I know a closeted gay man from Small Town. We grew up together.
I remember the girls in school talking about how fem he was. I also noticed he was fem, fashionable, talkative, bitchy, funny, creative and un-macho, but I didn’t realise he was gay till much later. I thought he was just eccentric. Since his family was well off and his parents were powerful in the community he could afford to be eccentric, I thought.
This guy went to Big City and became a designer. He never came back to Small Town except to visit his family.
Did his parents know? They were religious-conservative, they were pillars of society and in high positions. I can’t imagine he ever told them. At the very minimum they would have wanted him to keep it quiet as not to embarrass them.
This week his mother died suddenly at 83. Without any warning she collapsed on the floor in their home and was gone. The gay son hurried home to attend the funeral.
I walked by their house yesterday and saw the gay son in the garden. He takes an interest in roses and flowers. He was pointing and showing his father something.
I was struck by the gay son’s appearance. He had a deep sunbed tan. He wore fashionable 1970s-style eyeglasses. He had coloured his hair black. His body was of the muscular but artificial gym type and he wore a tight white singlet. What a queen. He looked like he had escaped from a gay disco.
His father, the recent widower, followed the son around the garden. I felt sorry for the father. When I was young he had power over me and I didn’t care much for him. But now he was reduced to a small, old man, looking vulnerable and tired.
I didn’t care much for his late wife either. She was arrogant, authoritarian and snobbish. I was frequently at odds with her. But a lot of time has passed since then and I realise with hindsight that she wasn’t as bad as I had thought. She was human and behind her fierce public persona she probably had a heart.
If it had been possible I could have attended her funeral, watching the ceremonies from the back benches of the church, before going back to Thailand. But I have to leave that to my mother.
I wonder how much this woman and her husband understood of their gay son. Having him was an ironic twist given their religious and political views, which were decidedly anti-gay. Did they realise what he was? Were they in denial? Were their attitudes shaken by having their own son turn out “like that”?
It might have done them some good.
Tags: gay boys, gay Thailand
xxx
June 5th, 2007 at 10:26 am
My dad and mom died before I discovered my bi side. Which was probably a blessing since I would have put them in their grave by telling them how much I had changed in my later years. I have my 50th class reunion coming up in eight years and I have fantasies of what it will be like if I show up with Irin, my Thai ladyboy. Hehehe. I might put some of my old classmates in their grave right then and there. We will certainly be the talk of the class during the reunion…if anyone can actually tell that Irin is a ladyboy, which is not easy to do.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I’d vote for denial, if he looks like that. straight people have a gay-dar too
June 5th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Yes but it has to fall within their sphere of possibility first…I have a friend with very religious and conservative parents who is quite thoroughly gay, came out to me a few years ago, he even has a (quite staggeringly rich) older boyfriend who takes him off on trips to the US etc for months at a time. But his parents, while utterly bemused as to where he goes and what he does for so long, still seem thoroughly clueless. I think they simply can’t imagine having a gay son.
So I think it is possible to get away with being thoroughly unsubtle with some types of parent, at least…they’ll just think you’re, um, eccentric…
June 5th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
I remember the late mother making speeches about how one should save oneself for marriage. The gay thing was such a horror she would not even mention it.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:11 am
This subject fascinates me.
My Malay bf Everard is clearly gay even to those with a wonky gaydar.
Maybe it’s his stylish, tight T-shirt, his latest-fashion shorts, his immaculately coiffured hair, his skinny, limp-wrested walk or his LV shoulder bag . Whatever, it’s clear to everyone he isn’t a bricklayer.
And yet he tells me his family don’t know he’s gay!
He’s handsome and never had a gf. He prefers to travel around the world with a farang over twice his age, and his family don’t know???
What’s even more strange is that his sister is also gay and lives with her gf. His family DO know about this however. His mother doesn’t judge or talk about it but his father is not at all happy that is daughter is gay.
How unusual (I think) that both offspring from one apparently straight couple are gay.
Maybe it’s just too much to cope with for ‘traditional’ straight parents to admit to themselves that BOTH their offspring could be gay. I’m not really sure who’s kidding who, but I’m SURE they must know.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Nobody guesses I’m gay; they never wonder why I’m not married because they think I’m such a horse’s rear end.
But then again for some reason I’ve got no bf either.
June 6th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
In response to Iwanuk, an ex bf of mine had a lesbian sister, he wasn’t allowed to come out to his parents because they would have blamed the sister for “making” him gay!
There were no other siblings so I guess Mom & Dad might have been really cut up over thie situation.
I was allowed to visit the family home and introduced as the sister’s bf…..lol.
Always makes me laugh when I think of the crap we go through.