Sons Talk About Their Gay Fathers by Andrew Gottlieb

Author:Andrew Gottlieb [Gottlieb, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, LGBTQ+ Studies, Gay Studies, Men's Studies, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317712961
Google: mtisAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-01-14T04:57:11+00:00

ROB

Life goes on.

Twenty-one-year-old Rob describes himself as “a rough-and-tumble kinda guy.” He goes with the flow and doesn’t “sweat the small stuff.” His ability to adapt easily developed early on when he, his father Warren, now sixty, his mother Jane, now forty-six, and his brother Jerry, now eighteen, had to move from base to base while Warren served in the Air Force both here and abroad. Relocation became a fact of life. As a result, Rob now feels that he could deal with “pretty much anything thrown in front of” him. It is a skill that has come in handy.

His parents met while Warren was stationed in the South. Jane’s father was also in the Air Force at the time. Jane’s mother saw Warren at the officers’ club and invited him to the house with the intention “of hitting on him.” Warren wasn’t interested in her but was interested in her daughter. He and Jane dated for a while and eventually married. She went to law school and, after Warren retired from the Air Force, so did he. Both now have a private law practice and reside outside Washington, DC.

Rob says that he and his father “have always had a great relationship,” one that has remained that way over the years despite some ups and downs. A “stay-at-home dad” after his mom started law school, Rob feels that his father has been consistently responsive to his interests and needs. Whether it was showing him how to operate his Dukes of Hazzard Power Wheels scooter as a youngster, or teaching him how to play baseball when he was a bit older, or coming to his lacrosse games now that he’s in college, or just sitting down and watching a football game together, Rob has always felt his dad’s presence: “He’s a great guy—definitely.”

Describing him as organized (“He’s got his sock drawer and his underwear drawer … all lined up by color”), with an offbeat sense of humor (“Stuff he finds funny nobody else really does”), and truthful to a fault (“I don’t know why, but he … won’t lie”), Rob can recall only one physical confrontation with his father. He was around age twelve and learning about water conservation in school. One morning they were in the bathroom together. Rob observed Warren doing the unthinkable: he left the water running while combing his hair. Thinking it needlessly wasteful, Rob turned the faucet off: “I need to conserve the water.” His father turned it back on. Off and on, on and off, back and forth they struggled until his father warned, “If you don’t stop being such a brat, I’m gonna smack you.” “Go ahead!” Rob dared. Smack him he did. Rob doesn’t see this as such a bad thing since he “kind of deserved it.” Although challenges to authority clearly did go on, this confrontation proved more an “isolated” incident—the exception to the rule.

When Rob was thirteen, his parents called “a family meeting.” “Something important” was about to happen. Ten-year-old Jerry panicked and began to cry.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.