Parents, Friends of Lesbians And Gays
You can also read this published story, ("A Sunny Afternoon") on the stay close website, a parent organistaion of PFLAG. And while your there, you know, make a donation...
Coming Out
The first thing I do every morning when I get to work, is check my emails. I turn the computer on, type in my password and check my gmail account: This morning, there are 11 new messages. The first one is a spam advertising me on penis enlargement. Delete. The second one is from my cousin, in regards to the family reunion she is throwing in 2 months. I opened it. And just like I was afraid of, I read the dreaded question: "Why is your brother not coming to the reunion?"
“Psssss, Sofe? Sofe?”
It was the summer of 1999. I was reading a romance novel I had stolen from my aunt’s shelf. I looked up and saw my 18-year old brother’s head popping through the door.
“Are you bored? I am so bored.”
“Tell me about it!” I sighed back.
“You want to go for a walk? Let's go into town”, he suggested.
My grandma lived in Sfax, a small town in the middle of Tunisia. 3 PM was the very sacred siesta time and everyone else in the house was taking a nap. The only thing I could hear was my father snoring and the kitchen clock ticking. I wasn’t sure about going into town: most stores would be closed and the streets would be empty. But I was bored out of my mind, there was nothing to watch on the Arabic TV- and I didn’t understand half the stuff anyway.
I got up as quietly as possible and the two of us tiptoed out of the house and into the narrow streets of the Medina, the old part of the city. In this part of town, the houses had no running hot water; no heat for the cold and damp winters and the streets were dirty and filled with trash and abandoned kittens someone did not have the heart to drown.
We were alone in the street and walked in silence for 10 minutes before coming to the newly renovated plaza and the slightly busier road that separates the Medina from the rest of the town. We crossed and walked among empty shoe stores, closed ice cream parlors and almost-dead coffee houses. In some cafes, the waiters were getting busy, filling the water pipes with apple flavored tobacco, making sure there was sugar in the sugar bowls, wiping the dust off of the tables on the terrace. In an hour, the Imam will call out for the afternoon prayer and very quickly, the café will get swamped with men stopping in between the mosque and work.
My brother and I took a break at a Kebab stand to get something to drink; it was so hot, drops of sweat were drizzling down the vendor's tanned forehead, splashing on the ground. My brother frowned, watching me stick a straw in my can of Diet Coke.
“Why do you still get diet? I thought you were done with that. You’re still very skinny!”
“I like the taste better - I lied, looking down at my knees and what I was sure was cellulite wiggling around them.
We continued to walk across the center of the town, pass the one movie theater, which only showed old Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Dam movies and head towards the sea and the boardwalk. I told Ismael about school, filled him on my apartment, crazy roommate and everything else that had changed since the last time I saw him. I told him that I had finally ended my on-again-off-again 3-year-old relationship with Ron.
" Men are stupid.” I concluded.
“I know”, Ismael squeezed my hand in sympathy before letting out a burp.
“Roger” he yelled out and before I could even react, he smacked my forehead. “Roger” was a burping game my brother, sister and I played: Whoever burped had to say “Roger” and everyone had to say it back. If you failed, you got smacked in the forehead.
“Ouch. What the…! You’re not supposed to put me in a coma with this!” I yelled out.
Ismael looked at me, my red forehead and started to laugh!
"So how about you, any new girlfriends? I asked
“Nope!”
“You don’t have a girlfriend?”
“No!”
“Someone you have a crush on? A sugar mommy?”
“No”
“Boyfriend?” I said, laughing.
“Actually, yes…”
I stopped walking and turned around, expecting him to smile and say “Gotcha!” but instead he laughed again, “Man, you should see the look on your face right now Sophie, so funny”
“You know, I have a lot of gay friends and it’s almost disrespectful of you to just, I don’t know, are you mocking gay people?”
He laughed for another few seconds, looked me straight in the eye and repeated:
“I have a boyfriend, his name is Mohammed. Ask Myriam. I told her at Easter; I wouldn’t joke about this.”
I didn’t say anything and that was the end of our conversation. We walked to the sea, sat on a bench, and every once in a while I glimpsed at my brother, trying to figure out if it was a joke or not; trying to decide if he looked gay or not…But he just looked like my brother. After 15 minutes of uncomfortable silence, we walked back to the house, Ismael rushing to bathroom while I ran to wake up Myriam, our older sister.
