The Question

“Dad… are you gay?”

She was standing there in her high-top Chuck Taylors… in her best tomboy-pose… exuding cockiness and shy uncertainty. Livvy, my youngest, the baby, had just turned eight, and was asking a question, with a particular emphasis, a phrasing, really, an upturn on the last syllable… that suggested she meant it as a question, but she would withdraw it and pretend it as a joke if I’d rather. All I had to do was to give her some kind of a sign.

It was the kind of question that can kill a buzz. I had just put my empty cup in the sink, I was reaching to grab my windbreaker, and I startled. Then I looked up to see what was written on her face --

At that exact moment, her sister comes into the room behind us.

“OK... I’m ready... Let’s go.”

We are walking out the door to go for a bike ride.

***

The weather has been cold and wet for a while, and windy. First came the blizzards, and then we had the rain. We’d been locked up inside like grizzly bears for most of my daughters’ recent weekend stays, for most of the winter really… We’d put on weight, and our claws were beginning to reach that stage where they might begin to be useful. This was the first real week of Spring, a little chilly still, but with a promise of warmth in the air. So we were riding bikes at every opportunity… trying to get out and about, to kind of work off some of the energy.

Yesterday we had gone for a ride down this tree-lined street in one of my favorite neighborhoods. This street, it should be explained, is kind of special. It is one of those that have a “nature’s cathedral” feel. It is gorgeous in summer, with spectacular cover creating this cool, still haven from the sweltering bustle outside. And then it has this stripped back beauty in winter. For my tastes, this is when it is really lovely. When all the leaves are off the trees and only the bony remains are left, the trees look like they are raising their plaintive arms to heaven, in some sort of furtive cry. It is astonishing.

The street is a constructed one… but one that was done well, and long ago. It is lined along its entire length with sycamores. Its narrow winding pavement looks almost like a footpath, if you walk out into its center and imagine it as a footpath. The path pushes gently down a hill… and lulls rightward… before dipping away, and into the intersection. It is – how to say it? – draped in this kind of shady, gauzy veil. And it is beautiful. The trees are standing there in their skeleton-walled canopies, with their winged buttresses forming a kind of long, bending Gothic arch cathedral of tree limbs and trunks, running all the way down the lane. It’s like a painting… or a movie. It’s a Harry Potter dining hall... Or, better, it’s an animated drawing. It’s a forest in one of the princess movies. It’s a forest in Snow White…

And so I was explaining this to my girls, as we stood there in the middle of the street. I had pulled them right into the center of the space. We were standing in the middle of the sanctuary, in that place where, if you know anything about music, if you’ve ever sung in a church that was built before the microphone, you get that perfect lilting lightness… where the purity of the sound seems like it will rise forever, where the sound gathers, in that smallest possible space at the uttermost possible arch of the building’s acoustic heights… and shimmers. Sound becomes light itself in such places. I know that sounds a little corny, but it’s the best way I can come up with to describe it…. It’s as if sound somehow attains the speed of light and turns into a spark. It’s like your whole body opens and is filled with light… your cells, the pores in your skin… your body resonates with the ringing, with the purity of the sound…

Do you know what I am talking about?

Well this was one of those places… and the girls had been good little soldiers and had pulled up beside me. And we are stopped in the middle of the street… A crisp light was spilling through the trees at an angle that set them off against the grey of the sky, lighting up their burnished beams… The overcast sky worked with the effect, to accentuate the feeling that we were in a small cathedral, a forest. And I was trying, somehow, to figure a way to explain this to the girls.

Of course, the question is… how, exactly, do you tell a just-turned-eight and soon-to-be-ten about the beauty of such things? They have so little experience. Have they had the opportunity to sing, in a perfect choral moment, a flawless cantata, or the satisfaction of reading the Transcendentalists over the course of a lifetime? Have they been to the cathedral at Chartres? Do they have the experience and imagination to appreciate this Tim Burton movie set? They are growing and are showing signs that they are done with silliness… Do they remember how to make believe…?

