KarMel Scholarship 2008

Personal Story

“Attention”

By Lisa Martens

Desciption of Submission: “True story told from my point of view: My cousin struggles to come out to his homophobic father, but he is ignored. His family assumes that he's just attention-hungry or that he's too "stupid" to know what being gay means.” - Lisa

A year and a half ago, my cousin asked what “gay” meant. His curiosity perked when he noted that a guy in his school wore girly jeans, so he was gay. “Not necessarily,” I responded. “He might just like girls’ jeans better. I know girls who wear men’s pants, and they’re not lesbians.”

He was confused. Being gay meant acting like a girl, right? His confusion stunned me; he was fifteen years old. I’d known about homosexuality since I turned nine. I explained very briefly and carefully. His father, my uncle, was strictly conservative, and he was letting me live in his garage. I didn’t want to rock the boat too hard.

A year ago, my cousin started asking me about Satan and hell. He kept asking me, “How do I know if I’m going to hell? How many things do you have to do to go to hell? Is Satan real?” I cheated on my test, so I’m going to hell anyway. It doesn’t matter what I do now, right?”

His questions about homosexuality became more frequent, and a part of me attributed it to natural curiosity...my cousin had always been a late-bloomer, and he was prone to obsession. He took spectacular care of every appliance and phone he had, he never let anybody touch his things, and he could rattle off facts about cell phones like a Verizon representative.

One night, as I ate chips on the couch, my cousin asked if Satan existed, and if there was one or two of them. I told him that I didn’t really know, and that most people, if they did believe in Satan, believed in one. He replied with, “Instead of imagining him half-naked in a cave, I should be trying to look this up.” Then he walked into his room.

The significance of this statement stuck with me and always will. My cousin is a very complicated person to understand, but all his questions had finally clicked into place.

My cousin was gay. Not only was he gay, but he was petrified of going to hell, since, according to his father, that’s where gay men went. To make matters worse, my cousin had somehow crossed the two into one obsession: He had started imagining Satan as a half-naked man partaking in bondage. His fantasies included the devil. My uncle’s constant rants on “homos” and how they “should all be killed” probably didn’t help him any.

I went to my room that night, somewhat sad and afraid. I think it was at that moment that I knew the situation would only get worse from that point onward.

“He doesn’t know what gay means,” my aunt said. “And he has the mentality of someone much younger than him, Lisa. He has the mentality of a ten year old. He can’t be gay.”

“Just because Steven has learning disabilities doesn’t mean he can’t be gay. That autistic savant we saw on television was gay. Having other medical problems doesn’t...I don’t know...disqualify you.”

“Just let me get pregnant first, ok? Let me get married and have a baby. You know your uncle. If he finds out that Steven is gay, he’ll never have a kid with me.”

My aunt is Steven’s stepmother. She’s thirty-three and eager to have children of her own. We sat across a small table at an Italian restaurant. Her engagement ring sparkled; the rock had cost about ten grand.

“I’m not going to tell my uncle,” I reassured her. “But I’m pretty sure my cousin is gay.”

“He acts that way for attention.” She tried to convince herself, and she wasn’t doing a good job. My cousin had started disappearing for hours at a time on “walks” after my aunt and uncle took away his Internet access. He had previously been spending up to six hours a day on myspace, and my aunt had found his profile page. Steven had his orientation set as gay. When confronted, Steven said he’d been kidding. My aunt had started crying, but didn’t tell my uncle. When he came home, my aunt convinced him, in a very logical and calm way, that Steven was spending too much time online and his grades were poor. And so, the Internet was disconnected. I had the harrowing feeling that my aunt had taken me out to lunch to “secure” me...to lock me down...to guarantee that I wouldn’t tell my uncle what had actually happened. She was trying to get me on her side.

“When your cousin, Steven, was little, he was very sick.” She spun her pasta using her fork and spoon. My aunt was very learned in the social graces. She held herself upright. Everything was so prim and proper except for me, the liberal smudge on the scene. I was the thumb-print on the white book cover of our family. “Your uncle had to work very hard to support him, and he was only a teenager. He had to give up his youth to take care of his responsibility, and Steven was a difficult child...even after he survived his heart condition. He was premature. He should have died. Then came his problems in school...he never did well, Lisa, and then your uncle got divorced...and Steven’s behavior got worse...

“My point is, your uncle has been through a lot with this kid. And although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay...I love Steven almost like he was my own kid...it would destroy your uncle. He would blame himself. He would call himself a bad father, and he doesn’t deserve that. He’s done nothing but sacrifice for Steven, and for Steven to do this...it’s wrong, in a way. Steven should have some respect for how his father feels.”

