Missed Connections

by Brian Francis

  First, stop beating yourself up. Your inability to find the connection you’re seeking isn’t your fault. It isn’t anyone else’s fault, either. Mostly, it all comes down to timing. So please stop obsessing about your failure to find love. Have fun, relax, and make out with people. Those Saturday nights at the bar will remain some of your most magical memories, although they’ll be harder to conjure in the years to come, and a little less vivid, too. Do us both a favour, will you? Put aside your romantic woes and self-absorption and try to be as present as possible on those nights. Stockpile as much as you can.

  I know growing up gay in an unaccepting world has made you feel ashamed, fearful, and anxious. It has caused you to doubt yourself in so many unnecessary ways. I’m sorry that this has been your journey. You didn’t deserve it and you’re not to blame. (You might need to repeat this over and over to really let those words sink in.) But what I’m here to tell you is you will step out from those murky shadows and into light. Brilliance is on its way. It won’t happen overnight and it won’t completely cast aside those shadows, but they’ll weaken. As I write this, at the old dining room table, the starless early morning has dissipated to an amber clarity. This is how it will be for you.

  I’m going to give you a couple of dates. Mark them down and tuck them away somewhere safe, and when you feel the weight of those shadows, remember them.

  MONDAY, JULY 19, 1993

  This will be the day you come out to Mom and Dad. You’ll be twenty-two and gearing up for your last year of university. You’ll be living at home for the summer, working at the pipeline, in an ill-fated long-distance relationship (your first), and you’ll be an absolute mess. By this point, everyone close to you will know you’re gay, but word will start to spread beyond your immediate friends. You’ll panic that Mom and Dad could find out from someone else. And you’ll want to tell them so badly. When you’re eating dinner, the words will be right there, a thorny ball on your tongue.

  “Mom, Dad, I’m gay.”

  But you’re never sure if the time is right, or if there ever will be a right time, so you swallow that ball back down, knowing that, as soon as you say the words, nothing will be over. Your journey with them will have just begun.

  On this particular Monday, you call in sick to work. You won’t be physically ill, but emotionally, you’ll feel like you’re teetering on the edge of a high diving board above a drained pool. Dad will go golfing late that morning and you’ll be sitting in the den with Mom, you in the rocking chair. You’ll notice a change in the air, a weightiness in the atmosphere.

  “I think I know what’s wrong,” Mom will say, and you’ll start rocking quickly.

  “Mmm-hmm?” you say, trying to stall, already sensing what’s about to come.

  “Brian, are you gay?”

  Before you can say anything, you start to sob. A lifetime of secrets and shame will surge to the surface. Years of excuses and guilt. The constant strain of your hiding.

  You won’t be able to speak, only nod.

  “I knew it!” she’ll wail. “I told your father, but he said I was being stupid. I knew I’d be dealing with this someday. That’s why I watched Oprah when she had gays on.”

  She won’t comfort you or tell you it’s all right. She’ll only be able to focus on what your revelation means to her. You see the wheels spinning in her head: What are the neighbours, her friends, the world at large going to think? She’ll say that no one can know. Except, of course, your father.

  “You’ll have to tell him, Brian.”

  You feel a sense of inevitable dread. Coming out to Dad will mean confirming the worst: your failure to be the son he deserved. You know this news will only widen the gap between you. All you can do is keep rocking and wait.

  Eventually the back door will open. You hear the clanging of Dad’s golf clubs as he takes them downstairs. He has no idea what he’s about to lose.

  He’ll come up the stairs, through the kitchen, to the living room, where you and Mom are sitting. He’ll know immediately that something is up. Mom and her silence, not to mention your red-rimmed eyes, will signal that. He’ll pause in the door frame, baseball cap slightly askew.

  “What’s going on?” he’ll ask cautiously.

  Before you can even open your mouth, Mom will open hers.

  “I told you Brian was gay!”

  And because your entire life has built up to this moment and you can’t afford to screw this up, you’ll look directly at Dad and say, “It’s true. I’m gay. I’ve always known. Neither of you have done anything to cause this. It’s just who I am. You’ve been a great father and I love you.”

  His reaction will be hard to gauge, as it always is with this man of action but so few words. He’ll sit down in the armchair, fingers joisted across his stomach, and you’ll wait, realizing that his opinion is the one that matters most.

  “Well, if that’s the way you are,” he’ll say matter-of-factly, “then that’s the way you are. The love that was here before is still here.”

  You’ll exhale, relieved, but still not quite believing his words. But for now, your secret is out. You’re out. No more hiding and no more tears, for now anyway. You’re too exhausted to feel much of anything.

  You’ll get up to go call your sisters, your boyfriend, your friends, to tell them the news. Dad will follow you out, and just as you’re about to go downstairs to your room, you’ll hear him say something to you. You won’t catch it at first, it was just a tight mumble, so you’ll turn and say, “Pardon?”

  “I said I could give you a hug if you want.”

  Remember what I said earlier about being as present as possible? You won’t realize it then, but Dad’s hug will be one of the most healing moments in your life. So much hurt and pain melted away in that embrace. Years later, when he’s no longer around to hug, you’ll want this moment back more than anything.

