Well Spoken

Celeste is 74 years old. She is still tall and rather handsome. In her youth, she was a high fashion model. She only did that for a few years, and then grew bored of it. She never went to college, but she reads voraciously and is well spoken and articulate. She has always been a strong woman with an intelligent opinion, respectful of others but not afraid of telling them what’s what and who’s who. When I first met her I was struck by how unlike my own mother she seemed. She was more like a comrade, a friend rather than a parent figure. Anne calls her by her first name, Celeste; never “Mom,” never “Mother.”

When Ann and I separated six years ago, Celeste could not stand being in the same room with me. Even though I had moved out of the house, there were almost daily reasons for me to come back to Anne’s place. I had to visit the kids, or drop something off for Anne, or pick up something that I left behind. I had to take the kids to gymnastics, or bring the kids home. I had to settle a bill or an argument or mend someone’s hurt feelings or someone’s broken heart. During those first tumultuous months after our separation, when Anne and I were barely civil with each other, it seemed that Celeste was always visiting Anne. Celeste came from New York to celebrate Anne’s birthday, or to go to a special show at the Smithsonian, or to help Anne out with the kids, or simply to be there as Anne’s moral anchor. It was inevitable that the two of us would keep running into each other. Normally, before the divorce, Celeste and I were very close. I viewed her as a true friend. When Anne went to Tanzania on a medical mission for three months, Celeste stayed with me for about twenty days. We truly enjoyed each other’s company. Anne used to joke, “It’s not natural! You are her son-in-law. You are supposed to hate her.” But I never hated Celeste.

After the divorce, if I came to Anne’s house and Celeste was there, she would promptly grab her purse and go out “shopping.” I would walk up the driveway, and Celeste would come rushing out the front door with her purse and key. “I have to go shopping!” she would announce as we crossed paths on the driveway. No hellos, no kisses, no hugs The first time it happened I thought it was strange, the second time it was a coincidence. “I have to go shopping!” By the third, fourth and fifth time it was an annoying pattern. “Where’s Celeste going?” I would ask Anne. She wouldn’t answer. “Close the door,” is all she would say.

Today, more than six years after we separated and less than two days after I tried to commit suicide, I am sitting like a corpse in Anne’s back yard. I’m shaved, and bathed, but my hair is too long. It should have been cut two weeks ago. I slick it back with gel, but the curls are so thick that they bump up like small mounds. I’m fussing with my hair, unconsciously, while sipping on lemonade that Anne made for the kids and me. The sun is blaring. Anne’s back yard is a veritable farm in the middle of the city. She grows strawberries, gooseberries, plums, herbs, tomatoes, lettuce and flowers. She is the constant Rockville Gardner. Joey, Christina and I are trying to play cards, but Joey gets frustrated (as usual) because he is losing. He has no luck at cards, and thinks that everyone is conspiring against him to lose. He is so much like me. He finally gives up and quits the game. “I’m going inside to play Game Boy!” he announces. He wants me to chase after him, but I don’t have the energy for it. He’ll come back when he feels better. I sit in the blazing sun, surrounded by the mini-farm, while Christina puts the cards back into their box. She is very quiet, which is not like her. She looks at me inquisitively.

“Daddy, are you happy?” she asks.

“Of course, Christina. I’m very happy.”

“Then why do you look so sad?”

I don’t know how to answer her. I keep sipping lemonade and fussing with my hair. Fortunately, I don’t’ have to answer. Christina jumps up to open the back door to the garden. Her grandmother wants to come outside with a tray of food. Christina holds the door open for her.

Celeste places a tray in front of me. Cheese, bread, cut up apples, olives. “Here’s a snack!” she says. Christina dives in for the cheese.

“Celeste, I’m not hungry,” I tell her.

Celeste insists. “Nonsense. You are too thin. Now eat.”

* * *

Twelve months before I left Anne, when I started questioning my sexuality, Celeste and Anne went on one of their infamous bargain basement hunts and came back with an armload of shopping bags and a “gay” newspaper.

“You won’t believe what Celeste has picked up!” exclaimed Anne, laughing hysterically.

“Look at this!” Celeste clamored, waiving a newspaper. “You won’t believe your eyes.”

She handed me a copy of the Washington Blade, which I had never seen before. It’s a fairly innocuous gay rag, but what’s in the center of the newspaper, the “pull out” section, is pretty shocking.

* * *

Less than 2 days and a few hours after I committed suicide, I am sitting in Ann’s back yard with Christina. The sun is blaring. I’m as alive as a stone statute. Christina is shuffling cards, while Celeste is pushing food at me. “Eat,” says Celeste, “eat.” and she goes back inside.

I pick at the food, knowing full well that I am not hungry but that I really should eat something. Christina is looking at me pick away. “Daddy?” she asks. (I dread this. She’s going to ask me if I’m happy again.)

“Daddy,” says Christina. “Are you worried about your job?”

I guess I have not been as subtle as I thought when speaking in hush voices to Anne about my company and having to find a new job. I thought the children were not listening or if they were listening they would be uninterested. I had forgotten that children have the incredible ability to hear everything their parents say. Even if the kids are playing cards and screaming at each other because one feels that the other cheated, even in such abundance of distraction they have their ears wide open to pick up whatever Mom and Dad are saying in whispers. Of course, if I speak out loud and directly in front of them (Christina brush your teeth, Joey put on your pajamas), then they hear nothing. But if Mom and Dad are communicating in the softest voices about how Joey misbehaved at school, or how Christina is cranky when she is tired, they are sure to hear and lash out from the other side of the house: “I was not bad today!” (Joey) or “I am not cranky!” (Christina).

