The most painful sentence a parent can say to a child? Long-grown man admits emotional trauma still rings in his head today
You and I know each other personally. I knew you were gay, of course, and I knew you never said you were going to your parents' house for the weekend. You've made no secret of the fact that you don't see them and you have a complicated relationship. However, we never really got into exactly what it was that affected your relationship so much that you went your separate ways. Do you have a problem talking about it even among people you're comfortable with?
You know I like to nitpick, but I do it alone. I'm kind of a perpetual dissector of everything that's going on around me, but I don't always want to or know how to share it. I'm not set up that way. I've always been annoyed by the stereotype that gay men are necessarily chatty friends and gossips. (Laughs) I'm neither.
Yet you decided to give me an interview. I know there's been some conflict about you being gay. At least that's the rough outline of why things aren't working out with your family. What made you finally open up to me? I appreciate it, by the way...
I've read a lot of the interviews you write and I feel like it makes sense. You know what I mean? I like them. I've cried at some of them because I can relate to them. I'd like to add my bit to the mill, too. I think I have something to add, and I want someone to maybe feel better because of me and like to read it too.
Have you always been more of a private person?
I was. Ever since I was a kid. I don't even like noise or noisy people. They get on my nerves. Sometimes I get on my nerves. (Laughs) I just like quiet and I don't like over-communication and I don't like to be the center of attention. My boyfriend is the same way. For him, it's complicated by the fact that he has a past that he doesn't like to share because he's not proud of it, even though he's learned from it. So we generally prefer to stay out of some of the action on social media or whatever.
When we get to the split with his parents and the cause of it: was it a one-off event or some long-term trend that resulted in the separation?
A long-term trend that ended with a very strong event.
My dad would always make light of things with this one line, "As long as you're not gay." For example, when I got scolded for a bad grade, when he felt that enough was enough, he would hug me and tell me that he loved me, that it didn't matter, that I got an F, that I would learn, as long as I wasn't a homosexual, or a faggot - he said it quite colorfully, of course. Then he laughed every time, as if the subject could never concern him. He was visibly contemptuous of gays and would never have thought his son was.
And Mommy?
She doesn't like to talk about the subject. She finds it literally rude.
Is it rude to fall in love with a man when you're a man, or what exactly?
So. Just any intimate, amorous, erotic or romantic situation between two guys or two girls. To her, it's on the level of seeing me in a porno. She's always taken it on the same level.
Have you ever pitched your view? Have you contradicted it?
Not for a long time. Then I tried now and then, but usually my parents either laughed or got really mad at me for not standing up for deviants and stuff. Of course there were comparisons to various perversions, fetishism, even paedophilia. It's all in the same bag.
Paedophilia?!
Yes. And that's what my dad told me when I came out to him about having a boyfriend. It hurt me so much.
How did you manage to come out in that environment?
I didn't. My boyfriend gave me the courage. He told me that until it was out, we wouldn't live freely and we would hide, which he was right. We live in at least a relatively free country, so he got me with the argument that I was depriving myself of freedom by hiding who I was. There are people in different parts of the world who would give anything for my situation. If they could walk down the street holding hands with a boy without fearing for their lives. I figured it was true. That just because I'm grateful for where I was born, I have to say it.
And how did that go?
Terrible. You can't imagine. After all these years of hearing how gays, lesbians and "all those weird, deranged perverts" are at least reprehensible, if not forbidden to be who they are, it was terribly hard.
How to ban? What would parents welcome as a solution for LGBTQ+ people?
The classic solutions, of course, included the military, a few slaps or a proper woman. You know...
I get it.
So you came out to your parents. Alone?
Yes, alone. I didn't want to put my boyfriend through this. But he was waiting for me downstairs, and we had the phone secretly on speaker. I came in like I always do, my mom asked me what I was going to eat right away, my dad barely registered because he was watching the news. Everything as normal. So I sat down and I just said, "Mom, what if I had a boyfriend?" I couldn't think of anything better. And I heard my phone vibrate in my pocket as my boyfriend burst out laughing.
Sounds like a straight start! What was the aftermath?
My mom pretended not to hear me and my dad yelled from the TV something like, "No way!" After it was quiet for a while, I said I was serious, I was in love. Mom stopped cooking, gave me the most disappointed look I've ever seen and said, "Well you can't be serious. Why on earth?" I didn't really know what to say to that. And then it got ugly.
Dad?
Yeah. Dad got up out of his chair and asked me a few stupid questions, like if I like tails that much or if I'm a buxom. If he didn't spank me enough when I was little or if he should do it now. We had a huge fight. We yelled at each other and it looked like my dad was really gonna hit me. So I got mad.
You haven't seen your parents since?
Just my mom at the move-in. I went to get a few things. Mom pretended not to see me, just asked if I was serious. Dad wasn't home. That was it. Our relationship ended twelve years ago like this. I expected that in time they'd realize they liked me and maybe reach out. But nothing. And neither did I.
Aren't you sorry you didn't take that step? That you didn't, like, reach out after a year and try?
No, I didn't. These people have hurt me so deeply, hurt me so deeply...
What's the worst line that resonates with you to this day?
That I'm one step away from hurting my kids. I don't want to say it exactly the way my father said it because it makes me sick. I can still hear it in my ears when I think of him. Unbelievable anger, insolence, nastiness...! I don't know what other word to use.
Do you feel it as emotional trauma?
No doubt. It really haunts me to this day: That my own parents would think that of me. I still haven't processed it. I was in my early twenties at the time, a kid. I'm in my thirties now, and even though I've imagined a thousand times what I'd say now, how I'd handle it, I haven't come up with the perfect version. It still just hurts.