  In that hug, he put his picket fence around you.

  There will be lots of conversations in the days, weeks, and months ahead, mainly led by Mom. She will go into a closet of her own. Both of them will experience some of what you experienced: the fear of judgement and blame, that they did something “wrong” in raising you, that our family is damaged. You’ll understand their insecurity as parents, subject to everyone’s opinions. Mom, especially. She’ll need time to process this, to absolve herself of responsibility (this is when her “scare in the Rockies while pregnant” theory will surface), and it will feel like you’re treading the same territory over and over again. Eventually they’ll find their way through. Dad will write to his relatives in Saskatchewan to tell them. They’ll help form Sarnia’s first Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays—PFLAG—support group and answer the phone line to assist other parents in distress. Dad will march beside you in Sarnia’s first Pride parade. They’ll also come to Toronto Pride in 1996, along with your aunt and uncle from Saskatchewan. Mom will greet you and your new boyfriend in the lobby of the Howard Johnson hotel wearing a fuchsia pantsuit. “The gays love colour after all,” she’ll proclaim.

  Dad will march with PFLAG in the parade. You’ll think about the lie that the world told you and that you’d believed: that a father could never love or accept his gay son. But then a face you recognize will materialize in a sea of strangers. Your dad will walk past you, in his Tilley hat and clip-on sunglasses, surrounded by the applause and cheers of the crowd, carrying a sign that reads “We Love Our Kids.” And while you’ll feel gratitude and pride inside you, you’ll also feel resentment and sorrow for all the silent years that passed between you and him, allowing the world to do all the talking when the only ones who should have been talking were the two of you. He’ll die just five years later. Shortly before his death, he’ll write in a journal that one of his regrets was not knowing about you sooner so that he could have given you the courage you needed. But you got that courage, Brian. It came just when you needed it most.


  Years later, at Mom’s funeral, a couple from the Sarnia PFLAG will come into the chapel and you’ll start to cry as soon as you see them. PFLAG parents will always set off your waterworks. The fear of that parental rejection is still deeply rooted in you. But rejection wasn’t your reality. It wasn’t your story. There are times when you can hardly believe it yourself.

  Time and time again, you’ll be reminded that your experience isn’t shared by everyone. You’ll see first-hand the damage that parents cause when they turn their backs on their queer children, when they care more about the opinions of others than their child’s happiness.

  You were raised and loved by two good people. And for the rest of your days, this will be your anchor.

  SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2016

  This will be your wedding day.

  Yes, it will be a real marriage. In 2003, same-sex marriage will be legalized in Canada. And although your wedding date seems a long way off from 1992, twenty-four years from where you’re currently sitting on your bed in the student house, marking your classified ad responses with x’s and o’s, the day of your marriage will actually be your twentieth anniversary. (He was the new boyfriend who met Mom in her fuchsia pantsuit.) Which also means that, as I write this in 2021, you’re celebrating twenty-five years together. The good news is that silver is the traditional gift for a twenty- fifth anniversary. The bad news is that gold isn’t until your fiftieth.

  Okay, so no doubt you want to know more about your future husband. His name is Serge. You won’t connect through a personal ad, but through a mutual friend. And, truth be told, this is one of the best ways to meet someone. His birthday will be two days after yours. He’ll always hold the door open for you. He’ll always say “bless you” whenever you sneeze. He’ll always put cream in your coffee (although it will never be quite enough), and he’ll always offer you the first bite of his chocolate bar, an act of selflessness that is incomprehensible to you. He’ll like his gin martinis dry, three olives, and with just a spritz of vermouth. (Don’t worry, you’ll learn how to make them.) And, like Dad, he’s a man of precision. He is a fantastic sewer. Your living room curtains will be testament to that. And talk about stylish! Everything Serge wears will be carefully considered, debated, then reconsidered. He’ll spend hours shopping and come home empty-handed.

  “I’m just so disappointed in everything,” he’ll sigh.

  He’ll support you unconditionally. Serge will be your biggest defender and never make you feel self-conscious for who you are. Being around him will feel completely natural. There will never be a day in all your years together when you haven’t looked forward to coming home to him. You’ll rarely argue and when you do, it will be about important things like whether the tomato knife should be used to cut anything but tomatoes.

  You’ll love him desperately, more than you’re willing to admit or able to grasp. His presence will be so threaded throughout your own life, it will be impossible for you to imagine not hearing his voice come from another room or not folding his still-warm undershirts, not seeing his eyeglasses on the counter or his shoes in the foyer. Even in the middle of the night, you’re certain a part of you can still perceive his presence, your slumbering bodies side by side.

