Self-Portraits - 1. Not Coming Out

Mum, Dad. I’m gay.

Gay. Even the word itself sounds gay.

Mum, Dad, I’m gay.

Gay. Gaygaygaygaygaygaygay.

The more I say it, the gayer it sounds. It’s the ay sound that’s the problem. The word just drops off, falls away, like you’re waiting for the word to finish. There’s no hard consonant at the end, no confirmation that you’ve finished. Not like fag or faggot. With faggot, you’ve got the opposite problem – the end is too hard, like a punching a brick wall.

Maybe I can use another word.

Mum, Dad. There’s something I need to tell you. I’m homosexual. Or, I’m a homosexual. Which is it? I’m homosexual or I’m a homosexual? Mum, Dad, I’m a homosexual. I’d need to say the ‘a’.

I shouldn’t say ‘sexual’ though. I don’t want them to think of sex at all. Maybe I could just say homo. Mum, Dad, I’m a homo. Me, your son, your firstborn, is a homo. Ho-mo.

No, homo doesn’t sound right either.

What other words are there? Queer, poofter, pansy, ponce. I once heard Dad describe a male hairdresser as “fruity”; maybe I could say: Mum, Dad, I’m fruity.

Maybe I should come at it from another angle, by telling them about me and Nicholas. After all, Nicholas is the reason for telling them in the first place. We’ve both agreed to tell our parents on the same night.

Mum, Dad, we’re in love!

Nicholas and I haven’t even said the L-word to each other yet. But maybe I could say something like, Mum, Dad, you know my friend Nicholas? Well, he’s not just my friend, he’s my ... he’s my ... he’s my what?

He’s my boyfriend. Isn’t he?

Well, technically, we haven’t confirmed that either, so maybe I shouldn’t call him my boyfriend yet.

Perhaps I should run it all together. MumDadI’mGayWithNicholas.

Nicholas – the boy who has been my best friend for four years, is now a lot more than just a friend, and I couldn’t be happier. So really, who cares what word I use, and who cares what my parents say, because the truth is I am in love.

“You’re making such a big deal out of this,” my sister Vicky says.

I turn my attention away from my mirror, where I’ve been practising how I’m going to say it at dinner tonight. I glare at Vicky, who’s gotten into my bed and is twisting all the sheets around her legs.

“You’re messing up my bed again,” I say.

“The more dramatic you are, the more dramatic they’ll be,” she tells me for the tenth time.

“Nicholas and I have talked about it,” I say primly, “and this is what we’ve decided to do.”

Vicky doesn’t know what it’s like to fall in love. She’s a year younger than me and has never had a boyfriend. Perhaps in one year’s time, when she’s sixteen, she’ll have a boyfriend. Probably not, though. Most boys at St Peters are afraid of her. Mum describes her as “unladylike”. Vicky stomps around, talks too loudly, swears too much, chews her fingernails, and pays no attention to her hair, the unruly blonde mop that we both inherited from Dad. (At least I try to comb mine.)

Lately, Vicky has made my bedroom her after-school hang-out spot. She always messes it up and leaves toast crumbs on the sheets. It was whilst lying in my bed one afternoon, a few months ago, that Vicky asked me if I was gay. After going dark red and spluttering, I thought, Oh, what the hell, and admitted to her that, not only was I gay, but that I had kissed Nicholas three times.

“Nicholas is amazing,” Vicky now sighs. “You guys are so lucky to have found each other.”

I am lucky. Nicholas, sweet funny Nicholas, with his cute elfish face, always-warm hands, and his fresh laundry smell. Nicholas, with whom I share thousands of personal jokes, hundreds of secrets, and – in the last three months – no less than nine kisses. We’re going to spend our final year of high school out and proud, not hiding our love from anyone.

Starting with our parents.

*

Dinner is at six sharp every night. There’s no TV during dinner and we all have to be there for it. It’s one of Mum’s few rules. Another rule is that we have to eat everything on our plates. I’m a fussy eater but luckily Vicky’s a human waste disposal, so we smuggle morsels underneath the table.

