Gay Dads HELP

Tags

Fatherhood, Gay Men

I’ve created a new blog and I need your help.

In the last couple of months I’ve come to know at least three individuals in my extended social group of formerly married gay fathers who have experienced close calls with suicide. About 6 months before this, several of us had met to discuss what we could do to help men in our situation.

There are a lot of resources in today’s world for gay teens and young adults. There are coming out stories to read and hotlines to call. That is all fantastic. But a man who has been married to a woman and who carries fatherhood responsibilities lives with an entirely unique weight of responsibility during the whole coming out process. Those of us who have been through it know how lonely, hopeless and yet exciting and freeing it can be.

Without knowing HOW we could help, the suggestion was thrown out that perhaps a website just for gay fathers would help.

So, I created one. Here it is.

But this is just the bare bones of what I hope it becomes. I need your help to provide content. One would think there are a lot of sites like this but there are not. Just google “gay dad” or “gay fathers” and you get discussions about coupled gay men deciding to become parents through adoption, surrogacy, etc. That’s wonderful of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

Men who came out after becoming fathers are different. They and their kids need to know they aren’t alone. They need to know how others have navigated the terrifying waters and how to get help in a crisis. Some of us need to tell our stories. That’s what this site is all about.

If this is you I hope you’ll help me build the site by sending me:

• Your story. Anonymous stories are welcome but I also hope to include some out and proud men here. I will be writing mine and placing here.
• Your child’s story. There are a lot of fathers who lose contact or enter into troubled relationships with their kids after coming out. I hope that some of us can get our kids to share their stories of how they’ve dealt with their father coming out. It could help some other child.
• A blog entry with helpful thoughts, advice, etc.
• Any additional resources such as lawyers, therapists, books, links to blogs and such.

This site is not going to be LDS focused. It will zero in on formerly or currently married gay men who have children of any age. All religions and nationalities are welcome.

Please help me make this a valuable resource by sending content and ideas my way!

Where Will You Go?

Tags

Apostasy, Coming Out, Fatherhood, Mormonism

Mormon apostle Russell Ballard gave a talk in October 2016 General Conference entitled “To Whom Shall We Go?” where he said the following:

If any one of you is faltering in your faith, I ask you the same question that Peter asked: “To whom shall [you] go?” If you choose to become inactive or to leave the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where will you go? What will you do? The decision to “walk no more” with Church members and the Lord’s chosen leaders will have a long-term impact that cannot always be seen right now.

A new website, wherewillyougo.org, has been dedicated to former Mormons submitting their own answers explaining where they’ve gone and how that’s worked out for them. This is my submission:

——————————————————————

10 years ago as a gay, newly divorced father of four and former Mormon, where I would go and what I would do was indeed the looming question

A lifetime of seminary, sunday school, priesthood, mission, BYU and church leadership had me imagining myself at best as a drug addicted felon like Matt Foley living in a van down by the river with no friends, family, job. At worst, I’d lose my family in the eternities.

The fear is real. And some of it is well-founded. I had a difficult time financially and emotionally for several years. Divorce in and of itself can and often does do that to a man. Add coming out and leaving your lifelong religion to the mix and it’s not going to be a cakewalk. But as I tell other men in the same position I was in 10 years ago, don’t divorce thinking you’re transitioning into some dreamlike peace and happiness. Do it if divorce is a reward in and of itself.

I’d offer the same advice for awakening Mormons making a rough decision to leave or to stay. Leaving needs to be a reward in and of itself, regardless of what exciting or terrifying experiences lie ahead. For me, divorcing and leaving Mormonism have indeed been their own rewards. I have had the exciting task of developing my own moral compass and creating a life that reflects my true soul rather than sticking to what some men tell me is “safe” and acceptable.

I’ve chosen to love my fellow man and have rejected doctrine, policies, standards and beliefs that don’t show that love…and it has made all the difference in the world.

Fatherhood has been my crowning achievement in that. In all that has passed, my four kids have always come first. I believe I’m a better father today than I ever would have been working 10+ hours a week out of the home on church callings, unhappily married to their mother and repressing such a fundamental part of my soul. I’ve been fortunate over the years to spend 1 on 1 time with each of my children and I have an unconditionally loving relationship with them, even with the ones who are still gravitating towards the LDS church.

What’s new is that my entire life is patterned after my own hard-fought-for values, rather than the pre-packaged standards and rules created by others. I’m still single. I haven’t replaced Mormonism with a different belief system. I still have good days and bad days. But I’ve experienced deep passionate love, familial love and acceptance, and financial successes that shadow the failures.

Where did I go?

Towards love, authenticity, and a genuine daily life. It has made not pretending worth it.

How Can She Not Realize?

Tags

Apostasy, Belief, Fatherhood, Mormonism

Major breakthrough #2

Three years ago my oldest daughter broke the news to me that she doesn’t like to go to church because it doesn’t make any sense to her. I was thrilled. That was breakthrough #1

In the years since, she has exerted her independence and rarely goes to church even when she’s with her mom. In fact we have  a nice routine on Sundays that she’s with her mom. She says she has to work and comes to have brunch with me.

