Two Boys Kissing(34)

His parents call again, before they leave for church.

He turns off the phone. But he can’t bring himself to throw it away.



“I hope they’re giving each other AIDS,” the caller tells the radio host. “I hope that when they’re dying of AIDS, they show that on the Internet, too, so children will know what happens if you kiss like that.”

The host chuckles, asks for the next caller.



“Turn that off.”

Neil has come into the kitchen, and he can’t believe what his parents are listening to, with his sister right there.

“What?” his father asks, blinking up from the Sunday paper.

Neil goes over and turns off the radio. “How can you listen to that? How?”

“We weren’t really listening,” his mother says. “It was just on.”

“The woman said she wants people to die of AIDS,” Miranda, age eleven, reports.

Neil’s father gives her a shushing glance. Neil’s mother sighs.

“We weren’t really listening,” she repeats.

Neil knows he should let it go. This household operates through a series of unspoken truces, negotiated by instinct more than by actual conversation. Neil has always considered his gayness to be an open secret with his parents. They’ve met Peter, they know what the story is, but the story is never said out loud. Neil can lead his version of his life, and his parents can believe in their version of their good son.

But open secret is a lie we like to tell ourselves. It’s a lie we often told ourselves, in both sickness and in health. It doesn’t work, because if you feel you still have a secret, there is no way to be truly open. In the interest of self-preservation, it is sometimes best to keep something back, to keep something hidden. But there usually comes a moment—and Neil is hitting his now—when you don’t want self-preservation to define who you are, or who your family is. Truces may stop the battles, but part of you will always feel like you’re at war.

Neil should let it go, but he doesn’t. He thinks of Craig and Harry kissing, even though he can’t remember their names. He thinks of Peter, and of how Peter’s parents take Neil in, extend their family so that he’s like a member. He thinks of his sister listening to the trash talk on the radio and his parents letting it go unanswered.

“How can you not hear that?” he asks his mother. “When something like that is being said, how can you just sit there?”

Neil never talks to his mother like this. Not since he was little, not since it was forced out of him by punishment after punishment.

His father steps in, conciliatory. He is always the good cop. Neil is tired of his parents being cops at all.

“We really didn’t hear it. If we had, we would have turned it off. We were listening to the news at the top of the hour and left it on.”

“When someone talks like that, you should hear it!” Neil says, his voice rising.

His mother looks at him like he’s an incompetent employee. “Why should we hear it?”

“Because you have a gay son.”

Miranda’s jaw drops theatrically. This is, to her, the most interesting family conversation to ever, ever happen. Neil couldn’t have shocked them more if he’d used a dirty word.

He’s broken the truce.

“Neil …,” his dad begins, his tone half warning, half sympathy.

“No. If some asshole on the radio was saying that all immigrants should go back to the countries they’re from, you’d pay attention. Even if you weren’t listening, you’d hear it. If they were saying they hope that all Koreans die of AIDS, your blood would boil higher with every single word. But when it’s gays they’re talking about, you let it slide. You don’t bother to hear it. It’s acceptable to you. Even if you don’t agree with it—and I am not saying you want me to get AIDS from kissing Peter—you accept it when someone else says it. You let it happen.”

We tried to tell them what was happening. We tried to tell them the disease was spreading. We needed doctors. We needed scientists. Most of all, we needed money, and to get money, we needed attention. We put our lives in other people’s hands, and for the most part, they looked at us blankly and said, What lives? What hands?

“I am gay. I have always been gay. I will always be gay. You have to understand that, and you have to understand that we are not really a family until you understand that.”

Neil’s father shakes his head. “Of course we’re a family! How can you say we’re not a family?”

“What has gotten into you?” his mother asks. “Your sister is right here. This isn’t appropriate conversation for your sister.”

Appropriate. The word is a well-dressed cage, used to capture the truth and hang it in a room that no one ventures into.

“She needs to hear this,” Neil says. “Why shouldn’t she hear this? You know I’m gay, don’t you, Miranda?”

“Totally,” Miranda answers.

“So there are no big revelations here. You all know I’m gay. You all know I have a boyfriend.”

But he’s never used that word before. It’s always been I’m going over to Peter’s house. Or I’m going to the movies with Peter. His mother once saw them holding hands as they watched a movie. That’s the only reason he’s sure they know.