“How was school today?” Mum asks.

“So shit,” Vicky replies.

“Boring,” I agree.

“Oh, lovely,” Mum says, because she never actually listens to our answers.

Dad never talks at dinner. He inhales his food in about two minutes then sits back, looking exhausted. He’s always famished by six because work is always too busy for him to have lunch. He’s in charge of medical supplies at the hospital and he’s a micro-manager. He always says, “If you need something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Vicky teases him for being a perfectionist.

On the surface, tonight looks like every other night. But my heart is pounding and Vicky keeps staring at me, wondering if I’m really going to follow through with it. But I have to. It has to be done. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Pride. Gay pride. I’m proud to be in gay-love with Nicholas.

Mum, Dad, I keep saying over and over in my head, I’m gay.

Now all I need to do is say it out loud. The only sound is the clinking of knives and forks against plates. Now’s my moment.

I take a deep breath.

Vicky’s eyes are fixed on me.

I exhale. It’s now or never.

“Mum,” I say.

Mum looks at me. Am I imagining it, or does she look every bit as anxious as I feel?

“Dad,” I say.

Dad looks up from his plate. He has dark circles under his eyes.

Here goes nothing.

“I’m gay,” I say.

Or at least, my mouth has formed the words, but they do not land the way I’ve practiced. At first, I can’t figure out why, so I say it again.

“I’m gay.”

Again, the words don’t seem to land on anyone’s ears.

Then I figure out why.

Mum has spoken over the top of me – both times – and Dad and Vicky are now staring at her. Nobody is looking at me. Nobody has heard me. There’s blood pounding in my ears. I’m beyond confused. What just happened? What went wrong?

Mum is looking around the table, gripping her wine glass. Her jaw’s clenched and her knuckles are white.

“Sorry – did you say something?” I ask Mum.

Dad’s mouth is open. There’s half-chewed broccoli in it. Vicky’s hand, cold as ice, grips my wrist.

“Oh my god,” Vicky says to Mum. “Are you fucking serious?” Vicky looks at Dad. “Dad? What the actual fuck?”

“What? What’s going on?” I say. “Did you guys hear what I just said? Mum, what did you say? Vicky, what did she say?”

Dad puts down his fork and closes his mouth.

Mum takes a large gulp of wine.

“We were going to wait until the end of the year to do it,” she says.

“Do what?” I demand.

Mum puts her also-cold hand on my other wrist. I now have two cold female hands on me.

“We were at least going to wait for you to finish school,” Mum tells me. “We didn’t want to place any stress on you for your senior year. You’ve got big exams coming up next year. That’s why we were going to wait until then.”

“What about stress for my senior year?” Vicky shrieks.

Dad runs his hand through his messy hair. “I thought we’d agree to wait,” he mutters to Mum.

“Yes, well.” Mum fills her wine glass back up to the brim. “Regardless, there it is,” she says. She raises her glass like she’s proposing a toast. “We are divorcing.”

She takes a large sip.

But I’m gay, is all I can think of at first. Did nobody hear me say it?

Then what Mum just said hits me.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Did you say divorcing?”

“Yes,” Mum says firmly.

“Well, no,” Dad says. “We’re only separating at this stage.”

“Oh, let’s not drag this out even more,” Mum says to Dad. She turns to us. “It’s decided. We will get a divorce.”

“This is fucking bullshit!” Vicky says.

“It is,” I add.

“Finish your dinner,” Mum says.

I look at my plate. Broccoli, carrots, mashed potato, pork and fennel sausages. I can’t take another bite. I put down my knife and fork.

“I’m not eating,” I say. “I’m never eating another thing again in my life.”

“That’s not very realistic,” Mum says.

“I’ll finish yours, Rick,” says Vicky. Nothing could ever ruin her appetite.

