I went out to dinner with a friend last night. We’ve been best friends for thirty years. We are both gay. We met in college at a Gay and Lesbian support group. It was 1996. I was twenty years old.
During dinner, the restaurant manager came to our table to ask how we liked our meal. Then she asked how long we’d been friends and, with a laugh, if we had planned our outfits. We had not. Though we were both wearing flannels like we were still living in the 90s.
She teased good-naturedly that she didn’t believe us, and then looked directly at my friend and said, “I can tell you’re Family.”
Her smile widened, and an easiness seemed to come over her, in the way your body naturally calms when it senses no danger. Then, as if we weren’t strangers, she told my friend and me personal stories about when she realized she was gay, how stringently she had protected the secret about herself that she was certain would destroy relationships with the people she loved the most. She included an intimate story about her mother, noting that she didn’t tell this story often, but continued with the comfort as though she were talking to trusted friends.
She also feared that her secret made her vulnerable to an incredible hate that could incite physical violence, even death, merely by existing, because, like my dinner mate, she would quickly buzz any homophobe’s gaydar.
I didn’t pass her gaydar. I’m always surprised when people can’t tell that I’m gay. When I came out in 1996, the only person who wasn’t surprised was an ex-boyfriend.
We were hanging at a friend’s house drinking beer. The exchange went like this:
“I’m a lesbian.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured.”
Continued drinking beer.
I always thought my gayness showed in my walk, despite my long hair and subtle makeup. But not everyone fit the stereotype. But when you did, you had to be aware of your surroundings. Like my friend and the restaurant manager.
Her name was Mercedes. She was a slender fifty-year-old lesbian from a Hispanic family. My friend and I were the same age as Mercedes, so we understood her insecurities. We were from the same generation.
She talked with us for so long that she eventually pulled out a chair and sat down. Neither of us minded. I listened as she told us her gay coming-of-age stories, and I felt like we were old friends catching up.
Mercedes knew she was gay in second grade when she couldn’t resist the temptation to trail her fingers down her teacher’s smooth exposed calf, which resulted in her parents being called. I had a crush on my kindergarten teacher but had enough sense to keep my hands to myself.
When Mercedes finally came out to her family, it turned out they had always known she was gay and loved her anyway. She has a wife that she has been with for over twenty years. Her journey in life has worked out for her, but that is not the case for many people in our community.
Being shunned and disowned was a brutal reality for many gay people back then. It was why there was such an emphasis on Family in the gay community. For some, being around gay people was the only time they truly felt seen and heard and loved and safe.
Our unexpected yet welcomed conversation with Mercedes, initiated because she recognized my friend as one of her own, made me wonder if today’s young LGBTQ+ generation holds the same high regard for Family within the community as generations past had done.
Or maybe because being gay is tremendously (though not perfectly) more accepted now, the need to look to the community as Family has ceased. Though I am glad that for the most part being gay is no longer something one has to whisper about, it would be a shame if that progress came at the cost of losing the emphasis on Family within the community.
I hope I am wrong.
Mercedes hasn’t let go of her obvious love for community. She gave my friend her number and told us to give her a call whenever we felt like going out. She knows a lot of gay people and enjoyed bringing people together.
I hope there are a lot more people like Mercedes out there.
My bestie and me.
