#74: Coming out to my parents (AGAIN)

My father and I get together for lunch once every couple of months. We’ve done this for years, the rarity decided by his packed CEO-Master-of-the-Universe diary. He has recently retired, so in theory a lunch date should be easier to organise now, but he has started trotting out that OAP mantra “I don’t know how I found the time to work, I’m just so busy…”, which is exacerbated by the fact he and his wife divide their time between two homes, neither of which is in London.
I booked in this lunch slot deliberately to be after my mum’s visit a couple of weeks ago, so I could tell them both within a reasonable window. I know the news won’t be a shock, as I sort of came out to him before anyone else, when his frank question 18 months ago (at another lunch) was the snowball that kicked off the Strexit avalanche in the first place. But I’m a little nervous, regardless.
He has been either polite or considerate enough not to push the issue any further in the intervening time, waiting for me to tell him more as and when I’m ready. He’s classy like that, my daddy.
Over lunch, he asked how I was and I told him matter-of-factly that we’re separating, the house is under offer, and I’m now an out gay man. He buttered his bread and told me how delighted he was for me and that he was in awe of my patience: that he could never have stayed this long to sort everything out so cleanly. I had intuited that my mother — who still hadn’t called or attempted to make any contact since I came out to her — would be pissed off if he found out first (given her reaction, I don’t know why I bothered). He agreed that was probably wise, and discussing her, he pointed out that she was terribly homophobic, always had been.
HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS?
Apparently they had discussed the possibility that I might be queer when I was a teenager — and wasn’t trying especially hard to hide the fact that I was screwing most of my mates — and she had been horrified by the concept, unable to address it and content to deny what she could see to be true.
Lunch went well and my father was so lovely about it all, telling me he just wanted me to be happy.
Later that evening, I finally called my mum. We had a blazing row on the phone, where I told her that she had not been supportive, that she hadn’t asked any of the questions she was supposed to and that I had taken her refusal to make contact with me as shame. She told me I was being stupid, that she obviously loved me unconditionally and that she didn’t see any point in dragging it all up. What was said was said and she couldn’t care less who I slept with. These were not the words of someone embracing my gayness. I said it was clear she was struggling to come to terms with it — and that that was fine — but that she had to find a way to deal with it and that it wasn’t my responsibility to show her a way to accept me. She hung up.
The following day, she followed me on my personal Instagram and liked all my pictures. In the evening, she called me, drunk, to tell me that she had liked my posts to show that she loves me. God, parents are weird. She told me she loved me and that she wasn’t ashamed of me but she didn’t need any gory details and she was worried that I would end poor and homeless and get AIDS and do drugs and die.
Baby steps.
