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“Hey, it’s me, everything’s okay, I just…wanted to talk to you about something, give me a call when you can, bye.” She sounded pleasant. Which was unusual. That’s how I knew it was a ploy, if she’d left the message in her usual flustered, stressed out, terse tone she used specifically for me, I would have known everything was truly okay and I wouldn’t have called her back, unless she explicitly said it involved Jamie, our son, which she didn’t.
She called again and out of sheer curiosity, I called her back a few minutes later, I took my break and went outside to call her. That way if the call got heated, I wouldn’t cause a scene. She asked where I was and I told her, “That’s right. I forgot what day it was.” I asked her what was up, not wanting to make fake small talk, I just wanted her to get to the point. She was trying as best she could to be nice, but I still felt as if we were about to get into an argument.
She paused for a moment and I got a bit worried. “Just tell me, what’s wrong.” I attempted to sound caring and involved.
She then asked, “Do you think Jamie’s alright?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like…emotionally, I guess, do you think he’s…”
I waited for her to finish, but she didn’t, she just left her thoughts hanging and so I answered. “I think he’s fine, he’s happy, we’ve been separated most of his life now, I don’t think-“
She cut me off, “it’s not about that…it’s…”
“What?”
“It’s the way he acts.” She stressed.
“He acts normal, he’s a normal five year old kid, what are you talking about? How do you think he acts?” I felt myself getting agitated. I spat the question at her.
She replied guiltily “He’s…different…”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know…he just is…” She was lying. She was playing dumb, I hated when she did that. She knew exactly what she was trying to get at, that’s why she called. She just didn’t want to come right out and say it. She wanted to make a game of it.
“Where is this coming from?”
“Nowhere it’s just…I’m wondering…” she trailed again.
“Just come out and say what you’re thinking. You called with it on your mind, just say it.” I begged irritably.
“What do you think his…sexuality is?” the question was strained, the words came out like they were teeth being pulled by a sadistic dentist. I knew now what she was getting at; we’d talked about it before.
It was the little things, he was still too young to fully express himself, but over time, it became more evident. It was the movies he chose to watch, the characters he liked and the superheroes he favored. Instead of watching movies like ‘Transformers’ or ‘Cars’, he liked to watch ‘The Princess Diaries’ with Ann Hathaway and ‘Tangled’. He always liked the bawdy female characters like ‘Ursula’ in the Little Mermaid or the three fairies in ‘Cinderella’. And he always favored the female villains like ‘Cat woman’ and ‘Poison Ivy’ over ‘Batman’ and ‘Robin’.
When he was little and I’d take him to buy a toy from the store, like most little boys he went for Legos and toy guns, but as he got a little older that began to change. I remember the first time he brought me a Malibu Barbie to buy him. I asked if he was sure he didn’t want a Lego set and he said “Yes.” And when I asked why he said because the doll was pretty and her dress was pretty too. I never question another doll. The cashiers would give us funny looks sometimes, but all I could really think to say was, hey they’re cheaper than Legos.
Her accusations annoyed me. I should’ve known all along this is where it was going.
“Oh for…fuck’s sake Jenny, He’s only five, he doesn’t have a sexuality, he’s just a kid.”
“Don’t cuss at me, I’m just asking…I’m worried…” she whined.
“Worried about what?”
“Well what if he is…? That would just make life…harder for him.” Her reasoning would make sense to most, no parent wants their child’s life to be more difficult than it has to be, but I knew Jenny. I knew how her selfish mind worked and I knew what she really meant. What she really meant was she didn’t want it to be harder for her.
“Jenny…I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to be encouraging!” She hissed.
“Well…fuck! Do you want me to lie!? We’ve talked about this before and honestly I’d be more surprised if he turned out straight, but Jesus, it doesn’t matter! He’s healthy, he’s smart and we love him! What else really matters?” I scolded her.