The next oldest daughter does what  she sees her brother do. He’s on a mission and i anticipate she’ll go one day too.

My youngest (12), on the other hand, is harder to read. She’s talked about going on a mission, about believing it all and so I’ve assumed that that’s her path. But something just happened that gives me hope

I’m taking youngest to see the traveling Broadway version of Sound of Music at  tomorrow evening, Sunday, but it’s not my weekend. She wanted me to come get her early so she could hang out with some of her friends who are getting together for lunch. I said I’d ask her mother if she was OK with it. Mom said no because it’s during her church time. This is how I broke the news to my youngest and her reaction!

TWO of my kids might be doubters!!!!

“How can she not realize?”

How did I not realize! I think we’re going to have a fun father-daughter date tomorrow.

Friends

Tags

Father's Day, Fatherhood, Friendship

“Friend” is an odd word.

During my teaching English as a Second Language days, my students often expressed frustration with American usage of that word.

“You use that word all the time! EVERYONE is a friend. But that means no one really is.”

“It doesn’t appear that Americans have friends. At least not in the way we use the word in my country.”

Ouch.

Of course I have friends. I have several cherished long time friends. I have friends I can not speak to for years and then reconnect with and immediately it feels as if we were never apart. I know a lot of Americans who say that very same thing.

But that example only serves to make my students’ point. The kind of friends they’re talking about are the kind that would never go years without speaking to each other. To them, a “friend” is a person that makes up an integral part of their daily life in their thoughts, emotions and activities. To them a friend is like an appendage; when you leave it behind it causes deep pain. The type of friends they are talking about are the type of friends that would play heavily into a decision to move or not. Mostly not.

I have to admit that I don’t really have those kinds of friends.

Most of my friends have been situational. By that I mean we were thrust into the same location by chance.Our close proximity caused us to reach out to serve a basic human need of belonging and likeness and so we became “friends.” But once the situation was over, we all went our separate ways and the friendship essentially ended except for nostalgic reunions on Facebook and occasional messages of “Congratulations” for a new job or “Happy Birthday.” You know, Christmas card friends.

I do have friends who have stuck their necks out for me in shockingly unselfish ways and for whom I’d give the shirt off my back. I’m so fortunate in that regard. These are the ones who you can look to in a time of need… and who you hope feel the same about you. As special as these friends are, they are not intimately involved in my day-to-day life and that’s what sets them apart from the friends my students described.

I have high school and college “friends” I cherish dearly but I can’t call any of them up right now to go have a drink with me. They don’t live nearby.  I have work “friends” I’ve collected at various jobs on my diverse resume, but we only stay in touch on Facebook. I have many international “friends” from my time in Brazil, Japan and while teaching but none of us are planning to meet anytime soon. I have gay friends, ex-Mormon friends and every combination in between but they are more close community members with some things in common.

My mission companions are like that. For 2-4 short months we were paired up and involved in some pretty intense day to day activities with a lot of emotional investment and vulnerability. Like friends, we encouraged one another, laughed a lot and cried some. Then, when a transfer came we hugged and walked away to do it again with someone else. I liked most of my companions and got along swimmingly with each one of them except for the first one. Funny that he’s the only one who has reached out to me on Facebook! The others I’ve interacted little to none with despite my attempts. Two of them were at BYU with me afterwards but showed no interest in getting together. The others are in Brazil somewhere with common names that return hundreds of results on Facebook friend searches.

Whether it be school friends, work colleagues, or travel encounters these situational friendships are a lifeline and something I cherish in my life, but once the situation ends the close friendship wanes. I don’t mean to disparage those relationships in my life at all. Some of them continue thanks to Facebook and telephones, but at a distance. My American tendency for residential mobility means that I’m only in one place long enough to start friendships. I’m rarely in one neighborhood, town, state or even country long enough to follow through with the kind of long-term friendships that my students described and for which I sometimes feel at a loss.

All my intimate relationships have been something I call friendships but even those have deteriorated into something stilted and casual once the partnership ended. The friendship portion was entirely dependent on our intimate pillar to hold it up (which is probably why they didn’t endure).

I just had a career defining event happen to me last week and I while I have lots of “friends” I could share that information with who would cheer and celebrate with me, I don’t have anyone who would come over and bust out in tears of joy with me because they know how hard I’ve worked for it, how much I needed this. THAT’S the kind of friend my students are talking about and the kind of friends I’m missing.

Today is Father’s Day and I’m alone all day. By prior arrangement, my kids are on an international trip with their mother and I likely won’t even get a call today. We celebrated early, but my point is that I don’t have a close enough friend that knows this about me … someone who would know how much it sucks and acknowledge it or try to abate the suckiness of it.