And it occurs to me that, as a middle-aged man who lost touch with his inner child long ago, I may not have the skill and imagination to relay what I am trying to communicate to them. And so I worry about these things for a moment…and then I fell back on what I know.

I point my finger toward some imaginary object down the road and I kind of squint at it, like I am really trying to make it out. I lean forward, searchingly. Dutifully, the girls fall into line and try to see what I am looking at.

Shhhh, I whisper... Quiet. Look down the road… right about… there! Do you see it? Ignore all the other stuff going on around us. Just sit here on your bike and pretend we’re at the movies. Pretend that all of this – and I indicate the world generally with a sweeping gesture – but particularly this place, the one inside this canopy of trees… imagine that all of this… is a movie screen. Pretend that we’re watching a scene from Snow White… And if you look down there at the end of the forest… you can see a white horse just stepping into the path.

And I looked, and leaned, and I squinted... And I saw the white horse.  Because if you don’t believe your own story, nobody else will.

And it almost worked, too. There was this little wrinkle, this moment, when I thought that they might be feeling it. I even asked them if they were feeling it.

Do you feel that? Does it feel like you’re in a movie? I made a few additional sweeping gestures with my hands and arms. The purported effect was to create this magical transformation. And so I stood, there just slightly in front of them… ridiculously acting it out… like we had somehow ridden our bikes into a mediated world and were now standing in a digitization of Snow White’s reality. I was acting as if I had woken up and found myself in a new body, as if I had just exchanged souls with someone else and I was now moving in… hanging pictures on the walls... I was patting the air with my hands and doing these quirky wax-on-wax-off motions. I was doing the whole mime routine...

And then my oldest daughter. Izzy, slapped me out of my reverie.

I had thought that I was constructing this meaningful experience for the girls. We do a lot of bike riding and nature watching in this neighborhood, and they often stop me to point out some budding flower or some odd-shaped stone. So it wasn’t entirely out of the question when I had hoped that they would feel the same sense of austere beauty that I was feeling in the interior space of the place. So it should have worked , but on this day it didn’t. To them, it was just a street with trees on one side and trees on the other… And no one was going to convince them otherwise. My Izzy turned her head into my shoulder and leaned into her punch.

“Dad, you sound kind of gay.”

***

So it had happened two days in a row.

Now it hadn’t particularly worried me when Izzy had thrown cold water… I knew what she really meant to say was, “Dad! Stop talking so loud! The guy over there in his driveway can hear you!” … I knew this because there had been a guy standing over in his driveway, and he could hear me. And she had been worried about it… In fact, she had been on my case a lot, lately, because I talk too loudly in public. I think it’s her age, really. She doesn’t come right out and say it, but I don’t think she thinks… that I’m as cool as I once was. The reasons for this are complicated, but they feel pretty certain. I can sense it and I’m sure that I’m correct. Even so, I think this thing about the loud talking is a momentary thing. It will soon run its course. Apparently, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I embarrass her. I know this because she assures me of it every time she brings it up. And she brings it up about four times a day... so I believe her. It truly is just a question of my being a person who talks loudly… At least, that’s her story. And for now, I’m sticking with it.

Also, there was another reason that I hadn’t been worried when Izzy said what she said. I mean, let’s face it, I did sound kind of gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but come on… a grown man standing there, in the middle of the road, describing, like some hapless Mr. Rogers, the aesthetic niceties of his neighborhood... and all he can come up with is princess stuff? It was like I’d called a meeting of the court, and put my best minds on it, then begged the favor of my children, to entice them to sit in recline with me awhile, to commune -- and in the midst of the festivities my daughters begged my pardon... “And what are we to talk about, dear father?” And I replied… unicorns!

Now you tell me, buddy… Is that or is that not… gay??!?

Ok, so actually, it is undeniably girly. But I don’t know that I’d call it gay. At least not per se. I mean, I’m a father, right? And I have daughters. True? So you tell me… What am I supposed to do? When I had stepsons, all they wanted to watch was movies of people being punched in the testicles. And so we did that. We watched many, many movies of people being punched in the testicles. But now I have girls, and they want unicorns. So I give them unicorns.