She didn’t say anything at first. This happened every so often and I knew her family well enough to know they must have said something to her, made a snide comment or inappropriate remark about him to her. That’s why I hated her brothers and mother so much. Her mother was the worst. The brothers were young enough to be of a ‘freer mind’, but they were still assholes. The mother, though, saw being gay as a mortal sin and said so often. She saw almost everything as a mortal sin, except obviously being a horrible judgmental mother and boarder line alcoholic.
“Are you still there?” I finally ask.
“This is your fault, you know?” she groaned, on the verge of hysterics.
“My fault?”
“Yes! Yours! And you know it is!” she screamed at me.
“How?”
“You indulge him! You’re the man, it’s your job to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen! Oh wait. What am I talking about, you’re not a man, that’s why you can keep a woman-“
I hung up on her, I was done. I suppose that wasn’t the adult route to take, but I was tired of hearing her shit. I knew what she was saying. I’d heard it before, I was always to blame for everything. What she was implying was I was letting him be gay, like it was my duty as a father and a man to beat it out of him. She also had a fondness for pointing out that my brother was gay. Every time I said anything about being born that way, genetics or even God, she’d throw that in my face, “Your brothers gay, it’s on your side of the family.” That might be true, but my brother is the best person I know. So I never took it as a slight, if Jaime grew up to be half the person my brother is then I’ve done my job.
Her small mindedness was the main reason we couldn’t stay together. Every time I brought her around to a family event she spent the entire time making snarky remarks about my brother and his boyfriend. I hated it and it embarrassed me, and she was never subtle about it and it turned my family against her and caused some unnecessary tension between my mother and me.
After we had Jaime, her mother said let’s make a deal. Leave me and she could move back home, rent free, they’d buy her a new car and whatever else she wanted or needed. We stayed together a year before she took her mother’s offer. If anything that was the biggest blow to my manhood, not the fact that she cheated on me every chance she got, or that she often told me she didn’t love me and no one ever would, but the fact that I lost my son, that I couldn’t keep him in my home and couldn’t keep my family together, but in truth, it was for the best and it wasn’t as if I truly lost him. I had him four days out of the week, sometimes five. He liked me, much more than he liked her and my mom was his favorite grandma. I love my son and I couldn’t care less that he’ll most likely turn out to be a member to the LGBT community. I’ll be the best dad a gay son could ever ask for. I am not one of those small minded, hyper masculine men who are overly sensitive and easily demoralized, if my son is gay, I won’t see it as my failure or a slight against my being a man, I’ll see it simply as a part of who my son is and I will love him all the more for it. I will be there for his challenges and I will reassure him that he is the best person I know when the dark times come.
She called me back multiple times, but she just wanted to fight and I didn’t have the time or energy. I had to get back to work. I hope her issues change with, if they don’t, his biggest struggle will be his mother. Who will see it as a personal failure, who will say out of line things she won’t be able to take back, she’ll spend his formative years talking about pretty girls and how he needs a girlfriend and she’ll cause him to be too ashamed to tell her who he really is, because she won’t tell him, she’ll love him no matter who he is. I’m not sure she would, as awful as that is to say.
My friends ask if I’d wished I’d waited to have a kid, and the answer sometimes is yes, Jaime wasn’t planned and now I’m bound to his insufferable mother for the rest of my life. But then…I look at my son, his smile, his face, his eyes, his chubby little cheeks and I know…I wouldn’t trade him for the world. He’s perfect just the way he is and I tell him so as often as I can, I say ‘you are perfect just the way you are.’ And he smiles and tells me I’m his best friend. I hug my son at every opportunity and tell him I love him every chance I get. Sometime we lay on the couch and snuggle as he watches his cartoons and I smell his hair. These are moments that if she saw, she’d point out, ‘you shouldn’t do things like that with him, it encourages him.’ And I know I’m making her out to sound like a bad mother, she’s not really, she’s a good mother, But she is crazy.
I love my son, he’s perfect just the way he is and sometimes, when I hug him, I don’t ever want to let go and I don’t feel that’s a bad thing.