I don’t think I’m alone in this desert of friendship either. I look around and I don’t see the kind of relationships my students described. We Americans are an independent and transient bunch. Our friendships tend to fall victim to other priorities and values. My European students placed their intimate friendships higher on the value chain than we would and had the close lifelong friends to show for it. Some of them would even top family, career, independence and money with their dearest, most intimate friendships.

My only experience with that involved using something like that sort of friendship as a tool (which of course means that it probably really wasn’t that kind of relationship).

At one point in my “trying to be straight” past, I read a lot of reparative therapy and ex-gay material (I also went to some counseling along those lines). The theory was that same-sex attracted (gay) men just needed to find healthy non-sexual bonding friendships with other men and that that would help “cure” them. I tried it and the timing seemed to be perfect because a very hetero friendship was sparked between me and another single guy at church. We did everything together almost every day and even became roommates at one point. I wasn’t attracted to him at all, so the theory was working! It worked so well that I also got close to his sister and ended up marrying her. Today this friend, my former brother-in-law, won’t even speak to me or look me in the eye if family events bring us together in the same room.

Even in my most longing moments, like right now, I’m not sure I’d be able to find that, or even want that friend again. I know especially that I wouldn’t even know how to nurture that in my life. But I’m open to learning.

I’m proud and bewildered to say that I believe my son has that with his friends. He has a closeness with a small circle of friends that I believe will last a lifetime. There’s a flip side to that as well. He’ll probably make life choices that will put those friendships higher on his chain of values than I wish he would. I’m confident that that will keep him Mormon unless one of them leaves. I worry that he’ll make education and career choices based on proximity to these friendships rather than based on his own strengths and ambitions. But then, those kind of sacrifices are exactly what my students were telling me that they’ve made for their friends, the choices that make their friendships stand above what they’ve witnesses on their travels here in America.

Friendship is an odd thing I haven’t quite figured out yet.

 

Also See Previous Father’s Day posts:

Happy Father’s Day! Ignore The Comediennes and Douche Bags

 

Mother’s Day

 

12 Summer Highlights…so far

 

 

Things That Make Me Smile #6

Tags

Fatherhood, homo, Humor, Movies, TV

Please Like Me

I found this little binge-worthy gem on Hulu. It was a Friday night alone after a long, hard traveling work week. I was exhausted and didn’t have the energy to go out but still felt like spending some quality time with my own kind. After surfing Amazon Prime Video and Netflix I was lamenting to myself the lack of quality LGBTQ entertainment when I stumbled upon this Australian diamond.
There are 2 seasons on Hulu that follow Joshua an obviously gay, but only freshly out twenty-year-old through his underachieving life with his straight friends and dysfunctional parents. Some have called it the LGBTQ “GIRLS.” These are definitely imperfect people just like in Girls, but if you’re like me you’ll still appreciate the occasional eye candy, like Joshua’s first boyfriend Geoffrey

 

The fact that I was nominated for a Brodie award!

The purpose of the Brodie Awards is to recognize Mormon themed material on the Internet. There are several categories, and I’m nominated in TWO! (Confession: I nominated one of my blog posts – which is totally legit, but someone else nominated another of my blog posts!)

Go vote for me if you agree that these blog posts should win the category:

• Funniest Humor Piece: Dad’s Primal Scream’s Insta-Gay and Lickety-Split Lesbian
• Best Mormon Parenting Piece: Dad’s Primal Scream’s series on his kids and the policy

Also, consider voting for my friends in these categories:

• Most Poignant Personal Story: I just ache, by Kiley
• Best Advice: Appearing on the TLC Network will only get you into trouble, by Gay Mormon Southpaw
• Best Response to Apologetics: Kennewick Man breaks Heartland hearts, by Simon Southerton
• Best Mormonism-and-Gender Discussion: Why It’s Tough to Be a Mormon Man, by Angela C
• Best LDS-Interest Book (Fiction): A Danger to God Himself, by John Draper

If nothing else, go read all these posts nominated in the category of Best Mormonism-and-Orientation Post:

• Soulmates, by myrtlejoy
• Church Lovingly Bars Certain Children from Membership, by Stake Pres.
• Revelation that Calls for Others to Sacrifice, by Lynnette
• Duty Bound to Reject it! by Bill Reel
• LDS Church Clarifies Stance on Same-Sex Childhood Apostasy, by Russ Stewart
• Consequences, Intended or Otherwise, by Julie M. Smith
• Michael Ferguson, Seth Anderson/ Fighting Gay Conversion Therapy, by Mormon Stories

Some recent smart ass memes

GeoGuesser

As a complete Geography nerd I love this game/time-waster. Using Google street view, the game drops you at a random location in the world and your task is to figure out where it is. After quite a bit of moving around, I can sometimes get within yards of guessing the actual starting point… Great fun. It’s available on smartphone too!

 

Taking my girls on their first Ski trip!

Almost every winter I’ve taken the kids to play in the snow in local mountains (Remember, they’ve grown up in Southern California and Phoenix). But this year I cashed in some travel points and took them full on skiing in nearby New Mexico.

