Ryan brought a plate to my mom and they talked for a moment. Ryan was warm. She was polite. But I could tell she was uncomfortable. Ryan soon gave up and moved on to other conversations. It broke my heart to witness.
From the kitchen, I watched my mom sitting alone on my futon now. I could see her disappointment settling in. So much of how I’d lived my life had been designed to impress her, to let her know that her hard work raising us hadn’t been in vain. But I could see her using my “new condition” and all of my new friendships as evidence to erase the list of maternal accomplishments she’d long held dear. I had been her pride and joy. She’d told me so. Now all of that seemed to be evaporating.
She didn’t sit alone for long. My mom had always been a magnet. People loved to talk with her, tell her their stories, and share their fears and joys with her. Partly it was her laugh, her smile. Folks could tell she was listening, engaging. Partly it was her tears. She was quick to those. Folks could tell she cared. Partly it was her good old-fashioned Southern nod. She could nod, and nod, and nod, even when someone went on, and on, and on. She could nod you to death and you wouldn’t even know it; you’d just think she loved your story like none other. It’s a particularly Southern mother’s skill, and she was a master at it.
My friends approached her one by one, sat beside her, and started asking her questions. A small circle began to form; then it grew. And when it did, my heart dropped like a lead fishing weight. As I washed the saucepot for the third time for no reason, I realized that because I’d said nothing to my friends about my mom’s reaction to my being gay, they just assumed this dinner party meant she had no problem with our kind. They assumed my mom was forward-thinking, open-minded, and dare I say: a liberal. Thanks to my cowardice, they assumed my Jack Mormon, military, Texan mom loved and accepted her gay son.
Here’s the thing: this was still well before Brokeback Mountain broke hearts, and way before Will & Grace and Ellen won them. For a mom—especially one with my mother’s background—to accept her gay son in this way at this time would have been huge. So now my friends were looking at her like she was some kind of queer-loving Mother Teresa. Holy fire and balls, I thought.
When they were done listening to her harrowing tale of traveling to “this big, loud city” that morning, they took the opportunity to share their own stories. They told her where they were from—cities and towns across the country, including those in our treasured South, where some had been kicked out of their homes when they came out. How they had made their ways to Los Angeles to become refugees in a sunny city where they might not freeze to death at night if they couldn’t find a job and a home. Some told stories of the Christmases they’d missed, of the families they hadn’t spoken to in years, of birthdays with no phone calls and phone calls that went unanswered. These stories weren’t uncommon back in the 1990s. Depending on what part of the country or faith one hailed from, they were the norm. My new friends and I had simply grown so used to hearing such tales that they hardly affected us anymore. It’s who we were. Such rejections felt like a necessary trial in the initiation into our tribe.
I watched in horror as my mom did what she did best. She nodded. She acted like she was listening without judgment. I had seen her do it so many times before. When a “priesthood holder” at church would try to teach her something she understood far better than he ever would, she would simply nod. When a drunk army boy would spin a yarn of heroism at a lobster boil, she would nod as if believing every detail. When Marcus would tell her he was on the mend, no more smoking, drinking, or drugs, she would nod, and try her best to believe him. And there she was, nodding again, but my friends couldn’t read her nods like I could. They thought she was actually listening, that she actually cared and felt for them, that she wasn’t mentally damning them all to some lonely hell. So they just kept talking…and talking…and talking.
As the night grew long, the wine in the bottles got low, and with the courage of booze and the comfort of her bobbing head, my pals veered into more personal territory. They started asking my mom for dating advice, then sharing their own stories of romance and missed connections, and when she kept nodding, they pressed on, telling my good Southern mom about their breakups, their heartbreaks, their make-out sessions in bathroom stalls of gay nightclubs; a lesbian couple explained how scissoring worked, and an older gay friend described the unique challenges of gay hygienics. I wanted to vanish. Correction: vanishing could have meant reappearing. I wanted to die.
Knowing this would have been a bit much for any parent, Ryan and Javi did what I wished I could have and sought the safety of their respective rooms. Busying myself with cleaning, I watched my friends begin to leave one by one and two by two, many to get ready for our graduation the next day, others to hit the gay clubs, all saying goodbye to my mom with a kiss on her cheek, a saucy wink, and for more than a few, a heartfelt hug to thank her for listening to them with such compassion. Little did they know.
Soon it was just my mom and me in the apartment’s small living room. With the echo of traffic outside bouncing off our bare wood floors, the paper plates and plastic cups still strewn here and there, the absolute lack of grown-up furniture, and my little mom perched on my futon, the space suddenly felt cavernous and cold. She let me pick up the last of the mess, then patted the spot next to her. She wanted me to sit down with her. It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.