My mouth hung open. My meal looked relatively untouched compared to my aunt’s empty plate. She had obviously been more comfortable in this situation than I had been. That unspoken card hung in the air, the one she passively aggressively stated - You live with us. You are not our kid. You don’t have to live with us. Unfortunately, the card trumped me. If it came down to me being right and Steven being gay, or the whole thing being kept under lock and key, my uncle would choose his son and send me back to Texas in a cardboard box.

“I’m not going to tell my uncle,” I said. I kept my voice level. “Steven should come out to his father on his own. I don’t want to tell on him. He can tell his dad when he’s ready.” I wanted to pretend that everything my aunt had said didn’t even exist.

“You know me, Lisa,” my aunt said. “I don’t have a problem with gay people. I let one do my hair. But your uncle...Steven can just wait until he’s grown and out of the house. Then he can do what he wants. While Steven is living in our house, he should really respect his father’s beliefs.”

There was the passive-aggressiveness again. She said the name Steven, but I could tell by the way she stared directly at me that she meant you. My uncle once kicked his sister out of a building he owned, and then conveniently forgot about it when the family asked. He had said that he “didn’t remember” kicking his sister out. It had been one of the many absurd conversations I’ve had to sit through.

The next few months were littered with intermittent crying fits from my aunt and increased tensions between my uncle and Steven. Steven would scoff and insult his father’s womanizing (he constantly made references to “hittin’ that” when he watched television). My cousin wore tighter and tighter clothes which strayed from his typical “homeless bum in a giant shirt” style. That, and he’d been using the Internet secretly. His page featured pictures of men showering in the shower together, licking one another, and straddling one another...erotica-type stuff.

Steven had a boyfriend named John. He’d leave the house to see him, but he was awfully hesitant because John was deep into substance abuse. Steven just wasn’t the kind of kid to take drugs.

Steven would blatantly make sexual comments about men in front of my aunt, who would at first get angry, but then she came to ignore his comments. “He’s just doing it for attention,” she started saying. It became her mantra. She stopped making eye contact with Steven, stopped talking to him except to give one-word answers to questions like “Where’s the tape?” and only sought after him if he loaded the dishwasher wrong. Steven started to cook more, clean more, and, whenever he came into my room, he’d ask to try on my shoes.

The more feminine Steven acted, the more my aunt and uncle pressured me to act feminine. If Steven cooked dinner, they’d comment on how I never cooked. “Your aunt cooks so nice...you should watch her so you can cook for your husband,” my uncle would advise.

The comedic height of this was during the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. My uncle, in all his womanizing glory, sat in front of his big-screen televison ten minutes in advance to watch international super models walk in a circle wearing minimal clothing.

“Steven, the Victoria’s Secret show is coming on! You gonna come in and watch it?”

Steven stood in the doorway with his hands on his hips and an apron over his chest. “No thanks, dad, I’m baking brownies!”

Steven baked three batches of brownies that evening. My uncle didn’t even eat one.

Since my cousin’s myspace page had been set to private, I was constantly hounded by my parents and by my aunt to show the contents of Steven’s page. She had, however, found another way to view it. She asked our neighbor’s daughter, Samantha, who was Steven’s age, to add Steven as a friend and report back to her. Samantha did. My aunt didn’t report everything on the page, but twisted the story slightly. She told my uncle that Steven had set his mood to “horny” on his page...which was true, but come on, it was one of the most minor things on his site...and that Samantha had seen it.

That night, they lectured Steven and threatened to take his laptop away, since obviously he could still access the Internet. He didn’t come down for dinner. On television, something on gay rights came up, and my uncle started.

“Everything’s about the fags now,” he said. “When I was little, there were no gay people. And if you were gay, you were quiet about it. Now they stomp around in parades. Now they want rights. I used to kick their asses in high school, and it was ok. All you had to do was tell the cop that he was a fag, and he’d be alright with it. It’s so different now. Everything has changed. Now gays want to have babies and be accepted.”

“...Do you really think it’s better that way? To have to hide that you’re gay out of fear of getting your ass kicked? Your cousin Michael is gay.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t rub it in our faces. And now there are more people acting gay and brainwashing children into thinking that it’s alright, and so now there are more of them, and people who are easily influenced get confused. It’s because of your generation.”

“Like Steven,” my aunt chimed in with a sing-song voice. “He used to make fun of gay people, and now he thinks it’s alright. He obviously doesn’t even know what it means, but it’s considered cool.”

“Exactly,” my uncle nodded. “Steven with his tight shirts and telling me that I’m sexist for checking out hot women. That’s what your generation has done.”

“Whether you realize it or not, you’re encouraging him,” my aunt just added and added... “By you having gay friends and acting like it’s alright, he imitates it. He thinks it makes him cool. He wants to look cool to his older cousin. You know, Steven really didn’t act so interested in gay things until you moved in, Lisa.”