After a morning of lessons, they hit the slopes and by day’s end they’d all converted to ski bunnies.

The next day we explored Santa Fe.

This was the first time they had ever seen snow fall! That led to one of the comments every dad wants to hear on a family vacation,

This is one of the best moments of my life!! Thanks Dad!

 

Relatives of LDS Church Authorities With the Balls to Speak up in Support of LGBT folks

• Laura Roper Andreasen – Granddaughter of LDS Apostle M. Russell Ballard

• Eric Reeves, Son of LDS Relief Society General Presidency 2nd Counselor Linda S. Reeves, Encourages Open Opposition to LDS Church SGA Policy Changes

The irony that the “other” Mormons are more Christian/Christ-like and their “Prophet” more of a leader than LDS counterparts

• Stephen M. Veazey, Prophet-President of Community of Christ (Formerly RLDS Church)

Nope, still not joining another religion, but this would definitely be one I’d consider if I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Does That?

I used to think it was just me, all my fault. As I came out and divorced years ago a certain sister of mine has treated me pretty apathetically. If I call or visit or take some sort of initiative there will be interaction.

Beyond that, she’s only made the initiative to socialize and interact with my ex-wife. More than once I’ve shown up at my ex’s house to pick up my kids and have seen my sister’s car in the driveway. I’ve been at family functions where my sister has all but ignored me. My kids have offhandedly mentioned times that my sister has invited my ex-wife and her new husband out to dinner. We live in the same city and I’ve seen her  maybe 3-4 times over the past 4 years – all my doing.

To clarify, I used to be close to my sister up until about the time she got married just before my mission. Something after that clicked. It clicked off. And I don’t dislike her husband. I do feel disliked though. Of all my siblings we were previously the closest and that just flicked off at some point. No real conflict took place. Just distance and tangential lives. Normal, I guess.

My ex-wife and sister had no significant relationship before the divorce. This isn’t a continuation of a tight ongoing relationship. Not once in my married life did my sister and ex-wife do something alone together. We always lived in different cities back then. In fact my ex-wife didn’t really like my sister and was somewhat intimidated by her. More than once I defended my sister to her.

Over the past 10 years I’ve always chalked all that up to my sister and her husband being True Blue Mormons and thus how she must feel obligated to treat me for me being an apostate… or, for me being gay.

I’m not sure which, maybe both.

But last weekend, I had an experience and an epiphany that might reveal another explanation…

My Uncle died on Christmas Day in Salt Lake City.

My oldest sibling created a Instant Message on Facebook to let us all know about the funeral arrangements. No one else said they were going, so I coordinated a gift of flowers for my aunt and cousins from all of us. Then, when I messaged my cousin to ask where I should send the flowers, my cousin said that I had just come up in conversation with my aunt about how much the time I spent visiting them during my college days at BYU had meant to them.

I choked up reading that message. I hadn’t experienced much positive affirmation from family so that meant a lot.

My aunt and uncle were really good to me during that period of my life and their home was always open to me at the drop of a hat if I needed to get away for the weekend while at BYU.

Maybe I should go to the funeral after all? It’s a good 12 hour drive for me… but then a brother who lives 1/2 ways said he’d go if someone would come pick him up… And that made my decision. I was going.

The decision felt right. We announced our decision on our group message and I called my Dad who lives in Salt Lake City to tell him we were coming.

Sorry if I’m boring you to death, but that background was necessary to set up what I witnessed.

After all that coordination on our group chat with sending the flowers, carpooling with my brother and such, we (me, my brother and my Dad whom we’d picked up to join us) showed up at the funeral and guess who we saw… My sister and her husband.

She lives in the same F-ing city as me. And didn’t even think to share with my brother and I that she was going to the funeral. And that’s not the weird part. She hadn’t told my Dad she was coming and for the couple of days that she was there didn’t interact with him beyond the funeral.

Who does that?

Who goes to a family  funeral out of town where their parent lives and doesn’t visit or call or even tell him that she’s coming?

Wow! My sister is a far greater bitch than I’d preciously given her credit for… Or, she and her husband are just incredibly socially retarded.  And she’s not only that way with me. She treats her own father like that?!

In my attempt not to be judgmental, I tried to think of some other alternative explanation… I guess I was OK with her being a bitch to just me, but witnessing her treat my father like that it dawned on me that maybe she or her husband, or both of them, have some sort of high functioning Asperger’s Syndrome or something.

Is that possible?

I mean, how else do you explain the blatant cluelessness of social norms and human intimacy?

My sister is very wealthy and her interaction with family has always been money driven. If someone begs sufficiently, she lends a hand. I am not aware of any bad blood between her and our Dad. Maybe she lent him some money he hasn’t paid back? I don’t know.

But still, who does that?