She exchanges her empty plate for my near-full one. I just sit there, my head spinning. Vicky shouts at them both with her mouth full, little food missiles covering the table.

Mum keeps trying to calm her down by saying things like, “I know this is a bit of a shock,” and “Please don’t scream with your mouth full.” Dad sits there in silence.

I need to get up from the table so I start putting plates in the dishwasher and cleaning up the kitchen. My movements are zombie-like, on autopilot.

By the time I’ve finished cleaning the kitchen, everyone’s left the table. Vicky’s stormed off to my bedroom, probably in my bed crying. I leave her to do that, and go into Mum and Dad’s room. I’m not going to shout like Vicky did. That won’t get us anywhere. I’m simply going to talk them out of this silliness.

When I walk into their bedroom, there’s already a suitcase open on their bed. Mum and Dad are at the wardrobe, taking out clothes on coat hangers, talking as though nothing important is happening.

“We’ll need to get you some more white shirts,” Mum says. “Look, this one is frayed at the cuff. I’ll get you some this weekend. Do you have enough socks?”

“I’ve got my tennis ones,” says Dad.

“But you can’t wear those with your work shoes,” Mum says.

“I don’t see why not.”

Mum laughs. “I’ll get you some more black socks this weekend too.”

“You are not leaving, Dad,” I announce from the doorway.

Dad looks at me nervously, then looks to Mum. For a second, he looks doubtful, he looks like he might be able to be persuaded. Stay for me, I want to say, but it sounds weird.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Mum says. “I know it’s a surprise, but it’s better to just get it over with now.”

A surprise? The new sneakers I got last week were a surprise. The tub of chocolate ice-cream Vicky found in the freezer, the B plus in yesterday’s maths test – those things were a surprise.

Dad walking out of here forever is not a surprise. It’s a shockwave.

Mum and Dad finishing packing his suitcase and then, with a pat on my back, Dad is gone.

*

The next morning, Vicky and I get to school looking wretched after a sleepless night. Vicky tossed and turned. I might’ve slept, except Vicky refused to leave my bed and spent the night farting and kicking me every time she rolled over.

The only good thing about the morning is that Nicholas is waiting for me at the school gate.

The night before I’d I sent him a short text message. Major drama, I’d written. Meet you at gates before assembly?

He’d replied within seconds. Yes PLEASE.

Sure enough, here he is, waiting for me. He is so handsome. I inhale his clean laundry smell.

“How did it go?” he asks.

“Don’t be mad,” I say. “I tried to tell them, but they didn’t hear me. What happened was—”

Nicholas breathes a giant sigh of relief. “Thank god you didn’t tell them. I didn’t either. I couldn’t. I realised that it’s a bad idea, Richard. It’s way too soon. We should wait until next year. You know, when we’ve left school, after our exams.”

I’m sort of relieved, too. “Yeah. It’s probably for the best.” I reach for his hand but he slides it into his pocket, out of my reach.

“There’s something else.” Nicholas looks down, uncomfortably. “I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about this, about us. I know we’ve kissed, but that was just for fun. You knew that right?”

I open my mouth but I have no idea what I’m going to say. I think about how, on Friday night, Nicholas slept over, and how we shared a bed. Nicholas had his arms around me all night. In the morning, he told me that my sleep drool was cute and then he picked the crusty bits out from the corners of my eyes. I tried to brush my teeth to get rid of morning breath before we kissed again but he said he would kiss me even if I had eaten a whole meal of garlic and onions.

I had not known it was “just for fun”. I thought we were, you know. Together.

But I don’t admit that. What comes out of my mouth is a lie.

“Yeah, of course,” I say. My face feels like it’s on fire.

“And I don’t want anyone else getting the wrong idea, either,” Nicholas says. “Darren Park made a joke after assembly yesterday about me and you sleeping over at each other’s places all the time. I just think, yeah, if we’re keeping this a secret for another year, we should probably hang out with other friends, instead of just with each other all the time. Just for a little while, okay?”