***

Now… I want you to stop what you’re doing. Stop it. I know what you’re thinking – just stop it. This is not going to be a coming out party. There is no coming out to be had. It is merely a story about a father and his daughters, and how a few little moments were filled with meaning. I also won’t be, in this story, having a bar-mizvah or a quinceanera… This is because I am not Jewish and because I am not a fifteen-year-old Mexican girl. I am a father. I have daughters. And they have both made comments recently about things they don’t understand. I am trying to help them understand.

So, to do that, I need to understand... myself.

There are two things going on here. First, Izzy has used a throwaway insult to allow her to break ranks and ride ahead rightquick on her bicycle, thereby signaling to the guy standing in his driveway that she has no idea who we are, that we are just some strangers who happened to ride up to the same spot on the street with her but otherwise she doesn’t know us. And while I suppose that it is within the realm of theoretical possibility that I had been acting -- and sounding, too, apparently -- "kind of gay" that particular weekend, I think Izzy’s comment had more to do with her age and her newly-found independent streak than anything I was doing.  She is about to be ten.  For the next seven or eight years she will think everything is kind of gay.

And anyway, I am not entirely sure what that means… to sound gay. I mean, sure, I get the concept. I’ve seen the stereotypes. But how does that fit me? So I had a skiing accident when I was seventeen. It knocked two teeth out and almost ripped my nose from my face. And after the bridge work and the rebuilding of my nasal cavity, I speak a little nasally. And there is also the slightest hint… of a lisp. But I ask you… if you felt, as I did just now, that little shiver… What was that shiver for? For God’s sake, Humphrey Bogart had a lisp. As does Mike Tyson… And what about Truman Capote? OK, bad example, that last one, but you take my point. It can’t be just about a way of talking.

I think at least part of the problem is that, included in the stereotype of gayness is a kind of extravagant creativity. Gay men and artists are the only men allowed in our society to show any sensitivity, and for our trouble in allowing them to act out, we expect them to produce flamboyant, imaginative expression. But does that make what they produce… gay? It just doesn’t seem to me to be both necessary and sufficient to say that creativity and expression equals gay. As if poetry itself has become the exclusive property of gayness. I think that boldness and extravagance of thought, of ideas, is neither male nor female, neither straight nor gay. It is universal. It is immense. Imagination and poetry are, for me, the lifeblood of living zenlike... in the moment. I am most alive when I am so, and that is what I want to be. Immense. Was Henry Miller gay? Was Whitman? Again… you take my point.

So I think that what it meant, if it meant anything at all, when Izzy said I sounded gay is that … I’m alive. And I can live with that. Still, I worry more about where she got that stuff than what she means by it. For example, I wonder… How the hell do I know what I wonder? Who in God’s creation knows where kids come up with their stuff... Can you answer that?! Can you?! Maybe one of their friends has a teenaged brother, and so they have learned that to say something is “gay” is an all-inclusive insult, a veritable triple-dog level of difficulty in the lexicon of teenage public insults. Or maybe they have suddenly come face to face with the possibility that their father, this man whom they have never questioned, should not necessarily be taken at face value. Maybe they are beginning to question authority, and starting at the most basic of levels. Perhaps they are taking graduate courses on Lacan at the community college on the weekends they are with their mom. How do I know? The point is… I don’t know. Kids operate in a kind of kid space. It is informed by so many things that have so little to do with me… Just as I live in my world and do not want to have to explain every single thought that runs through my head to them… I try to not read too much meaning into their comments unless they take the time to express them in a way that says they want me to… So while I want to tell Izzy that... as the war-torn path of a thousand ex-lovers, girlfriends, spouses, and their consorts can attest, and as these forlorn souls, strewn behind me like so much carnage, like so much food for the hunt… as these women surely will bear witness… I am not gay...  I don’t do this, however, beause I do not feel it is warranted. If asked to place odds, I would bet that her comment lacked a deep psychological core. It was child’s play… perhaps not innocent, because it hinted at a kind of ugly bias that I don’t accept… But still, child’s play.