My Dad is a good man. He wasn’t a bad father, He never inflicted abuse on anyone. He was often absent working to support a wife and 8 children. He financed the college education for this particular sister and I…something I appreciate deeply now as a father of four. The worst thing my Dad ever did was defer almost entirely to our Mom on everything and maintained his church activity at tepid at best. He was never going to be bishop, but he also never bad-mouthed or discouraged church activity.

Today was his birthday (78) and after talking to him on the phone it appears that out of 8 children only 3 of us called him to wish him a happy birthday…all 3 of us are apostates. Nothing from the devoted, active Mormons.

So much for being a family oriented church, huh!

Children of Gays and Mormon Credibility

Tags

Family, Fatherhood, Gay, Homosexuality and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I recall vividly the very first time it dawned on me that a Mormon Apostle could be and indeed WAS full of BS.

Let me take you back in time…

I believe it was April General Conference 1993. I was 28, unmarried, closeted, BYU grad, returned missionary, former MTC instructor and zone leader, working full time teaching English as a Second Language and taking graduate courses in Linguistics. I was active LDS and the Ward Executive Secretary in my single’s ward.

I wasn’t doubting.

In fact I’d never really doubted. Oh, I had a few things I’d tossed up on that testimony shelf where you put things that just don’t sit right, but I was all in. Certain things about LDS “culture” rubbed me the wrong way, but I was hardly skeptical by default. I was even one of those priesthood dorks who actually paid attention to the talks.

One particular talk by Dallin H Oaks called The Language of Prayer at first glance seemed pretty innocuous.  He was just saying that the church teaches us to use honorary, respectful language in prayers. Pretty harmless, right? The message was OK. But if you know anything about linguistics the reasoning he articulated was absurd. He’s just plain and simply wrong about the language. His logic was completely circular and made no sense. If you’re curious, here is an analysis.

My point is that he was trying to sound like an expert about an area he clearly knew nothing about. He was as bizarre as Ben Carson talking about the Pyramids. If he was a mouthpiece for God, then God was a moron.

This mattered a great deal to me at the time. I tried to talk to my roommate about the problems in the talk, but that hit a brick wall. I waited for the next Sunday to see if anyone else would want to talk about the silly talk… all I got were crickets.

I walked away realizing that:

• An LDS Apostle can be wrong in a fundamental way.
• He’ll present himself as an expert anyway.
• The majority of my fellow Mormons will obey and lap it up without a critical thought.
• Mormons don’t care about the means as long they get to their predetermined conclusion.
• Nobody cares.

Mormon leaders are wrong about gays. They’re wrong in the way they are dealing with children of gays.

They are wrong in a very fundamental way. I won’t be able to reach the analytical prowess on this topic that a gazillion other blogs will over the next few days, but I know that Mormon leaders are wrong and misguided and selfish…

• They are presenting themselves as experts anyway
• The majority of  active Mormons will obey and lap it up without a critical thought.
• Mormons don’t care about the means as long they get to their predetermined conclusion.
• SOME people care

That last part really means something to me right now. I have been having a really difficult time lately finding places I fit in and finding a community. I don’t have a group of gay friends here like I did in Palm Springs. When I’ve attended Ex-Mormon events in town I’ve felt accepted, but never quite found friends.

It’s really just me and my kids right now and so this new “Children of gays” thing feels evil and personal to me.

But today I’m touched by the indignation and emotion expressed by straight folks, fellow ex-Mormons and the usual allies at the various social media sites I participate in. Thanks you to any of you reading this…

Just understand that that horror and disbelief you are expressing today encapsulates my general reaction to how the church taught me to think about myself for 40 years. Pretty sick, huh!

I have tons of questions:

• My kids are already baptized. Will they have to disavow me at some point?
• Would they?
• Which child would?
• I’m not married. Does that make the whole thing mute anyway?
• Do I have to be married for my kids to qualify for the bigotry? I’m not a big enough threat as a single gay man alone? Way to kick me when I’m down!
• Will my children be grandfathered in? I mean, will they be called in to disavow me?
• My kids live with me 50% of the time. Can they get ex-communicated for that?
• If so, how can I encourage that along?
• Why couldn’t this have happened 10 years ago before my kids got baptized and when I WAS living with a guy?
• Can I  use this as evidence in court that my child’s participation in church is an act of alienating them from me?
• Am I wrong in thinking that if I ever find out a child of mine “disavows” me after turning 18 that I will disavow any financial support?

There’s a whole lot more I could say. And as I’m typing this, there’s some mock interview being posted of one of the apostles defending the church’s divisive policy. They got the guy with a gay brother to be the point person on bigotry towards children of gays. NICE.  I’ll watch it…

Here’s what I can tell you… the word “clarify” does not mean what they think it means. And…

• That LDS Apostle is wrong in a fundamental way.
• He presents himself as an expert anyway.
• The majority of active Mormons will obey and lap it up without a critical thought.
• Mormons don’t care about the means as long they get to their predetermined conclusion.
• People care.

That last part is the only part that matters to me today. It’s the part that is going to make Mormons look like the short bus of religions in the not too distant future.