“Yeah,” I say again, “of course.”

“Great.” Nicholas grins. “I love that we’re always on the same page.”

The bell rings.

“See ya when I see ya,” Nicholas says. That’s how we always say goodbye, but the gaps between seeing each other were never very long. But now our signature farewell feels like it’s gouging out a piece of my flesh. But I’ve got no choice; I have to say it.

“See you when I see you,” I say.

Nicholas turns and jogs over to Darren Park and his friends. A big rowdy group of boys with untucked shirts and backpacks with broken zippers. They’re always so loud and obnoxious. Nicholas and I have spent the last four years making fun of them. Now Nicholas wants to hang out with them, instead of me.

I stand there, not sure what to do. Last night, it felt like one of my arms had been amputated. Now it feels like I’ve lost a leg. I don’t snap out of it until the deputy headmaster Mr Jane shouts at me to get a move on.

And so, with only one leg and one arm, I hop towards my first class.

*

On a good day, I struggle to pay attention in class. I’m always doodling at the back of my textbook, or passing notes to Nicholas, or playing games on my phone, before it gets confiscated by the teacher. Today, I may as well be underwater. I’m a total zombie. At one point, I realise everyone is laughing and looking at me.

Miss Bristol’s at the front of the class, smiling.

“Earth to Richard?” she says.

I go red and stumble way through an answer about David Copperfield that’s completely wrong. We were meant to read the first chapter last night, but I didn’t. Mercifully, she moves on to Harriet Hayes, who’s had her hand in the air with the correct answer for two minutes.

At lunchtime, I don’t know what to do. Nicholas and I have met behind the cricket pavilion at lunchtime every day for the last three and a half years. When I get there today, he’s nowhere to be seen. A group of Year Nine girls have taken our spot.

Out the front of the pavilion, I scan the field.

I see him on the far side, by the fence, with Darren Park’s group. Those boys smoke cigarettes and try to get girls to text them pictures of their boobs.

Nicholas is hanging out with other friends, like he said we need to. The problem is, I don’t have other friends. I walk around for a bit. Everyone’s sitting in their usual clusters, in their usual spots. The soccer guys, the drama kids, the computer game nerds, the popular girls.

I’m starting to think I’ll have to eat lunch in a toilet cubicle when a voice calls out.

“Rick!”

It’s Vicky, with her highly annoying friends, outside the science block. She’s the centre of attention of her group today, melodramatising the previous night’s events. She’s holding out a tub of yoghurt.

“I accidentally took the boysenberry one,” she says. “Give me your strawberry.”

I end up eating lunch with my sister and her friends. They’re all short and squeaky, and never stop talking. Today, everyone is listening to Vicky describe her newly-broken home. They mostly ignore me while I eat Vicky’s boysenberry yoghurt and my own ham sandwich.

Vicky turns to me. “We need to find out where Dad’s staying,” she says. “It’s so fucking bizarre that we don’t even know where our own father is sleeping. What if there’s an emergency? Do you think he stayed at a hotel?” Before I can answer, Vicky says, “Let’s go to the hospital after school and talk to him. We need to know where he’s staying, he’s our fucking father. Meet me at the gate at three thirty.”

“Sure.”

It’s not like I have anywhere else to be.

*

The hospital’s just around the corner from the school, but on the short walk, I’m treated to one of Vicky’s monologues.

“I’m totally pissed off at both of them,” she says. “I mean, how long have they been lying to us? They’ve been sharing a bed for, like, twenty-five years. How many years have been a lie, do you think? Our whole lives, I bet.”

“They don’t always share a bed,” I say.

“Yes, they do.”

“Dad’s been sleeping in the guestroom a lot lately,” I say. “He said it’s better for his back.”

Vicky gives a strangled cry. “More lies! Are they even our parents? Maybe we’re adopted and we’re really Scandinavian and our so-called parents are planning to send us back to live with our real parents in a war-torn Scandinavian village.”

