Pre-apologies for the bloggish nature of this post. I don’t see the SDMB as my personal blog, am not interested in establishing a blog, and have only one unresolved issue with “the outing”. This post will be in 2 parts. I don’t know how to shorten it and effectively communicate. The issue appears in part 2, I welcome advice.
Almost two weeks ago I started this thread about a meddlesome neighbor who outed me to my mom. If you followed that thread, you might’ve assessed “It’s not over”. You would’ve been (are) right. I’ll summarize the events documented in that thread.
- Nosy neighbor corners Mom and accuses her of being “Levi. You don’t take care of your house or your children. . . I have proof that [fervour] is a homosexual. . .”
- Mom asks brother. Brother says “we’ve never talked about it.”
- Brother calls fervour and his partner who are on a trip to give a head’s up.
- Back from our trip, I give Mom a few days to initiate a discussion which doesn’t happen. So I initiate a conversation on how nosy neighbor is unloved which segues into the current topic.
- Mom says she loves me and SO (significant other), and she doesn’t believe the rumors.
So Mom was happy living deluded and I was fine with things ending that way. I honestly believe that without Dorothea’s (real name of neighbor, I see no reason to protect her) interference, Mom would’ve gone to her grave content in her assessment. But you see the problem here, I’m sure. When is a meddlesome neighbor ever content? Of course Dorothea was going to pick at the scab until it bled.
One Friday night, month’s ago, Mom invited Dorothea over to watch a movie. Dorothea lives alone with a dog. Since that one movie night, Dorothea has invited herself every Friday to watch a movie at Mom’s house. Mom has told me repeatedly that she wishes that she didn’t have “movie night”, but Mom doesn’t have the heart to tell Dorothea the theater’s closed.
This past Friday night, I look out my window, and sure enough, there’s Dorothea’s Jeep in Mom’s yard. Movie night lasts about 2.5 - 3 hours, but this one kept on going.
SO says, “Why don’t you go out there and see what they’re doing.” So I quietly walk into the night. As I approach the house, I see through the front window that they are both sitting and watching the TV. Steve, my other bro with Down’s Syndrome is wandering around bored. They don’t see me. I report back to SO and shortly thereafter Dorothea leaves. We shrug it off.
Saturday, Steve came over early which is unusual. I didn’t have a chance to drink my coffee and take in the news. Steve couldn’t figure out what to do with himself so I suggested that we go for a walk. We stopped at Mom’s and asked if she wanted to go walking with us and she accepted.
On the walk, we talked about nothing earth-shattering, the nearing visits of two of my sisters, how long they would stay, Mom’s upcoming trip. Steve abandoned the walk early and went home. Nearing the end of our walk Mom said, “Well, I had a confrontation with Dorothea this Morning. . .”
Mom continued, “She asked me had I confronted you about what we talked about last Saturday. I said I had. I told her what I told you, that I told you there were rumors going around the community, and that I didn’t believe them. She said, ‘You don’t believe anything bad about your children.’” Here Mom paused for a second, “Are you gay?”
This is the first time she had asked that and I considered the implications. Someone had at one time told me, “If someone is ready to ask a question, they’re usually ready to have an answer.” I don’t know how true that is, but I said, “Yes.”
Mom said, “Well, I owe Dorothea an apology.”
I interupted, “You don’t owe Dorothea anything. I don’t think she had any good intentions when she told you anyway. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt you or for you to worry about me. She didn’t have anything good on her mind–”
“Now you’re judging her. You can’t do that” ----and so on and so forth. We got home and didn’t talk about it further. For the rest of the weekend, things were normal—except for the 800lb gorilla in the room that nobody talked about.
Mom’s going away for 5 days on Wednesday, then my sister and her husband are coming for a couple of months, finally my other sister will be joining the visit for 3 weeks in July. I reasoned that maybe Mom needed time to digest the information. My friend Samantha has said, “You’ve had 42 years to adjust to who you are. Your mom has had a couple of weeks. And she’s probably hurt that you never told her.” So, I figured we’ll continue to ignore the 800lb gorilla, make it through Monday and Tuesday, then talk about this in a couple of month’s after all the company is gone.
Monday morning I went over to Mom’s to ask Steve if he wanted to go out for lunch to get a burger and fries. When I walked into the house, I noticed that Mom’s bedroom door was partially shut. There was whispering coming from the room. A quick listen revealed the obvious. Yep, it was Dorothea again, being her loathsome self. I walked out, furious. Back in the barn, I asked my partner, “Should I go confront her?” He said, “Yes.”
I quickly called my sister and asked her, “Should I confront her?” She said, “Yes, if you can control your anger and speak rationally.”
I said that I thought I could but I’d need a shot of whiskey and an Atenelol.
I could barely feel the whiskey pumping through my body, but knew I had to get over there before the snake got away. At Mom’s I knocked on the bedroom door, pushed it open, and went in. I looked Dorothea in the eye and said, “I see Dorothea is here to talk about me.” I then looked at Mom and said, “If we’re going to have this conversation. Let’s have it.” Mom gave a nervous laugh and said, “OK.”
