more up-to-date
about the wedding plans. Six weeks before the wedding, in July, I’d told her it
would be held at Eaton’s.

            “Oh, I remember I used to go there as a little girl…”
She drifted away in reverie. Then she switched gears at breakneck speed.

            “Do you think I could fit into the dress I wore to
Debbie’s wedding?”

           
What brought this on?
I wondered.

            “If I can’t zip it up,” she thought out loud, “I’ll
have to work and exercise until I can get all the way in.” We dug out the
dress, and sure enough, it was too tight. So she started an exercise regimen as
promised, walking furiously every morning. My mother marched up and down the
hallway of her apartment building, working up a sweat, until finally, after
five weeks, she fit.

            She could have showed up in a ratty sweatsuit at that
point, as far as I was concerned. My mother’s effort was all the reminder I
needed about the immensity of her heart.

            (OK, so sue me for dramatic license: we did let the
dress out a
tiny
bit.)

SHELDON   
By the time
the invitations were going out, most of the community knew the event was imminent.
However, the rabbi of our own Orthodox synagogue hadn’t been told, and I wanted
him to find out from me, not another member. He is a serious-looking man for
his thirty-seven years. And don’t forget he leads an Orthodox congregation. So
when I set up the appointment I didn’t expect him to lead any cheers over my
announcement.

            I had a second reason for wanting to meet with him. On
one hand, he’s a rabbi, with the obvious background in religious teaching. And
I know the basic premise of that. He also has a doctorate in psychology from
Tulane University. What I wanted to learn was how he reconciled the religious
reservations about homosexuality with modern psychological thinking. I figured
maybe he could help me acquire a new understanding.

            After services, I went up to his office. Without
trying to lecture him, I started things off with, “I’d like you to allow me to
speak for ten or fifteen minutes about my family. In preface, I’m not here to
be confrontational. Also, I’m not a baby. If you want to be harsh, I can take
it like a man. Of course, I don’t have to agree. So please speak freely.” This
rabbi had never officiated in our family affairs, because he’d just some to the
synagogue a couple of years before. So I spent a minute giving him some background
on our family. Then I explained our current situation at length. After he knew
all the details, I said, “I don’t want to know if it’s the right thing or the
wrong thing. We’re doing it. I’ve come here with the hope that your reaction
will be helpful to me. So go ahead, and don’t treat me like I’m tender.”

            Surprisingly, his first words were comforting. “I’m
honored you would share your thoughts with me.” Then he cut right to the
ending: “Not only did you make the right decision, you made the only decision.
This theory we used to have in European communities that the only way you could
get a child to fall in line was to threaten, with the ultimate threat being
‘sitting shiva,’ doesn’t work in modern-day society, to the extent that it ever
worked. Now you must keep the communication open.”

            He didn’t, however, attempt to reconcile the
differences between religious and psychological thought. The closest he came
was when he observed, “Wearing my psychologist’s hat, I recognize the
importance of family relationships. But with my rabbi’s hat on, I must
acknowledge that we must continue the cycle if we are to carry on the faith/” I
had prepared myself for a lecture, invited it even. And though I didn’t get an
answer to my question, the rabbi had been very sympathetic.

ROSLYN
   
Everyone in New York and California must have received the
invitations by the last week of June. They arrived even sooner in Montreal,
probably by the end of the third week. We had included response cards with the
mailing; guests could send back a note on the card with a personal greeting.
The responses were just as positive. I can’t recall one that didn’t have
something warm and congratulatory to say.

SHELDON   
Of course, I
wouldn’t expect anybody to be so impolite as to formally reply in a negative
way. The surprise, if you want to call it that, was that when I asked my
closest confidants if they’d heard any unfavorable comment behind our backs,
they all said, “Truthfully, no.” These same friends have been very forthright
about their reservations all along, so I knew they were being upfront now.

ROSLYN
   
The response to the invitations was terrific, but we were still
hearing the occasional comment from acquaintances, like “Why does it have to be
so big?” Soon after the invitations were in the mail, I asked Sheldon, “What do
you say to friends when they bring it up now? Because if you’re still saying,
‘I’m uncomfortable,’ it reinforces their negativity.” I was only too aware that
some of the negative reactions we’d heard for months had been fueled by
Sheldon’s own ambivalence.

            About a month before the ceremony, we were on our way
to dinner when I asked Sheldon again if any of his friends had mentioned the
wedding recently. He said that as a matter of fact, two of the guys had
commented to him, and not for the first time, “Why did it have to be pushed in
people’s faces?” and “Why couldn’t it have been in New York?”

