People want drama and flair and snapping of the fingers when you tell a coming out story, even if it ends in devastation and total family rejection. They want to hear that you cursed out your dad in the garage for calling you a fag when you handed him the flathead instead of the Phillips screwdriver. That you had this deep emotional red-faced monologue about drama club and Carlos the pool boy. They want to hear about how your mother collapsed in the kitchen and had to be taken to the hospital. How Grandma was helping you pack your stuff and found the photos you and Carlos took on the bean bag. They lean on the edge of their seats for it! I tell people that all of the juicy stuff is usually in the middle; then I share my gay-ass coming out: I wrote a fucking poem story.
It took me nearly two hours to write the poem. My stepmother, applying makeup in the burgundy-carpeted master bedroom, provided the perfect opportunity to read it. She was curling her hair, dressed in a bra, skirt, and pantyhose, during my first attempt at coming out. My butt floated on the edge of her water bed as the notepad shook in my hand.
“I wrote a poem, here it goes. You ready?” I waited patiently for her to look my way and give me the accepting head nod which she carefully managed as she held the curling iron in a rolled piece of hair.
“Sure,” she said vivaciously to appease my desire for an audience.
My eyes broke from the paper to check her reaction. She was motionless as the burning hair spray sizzled from the heat. My hands shook the notepad a bit as the guts and glory of the poem spewed from my lips, but I never looked up from the page. Then in encore style I finished:
I waited, poised on the water bed with bated breath. She rolled another piece of hair around the curling iron and said nothing. There was a long, awkward silence, “That’s it? Oh, I thought there was more!” She laughed loudly. “Beautiful. Didja write that yourself?” Her heavy Midwestern accent bled into each word and each syllable.
“Yes, it took me two hours. I really poured my heart out.” I felt some relief as I gently yet nervously swung my leg back and forth over the edge of the bed.
“It’s very good, honey. Yer very talented; you should read that to yer dad.”
I kinked the corner of my lips upward in a smile, but I wondered one thing. “Did you get it?”
“Suure,” she drew out the word again with her singsong, Northern-Ohio charm that turned the word into a three-note harmony. “Beauta-ful.” That was all she said before she teased and puffed her hair higher. My projected heart-to-heart talk with tears and hugs of acceptance never happened. I was left sitting on the water bed very unimpressed with the way it was handled. I fully expected a dramatic scene like in soap operas complete with orchestral music in the background and close-up shots of our eyes pooling in tears. But, this was unexpectedly blasé, and I didn’t know what to do with the lackluster moment. It totally threw me off, so I simply jumped off of the bed and shuffled back to my room. After plopping myself on my twin, I began mulling over the months it took to finally tell someone; how it came out in a two-minute poem and how absolutely nothing had changed. My stepmother continued teasing her hair in the other room as I tapped my pencil on the mattress in confusion. She heard my poem, but didn’t listen to what was said.
Later that evening, during a commercial, of course, I read it aloud to my dad. He said he genuinely thought it was well written. When asked if he understood it, he said, “yes” just before he unmuted the television to continue watching his show.
My mother’s reaction was very understanding. She gave me the “It’s-normal-it’s-a-phase” speech that every parent in denial feels they are obligated to declare. That’s the safe way to say she was a groovy parent, but, if I decided to be a raging homosexual in leather ass-less chaps, it better be temporary because she wants grandkids; so don’t fuck this up or she will get my demons exorcised! As they say, Mother knows best, so it was written off as a part of growing up.
So, rather than focus my energy and newfound sexual tension on the complexities of identity and all that mumbo jumbo, a revolution of porn in the media exposed me to a bigger, more adventurous goal; to touch myself whenever possible.
Indulging in sneak peeks at my dad’s hidden nudie magazines was far more important than the roots of my sexual orientation. My mother’s porn collection that she owned with her second husband became one of many sources of entertainment. Forwarding past the man sex to the housewife and Avon lady fucking in the parlor was part of my process. Dear Grandma’s romance novels from the bookshelf of her private collection were not safe from the mission to turn myself on. My routine involved flipping to the middle of the book to read about “smooth sun-kissed skin, hard nipples, and hot, wet pussy” while Grandma cooked her famous beef and homemade noodles.
She nearly choked on her Pepsi once when she caught me reading one of her cherished Indian-and-white-woman lovemaking scenes. My heart catapulted through my chest when she disrupted my visual of Red Cloud about to give it to his white woman lover in the cabin before her asshole lumberjack husband came back to smack her around.
Jane was arched over the bearskin with her ass in the air feeling intoxicated by the heat of the moment. Red Cloud’s bronze skin and animalistic lust for her petite frame made Jane feel every sensation of her throbbing wet mound of passion. Red Cloud couldn’t speak English, but he didn’t have to say a word to know that Jane’s heaving pussy needed to be filled.
The build of tension before Red Cloud inserted his pulsating man beef led the reader into intense anticipation and escalated my body into full masturbation mode. This is when Grandma caught me reading on the floor, and I’m pretty sure it caused me to piss my pants. She took the book and forbade me to read anything else on the bottom two shelves, as she explained they were books for adults. She should have let me read about the insertion of Red Cloud’s penis into Jane’s vagina and how she squirted all over the bear skin before the lumberjack burst through the door with his musket. Damn Grandma for the denial of these adventures.
After Grandma’s restriction, my sexual curiosities escalated with no source to draw from. I would have indulged in the entire collection, if gone unnoticed. Maybe that’s a good thing, though. Otherwise, I’d live on a reservation with my husband TuTonka Thunderbird and a papoose on my back. Hey, it could have happened.
CHAPTER 2
After Grandma caught me with her “adult books,” masturbation material derived from other media. From the innocence of words on a page to role-playing in my one-woman show, my imagination became my playground.
My inspiration was characters from science fiction movies. Dungeons and Dragons infiltrated its way into every science fiction movie of the time, so in fantasies I morphed into a vampire goddess, a fair maiden, or a warrior. Tim Curry played the devil that cut off a unicorn’s horn before the world went dark in Legend. Tom Cruise’s character, the humble peasant boy, tried to save a beautiful maiden from the spell she was under to become a naughty devil bride. There were trolls, a jealous fairy, and treasures to be found. If it was mystical, yours truly used it to fantasize and masturbate at the age of thirteen. These days, young girls just give blow jobs in the band room, but back then it was the intangible that motivated me.