“I don’t think Scandinavia is war-torn.”

“It will be if we get sent back there!” We’re coming up to the hospital now. “At least you have Nicholas to help you through this. I’ve got nobody.”

“Well, actually …” I’m about to break the second wave of bad news to Vicky, when she freezes in her tracks. She grips my arm with her cold fingers.

“Look,” she whispers, her eyes bulging.

I look.

Dad’s standing out the front of the hospital – and he’s not alone. He’s with a woman, a woman with long red hair, wearing an enormous red coat, red shoes. Dad has his arms around her. Then he kisses her. My father is kissing a strange red woman.

Vicky lets out a strangled cry.

“The fucking pig!” she says. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours and he’s already found a girlfriend.”

I think about all the Saturdays he’s been working lately. He’s had weekends away, too. “For work,” he told us. Another lie, I now realise.

The kiss stops, thank goodness, and Dad goes back inside the hospital. The Red Woman turns and starts walking away.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s follow her. I bet that’s where he’s staying.”

“I’m not following her,” Vicky snarls. “I don’t want to know where he’s living anymore. I don’t want to know anything about him. I’m never speaking to him again. I can’t believe he’s done this to Mum.”

I can’t either, but I also want to know more about this woman. Perhaps some part of me is hoping there’s an explanation. Or perhaps, like Mum said last night, I don’t want this to keep being dragged out.

“Well, I’m following her, even if you’re not,” I tell Vicky. “I’ll see you at home.”

The Red Woman’s already vanished around the other side of the hospital, so I leave Vicky, and break into a run. If she gets into a car, then I’m stuffed, but she doesn’t. Luckily the red stands out from a distance, and I see her weaving in between the cars, through the car park, and onto the street.

I start fancying myself as a bit of a spy. The Red Woman has no idea she’s being followed. She turns down one street, then another, to a small cul-de-sac filled with big trees. Her house is the one at the very end. It’s a small brick place with a big front window. Someone needs to sweep up the leaves and mow the lawn. There’s a huge worm farm out the front. That’s funny; my mum has a worm farm, too. I guess Dad falls for environmentalists.

The Red Woman goes through the front door. I kneel down behind the letter box.

Through the front window, I watch her as she takes her red coat off. She turns to hang it up on a hook.

I gasp. Her enormous red coat was hiding something even more enormous.

Dad’s girlfriend is very, very pregnant.

*

Back at home, Vicky’s settled into my bedroom, blasting music, and babbling into the phone. I catch the words “fucking liar” and “red-headed slut”.

Mum’s in the kitchen making dinner. I try to help, because I’m a feminist, and have always tried to make sure that the men of the household do as much cooking and cleaning as the women. (Vicky doesn’t do any, so it’s not hard to keep the balance.)

“No need, darling,” Mum tells me. “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”

“Ew, we’re having broth?”

“I’m making a lasagne. How was school?”

“Fine,” I say. “How was … um …”

I try to think of a way to ask my mother how she is. I realise that in all my sixteen years, I’ve never asked her that very basic question. She’s always been here to make sure I’m okay, not the other way around. This makes me feel bad, but after the day I’ve had, I’m getting used to that feeling.

“I thought Nicholas might be over for dinner,” Mum says.

It’s Thursday; he often comes over after school on Thursdays.

“Not tonight,” I say.

“He’s so funny,” Mum says. “He always makes us laugh, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Another piece of me is gouged out. Nicholas is perfect.

“We’ll all be alright though,” Mum says. “It’ll just be a bit of an adjustment.”

It takes me a second to remember she’s talking about Dad, not Nicholas.

“Luckily you two kids are so resilient,” Mum says.

At that precise moment, there’s a gap in between the songs Vicky’s blasting and we hear her shouting into the phone.

“He’s a complete fucking moron and he’s ruined my life!”

If only she knew the half of it.