This is the story of when I first came out to my sixty-year-old Vietnamese mom, five years ago. I originally posted this on September 10, 2007, but I thought it’d be fitting to repost it for the Gay Men Project. I’d love to hear your story coming out too…
Mom, I’m gay.
She looks at me. Lets it register. I honestly don’t remember what she said next, even though I just told her. Maybe something to the effect, “Are you sure?” Ha. Something about my uncle, when he was thirteen he went to an all boys school and thought he was gay, yada yada yada, she read it all in his diary, and she’s telling me now, because now he’s attracted to women, so the point is, maybe I’ll wake up and be attracted to women. I dunno. Don’t remember. How do you feel I ask. Are you ok? Yes, it’s how God made you. God still loves you. I still love you. Just go to church and pray. Live here. Don’t tell anyone. They beat up gay people, society isn’t accepting of certain groups of people. It’s not like that, I assure her. I laugh a little. But what about that guy, in Texas, she says, they murdered him. I’m thinking she’s thinking Matthew Shepherd? I dunno. Don’t go to gay bars, she continues. Those guys sleep around with other guys. You don’t want to get a disease. I do case loads for men, they come in, they’re gay and have HIV. You don’t know that, I tell her. It almost sounds absurd, the presumption. I don’t know, she continues, maybe you were supposed to be a girl. You have a girl face. Ha. She just told me I have a girl face. Ha. Then she goes off about taking birth control, or not taking birth control, I really had no clue what she was talking about, but somehow taking birth control or not taking birth control contributed to my gayness? Dunno. Or the water. She talks about the water, drinking the water in the ocean when she was pregnant with me, fleeing Vietnam in a fishing boat. God made you gay, she continues, point being, then questions herself, mentions a lifestyle, choosing to live it. Nurture vs. nature? Free will vs. predetermination? It doesn’t matter to me, she says, you’re still my son, I still love you. God still loves you. Go to church and pray. I ask, Are you upset? Do you wish you didn’t know? No, I’m glad I know, she says, now I know who you are. Are you embarrassed, ashamed? No, she assures. But she keeps saying it’s abnormal. Finally, I say, it’s not abnormal. It is abnormal, she says, women should like men. Men should like women. It’s how God wants it. But then, in question of herself, God made you gay. God made me gay. You can’t control who you love, I tell her. I love men. It’s a feeling. You can’t control it. You can’t stop it. You can’t turn it off, tell yourself no. You love who you love.
It’s funny, an hour conversation and I can literally see her process it all for the first forty five minutes. You know, see her thinking until she’s finally able to wrap herself around the idea that I’m gay.
Other stuff was said, bottom line, she doesn’t want me to suffer. When I suffer she suffers. I’m still her son and nothings changed.
And an unspoken agreement that we are never to talk of gay sex. she doesn’t understand it, how it works, because she doesn’t watch movies 🙂
kisses from New York. ~ kt