            I asked how he had responded. He said he replied
forcefully, “Listen, Andrew is
my
son and I will do whatever I think is
right for him. I love him and I’m not ashamed.”

            I breathed a sigh of relief. At last the truth was
spoken.

DOUG   
I felt there was a
basic irony underlying the settlement reached on the invitations, and in fact,
the entire wedding. Much of the apprehension from Sheldon and the wider Jewish
community was about the fact that the wedding was so
large
. Sheldon
himself had asked at one point much earlier, “Why can’t this be held in a
rabbi’s study, like a second marriage?” Forget for a moment that most of the
weddings in their circle are bigger than ours; size, it turned out, really did
matter.

            The strange thing was, neither Andrew or I was married
to the idea, pardon the expression, that we should host a party for 175 people.
The list we’d prepared of our friends and close family came to 130. It was
Sheldon and Roslyn’s list of
their
friends that pushed the number up by
sixty more. Andrew and I were happy to have his parents’ friends. There were
two good reasons, however, for not issuing the invitations to their list:
First, Sheldon wanted a smaller affair. Second, the all-important concern over
the comfort of his friends. I was aware of how many (if not which exact people)
had expressed either disapproval or dismay over our plans. Of course, Andrew
was happy to have his parents’ friends at our wedding. He’d grown up with their
children, and knew each of them all his life. But I asked Sheldon several
times, if he wanted to keep the list smaller, why we couldn’t kill two birds,
and shorten the list by cutting the very people whose displeasure he worried
about?

ANDREW   
I tried to
explain wedding etiquette to Doug, but he didn’t get the concept. He kept
trying to apply logic, but anyone who’s had a couple of family weddings under
their belt knows logic has nothing to do with it. My parents had been invited
to the weddings of all of their friends’ children. How could they not
reciprocate, even if our nuptials were as welcome in Montreal as the mumps?

SHELDON   
Despite all
the criticism we’d received along the way, Roslyn and I found that almost every
single friend from our invitation list had confirmed their attendance, and
would be sitting in the hall for the commitment ceremony.

            A few weeks before the event, I referred to it as a
“celebration.” Did I really see it as a celebration? I was asked. And what was
I celebrating? After some thought, I replied, “I’m thrilled that Andrew has a
companion, a partner. And I’m thrilled with his choice of partner. Mostly
though, I’m celebrating the fact that any shackles that I felt were binding me
from being open about my son are being pried loose, even though it wasn’t my
doing. I won’t have to explain that I have a gay son anymore. I won’t have to
decide how, or even if, I should say it. We’re out in the open now. And the
chains are off.”

            I thought this was as far out of the closet as we
could get. Once again, I was in for a surprise.

DOUG,
ANDREW, SHELDON
AND
ROSLYN

July-August
1996

DOUG   
A couple of weeks after the
invitations went out, I was in Chicago producing a tape for my friend Louie’s
nonprofit company. Since the whole project was done on donated equipment and
time, including my own, Louie found a place for me to stay with an acquaintance
of his, an older, respected doctor with an eccentric air. He invited me to
dinner with his significant other. He and his nearly silent, much younger
partner had, I gathered, a rather open relationship. Or at least the doctor
seemed to. His leering, lecherous behavior may have only been an act, but it
gave them, as a couple, the air of another world of gay relationships. They
seemed a throwback to another time. Maybe this old-fashioned arrangement is the
sort that right-wing activists refer to with the term
gay lifestyle
.

            Couple
number one invited another pair of partners along as well. I was the fifth
wheel. Referring to my missing half, I mentioned our impending nuptials. Since
most of our friends are heterosexual couples, this was the only time during the
year and a half of wedding planning  that I heard reaction from a group of gay
men. It was an education.

            The
first question was from the other couple. One was sweet; his slightly older
partner was cool and aloof. Mr. Cool said, “ So, are you
registering
?”
When I said, yes, as a matter of fact, we’re going to Bloomingdale’s next
weekend, he made a pronouncement: “Oh. So that’s what it’s about.”

            Well.
I barely stopped myself from firing back, “Bitter, aren’t we?” His boyfriend
broke the awkward pause with a question about the ceremony. Then my host, the
doctor, interrupted my answer to announce, “Oh I must come and see it. Is
either of you going to wear a gown? No? Tuxedos, how boring! Well somebody must
wear a gown. Oh, let me!” Even if it was his third drink doing the talking, the
liquor was a loosener, not a hallucinogen. He meant to be catty. Since I knew
I’d never see him after this weekend, I played along, in my best approximation
of bitchy camp. “Oh, please, you must have some old taffeta number from a
debutante ball where you didn’t scuff the knees too badly. Pull it out of
mothballs. I’m sure it’ll do just fine.”