One last note on your way home tonight, Mormons! Don’t forget to turn your clocks back 50 years.

Parent or Putz?

Tags

Fatherhood, Parenting

Am I a good parent or a putz?

I’ve got to admit the question flashes through my mind constantly. Not having ever discovered the definitive parenting manual, I end up winging it most of the time.

The lucky part is that my kids, by nature, need very little discipline. I don’t say that with blinders on. I know where my son and daughters’ weaknesses lie. My kids just don’t end up blatantly violating the boundaries I’ve set up. The hard part is that my kids are very different from one another and need varied styles of guidance and encouragement.

Last night I winged it.

Last night my 13 year old daughter presented me with an almost exact duplicate of a situation that I encountered with her older sister just two years prior. And about halfway through last night’s event it dawned on me that I handled the two girls’ dilemmas completely differently. Exactly opposite in fact.

To be honest, it was so bad that I found myself wanting to say to my daughter last night, “Um, don’t tell your sister that I’m doing this for you. She”ll get upset”

Aand there’s your sign.

There’s your sign that someone feels guilty. Secrecy.

Here’s the situation. Tell me what you think:

It’s late in the afternoon on a Fall weekend that the kids are with their mother. In a perfect world I’d have some awesome plans for myself to go out, maybe even on a date. But I don’t. Daughter calls me up and asks if I’d drive her to to a haunted house because Mom can’t or won’t. I don’t have anything else to do so I say, “Sure.”

Up to this point the two situations are almost identical, just a couple of years apart.

Almost.

I’m free. The kids want to go be with friends. They’re reaching out to me because Mom is unavailable. It’s a little annoying that it’s last minute, but they’re teenagers… I ended up refusing to take daughter A, but gladly taking daughter B. Is that fair?

The situations were almost the same. Here’s where they differed…

Daughter A: 2 years ago I was unemployed with very little money and driving an unreliable car. I arrived to pick up daughter A and asked where the haunted house was. She gave me the address and it so happened to be on the opposite site of the metropolitan area we live in. An hour away at least and a good $20 in gas! I asked how she was getting home and she replied, “I’m not sure. I think one of my friends’ sister is driving us back.” At that point I said NO. She threw a fit, I held my ground at NO and she proceeded to lose it some more. I took her out for some Taco Bell. We sat in the car in the parking lot to talk and she began to regurgitate all her 14 year old problems to me… and sitting there listening to my little girl talk to me was one of my favorite parenting nights ever. She asked to spend the night and I blogged about it here.

Daughter B: I now have a decent job and a reliable, economical car. Daughter B calls up last night to say she had arranged to go to the haunted house with a couple of friends. Two of them bought the $25 tickets online just before the third, whose parent had previously agreed to drive, called to cancel. She had arranged it all ahead of time and it fell through. I said that I’d take them if the other girl’s parent would pick them up. Agreed, and all was OK. I was available. I had the means. They had a certain ride back.

Unlike this title implies I am confident I made the right parenting choice in both situations. What causes me hesitation, though, is directly related to my son’s mission farewell a couple of months ago.

In a few years I can picture myself sitting in an LDS chapel for daughter B’s mission farewell listening to her utter the same words her brother did… saying essentially that the only valid family is a Christ-centered family. It  disregarded any parenting that I had done over his 18 years and made it appear as if his mother and her husband were his only valid parents, his only valid family. Never mind the hours I’d driven in his behalf, the tears I’ve wiped, the underwear I’ve laundered, the vomit I’ve cleaned, the ceremonies I’ve attended, the meals I’ve cooked and the values I’ve taught.

It left me wondering if I’d done it right. Did I do this to myself by parenting essentially with my head down, ignoring the LDS upbringing with his Mom, not nurturing resentment and conflict? Did I passively turn myself into a putz?

Experience tells me that any small move I’d taken to talk to him about his mothers religion would have alienated him and driven a wedge between us. I can and actually do say slightly more with my daughters. But with him I had to make a different choice.

Still, it was an anguishing experience to sit and listen to the utter lack of respect or honor that my 18 years of fathering him had earned me in his eyes. It made me feel like a putz rather than the parent that I know I am.

The Time Has Come

Tags

Fatherhood, LDS Mission

The moment has arrived.

The anticipation of this moment is why I started this blog in the first place.

My son, my oldest child, leaves for his mission in 3 days. Tomorrow is his farewell at church.

[Insert Dad’s actual primal scream here]

What a hodgepodge of emotion.