* * *


The pull out section of the Washington Blade is called “Encounters” and it consists of a series of very explicit ads for gay sex. Men’s sex parties, bath houses, male prostitutes, ads by men seeking every imaginable sexual pleasure and partner or partners to do it with. Today, when I look at “Encounters” I am bored by it. But the first time I read that pull out, with the very same innocent heterosexual eyes as Celeste and Anne, I was shocked, amused and above all very interested. It aroused in me a sexual longing I had not experienced before. I wandered, naively, if these sexual pleasures were freely available, as page after page of “Encounters” seemed to indicate.

“Where did you buy this?” I asked Celeste.

“I didn’t buy it,” she said, “It’s a free newspaper. They have it at Tower Records. Isn’t it a hoot!”

“Yes, a hoot” I said, as I salivated after the pictures.

After that, I visited Tower Records every Thursday to get the newest edition of “Encounters.”

* * *

So, foolishly, lately, six years after we divorced and some twenty fours hours after I tried to commit suicide, I’ve been telling Anne lately how much I am worried about my job, and she’s been telling me that I don’t need to worry about the job. While sipping Argentine wine and making pasta on her kitchen table, Anne has been telling me that I need to “lighten up!” and “live it up!” She’s bought Argentine parmesan cheese as well, and she is hand rolling gnocchi. There is flour everywhere. Anne is jovial, laughing, busy with her kitchen stuff.

“I’m not like you,” I tell her. “I can’t roll with the punches.”

She takes a sip of wine, looks at me with her Scottish smile and her German blue-green eyes, and tells me quite simply, “You have to, and you will.”

* * *

So foolishly, lately, I’ve been telling Anne that I’m worried about my job, and apparently Christina (who is all of six years old and should have no such worries), has been listening in.

“Daddy, are you worried about your job?”

“Not really, Christina. Besides, it’s only a job.”

“But what if you lose your job,” asks Christina as she climbs on my knee. “How will you pay your bills?”

“Then I’ll get another job sweetie. Don’t worry.”

“But what if you don’t have a choice? What if there is no other job.”

“Sweetie, you always have a choice.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” I say convincingly. “There’s always a choice.”

So I found myself telling Christina the same thing that Anne has been telling me for so many weeks and months now. I can’t let this job, or more to the point the fear of losing this job, define who I am. I never saw myself as a lawyer anyway. I see myself as a father first, as an artist (I paint), as a reader, an athlete (I swim), a brother to my siblings and an uncle to their children, as a son, as a friend to my friends, as a gay man. I don’t see myself as a job. And if I lose this job, I will do something else. I will not cease to exist.

* * *

I eat some of the food that Celeste left for me.

* * *

After that first time that Celeste brought the Washington Blade into my house, it became an obsession with me. I could not pass a week without picking up the newspaper. The first time I went to Tower Records to look for the rag, I was afraid that someone would see me and that they would know, instinctively and immediately know, that I am gay. Married but gay.

I developed a technique where I would pick up every free newspaper that was available, including the Washington Blade. My assumption was that if anyone saw me pick up the Blade, they would figure I had done so in mistake. “That poor bloke,” the would guess, “he was so eager to pick up all the free stuff that he even took the gay porno with him.”

If someone were to confront me (not that anyone ever did) I had my lines ready and prepared, “Oh, I didn’t realize this was a gay newspaper. I just thought it was free.”

After picking up each weekly copy of the rag in machinations similar to those worthy of a CIA agent, I would spirit it away to the safety of my home, where I still lived with Anne and Celeste’s frequent visits. I kept the newspaper under my side of the bed, away from Anne, and read it only when she was not around. One day, however, I left the paper in the living room, and Celeste ran across it.

“Is this that same newspaper I picked up six months ago?” she asked.

I turned red “No,” I told her. “It’s a more current issue. I picked it up as a lark this morning. Isn’t it a hoot?”

Celeste looked at me suspiciously. “Yes, a hoot,” she mumbled unconvinced.

Celeste knew.

* * *

Six years after I left Anne, and two days and some hours after I committed suicide, I am sitting outside in Anne’s beautiful farm garden, in the middle of the City of Rockville, and I am feeling better. My daughter, Christina, is sitting on my lap and we are playing paper, rock, scissors. I’m always the rock and she’s always the paper, and she wraps her hands around my wrist gently each time.

The sun has finally settled, and the afternoon has become pleasant. I’m feeling tired, as if perhaps tonight I could sleep without thoughts of death. I kiss Christina and tell her that “Daddy has to go home now.”

When I come inside from the back yard, Celeste and Anne are sitting in the kitchen, whispering. I guess the kids inherited their freakish-hearing from me, because I hear Anne say to Celeste, “He’ll be OK, Mom. Don’t worry.” I know they were talking about me but I don’t’ care. The only thing that comes to my mind is that normally Anne never calls Celeste “Mom.”

“I’m going, now,” I announce. “I have to go back to work tomorrow, and I want to get a good night’s sleep. Thanks for lunch and the snack,” I say to Anne.

Anne gets back to her chores. She is busy making homemade pasta for the kids. There’s flour and pots and pans all over the kitchen. She is sipping Argentine wine. She is smiling. “Goodnight!” she says cheerfully.

Celeste gets up and walks me to the front door..

Celeste kisses me on the lips.

Celeste whispers in my ear, “Sweetie, please take care of yourself. You have no right to do this to Anne and the kids. They need you. We all need you.”

Well said Celeste. Well said.