Straight-Faced

community and family

I learned that coming out was a bandwagon situation. The day after I came out to the world, hundreds, maybe thousands, of people followed in my footsteps. I started receiving messages from my fans about how I had inspired them to come out to their own friends and families. Luke and I read a lot of those stories together, and it made me so happy to see what we had been able to do.

Anna Lee and I had each other's back on the internet. If any homophobes harassed either one of us, the other was quick to report them. We interacted publicly pretty frequently to let everyone know that we didn't hate each other.

The most surprising outcome of this whole thing was finding a friend in someone who I had known for almost two years. This was the first time that we actually got along, and after all we had been through, I couldn't believe that I had her support. I still hated her music, though.

***

I was at Luke's house to pick him up for a date, and he was upstairs in his room, as per usual. It was cool that he trusted me to let myself into his house, but it was not cool that I had to walk past the kitchen to find him. This was because his mom spent most of her time there, and we still weren't on the best of terms. I held my breath as I walked approached the kitchen, just in case Mrs. Mitchell was in there.

She was. I was going to duck my head and pretend that I hadn't seen her, but she saw me.

"Cameron? Can I talk to you?"

Those were, sadly, probably the nicest words that I had ever heard out of her mouth.

"Sure," I said cautiously.

She wiped her hands with a kitchen towel. "I'm sorry."

"Not trying to be rude, Mrs. Mitchell, but you've got a lot to be sorry for."

Recently, I had learned to stop taking shit from people. If they weren't going to accept me, then charming them wasn't going to do anything except drain me.

"I'm sorry for everything I said to you," she told me. "I had been hoping to scare you off so you wouldn't date my son. He hasn't had the easiest time growing up, and maybe I had something to do with that, but I didn't think he was ready for a real relationship."

"Is that supposed to be an excuse?" I asked.

Mrs. Mitchell nodded. "I didn't think Luke was ready, but I shouldn't have been the one to judge."

So... did my boyfriend's mom not hate me?

"Look," she continued. "You're a boy, and you're also older than him, but I only used those as an excuse to disprove of your relationship. But Luke knew what he was doing."

"I think he knew what he was doing more than I knew what I was doing," I admitted.

Mrs. Mitchell nodded. "And then, you guys got outed unexpectedly. I didn't know which one of you was going to be the rational one who tried to hold it together, and which one was going to freak out and feel the need to break up. If that was going to happen, I didn't want you two to blame each other. So I stepped in."

Wait. I couldn't be hearing this right. She wanted the best for us? Okay, and maybe she had a messed up way of showing it, but I guess I could respect that.

"We made it through that," I said. "Luke kept his head through the whole thing, and we were okay. Why are you apologizing now?"

"Because I was wrong. And now I see that." Mrs. Mitchell walked up to me and extended a hand. "We'd love to have you over for dinner sometime. Third family introduction's the charm?"

I laughed and shook her hand. "I'd hope so, because I was just about to give up on winning you over."

And then, Mrs Mitchell threw one more curveball.

"I hope you two stay together for a really long time," she said, opening her arms for a hug. "Welcome to our family."

***

The best thing about being out to the world was the community. It was made up of people of all sexualities and genders, or lack of that, and they all supported each other. It was the most positive force that I had ever encountered, and now, I was a part of it. It made me realize how wrong I was to hide for the first eighteen years of my life.

So, I fired my manager.