Family for the Holidays

GetOutLB would like to wish everyone a very happy and safe Easter, Passover, Spring Equinox or whatever holiday you may celebrate! Many cultures and religions observe holidays and cultural festivals around this time of year.

I’m not religious, so I look at the holiday as a time to slow down and reconnect with family and friends. Of course, I’m lucky enough to have time off from work, which enhances the experience for me.

This year, my boyfriend Sal and I are headed up to San Francisco and Sacramento to visit my brothers and my mother. I haven’t been up in over two years and they haven’t been down to visit me in the LBC either. What happened? I guess we all just get so busy and wrapped up in our daily lives that we lose track of time and sometimes lose track of what’s important. I’m not even estranged from my family and I haven’t seen them in two years! I’m actually lucky that all of my brothers, but one are gay, so family is really “family.”

My mother is a whole other story. She lives alone in Sacramento, but is very active and loves a good party. She’s very upfront about things; when she asked me about what I was doing for the holiday, she flat out said, “This is me guilting you into visiting your mother.” As soon as I told her I would be there for Easter Sunday, she wrangled my two brothers in San Francisco to come down too. I’m sure she’ll have all of her single lady friends over; they just love her gay children. One of her friends refers to herself (in a two-pack-a-day voice) as the poor man’s Liz Taylor, one keeps a flask of “medicine” in her purse and one is a lesbian who is practically one of the family. This year I’m sure she’ll have her theatre friends over as well.

I don’t think we have all been together in over three years and I’m not sure if my straight brother will be there or not. He lives in Fresno (he is straight, remember).

He just got married for the first time a few years ago and we had a collective sigh of relief when he and his wife had their first child. Finally, my mother was a grandmother. We were off the hook. It’s interesting, one of my mother’s friends once said, “Have you ever thought your brother felt like an outsider since the rest of you are all gay? He really was different as a teenager. We collected GQ magazines and 501 jeans and he collected guns. None of us had considered it before, but the thought pushed us to build a better relationship with him. I hope they make it up for the holiday. It would be good to see him.

This will be the first time that the family will meet Sal. I’m sure this is an unspoken tradition in all families: a holiday comes up, we go off to visit the kinfolk and take our significant others with us for a really uncomfortable all-day introduction. They will love him; he’ll fit in.

I just dread the moment when they all decide to start telling stories about me. My mother likes to talk about my first porn movie (her words). When I was 11 or 12 I was an extra in a Mark Twain movie called Life on the Mississippi and I had to run out of the Illinois River naked (the Mississippi was too polluted to use). My brother Stephen likes to tell people that I allegedly thought I looked like a young Elizabeth Taylor after he dressed me up in drag at the age of 14. He’s the one that likes drag by the way. I was the youngest so it was easier for him to get all of his creative fashion ideas out on me. He practically dressed me in drag every Halloween until I was 15, including sewing me a complete I Dream of Genie costume out of transparent pink silk chiffon. After which he paraded me around the neighborhood to show off his handiwork. I’m still scared. Who would have ever known we were gay? Then I’ll have to start telling everyone how he use to drag me around to abandoned houses to look for treasure, until we got the crap scared out of us when something started moving toward us in the dark during one of our escapades in an old boarded-up bungalow. We ran, but not until after my brother snagged a cast head of the Virgin Mary off the wall. He still has it, by the way, and it still creeps me out. Then it will turn into a free for all, all of us yelling over each other in a contest of one-upmanship. I’m looking forward to it actually; I just wish I had time to practice my skills. This is why my mother’s friends come over when we visit—to be entertained. You couldn’t make this shit up.

I do worry about Sal, though. It’s almost a fend-for-yourself atmosphere. One, because my mother is gastronomically challenged (I’m being nice). But, really because we don’t get together that often, and when we do, it can be like no one else is there. I think we moved in a pack as children. Actually, now that I think about it, he’ll be fine. Besides, it will be payback for when we were at his parents’ house for Christmas and his father kept chasing me around with shots of tequila and I kept slurring, “No mas, no mas!” Good times.

GetOutLB will be back with a full issue on April 6. We have great things coming this spring.