            Unbowed,
he went back to ribbing our plans. He probably meant no insult, but this wasn’t
a response I ever anticipated. As far as I could tell, those at the table with
the loudest voices were behaving as if I’d attacked them. By implying that
Andrew and I were playing house, they acted like our decision to marry was
devaluing them and their relationships.

            Finally
I noticed that the cynical reactions were coming from the two oldest people
present. Old dogs who, perhaps, saw new tricks as a threat.

ROSLYN
   
There
was a kind of backlash in Montreal’s gay community as well. The word was, as I
heard it, that if this affair didn’t turn out well, or wasn’t received well, it
would reflect badly on the entire gay community. I already felt like the
heterosexual end of a bridge between the gay and the straight Jewish camps. So
the expectations placed on this event were added pressure I didn’t need and
couldn’t bear.

ANDREW   
In mid-July Doug and I
went to Montreal to work out the last details of the big weekend, and we had
one last group therapy session with my parents. We hashed out the kind of
minutiae that I’m sure every couple faces with their family.

            It
was during that trip that my sister Debbie stopped by my parents’ house, and I
reminded her it was less than two months to the wedding. Would she and Abraham
be walking down the aisle with my niece Rachel? Debbie looked away, pained, and
said, “You’ll have to talk to my husband.”

SHELDON   
I knew Abraham had been
trouble because of Rachel. “It would be OK if she’d experienced fifteen, twenty
heterosexual ones, maybe,” he said once. He meant, I think, that he’d have to
tell his daughter she was going to a wedding, and now this was going to be her
first impression of what a wedding
is.

            My
other son-in-law was more pragmatic about it. “What are you going to do about
the commitment ceremony?” David asked me. This was back in the previous fall.
“It’s a year away,” I said. “Plenty of time to worry about it.”

            “What
are you fooling yourself for?” he chided. “I know you. You’re going to support
your son, if that’s what he wants. You’re going to suffer through it, it’s
going to be over, and that’s going to be it.”

DOUG   
Long after the fact, I asked
Abraham if he could reflect back on the root of his inner turmoil. He said:
“The first thing I thought about when I heard about the wedding: Two human
beings, they love each other, but they’re males, they can’t procreate. The
feelings they have for each other, that’s great. But two people being together,
that means continuity of the people.

            “You
see, I have the basics of my education, then I have more recent information
that’s telling me what’s going on now. I grew up one way, but I’m getting
information that’s completely different. It’s contradictory with the rules I
grew up with. The world, it changes around you so slowly. You don’t feel it
happening. It’s like the sun sending rays to the earth. You don’t feel it, but
it’s happening.

            “It’s
not enough for me to listen to Bible verse, I need an intellectual answer that
speaks to me. I have a mind to think about this. I’m not an extremist. So I
spend time working it out.”

            While
I can’t say I know Abraham extremely well, I can say I know something of the
depth of his search for truth.

ANDREW   
Abraham was forthright
in his objections. My sisters weren’t quite as bold. To some extent, I had to
read between the lines of their disapproval. Some of Debbie’s best friends are
gay.
Really
. She’s an interior decorator, so that’s part of the
explanation. Anyway, she’s very comfortable with gay men. That’s why her subtle
uneasiness and withholding caught me off guard. She never said anything
outright unsupportive, though.

            About
a year before the ceremony, my other sister, Bonnie, told me she was fine with
the wedding, as long as my father was comfortable. That, she said, was her
major concern. She knew my father would go through with it, but she just wanted
to make sure he was as comfortable as possible. She wasn’t as concerned about
my mother, because at the time she was under the same impression I was – that
my mother had no qualms about the wedding.

            A
couple months later, Bonnie mad another statement, and this one had long-lasting
repercussions. It was about nine months before the wedding, during the time
when it seemed possible there might not be any ceremony after all. Bonnie asked
my mother, “Why is Andrew doing this to Daddy?” Either my mother forgot the
context of Bonnie’s comment or I didn’t hear it, because Bonnie now says she
was referring not to the wedding, but to the therapy we were going through.

DOUG   
I think I was the one who
reacted most strongly to Bonnie’s reported comment. Of course, I didn’t know
that I was hearing her taken out of context. But it disturbed me that an
expression of love between two people could be judged an act of aggression
against a third party. Over the years, Bonnie had shown me nothing but
kindness. Now I yearned to tell her how I felt she’d contorted our intent and
confused the issue. Worst of all, I feared such a third-party accusation could
set a tone:
This wasn’t our wedding. This was Sheldon’s cross to bear.