“Hey! IthinkIsmajusttoldmehewasgaybuthesaiditlaughingand…and…he said you knew?”
The words were flying out of my mouth so fast I wasn’t sure my sister actually understood me. But she nodded yes.
“Shit. He’s gay?”
“Yep”.
“You know- I lowered my voice in case someone was walking by our room- I used to wish he was gay. Just to teach Dad a lesson. Every time Dad got drunk and started yelling and being mean, I kept thinking: wouldn’t it be fun if his son was gay? Dad would get all upset and it would serve him right. And now, I am so ashamed I ever thought that… Like his punishment for having a drunken father is that he turns out gay…Like being gay is a punishment. Shit. I am such an asshole…”
My sister and I just sat in silence. I didn’t say anything else to my brother either that day. And when it was time to go to bed - the three of us slept in the same room; my sister and I on two benches so narrow, my brother, who slept on a mattress on the floor, was constantly afraid one of us would fall right on top of him- I pretended nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that afternoon; asking the same questions I always asked right before turning the lights off.
“Did anyone check for roaches? I said patting the sheets on top of my bed.
“I did” says Ismael.
He turned the lights off and I remember thinking: wow, my brother is gay!
And that was the only thing I thought of, every day, hour and minute during the rest of your vacation. Every time he spoke, every time he did something: buy yogurts for my grandpa, help clean the house, play with our cousins, even sneeze, all I could think was: my brother is gay.
Because I didn’t see “it”: He was my brother, a tall, skinny, bonny 18-year-old kid with a nose a little too big. He didn’t speak in a high pitch voice; he didn’t gesture or wear pink- the cliché my uncles sometimes used to make fun of the “Queers”.
It never crossed my mind. Not when he wore tight tank tops, not even when I took him to the gay pride the summer he came to visit and all the men stared at him. He was my brother, just being my brother. The way he had always been.
We never really talked about it again. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell him I was worried for him. He was going to come out, or someone would see it. His “gay-ness”. He would experience pain, shame; some people will make him feel abnormal; some would try to hurt him, shun him aside. There would be stares and hatred and fingers pointing. People would whisper behind his back. Some of his friends wouldn’t stay his friends… Some of his family would no longer consider him family but an AIDS patient in the making. Neighbors would pity my parents: what had they done to deserve this? How could he do this to them? They were such nice parents… Cousins would be afraid to leave their baby boys alone with him. “It’s a known fact that pedophiles are gay” they would say to justify their behavior. And others would nod their heads in agreement. His female friends would always wonder if he was trying to steal their boyfriends. My parents would cry, scream, and kick him out of the house or worse.
A day before flying back to our regular lives, we went on another walk. We got ourselves strawberry sorbet and sat, facing the sea, taking pictures with out tongue sticking out, red from the ice cream; and on the way back, I asked him if he had bought a souvenir for Mohammed, maybe one of those stuffed Camels they sold at the store near the bakery. Ismael just smiled and said: yeah, maybe we can go look for something on the way back!” And then he smacked my forehead…
“Hey! You didn’t burp or say Roger!” I yelled out.
“I know!” he laughed and started to run away. I chased him, attempting to hit him back, and when I caught up with him, I pretended that the tears in my eyes were from laughing too much.
I couldn’t tell him that every time I looked at him, I still saw the skinny 6-year-old boy crying, banging his head on the marbled floor, screaming “make it stop, make it stop”, because he didn’t understand why dad was yelling, punching the walls, stumbling while he walked to the car before speeding off in the night. Nor did he understand why mom was sobbing hysterically. So he kept banging his head on the floor until it all got quiet, mom stopped crying and we all went to bed.
I couldn’t tell him that I was afraid that the next time he would hurt this much, it might be because he was gay. And that despite being his big sister, I would never be able to protect him.
I click reply and start typing a message to my cousin, just like my brother had instructed: Do not lie. Tell the truth. Nothing to be afraid off and nothing to be ashamed off. So I wrote: Ismael won't be coming to the reunion because my father refuses to speak to him since he came out, six years ago. He isn't welcomed near my father anymore nor is his boyfriend of 4 years, Nicolas. I clicked "send" and waited for her answer.
