Sunday, January 4, 2009

What Not to Do if You're Afraid Your Son is Gay

I am the prize dork of all time. See "Who Says I'm a Dork?," below. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s an honorable tradition in my family. My father and my brother Michael were; my brothers David and Ron are too. Their sons, Christian and Casey, respectively, will carry on the family tradition also. Ron’s second son, Andrew, is only six weeks old at the time of this writing, so it’s too early to make a call on him.

For the uninitiated, there is a difference between a nerd and a dork. A nerd is someone who’s one-dimensional, and tends to fade into the background. Sort of like an accountant. Dorks have presence. For better or worse, you know we’re there. You can usually count on us to say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time. Consequently, we tend to be socially awkward and less than desirable to the opposite sex. In my case, even if I did manage to elicit any sort of female interest, I was often oblivious to it, and even if I had not been, would not have known what to do anyway.

A year ago, my wife met a female high school classmate of mine, who for some reason told Dawn that she had a crush on me when we were in high school. She averred, correctly, that she didn’t think I was aware of it. I hadn’t the slightest idea. The prize dork of all time.

As you might imagine, this did not bode well for my social life. Throughout my high school years, I didn’t date anyone, spent lots of time alone, and didn’t hang with a crowd. For the most part, the groups I did spend time with tended to be all male. As I was to learn, this caused my mother some concern.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but I think it was during my Senior year of high school. I recall being seventeen at the time. It was a Sunday morning, and as was my custom, I was at the stove cooking some scrambled eggs. I was just about six feet tall at the time, and weighed a whopping 155 pounds. My mother, who stood five feet four in heels, walked over to me, and stood perhaps a centimeter away from me. I guess the time had come for her to get an answer to the question that had been eating at her for God knows how long.

She looked up at me, batted her eyes a couple of times and asked, with utmost sincerity, “Ed, you do like girls, don’t you?”

I was so taken aback I couldn’t think of anything witty to say, which is probably just as well, because if I had even joked about being gay, she would have had a heart attack on the spot. I assured her that I do, indeed, ‘like girls,’ and we never spoke of the matter again.

For the record, I am happily heterosexual, and no, I’m not going to provide references. The best thing to come out of this was that when I finally did start dating, she was so relieved that I was bringing home girls, and that they were white, that I didn’t have to worry about her disapproving of my girlfriends.

I remember her query as one of the great missed opportunities of my life, but when you’re a dork, you can’t always come up with the ideal punch line. I am biding my time though. One of these days, I plan to try this out on Christian and Casey.