• I’m devastated that he’s been successfully indoctrinated enough to arrive at this point.
• I’m excited for him to see the world outside his insular Mormon community,
• I’m thrilled he’ll get to experience leaving the country for an extended period of time.
• I’m disappointed that he hasn’t really thought about what he’ll really be doing.
• I’m feeling inadequate and powerless to prepare him for the reality of what’s ahead.
• I’m troubled that he hasn’t even remotely gone through the process that he’ll be encouraging his investigators to go through.
• I’m disappointed in myself, that I haven’t done enough to expose him to the alternative.
• I’m feeling left out of all the Mormon-ish preparations and celebratory events.
• I feel intentionally left out of the fatherly role entirely.
• I feel like I’m losing my son to a cult… officially
• I am worried about his physical welfare…I know the piss-poor conditions of missionary accommodations, the lack of concern for health, the lack of vigilance for his health and well-being by the church he’ll be working for.
• I’m proud that his stated goal is to serve and love his fellow man and make their burdens lighter.
• I’m feeling powerless to explain to him that his main objective on a mission is to CONVERT and that that’s not the same same thing  as “serving.”
• I will miss him.
• He’s a well liked young man. I like him. He’s clever, funny, sarcastic, talented and intelligent. He has an honest heart and a sensitive demeanor.
• I’m dreading the farewell. I’ll see all my former ex-in-laws but also my own family who have treated me like shit.
• I dream of the day I can share a beer with my son. Not for the beer. For what it represents.

Bottom line:

I am glad I’m his father. I love him no matter what. The pain and struggle I’m feeling now is my own. It represents my own life experience and I can’t expect him to realize at 18 what it took me 38 years to discover.

I’m trying to focus on the positive, and ignore the pain.

Funny.

I’m putting all the negative on a shelf and turning it off… again.

Gay Mecca

Tags

Brokeback Mountain, Palm Springs, Palm Springs California, San Jacinto Peak

Re-posting. This was first posted 2 years ago… I still miss Palm Springs.

——

Every member of a minority should spend a year or two living in a place where he or she is part of the majority.

As I’m only days away from moving, I wanted to document some of my thoughts on the past 2 years living in one of the gayest places in the United States. Palm Springs has the highest per capita ratio of gay residents than any other US city, including San Francisco.

What that means is that I can go to the grocery store and flirt with the hot man in the produce department; I can have a gay doctor, a gay dentist & a gay handyman; I can eat in a gay-friendly restaurant and be served by a gay waiter; I can then walk to 4-5 gay bars on any given night; I can hold hands on a date; I could spend a day at a number of clothing option gay resorts if I wanted to. You get the idea.

It’s like living in Provo, Utah if you’re Mormon…Mormons everywhere. Mormonism colors everything and everyone there. In Palm Springs the gay rainbow serves up a pot of gold on everything and everyone. It’s also  a mecca for seniors, golfers and the occasional spring break or bachelorete party but above all it’s really gay here.

I was first invited to spend a weekend in Palm Springs back in December 2005 when I was freshly separated and barely out of the closet. My date and I were here on the first weekend of the Brokeback Mountain release and the experience before the movie started in that theater that day was almost more powerful for me than the movie. Being firmly closeted my whole life I’d often felt out of place and misunderstood in groups of men. Before the movie started I recall looking around in awe at a theater full of gay men and for the first time in my life feeling like I was the straightest man in the room!

Palm Springs is such a world unto itself that I also recall one of our Palm Spring hosts  commenting after the movie, “Well, I’m certainly glad that the world isn’t like THAT anymore!” I remember my retort that, “Outside Palm Springs it IS still very much like that for many people…people like me for the last 40 years!”

Over the next 4 years I returned to Palm Springs twice for weekend trips with other friends. I loved it each time but I never had any premonition that I’d live here. Then, 2 1/2 years ago the stars aligned as I was looking around southern California for more affordable digs. I was in town in February for business at a tradeshow when I walked out of my hotel room, looked up at the majestic sun-splashed mountain and it hit me, “I could live HERE!”

I checked; rents were indeed cheaper; it was 2 hours closer to my kids; it was gay friendly so maybe I could make gay friends; my job at the time allowed me to live anywhere in the state; it was beautiful. Done and done. A month later I was comfortably lounging on my new patio furniture in my funky mid-century modern condo gazing up at the palm trees framing the San Jacinto Peak. Heaven.

Clearly this is another world.

Soon after moving here I was certain this is where I’d be settling down for good. But life has a way of yanking the rug out from under you. A lost job and no local employment prospects in sight slowly led me to the realization that without a job holding me back I have an opportunity to move to be near my children. When their Mom won the right to move them a state away, I felt angry and trapped but I soon learned to accept our new arrangement and I imagined Palm Springs to be the best compromise. Unemployment has enabled me to change that.

But I still have mixed emotions.

I know, and my kids know, that the only reason I’m moving is to be near them on a more regular basis. Period. That alone weighs the scales enough for me. I had a conversation with my ex-wife to ensure that she’d work with me to re-arrange custody once I’m there. She willingly agreed. I’ll be parenting them twice a week (T/TH) and  every other weekend. YEA! I’ll be helping with homework, chauffeuring and enforcing bed-times (Some things they’re not used to me doing since I only had them on weekends and vacations).

I will miss so many aspects my Palm Springs life. I’ve experienced and learned so much here.