Coming Out
The first thing I do every morning when I get to work, is check my emails. I turn the computer on, type in my password and check my gmail account: This morning, there are 11 new messages. The first one is a spam advertising me on penis enlargement. Delete. The second one is from my cousin, in regards to the family reunion she is throwing in 2 months. I opened it. And just like I was afraid of, I read the dreaded question: "Why is your brother not coming to the reunion?"
“Psssss, Sofe? Sofe?”
It was the summer of 1999. I was reading a romance novel I had stolen from my aunt’s shelf. I looked up and saw my 18-year old brother’s head popping through the door.
“Are you bored? I am so bored.”
“Tell me about it!” I sighed back.
“You want to go for a walk? Let's go into town”, he suggested.
My grandma lived in Sfax, a small town in the middle of Tunisia. 3 PM was the very sacred siesta time and everyone else in the house was taking a nap. The only thing I could hear was my father snoring and the kitchen clock ticking. I wasn’t sure about going into town: most stores would be closed and the streets would be empty. But I was bored out of my mind, there was nothing to watch on the Arabic TV- and I didn’t understand half the stuff anyway.
I got up as quietly as possible and the two of us tiptoed out of the house and into the narrow streets of the Medina, the old part of the city. In this part of town, the houses had no running hot water; no heat for the cold and damp winters and the streets were dirty and filled with trash and abandoned kittens someone did not have the heart to drown.
We were alone in the street and walked in silence for 10 minutes before coming to the newly renovated plaza and the slightly busier road that separates the Medina from the rest of the town. We crossed and walked among empty shoe stores, closed ice cream parlors and almost-dead coffee houses. In some cafes, the waiters were getting busy, filling the water pipes with apple flavored tobacco, making sure there was sugar in the sugar bowls, wiping the dust off of the tables on the terrace. In an hour, the Imam will call out for the afternoon prayer and very quickly, the café will get swamped with men stopping in between the mosque and work.
My brother and I took a break at a Kebab stand to get something to drink; it was so hot, drops of sweat were drizzling down the vendor's tanned forehead, splashing on the ground. My brother frowned, watching me stick a straw in my can of Diet Coke.
“Why do you still get diet? I thought you were done with that. You’re still very skinny!”
“I like the taste better - I lied, looking down at my knees and what I was sure was cellulite wiggling around them.
We continued to walk across the center of the town, pass the one movie theater, which only showed old Bruce Lee and Jean-Claude Van Dam movies and head towards the sea and the boardwalk. I told Ismael about school, filled him on my apartment, crazy roommate and everything else that had changed since the last time I saw him. I told him that I had finally ended my on-again-off-again 3-year-old relationship with Ron.
" Men are stupid.” I concluded.
“I know”, Ismael squeezed my hand in sympathy before letting out a burp.
“Roger” he yelled out and before I could even react, he smacked my forehead. “Roger” was a burping game my brother, sister and I played: Whoever burped had to say “Roger” and everyone had to say it back. If you failed, you got smacked in the forehead.
“Ouch. What the…! You’re not supposed to put me in a coma with this!” I yelled out.
Ismael looked at me, my red forehead and started to laugh!
"So how about you, any new girlfriends? I asked
“Nope!”
“You don’t have a girlfriend?”
“No!”
“Someone you have a crush on? A sugar mommy?”
“No”
“Boyfriend?” I said, laughing.
“Actually, yes…”
I stopped walking and turned around, expecting him to smile and say “Gotcha!” but instead he laughed again, “Man, you should see the look on your face right now Sophie, so funny”
“You know, I have a lot of gay friends and it’s almost disrespectful of you to just, I don’t know, are you mocking gay people?”
He laughed for another few seconds, looked me straight in the eye and repeated:
“I have a boyfriend, his name is Mohammed. Ask Myriam. I told her at Easter; I wouldn’t joke about this.”
I didn’t say anything and that was the end of our conversation. We walked to the sea, sat on a bench, and every once in a while I glimpsed at my brother, trying to figure out if it was a joke or not; trying to decide if he looked gay or not…But he just looked like my brother. After 15 minutes of uncomfortable silence, we walked back to the house, Ismael rushing to bathroom while I ran to wake up Myriam, our older sister.
