At the Bottom of the Closet

 by Christopher Allan Poe

My mother was gay. I've never really spoken about it much for two reasons. One, who you stick your dick in—or not—ranks right up there with chit-chat to me.

"Hey Bob. Whatcha been up to?"

"Just doing my thing."

Shit, Bob. You are one interesting SOB. What do you say we talk about the weather next?

The other reason—and a much more serious one—was that until the day my mother sent me away at thirteen, my childhood was traumatic on a scale that few can understand. For my sisters, it was worse, and our story doesn't fit neatly into any narrative, so it wasn't worth unpacking its nuance for sound-byte fools—eyes shut, fingers in ears—who don't care to understand anything about anyone anywhere.

A few events have changed my thinking recently. Maybe my reluctance to speak stemmed from my own fear of telling the truth, because at a young age, I was taught to lie by my mother.

Back in the eighties, things were different. In my Stranger Things nostalgia, even I had forgotten just how different they were until I wrote this. My family had just moved to Maine. I was eight when my sister first told me that Mom was gay. She was eleven.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Nuh uh. You're a liar."

"She is too."

"Is not."

The is-too, is nots went on for a bit. Finally, I charged into our house and demanded the truth from our mother. After shooting my sister a serious look, she admitted she was gay, to which I replied, "Oh...what's gay mean?"

I really didn't know, but I'd overheard enough people screaming about it to fear it.

Mom reluctantly explained that it meant that she and Betty loved each other. That much was obvious since they slept in the same bedroom and kissed each other.

"But," Mom said. "You have to promise me that you'll never tell anyone. It would be very bad if you did."

So I pinkie swore. Made sense at the time. Crisis averted, I charged outside to play. My sister Beth, on the other hand, got yelled at and grounded for speaking the truth.

Like I said, times were different. Unlike gay men, most lesbians probably wouldn't have been beaten or murdered for their sexuality, but they certainly could've gotten fired. Blackballed. Evicted. Though I didn't fully grasp the situation, that day I learned that honesty wasn't always the best policy.

A few years later, we moved to Phoenix, and why a lesbian couple would willingly move to Arizona is beyond me. I can only imagine that it was all we could afford.

So, there we were, in conservative Arizona. A place where Governor Evan Mecham tried to ban Martin Luther King's holiday and once proudly exclaimed that he could fit all the gay people in Arizona into his personal office. In the blistering heat, a gay protest gathered outside that office to prove him wrong. My mother joined the rally, which was several thousand strong. It stunned me. Wasn't that dangerous? Being seen in public? Was it okay to reveal the truth sometimes? That rally sparked what I consider the beginning of the end of our family.

Anyway, I was eleven, I think, when Beth and I snuck out to church. It's a tricky business stealing Catholic donuts without having to sit through their god-awful, boring, tedious, droning, chanting, sit-stand-sit sermons, and Beth and I were masters. Sometimes we'd get three donuts each. After the service, Beth wanted to go home, but I wanted another round at maple bar glory, so she left, and I sat out on that curb alone after service, frosting faced, watching the parishioners mill about.