The place I’m moving to couldn’t be more polar opposite. It’s a sterile, suburban community heavily populated by Mormons. Why does the phrase, “returning like a dog to his vomit” keep coming to mind?

But gay men are still everywhere, right? I’ll certainly have to revive my gaydar or re-install Grindr because I can no longer assume a single man my age in the grocery store is gay.

Some of you may never have had the type of experience I’ve had  here. Upon reflection, here is what I’ve gained and learned over the last 2 1/2 years in Palm Springs, the gay mecca of the world…

Gay friends

It took patience and resolve but I can say that I’m walking away with a small group of lifelong gay friends. Of course, one doesn’t have to live in Palm Springs to get that, but it certainly helped ME. Without this concentrated population of gay men I found it difficult to meet other men in other places. I’ve made friends with other men my age who have completely different backgrounds and yet we’ve connected in a way I had found difficult previously. The best part has been that they accept all of me and have integrated my full life as a father into our friendship. I’ll be returning for “family” holiday get-togethers when I can and I’m sure there are joint vacations and trips in our future.

I’ve also benefited from friendships with gay men in other generations. I have some fantastic older friends who have given me some wise advice over the last couple of years.

Immersion

As much as we hate to admit it there are some stereotypical aspects of gay life that are true or at least more common. Living in Palm Springs has been my baptism by immersion in all things stereo-typically gay and it has been both fun and frustrating playing catch up with my peers who have been out of the closet since their early 20’s. I now get some of the campy gay jokes that flew over my head years ago. I’ve never felt obligated to make this aspect of the “gay lifestyle” fully my own, but on the other hand it has been rewarding and fun to experience it in such a concentrated fashion like I have.

It’s been fun attending drag shows, showtunes night at the bar, and Halloween parties that happen here like no place else.

Small town with a big city feel

I’m a city boy. I moved here from a downtown city loft. I thrive in tight, crowded environments. Palms Springs at least has a unique vibe of sophistication with a walkability that you usually don’t find in a small town. I can walk to many places from my home and it’s a 3 minute drive downtown to restaurants, clubs and shopping galore. It’s going to be really difficult re-entering the din of the suburbs where everything is a 10-30 minute drive away and every other street corner houses identical-looking big box stores.

I’ll miss recognizing the same cashiers, waiters, baristas at all my regular haunts.My favorite sandwich place starts making my usual as soon as I walk in.  I’ve just never experienced that sort of familiarity in the suburbs.

Architecture matters

I LOVE the Palm Springs mid-century modern architecture. On my daily walks I’m able to meander by some of the most interesting residential architecture. Not one home is exactly like the other. It was this eye-opening appreciation for structures that led me months ago to reflect on the impact of interesting Mormon architecture and the consequences of it’s recent demise into dull and predicable. I just think the buildings we live in and the structures we stare at all day long matter.

We’re all the same

As much as I’m making a big deal about my pleasant 2 year stay in gay intensive Palm Springs, one of my takeaways is that we’re all just human beings trying to make our way the best we know how. Most of us are figuring it our along the way with all our insecurities, self-doubts, and desires for a good life. That’s all the same no matter where you live and which demographic makes up the majority.

Sometimes I tend to approach life from the vantage point of a curious onlooker as if everyone else has it all figured out. The other day a friend and I were bantering back and forth regarding an attractive man. As he has been out about 20 years longer than I have I said to him, “Go talk to him and show me how it’s done.” He looked at me surprised and said, “Look, I don’t know what I’m doing either!” That shouldn’t have been a profound realization for me but it was.

Mountains Are the Great Equalizer

An ocean view is reserved for the rich. I have friends who pay 3 times the rent that I do for a smaller place a few blocks from Mitt Romney’s San Diego oceanfront home. They can see the ocean from their rooftop and kitchen window.  Mountains by contrast are every man’s view. As much as I love the ocean, I’ll probably never afford to live anywhere that I can see it from my bed. But here in Palm Springs I have the same amazing view of the mountains from my condo as they do in the million dollar homes 3 blocks away. At night I see the top of the Palms Springs Tram station lit up as do thousands of other residents.

Pride

So, “pride” is an overused word in the gay lexicon, but there’s a certain strength that comes from celebrating a common core. Pride, as opposed to the shame most of us nurtured in ourselves for so long, is more easily self-affirmed when there’s a welcoming community smiling and nodding their heads in agreement.  I can now fully understand why ethnic minorities congregate in the same local. It has been affirming to experience this chapter of my life among like-minded men.

Living in Palm Springs for me has facilitated gay conversations with family members and friends. This has helped tremendously with my kids. Their exposure to a gay environment has enabled them to more easily talk with me, joke with me and also shrug off prejudicial comments by others. Living in this environment has enabled my homosexuality to be less invisible, while also reducing the need to be overtly in-your-face.

Goodbye Palm Springs. You’ve been a good friend.

See also:

27 Solid Reasons Why Palm Springs is the Bomb Diggity