January 2002

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For this entry to really make sense, you need to have seen the bit in Friday's entry that sparked the person who wrote me yesterday to write. And it would help if you've read yesterday's entry, which gives a bit of background on me and details the episode that wasn't funny. This is the funny one.

I had a good friend in Chapel Hill. He really didn't care if people in his local life knew that he was gay, but he hadn't decided whether or not to tell his parents, who were coming to town for a Thanksgiving visit. Without ever really talking about it much, we came to the conclusion that if his parents thought he and I were an item, well, we wouldn't disabuse them of that notion.

It is important that you understand, though, that if they had ever asked whether or not we were a couple, we would have told them we were just friends. And friends is what we presented ourselves as being. We definitely did not change how we acted around each other, or try to convince anyone of anything that wasn't true.

They were a very pleasant pair, and I was glad to get to meet them. I had Thanksgiving dinner with them, and I think we all wound up really enjoying the day. And I'm glad, especially since that turned out to be his dad's last Thanksgiving. He died the following August.

And where things got funny: the year his dad died, his mom came back here for a long Thanksgiving visit. My friend had decided against telling her the truth, at least for the time being. She and I had stayed in touch during the intervening year, and were already friends. During the first couple of days of this visit she was staying with me, for complicated reasons involving bad backs and food poisoning.

I was still recuperating the first morning she was here, and was rather weak. She and I were sitting at the dining table having coffee and chatting. All of a sudden she asked me why her son wasn't married. I knew the real question was why he and I weren't married.

Although even when I feel well I'm not the world's best at extemporaneous speechmaking, in this instance, I did okay. I managed to say rather calmly that I couldn't speak for him, but that I suspected his reasons were similar to mine: that I was used to my privacy and not yet ready to share the space with another person. That satisfied her, or at least kept her from asking again!

After a lengthy battle with cancer, my friend died several years ago. To the best of my knowledge, he never did tell his mother, and I don't think she ever voiced any suspicions.