My uncle nodded.

I knew this wasn’t true. My uncle’s sister...the one he’d thrown out...had been babysitting Steven since he was a baby. When he was two years old, he had already been dancing in his mother’s heels to Billy Joel music. She had suspected that he was gay since he’d started walking. She had told me never to mention that to her brother, though. My lips were bound by so many oaths that I could only keep silent. I couldn’t say anything in my own defense that wouldn’t betray someone else’s trust.

“You’re right. Steven didn’t start acting like this until Lisa moved in.”

My aunt smiled at me. “We’re not saying that it’s your fault, Lisa, just that you don’t realize how you’re influencing him.” My blood boiled. My uncle was obviously convinced that my presence encouraged homosexuality. Now, anything I said in the defense of gays would be used against me - my “liberal” attitude directly correlated with Steven’s actions. If Steven acted too gay and if I acted too accepting of gays, then my influential presence would be eliminated.

We cleaned up after dinner. The women, that is. My uncle sits there while we take his plate and clean around him. I searched on the Internet for apartments when I was done.

Steven stopped seeing John because he had gotten too deep into drugs. The breakup was mutual, but Steven was crushed. He cried all night the day they broke up. I didn’t know how far they had gone sexually; I knew Steven had a sexual experience with him in a movie theater, but Steven was vague. Oral sex, probably.

Once, when cleaning, Steven stood with his arms at his waist; he did this stance more and more. My aunt had started yelling at him to stop acting gay, and that if he wanted to act like a faggot, then he could move out and get his own place. I was no longer the only one being held captive by the threat of homelessness; it had spread to blood relatives.

With yet another myspace account, Steven met a boy named Patrick who lived in the same town but happened to attend a different high school. Steven disappeared to see this guy now. My aunt’s spurts of “he wants attention; he wants attention” became more frequent but less convincing to even herself. My aunt and uncle encouraged Steven to get a job...actually, in her typical fashion, my aunt convinced my uncle that Steven should get a job. When we were alone, she told me,

“A boy like Steven...with his learning disabilities and everything...needs a job to keep himself busy on weekends. Or else he spends all his time on the Internet, getting into trouble. Steven has a very short attention span, and at least now he’ll be doing something productive.” So Steven got a weekend job at McDonald’s. In reality, it was a time-consuming ploy for my aunt to postpone my cousin’s sexual self-discovery. I imagined my aunt single-handedly crushing Steven’s soul, mashing it up like potato salad, and slicing his boiled egg feelings to decorate the outer rim of the bowl.

I couldn’t afford an apartment on my own. While I was a full-time college student at NYU, I felt more like a charity case leeching off my uncle’s house. I felt like a complete bum, and I felt like they could do anything they wanted at any time, even though my parents paid my uncle rent. Still, in some illogical way, I was small and unworthy and reduced. My aunt reminded me how cheap my rent here was in comparison to renting a place with a friend. The more Steven told me about his sexuality, the more trapped I became. If I said a word, I could be thrown out. If I didn’t say anything, and then my uncle found out that I didn’t say anything, it would be treated as conspiracy and I’d still be kicked out.

And the wedding was coming up. After the wedding, my aunt wanted to start trying to have kids. Her bridal shower was this upcoming weekend.

Steven came into my room on Wednesday night depressed and forlorn. Instead of talking about wearing my shoes in his usual chipper manner, he asked about over-the-counter medicine. He asked how much he would have to take to die. He asked me about mixing certain medication together. Fire alarms blared in my head: This I could not hide.

By the time Steven left my room, it was ten at night. I vowed to tell my uncle what Steven had told me in the morning, but I didn’t see him that morning. He must have left very early.

Tonight, then.

Thursday night, I rode in from school on a train. The ride took about forty-five minutes. Already, I was wrecked with prospects of what I’d tell my uncle. Should I tell him that Steven was suicidal, but omit everything about the homosexuality?

Right past Carle Place, I received a warning text message from my uncle’s sister - “Steven got into a huge fight with his dad. Told him he was gay.” I stared at the message until I reached my stop.

My aunt waited in her car at the train station. When I climbed in, she already started flailing her hands around. Her fingernails clinked and darted around her like red flies around a carcass.

“Just so you know, Steven and your uncle got into a huge fight. Steven was just acting weird. We were in a restaurant and he was acting so gay. So we told him to stop and then we went to drop him off at home so your uncle and I could have a nice evening. We can’t bring him anywhere, I swear. So I was waiting in the car when the two went inside...and your uncle was supposed to come back...and then I just heard them yelling. I went to go in and see what was wrong, but your uncle slammed the house door in my face...not in a mean way, or anything...and told me to wait in the car and that he had to talk to Steven. And Steven was being so dramatic...saying stuff like he didn’t care if he lived or died, that his dad should accept him if he’s straight or gay...eventually your uncle left crying and went for a walk.”

