Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality by Schwartz John

Author:Schwartz, John [Schwartz, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101600511
Publisher: Gotham
Published: 2012-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Following Brian’s advice, Jeanne and I were discussing gay topics more openly at home. Not…pushing…precisely. But talking. Out loud.

Using our daily New York Times as a source, we could easily find stories to discuss at the dining room table, including legal challenges to discriminatory laws, celebrities coming out, political debates over wedge issues like same-sex marriage.

It was rocky at first. One day, as Joseph came down the stairs from his bedroom, we were chuckling over a story.43 (We really did chuckle. We’re parents, not actors. And the story was written by Jim Dwyer, who is eminently chuckle-worthy.) Jeanne had found a story about a man, Mike Shaieb, who was being fraudulently dunned for child-support payments by a woman he did not even know. He didn’t even know how the city got his name. But the letter he received from the city said that if he didn’t pay his share, he could be arrested, and, as Dwyer wryly wrote, “he might lose his licenses to drive, fish, or hunt, or practice barbering, accounting, or dental hygiene” under the law.

He hired a lawyer and attended the hearing, where the lawyer delivered something of a bombshell argument. “Mr. Shaieb is gay,” she said. “He’s never had sex with a woman in his life.”

In fact, Mr. Shaieb added, “In my entire forty-five years of living, I have never seen a vagina in person.”

That was the line that sent us into a giggle fit, and which we read out loud to Joseph.

He got stormy. “What’s so funny about that?” He ran back upstairs and slammed the door to his room.

Bit by bit, we made progress. During the presidential election of 2008, Joseph wrote a report that focused on the candidates for president, and he paid particular attention to anti-gay views expressed by Mike Huckabee.

By the middle of seventh grade, in 2009, I could show him a new video that the humor website Funny or Die had put out about Proposition 8.44 It starred John C. Reilly, Jack Black, and Neil Patrick Harris, who is easy on the eyes and famously gay. The video itself explored the issues and illogic of the gay marriage fight. As the video played, Joe came over to look at the laptop. He wasn’t saying anything, but this time he wasn’t running away, either.

We had even signed Joe up for summer camp for the first time. The summer before, we had toured a few, and he lit up during the tour of French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts. This was a place that was strong in musical theater, a growing interest of his. The camp has been a training ground for aspiring actors, singers, and musicians since it was founded in 1970. Its alumni include Zooey Deschanel, Jon Favreau, and David Stone, the producer of Wicked and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

We didn’t know all that when we took the tour. But we did see kids running around the camp who were clearly, happily gay. It seemed to us the kind of place that a kid like Joe could find out that he was not alone.

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