Help From An Uncle, Part 1
Help From An Uncle The first week of summer vacation brought the whole damn bunch---aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins and grandparents. It was like an invading army. The one relative who didn't show was the person everyone talked about---my uncle Bill. I didn't know there was an uncle Bill. "Yeah, he's the blacksheep of the family," mom said. "He'll never show because he knows he might not be welcome." "Why wouldn't he be welcome?" "Because he's gay." It was a joy to hear that someone else in the family was a disappointment. Maybe I wouldn't feel so guilty anymore, I thought. I couldn't wait to meet him. But as mom predicted, he didn't show. I had to go looking for him. He was my dad's youngest brother, but he resembled me more than dad. We were the same height, weight, and build. We both had the same shade of blond hair, the same hairline, and slump in the shoulders when tired. He wasn't all that keen about revealing his address because he had a gay lover who might not believe I was a nephew. He took me home with him only because there was no place else to take me. "So, what do you want from your uncle?" the boyfriend asked. "Some hope. Some encouragement. Some assurance I won't break my mom's heart when I'm ready to tell her I'm gay." "That's too heavy for me," he said, and excused himself to go fix the three of us dinner. "Well now, I'm going to ask you for something," uncle Bill said. "A promise that you'll graduate and go on to college. You want to come around here and be friends, you'll have to work for the right." "Now you sound like an uncle!" his boyfriend hollered from the kitchen. "Okay," I agreed. "Is that a promise?" It was a promise and I made good on it. I finished high school, entered junior college, and got back to him with plans I had made for a nearby university. "Let's celebrate," he said, taking me into his arms. "Let's take him out and get him laid," said the boyfriend. Uncle Bill laughed, then thought about the idea. "Would you like to get laid? I know a cute boy just about your age?" "Your uncle will fix you up," the boyfriend assured me. Uncle Bill chuckled to himself and went for the telephone. "Well, that's what uncles are for." It was an hour-and-a-half wait before the doorbell rang, but the cute guy who came into the bedroom and sat down next to me brought a lot of excitement with him. What I learned while growing up was how to hide excitement like that, how to hide my feelings. I had the idea that admitting i was gay would be an admission of something terrible. "Please, God, change me," I used to pray. He did. By giving me an uncle who made me examine my thinking. What was Hamlet's line? "There is nothing either good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."
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