Mother on her Birthday Day

I’ve been thinking about my mother’s 61^st birthday on Sept. 2, 2001. Mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and she had a psychotic breakdown sometime around Christmas the previous year. Her condition had not stabilized nine months later. She had been in and out of the hospital all that year. She was in fact an inpatient on her birthday, but her doctor thought she was well enough to leave the hospital for a few hours. Dad and I took her to Applebee’s.

We knew that the wait staff sang Happy Birthday to the patrons if they knew it was their birthday, but we didn’t know if Mother was up to that much attention from strangers, so we decided to simply not say anything about it being Mother’s birthday when we went inside the restaurant. But when the waitress was taking our orders, Mother announced the news herself. “It’s my birthday!” She said it like a little kid. Her eyes were wide open but not focused on anything in particular, which is a common thing among people with her condition, and her smile was unusually broad. The waitress politely wished her a happy birthday and went about her business.

The meal went well. Mother remained calm and she didn’t say anything inappropriate to those around us or act out in a way that would have required us to scold her or take her back to the hospital. However, both Dad and I knew what was going to happen, and sure enough, when we were almost finished, about ten restaurant employees came up to our table with balloons and a complementary dessert, and they all sang to Mother. Thankfully, Mother was delighted and not disturbed in the slightest. Dad and I were greatly relieved. It was a sad, funny and sweet moment.

A few thoughts on our sexuality.

Homophobes would have us believe that it’s selfish for us to define ourselves by our sexuality. They claim we dwell on it too much and that we’re obsessed with it. But it’s actually very common for straight people to define themselves according to their sexuality. It’s just that it’s so ordinary, so ubiquitous we often don’t recognize it for what it is in the same way we usually don’t think about the air we breathe. And it’s not just about what we do with our private parts. Homophobes love to reduce it all to the mechanics, but it’s so much more involved. Of course, that is an important element of our sexuality, but it’s also about who we’re attracted to on many levels, who we want to be with, who we identify with, the roles we feel comfortable with when we’re in a relationship, the need to love and be loved as well as the desire for physical intimacy.

Look at all the movies, books and songs that feature heterosexual romance. Listen to what people talk about and gossip about. Titanic, for example, was one of the most successful movies ever, and that’s because those who produced it were smart enough to make the romance between poor boy Jack and rich girl Rose the center of the story. It was tragic and heartbreaking when Jack died, but the fact that Jack and Rose found one another, fell for one another and were able to love one anther for a few days was beautiful and profound. That connection was still important to Rose 80 years later. Audiences ate that up. It didn’t matter that it was fictional. It didn’t matter that we weren’t directly involved or that the story was set so long ago. Millions related to Jack and Rose and adored them. That’s because sex, sexuality, romance and love are important to straight people, and those things are important to LGBT people, as well.

A few thoughts on cause of homophobia.

I don’t see homophobia as an us v. them kind of thing. I think it’s a cultural problem. LGBT people can be homophobic. Sometimes very homophobic. I notice it all the time. And I know that I have a certain amount of residual homophobia in me. We were all raised with it. It’s in our programming.

I also don’t see LGBT rights as something that only benefits LGBT people. Straight people may not want to have sex or romantic relationships with members of the same sex, but homophobia is part of the that whole gender box thing that our culture is cursed with. When we’re born, our parents look us over, and suddenly there are all kinds of expectations placed on us based on what’s going on between our legs. Little boys are expected to be rough and tough. They’re expected to fight and to be strong. And they’re certainly not expected to like other boys in *that way*. Little girls are expected to be sweet, passive, concerned for others and pretty. The system my benefit straight boys in many ways, but we all actually pay a price because none of us fit into that system perfectly no matter our sexuality or how traditionally masculine the boys are or how traditionally feminine the girls are. I think we’re all being held back from our true selves, and we’re all being threatened. If you think straight men only receive the benefits from this cultural system and are never punished, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. Our prisons are full of scary men who were once battered and abused little boys. Many successful and law abiding men were also abused, but they learned how to channel their aggressions in ways that lead to social status and material gain.

Of course, we have to call people out when they harm others, but if that’s all we do, I don’t think we’re going to get far. Rather than simply resting in our own self-righteousness and piously blaming others for all the things we don’t like about our society, I think we have to examine ourselves critically and look for the ways in which we are passing on our cultural problems.