A Quiet Christmas

He’s a guy I don’t know anything about, this Rob Portman, an Ohioan and congressman and signer of the Defense of Marriage Act as well as backer of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. Oh, and he’s Republican, as well.

And as you probably know, he completely reversed his stand yesterday and came out for marriage equality. Why? Because his son told him, two years ago, that he was gay. (The son, that is, not the congressman….)

So? Big deal—isn’t that how it gets done?

It did in my case—over about thirty years I dragged everybody out of the closet in my family. Some came out easily; an elder brother came around very late. A cousin’s wife, who speaks to the Lord every morning—they have a brisk, efficient relationship—was trading garden lore with Rafael two years ago, completely nonplussed to have an “admitted homosexual” in her face.

Some of the party, however, are arguing that just because a son is gay shouldn’t make any difference at all. Presumably, the principled reaction would be along the lines of “you and your relationship are unnatural and I cannot countenance either. You are welcome in the family but your partner is not. And don’t for God’s sake talk about it.”

That was what I was facing, those years when I contemplated telling my parents. It was a given—they wouldn’t reject me entirely. I wouldn’t be told, as people I knew had been told, “you’re sick and disgusting. Go, and don’t come back until you’ve changed.”

Yes, there were parents who said that.

But there were many more parents who said ‘leave your homosexuality at the door when you walk in this house,’ or words to that effect. You went to your family, your lover to his. You did the Thanksgiving / Christmas / Easter thing and watched football for the afternoon. Then you reconnected with your lover and hung out at the gay bar for the evening.

The problem coming, of course, when the lover had no family nearby, or a family nearby that had rejected him.

“Go,” I said to Raf, those decades ago when I had just landed in Puerto Rico. “Christmas Eve means nothing to me. Why not go and celebrate with your family? I’ll be fine.”

It was logical, and he went.

I was alone in the apartment, and also the building—the people in the apartment next door were off on the island with their families, and Pablo, the gay landlord who lives upstairs was out as well. I settled with a book in a chair next to the indoor patio, filled with plants that Raf had brought.

Also filled with moonlight, since Christmas had coincided with a full moon that year.

Also filled with a rare, quite heavy fog.

It wasn’t a night for reading. I put down the book and wondered—what the hell had I done? I knew no Spanish, I dreaded going out into the streets—I was an outsider, I felt the distance acutely. I did stupid things, just to avoid the language issue. I once walked four or five miles home carrying my cello from a rehearsal. I was dying of thirst, virtually hallucinating for Coca-Cola, but couldn’t enter a store to buy one. Yes, I had the money. But I didn’t want to see the clerk’s eyes dilate with fear—‘A gringo. What if he speaks to me? No hablo inglés…’ she will be thinking.

And I didn’t have a job. The one job I thought I could have vanished in five minutes, after I choked and blew the Dvorak concerto in an audition for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. It left me with a lot of time, time I didn’t know how to fill.

Which didn’t do the relationship any good, and we had had a fight, a couple weeks ago, and things were better but not good. It was tense—should I stay? But what about all the stuff I had moved, which included a cat that was really more Raf’s than mine. So just leave everything, cat included, and take off, cello in hand?

It was utterly quiet, utterly still, that evening of fog infused with moonlight. I looked out at the plants, moistened by the fog, lit by the moonlight. Time had slowed.

And then music, a guitar, people singing. It was a parranda, a group of friends out singing gentle Christmas carols to their friends. Later at night, it can be rowdy—“ASALTO” people will shout, “ASSAULT!” and you get out of bed and start the asopao. Oh, and get ready—no one leaves until the last drop is drunk. But this was a quiet group of five or six people singing the traditional aguinaldos, the gentle, lilting music from the mountains.

I stood at the window, listening. I wanted to go out, join them, but….

The gate clicked—Pablo had come home. I heard him bound up the steps to his apartment, saw the light in his bedroom and heard the sound of his TV. A moment later he was shouting, “hey, gorgeous, come up here!”

I did. We watched a stupid Mexican posada and ate popcorn on his bed. Raf came home and joined us.

So should Portman have acted on principle? Was it wrong to flip on an issue just because his son is gay?

I only know this.

You’re not much of a parent if you banish your child, force him or her into solitude and loneliness, force the choice—your lover or your family.

We learned, Raf’s family learned, Portman learned.

And very soon, pretty much everybody will learn.