  Your years as a couple will blur together, but they’ll have a way of sneaking up on you. One day, you’ll note Serge’s greying hair, a rounding in his posture. He’ll see the same in you, and you’ll see it yourself. You’re a pair of middle-aged men now. You’ll start to measure out your relationship in dogs. You’ve already had two; the second one is now fourteen. You’ll no doubt get a third dog (Serge would be lost without one), but you’ll also realize the next dog will likely be your last. And though you no longer worry about breaking up, the worry about a different sort of separation will begin to take shape. You won’t dwell on it much; there are still many good years ahead for you both, fingers crossed. You want nothing more than to be two elderly geezers shuffling down the street, holding hands. But it’s inevitable one of you will be left behind. Which of you will it be? And will the life that you once shared feel like it belongs to another dimension? Will the blur of all those years seem like the dissolving flashes of shooting stars?

  One frosty night, when you’re out celebrating your birthdays, you’ll both remark that your twentieth anniversary is coming up.

  “Maybe we should do something to commemorate it,” you’ll say.

  “A party?” Serge will ask, likely already thinking about what he’ll wear.

  “How about a wedding?” you’ll say, surprising yourself.

  Marriage has always been in the background, but neither of you feel very strongly about it. After all these years, what would it prove? What would be the point when it’s clear the two of you have already committed to each other? Besides, you’ve sat through enough weddings that seemed to be more about spectacle than about two people declaring their love for one another. But it’s also true Serge and you have never done much to commemorate your relationship. And it would be nice, you’ll reason, to bring everyone together, your family and all your friends, under one roof, and have a party. One thing you’ve learned, Brian, is that if you don’t take the opportunity to pause and reflect, if you don’t stop the frantic pace of your days to take inventory, life will sail past before you have a chance to pull the moments back.

  When you tell people of your plans, some will ask why, after twenty years, you’re getting married. The stress, the planning, not to mention the expense. But the answer will be clear to you.

  “For the memory,” you’ll say.

  While there will be details to sort out and agonize over in the weeks ahead (the guest list, the food, and the minefield that is the seating plan), your impending wedding will also cause some long-buried issues inside you to surface. You have never publicly declared your love for another man. You’ll start to feel uneasy about the wedding kiss. It will mark the first time you’ve kissed Serge in front of your family and friends. The memories of those layers and layers of laughter from years ago, the punchlines, the revulsion, the seeds of rejection that were planted in a young boy, are still very much alive. And even though your family and friends all accept you, your hesitation about kissing your husband on your wedding day only highlights that a part of you still doesn’t accept yourself.

  When you confide your anxiousness to Serge, he’ll say, “You’re overthinking things. As usual.”

  He’ll be right, of course. When you fixate on things to the point that you’re not in the moment, you lose that moment. You tell yourself to stop listening to those voices from your past and instead focus on what’s most important: the person standing in front of you.

  Friends suggest you rehearse the kiss. But that doesn’t seem like the solution. And you want that moment to feel authentic, not a performance. That kiss should feel as genuine as possible.

  On the day of your wedding, just before the ceremony starts, you’ll stand at the back of the room, taking in all your guests. Everyone you had once been afraid to tell you were gay will be there, joining in the celebration of two men in love: your mom, your sisters, your nieces and nephews, your in-laws, your friends from high school. Your university roommates, too.

  And as the processional music starts and you make your way down the aisle, you’ll realize this is what your wedding is really about: all the people you hold close, together in one room, for one moment. It will never be like this again. Even just a few years later, this same gathering won’t be possible. Mom will have passed, as well as Serge’s dad. And one of your university roommates. Another good friend, too. Life is fleeting, constantly spiralling into the past. And all we’re ever able to hold on to is the precious present.

  When it comes time for the kiss, you and Serge will lean in towards one another. It will be a bit awkward, but when is kissing in front of a crowd of people ever not awkward? As it turns out, the kiss itself won’t be all that memorable
. Nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, you’ll hardly remember it.

  What you will remember, in all the bright days and years ahead, is the chorus of cheers.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As someone who is primarily a fiction writer, I’m always on the lookout for what I perceive to be fictional elements in works of non-fiction. What I mean is, when I read a story or book presented as “non-fiction,” I find myself asking questions of the writer like, “How do you remember the sun was shining on that day in 1975?” Or, “How can you recall detailed conversations you had with someone twenty years after the fact when I can’t recall what my husband said to me ten minutes ago?” (He’ll no doubt claim I wasn’t listening to him.)

  The reverse is also true when I’m reading fiction. I’ll wonder, What real events have found their way into the author’s fictitious world? How often is a novelist drawing on the details of their own life, and the lives of others, to create their imagined landscapes?

  Throughout the writing of this book, my memory has been stretched to its limits. I have tried, as best as I can, to capture various times in my life as precisely as possible. I’ve also resisted adding embellishments if I couldn’t recall details with certainty. That said, memory is malleable and rarely perfect. And so even though this book reflects how I recall my life, there may be some unintended blurred boundaries between fiction and non-fiction within its pages.

  With the exception of my parents and husband, the names and identifying characteristics of people mentioned throughout this book have been changed for reasons of privacy. With regards to the thirteen letters I received in response to my personal ad, I’ve done some rewriting. I’ve changed names, physical descriptions, and other identifying details in order to create new works. But I have tried to capture the unique spirit and personality of the original letters as closely as possible in order to maintain the creative springboard that inspired my replies.