Until I Meet My Husband (Essay Novel) by Ryousuke Nanasaki

Author:Ryousuke Nanasaki [Nanasaki, Ryousuke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: light novel
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Published: 2022-04-15T07:00:00+00:00

The “Cruelty” of Coming Out to My Parents

I WAS 20 YEARS OLD when I came out to my mother. At the time, I was already living on my own in Tokyo, so I was planning to tell her during my yearly trip back to Hokkaido.

Naturally, I had done some thinking with my tiny little brain trying to decide whether I should tell my parents at all. Ultimately, I concluded that it just wasn’t going to be possible to hide it for the rest of my life. So if they were going to find out sooner or later, I wanted it to be as early on as possible. But my parents were both the “jock” type, and since they had hoped to raise me into an athlete since the day I was born, there was no chance they’d approve of me being gay. Looking back at my childhood, it was clear that they simply weren’t the sort of parents who could tolerate it.

In sixth grade, I loved having shaggy hair with bangs that reached my eyes. But my parents—particularly my father—couldn’t stand it. “Look at that mop! Go pay to have it cut!” he’d shout, handing me money from his wallet.

But while I took the money, I desperately didn’t want to get my hair cut. “No! I don’t want to!” I protested tearfully.

“Why not?! What, you think you look cool like that? The best hairstyle for a man is a close-cropped cut! Or I could get the electric razor and shave your whole damn head if you’d prefer!”

“Never!!!”

“You think you look so cool with your long hippie hair, don’t you? That’s the kind of man I hate the most!”

But that wasn’t enough to cow me. “Yeah, well, you only cut your hair short because you think it’s so manly! You’re trying to look cool, too!”

“I have never cared about looking cool, thank you very much!”

“If looks didn’t matter to you, then you wouldn’t complain about my hair in the first place!”

Kids argue using logic, which is not something that can be defeated with a grown-up’s beloved common sense. Thus, the parent’s only option is to play their trump card:

“Don’t talk back to me! You’ll do as I say!”

“Fine! As long as I cut my hair, you’ll be happy, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You promise you’ll stop nagging me?”

“Yes, I promise! Now go!”

I took the 2,000 yen my father gave me and went to the barber shop, where the barber asked me, “How much do you want me to cut?”

“One millimeter on all sides,” I answered brusquely, my eyes puffy from crying.

“One millimeter?”

“Yes, please. Or if that’s too hard, then maybe half a centimeter or so.”

Afterward, when I returned home with my hair exactly half a centimeter shorter than it was before, all my father said was “I want my money back.” Alas, this was not the last fight we would have about my hairstyle.

The topic of male gender roles came up in junior high as well. At the time, the most popular cologne among my peers was called CO2.

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