“So...Steven told his dad that he’s gay?”

“Well, I mean...you know how Steven is. Do you really think he’d say something like that on his own? Steven can’t think of stuff like that.” I hate when she treats Steven like he’s completely incoherent. He’s bad at school; he’s not completely delinquent. “I bet it’s that friend John that he has. He was talking about John the other day, and John said things like that to his own parents. Steven just does it for attention.”

“Maybe it’s not for attention. Steven has been really upset over this lately. Last night he was talking about killing himself. Taking medication over the counter...overdosing.”

My aunt stared, and then started flapping her manicured hands everywhere again. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

I stuttered inwardly. Several months ago, while shopping, I mentioned to my aunt that Steven may be suicidal. She brushed it off and bought him a pair of shoes, and told me not to mention it to my uncle. Now she was down my throat with her panicked fingernails.

“I was planning on telling him tonight,” I said. I did, when we got home. My uncle still had tears in his eyes. My aunt threw out all the drugs in the bathroom...until my uncle convinced her to act calmly so it wouldn’t be obvious. Then my uncle asked me,

“But...do you really think he’s gay?”

“Yes, I do.”

My aunt interjected. “No, I don’t think so. He’s very easily influenced. He always has been. He probably just does it to get a reaction out of his dad. There’s no way he can actually know unless he has sex with a man, which he hasn’t.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t know...I didn’t have to have sex with a man to know I was heterosexual.”

My aunt flapped her arms again. She probably thought she could fly away from the situation if she flapped hard enough. “But Steven’s different. He’s not the same as you. He doesn’t really want to get fucked in the ass. He’s just doing what that kid John wants him to.”

“Lisa...” My uncle’s tears were streaming. “Has he done anything...with a guy?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes. What, I don’t know. But I know he’s definitely done some things. He’s very...hurt that you won’t accept it. He knows you won’t. He says he doesn’t care what you think, but he does at the same time. He’s confused. He doesn’t want to actually have to tell you, but he thinks you’ll figure it out from how he acts so that he doesn’t have to. That’s why he acts overly gay around you two now.”

My aunt sounded triumphant. “So what I said was true...he is doing it for attention!”

“No...not completely. Partially. He is attracted to men, but he’s afraid of telling you. He’s afraid you’ll kick him out. It frustrates him.”

“If he’s so afraid, then he’d keep it to himself,” my aunt rattled. “He obviously wants us to react...”

“No.” My aunt looked surprised; my uncle had said this. “He’s...confused...and trying to handle it, because of course he cares what his dad thinks. And he knows I won’t accept it. I feel like I’m in a nightmare right now. I can’t even begin to process this.” I felt a twang of pity for my uncle. “But he’s right, I won’t accept it. I just can’t. I’ll never be able to accept that my son is a homo. And what will my family think? So of course he’s confused...”

“But it still doesn’t make sense that he’d act so gay if he knows...”

“You’re thinking like an adult. He’s thinking like a teenager. He’s not thinking rationally. Plus, Steven...with his condition since he was born...is really sensitive. This must be extremely hard for him...” Steve looked at me. “Do people in school know? Do they make fun of him?”

I nodded. “Teachers know...the students do, too. Girls hang out with him because he’s like the gay friend they can talk to.”

“Are you serious?”

I nodded again, almost incapable of any other action.

“So the guys know?”

Another nod.

“He must get made fun of so bad...I remember how I used to treat the fags...”

“He has some heterosexual friends who know. Yeah, some kids make fun of him, but not all of them. He eats lunch with a straight friend sometimes.”

“Really? Wow. That’s pretty different from when I was in high school...and that’s only seventeen years ago...”

He seemed to reflect for a few minutes, then added, “I wonder what I did wrong, that Steven turned out this way.” Then my uncle stood up. “Well, I appreciate you telling me this, Lisa.” He walked away; my uncle takes walks when he’s stressed. He left the house, and I finally had the opportunity to eat dinner. My gut hadn’t allowed me to eat most of the day in anticipation of this conversation with my uncle. Now that it was over, I was starving.

My aunt joined me downstairs, her pupils restricted and fearful. She felt like she had lost some important battle, and she needed to restore something in her world. As I ate, she spoke, half to herself, half to me:

“It’s always something with this kid, isn’t it? If he’s not sick, it’s therapy from his real mom and the divorce...and now this. We can’t just be happy, can we, Lisa? We can’t just be normal and happy. And he did this two days before my bridal shower. It can never be about someone else, can it, Lisa? He always has to do something so it’s about him.”

I ate and let her talk. She could talk. People could talk, but only time could tell.

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