ANDREW   
Obviously both of my
sisters faced and unenviable challenge. They were both confronted with my
decision, and had to deal with it, plain and simple. It wasn’t as if they had
an outlet, like my parents, who at least were engaged with Doug and me in a
dialogue, contentious as it may have been at times. Bonnie and Debbie were
merely bystanders. And any feelings they might have had – positive or negative
– were obviously complicated by our sibling relationships.

DOUG   
After I got back from Chicago,
Andrew and I headed over to Bloomingdale’s/ We knew we wouldn’t be the first
same-sex couple to cross their threshold. It was a busy day in the registry
when we stepped into the appointment line. When our turn came, we sat down with
a fortyish matron with a big, if slightly frozen, smile. She looked at me. Then
her head pivoted to Andrew. Soon it swung back hesitantly to me, like a rusty
lawn sprinkler. She started to check a box on our application when the death
grip she had on the pencil snapped the lead, and the pencil flew from her hand.
I looked over to Andrew, and we both straightened our smiles while she fumbled
for it on the floor. Once she recovered from the initial shock, she was nice as
pie. And she only dropped one more pencil.

            To
be fair, once we got past the flying-pencil welcome, everyone we met was
totally unfazed and very helpful. Andrew and I spent the afternoon arguing over
flatware and dishes alongside straight couples without raising anybody’s
eyebrows.

            The
next morning we were one foot out the door when the phone rang.

            “Good
morning. This is Bloomingdale’s Registry,” a nice lady announced brightly. Then
she added, gingerly, “Could I
double-check
some information?”

            “Sure.”
What was there to double-check? We hadn’t chosen any items yet. All we’d done
was put our names in the computer.

            “The
groom is listed as Andrew Merling. M-e-r-l-i-n-g?”

            “That’s
right.”

            “And
the, um, other name… Let’s see if I spelled all this right: W-y-t-h-e? And the
first name, is that, um… D-o-u-g?”

            “Yes.
You’ve got it.”

            The
tiniest pause, and then she chirped, “OK, great! Thanks a lot! Sorry to bother
you!”

            “No
problem! Thanks!” I chirped back. Andrew stood by the door waiting for me. We
were on our way to register at ABC Carpet and Home, a store full of unique
household items. While we walked to the elevator, I wondered out loud if ABC
would have a more nineties setup than Bloomie’s. Sure, it was kind of cute to
flip a coin and see which one of us would go into the computer as a bride. It
was also annoying, as if they felt we were playing dress-up in Mommy and
Daddy’s clothes. ABC was near Union Square, so maybe their attitude would be
more downtown too. Then Andrew asked what was going on with the phone call. I
laughed out loud, because it finally hit me what the conversation was really
about.

            “Oh
my God, they weren’t just checking the spelling of our names! She had me spell
my
first
name. How else did they think I could spell D-o-u-g?
D-a-r-l-e-n-e maybe?” Somebody must have taken a look at our printout that
morning, seen D-o-u-g under “bride,” and figured it had to be one heckuva typo.

            I
know the staff at Bloomie’s didn’t mean that as a put-down, it was just a
little confusing for them.

            Then,
on Monday, I was walking down the street from the gym to get a cup of coffee
when I ran into Wendy Roth, one of the senior producers of
Turning Point
.
The show had been on the air only sporadically since it had been taken off the
network schedule a year before. Now, in September, it was being resurrected
with a weekly time slot, even if it was in the suicide position opposite
ER.
Though I’d never been told an exact start date, I knew it would be on by
mid-September. This was the first time I’d seen Wendy since they’d called me in
May to see if I was available. After hug, kiss, and howyadoin’, I asked if she
knew when I should start work. When she suggested the second week of August, I
told her I’d need to be away for the first week of September.

            “What’s
going on?”

            “I’m
getting married.”

            “
Oh,
really?”
Smiling, she lowered her sunglasses and deadpanned, “We’ll talk.”
Later that day I got a call. Sure enough,
Turning Point
had a show in
the works on gay marriage. They were looking for couples with ceremonies
sometime between now (early July) and October. I told her it had been so
stressful just getting to this point, I couldn’t imagine adding any more
pressure to our wedding. But I said I’d talk to Andrew. As expected…

ANDREW   
I said, “What, are you
crazy?” First of all, there was the added pressure. Second, I had no idea what
they wanted to do. Neither did Doug. And as far as I was concerned, I wanted to
leave it that way. A few days later, Doug got another all, this time from the
woman who’d been producing the program. Her name was Denise Schreiner, and
according to Doug, she was a great producer. After talking to her on the phone,
he thought it might be worth our time to just sit down and meet her.