“Hey! IthinkIsmajusttoldmehewasgaybuthesaiditlaughingand…and…he said you knew?”
The words were flying out of my mouth so fast I wasn’t sure my sister actually understood me. But she nodded yes.
“Shit. He’s gay?”
“Yep”.
“You know- I lowered my voice in case someone was walking by our room- I used to wish he was gay. Just to teach Dad a lesson. Every time Dad got drunk and started yelling and being mean, I kept thinking: wouldn’t it be fun if his son was gay? Dad would get all upset and it would serve him right. And now, I am so ashamed I ever thought that… Like his punishment for having a drunken father is that he turns out gay…Like being gay is a punishment. Shit. I am such an asshole…”
My sister and I just sat in silence. I didn’t say anything else to my brother either that day. And when it was time to go to bed - the three of us slept in the same room; my sister and I on two benches so narrow, my brother, who slept on a mattress on the floor, was constantly afraid one of us would fall right on top of him- I pretended nothing out of the ordinary had occurred that afternoon; asking the same questions I always asked right before turning the lights off.
“Did anyone check for roaches? I said patting the sheets on top of my bed.
“I did” says Ismael.
He turned the lights off and I remember thinking: wow, my brother is gay!
And that was the only thing I thought of, every day, hour and minute during the rest of your vacation. Every time he spoke, every time he did something: buy yogurts for my grandpa, help clean the house, play with our cousins, even sneeze, all I could think was: my brother is gay.
Because I didn’t see “it”: He was my brother, a tall, skinny, bonny 18-year-old kid with a nose a little too big. He didn’t speak in a high pitch voice; he didn’t gesture or wear pink- the cliché my uncles sometimes used to make fun of the “Queers”.
It never crossed my mind. Not when he wore tight tank tops, not even when I took him to the gay pride the summer he came to visit and all the men stared at him. He was my brother, just being my brother. The way he had always been.
We never really talked about it again. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to tell him I was worried for him. He was going to come out, or someone would see it. His “gay-ness”. He would experience pain, shame; some people will make him feel abnormal; some would try to hurt him, shun him aside. There would be stares and hatred and fingers pointing. People would whisper behind his back. Some of his friends wouldn’t stay his friends… Some of his family would no longer consider him family but an AIDS patient in the making. Neighbors would pity my parents: what had they done to deserve this? How could he do this to them? They were such nice parents… Cousins would be afraid to leave their baby boys alone with him. “It’s a known fact that pedophiles are gay” they would say to justify their behavior. And others would nod their heads in agreement. His female friends would always wonder if he was trying to steal their boyfriends. My parents would cry, scream, and kick him out of the house or worse.
A day before flying back to our regular lives, we went on another walk. We got ourselves strawberry sorbet and sat, facing the sea, taking pictures with out tongue sticking out, red from the ice cream; and on the way back, I asked him if he had bought a souvenir for Mohammed, maybe one of those stuffed Camels they sold at the store near the bakery. Ismael just smiled and said: yeah, maybe we can go look for something on the way back!” And then he smacked my forehead…
“Hey! You didn’t burp or say Roger!” I yelled out.
“I know!” he laughed and started to run away. I chased him, attempting to hit him back, and when I caught up with him, I pretended that the tears in my eyes were from laughing too much.
I couldn’t tell him that every time I looked at him, I still saw the skinny 6-year-old boy crying, banging his head on the marbled floor, screaming “make it stop, make it stop”, because he didn’t understand why dad was yelling, punching the walls, stumbling while he walked to the car before speeding off in the night. Nor did he understand why mom was sobbing hysterically. So he kept banging his head on the floor until it all got quiet, mom stopped crying and we all went to bed.
I couldn’t tell him that I was afraid that the next time he would hurt this much, it might be because he was gay. And that despite being his big sister, I would never be able to protect him.
I click reply and start typing a message to my cousin, just like my brother had instructed: Do not lie. Tell the truth. Nothing to be afraid off and nothing to be ashamed off. So I wrote: Ismael won't be coming to the reunion because my father refuses to speak to him since he came out, six years ago. He isn't welcomed near my father anymore nor is his boyfriend of 4 years, Nicolas. I clicked "send" and waited for her answer.
posted by Sophie Yon-Gharbi at 6:12 AM
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