But then there was this second thing…

***

Livvy stood there, not quite sure what she had just done. I think the fact that I looked up at her made it worse in a way. She has really been clinging to me lately. She’s been especially gentle, and sensitive, and her hugs have been electric. She is in the final throes of the Sweetness and Light stage, those last few days of Barbie and coloring books. She has seemed vulnerable, as if she wants to wring out every last drop from these vestiges of childhood but she is also afraid of being mocked. She is trying out a variety of new roles – punk rock girl, brainiac, and most importantly… the girl-who-is-no-longer-just-Izzy’s-little-sister. She is new at all of these, and she plays them tentatively. She is seeking authenticity… She craves attention, but she shuns it. And she doesn’t want to be the one to rock the boat, but she kind of likes the rocking… And so now comes Livvy, with her wild wild question… Why here? Why now?!... and she clearly means it as a serious question. And I look up at her like she has just told me that she won the lottery but I am trying to determine whether she is putting me on... You know, one of those searching looks.

Her innocent face is crystal. She is delicate and breakable in her sweetness. She holds her pose, but we both know that it could slip at any moment and break into pieces on the floor. She will start to look for a hole in the floor to jump into if I don’t think quick, if I don’t speak up.

So I pause, and I straighten myself, and I look her in the eye... I say, “What?! “

There are a number of ways to say that word… the way I said it was the way you say it when your drunken friend has just made an impassioned argument that The Carpenters are his favorite early rock band. Wait… What ?!

She is kind of smiling, but only just kind of. Her smile looks like an expression you might see on one of the kids in the hall... She is not sure for whom she feels more embarrassed, me or her. And I can tell that she is trying to sort it out. So I try again. “Baby Girl…”

Now just where do you go with such an answer. I mean, she’s eight, right?. And she’s old enough to know that if she wants to know something all she has to is ask, yeah? But she’s also old enough to know better… She has been raised to be sensitive by a guy who grew up with Alan Alda on the tube. While she should know that her father is a veritable dynamo of masculine insouciance. And while, of course, she will find this out over time. (I can be just such… a… man. Perhaps her mother could share some stories.) … she also needs to know about acceptance and tolerance. I want her to avoid the dark thinking that lies at the bottom of her question… as if it was an accusation.

So I struggle with what to say. And I struggle with how to say it. And this struggle, though mighty, takes all of two seconds… and then I fall back on what I know.

“Baby Girl, as the war-torn path of a thousand ex-lovers, girlfriends, spouses can attest, and as the souls strewn behind me like so much carnage can bear witness, I am most definitely… not gay.”

She looks at me uncertainly. Not because she doesn’t accept what I am saying, but because she is processing it. She is a gifted and talented girl, bright as a new penny, but she sometimes takes me too literally. Her funny bone is oriented toward physicality, whereas her sister’s is more verbal. She is trying to determine my mood, my intent, from the words I have used. She is reading me.

I don’t give her any help at first. I just let it sit there. I have always used adult language with my girls, as well as conceptual thinking, and trusted them to hear and understand. It is important to me to have integrity, and I don’t think I do my girls any favors by spoon-feeding them knowledge. And yet, it occurs to me, as I stand there, that I can’t let something I’ve just said go without clarification. Honesty is very important to me. I am not a Nazi about it, but I do try to advocate for it when I can. So I must go back and make sure that the girls, both now standing in the living room, each with one foot pointed toward the door, don’t get any wrong ideas.

Well, OK… I say. There may have been just a few less than a thousand. It was more like a hundred… OK? Fine. You want to play detective, missy? Ten. There were ten… all right?! And I realized that I seemed less than authoritative. And also slightly comical with my sudden and unexplained punching of the air. So I add… But there was strewing. Believe me -- strewing was involved…

It was this last bit that broke the ice. Izzy snorted and Livvy took her cue, and grinned. I stood there like the class clown who has just discovered that if he cracks wise it’s almost as good as doing his homework… Then, I walked over and gave my girlies a little peck on the cheek.

Livvy had been looking for a sign, and so I had given her one.

“No, Boo. Your daddy is not gay… he’s just a little silly.”