| Thursday, May 03, 2007 |
| all that's known |
I think my aunt is a lesbian.
My mother clings to my aunt Mary, because in a way she’s the only sibling she has left. Michael is distant, and her twin Peter is many years dead. She cries when Mary doesn’t return her phone calls. When she is around, the two of them are always giving each other expensive, sentimental gifts. My mother, for example, has dozens of Waterford Crystal statuettes flown in from Ireland and sold in specialty stores. Mary is gifted regularly with expensive jewelry that I suspect she only wears because she feels obligated. In fact, her appearance overall is very un-traditionally-feminine. Baggy t-shirts and jeans, close-cropped hair, very sparse makeup and jewelry, usually with a beer in one hand. She also works as a Chicago police officer. And while we’re on the subject of stereotypes, I have indeed seen her shopping at the Home Depot.
She does have a boyfriend, David. I suspect, though, that he’s a “boyfriend”, and possibly complicit. If my aunt were a gay man, David would be her “beard”—a “girlfriend” bandied about to make people think the bandier is straight—I’m not sure what the lesbian equivalent is, but that’s David in my mind. I’ve never seen them physically affectionate. Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, I know, but it is still absence of evidence. In fact, we’re not allowed to talk about Mary’s relationship with David outside a certain circle of family and friends. Because they work in the same precinct, they’re technically not supposed to be dating. If they are at all. They’ve been “dating” for over a decade, and I haven’t heard of any progress within their relationship.
More than anything, though, there is a sense with Mary that there’s something she’s not letting slip. Every conversation unfailingly conveys a feeling that there’s a surreptitious undertone. It’s usually playful—I’ll be out with Mary and my mother, the subject of schoolwork will come up, I’ll say that I’ve been studying diligently and share a knowing look with Mary. Or, if I’m visiting her and my grandfather, he will begin a drunken reminiscence of the old country, and she will humor him and roll her eyes in my general direction. It’s not always so playful or obvious, though. There are always pointed silences, pointed glances, usually between herself and my mother. There’s something there, and it’s something they’re not telling anyone else.
Of course, there’s not enough evidence to convict my favorite aunt of lesbianism. It’s a conclusion that I’m jumping to, even if it is a relatively small hop, and I have my own motivations for making it. I came out myself a few years ago, but not to my extended family. I told my friends, my parents, and my sister. Even now, I don’t keep it a secret from anyone but my family.
Speaking with my family has become an exercise in public relations. I feel like a politician’s press secretary, the public figure who makes releases and takes questions while the actual politician hides behind a desk somewhere. Or underneath. Duck and cover, wait for the air raid siren to go out. We had one of those at my elementary school and church. It looked like a giant bug zapper on top of a giant pole in the midst of an encroaching patch of trees next to the creek, and before my time it was retasked to be a tornado alarm so they didn’t actually have to install one in the building. And that’s how I knew it, until I learned what an air raid siren was. In those days, speaking with my family was easy. They would ask me how old I was, what grade I was in. They would test me with some random science question, and laugh and share a knowing smile with the other adults when I got it right. They would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I would answer—an astronaut, a scientist, even a priest—and they would pat me on the head and tell me I could do anything, because I was so smart. “Scary smart.” The question is different now. It’s not what do I want to do, now it’s what am I going to do? Apparently I’m supposed to have a plan. I haven’t got a clue. All I can think about is whether I can slip the words “I’m gay” neatly into conversation without missing a beat. |
posted by La Malinche @ 7:05 PM   |
|
|
|
|
|