My mom was rarely at a loss for words. She had long flirted, reached out, intimidated, and even moved mountains with them when her body couldn’t. But now, save for her clearing her throat a few times, she couldn’t find a sound to fill this void, and we just sat silently beside each other.
Finally, she said: “I met your friends.” I felt sure that she wanted me to read every bit of her disdain in that one sentence, and to apologize then and there.
“Yeah. I know,” I said, hoping that was enough of an apology and we could get on with not talking about anything else that mattered.
“They seem nice.”
“Yeah,” I said. Again, I meant it as an apology. How long was she going to drag this out?
We sat there for another silent minute, my guts tying themselves in knots. I imagined she was somewhere between tears and fury too, ready to lash out and damn Ryan, Javi, and all our new friends to some everlasting hell or to beg me to enter into some arcane, scientifically disproven therapy to change this terrible “choice” she thought I’d made, to get me off this path she wrongly believed Ryan had led me down. I was on the verge of losing it, of screaming or leaving, but instead she said this: “I met the actor, or…writer, who you write scripts with.”
Oh God. Right. Jason had been there that night, and I had hardly even noticed. The truth is, I was more enamored than ever, though he still couldn’t be bothered to care.
“Right. Yeah. I know the one you mean,” I told her. This was torture.
“Well…,” she said, then stopped.
“Well…,” I said, then stopped.
“Well…I told him that the next time he went out with my son, he might think about treating my baby boy with a little more…warmth. And he’s older, isn’t he? So I hope you don’t mind, but I also told him that when he finally does wise up and take you out on a proper date, well…that he should pay.”
I dared not trust my ears. I dared not look at her in case I had just imagined her words. So we sat in silence again, both of our eyes welling up. Hell, mine are welling up right now just writing this down two decades later.
Then my mom mustered the courage to turn and show me her eyes, so I turned and showed her mine. We looked at each other like that for as long as we could…about one second. Then she wrapped her arms around me and held me tighter than I think I’d ever been held. At least that’s how it felt then to my heart and now in my memory. And she didn’t let go.
I knew right then and there that for the first time in my life, my mother was
holding me for me, all of me, and that she not only loved me with all of her heart but also loved me for all of mine.
In that embrace, in that moment, I suddenly felt stronger than I ever knew I could be: more courageous, liberated, seen, and loved. Her embrace that night lit a fire that would change the course of my life.
But how and why had her feelings so suddenly changed?
Because yarn had been spun.
What I thought had been less than worthless—our gay lives; our stories of tribulation, loneliness, and loss—had been spun into pure gold in that room that night. For the very first time in her life, my mom had heard actual personal stories from gay and lesbian people while she looked them in their eyes and gauged their truth. Those stories had little to do with statistics, activism, movements, politics, law, or the Constitution. My friends didn’t think she needed to hear those stories. They thought she was already on our side. If they had known she was some enemy of equality, they likely would have dug their trenches deep and entered into heady debates armed with numbers and scientific and legal jargon. Instead, they talked to my mom like she was family, not a person from some “other America.” They told their stories with open hearts—universal stories of family, love, and loss. And in one night, those stories set straight generations of myths and distortions. They erased every lie told by our church, our country, our own treasured families back home; by my mom’s friends, her noble military, and our good neighbors. In one night, I witnessed generations of my mom’s hand-me-down misconceptions be replaced with love, understanding, and acceptance. In one night. Thanks to storytelling.
I wish I could say that I had planned the night, but I hadn’t. Ryan had. Its outcome was an accident. But thanks to this happy accident, I learned the value of speaking to the heart from the heart. I witnessed the absolute and undeniable power of the personal story.
The next morning, I donned my cap and gown, shook my troublemaking dean’s hand before throwing him a wink, and graduated from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. It was an impossible dream come true for me and for my mom. I was the first in our immediate family to get a college degree. Perhaps her childhood doctors had been right that she would never get one herself, but now her son had, and so she added this to her long list of maternal accomplishments, a list that had somehow survived the past six months and could now grow long and strong again.
* * *
—
I wouldn’t get a job writing or directing films right away. They don’t hand those out with film degrees. Instead, I would serve a lot of orange juice over the next few years, wearing an impossibly tight black T-shirt and short shorts at a rather gay West Hollywood breakfast and lunch spot. It was the same restaurant Jason worked at, where we knew all too well that if we let the men flirt, our tips would grow, and that was money we could put toward our films.
After a long day of work and one very long night of trying and failing to write something of merit together, Jason said I was free to stay the night. I lived far away, we’d had a glass or two of wine, and it was very late. So I climbed into his bed. It was big enough that we didn’t have to touch. I lay there sleepless, perfectly still, minutes turning into an hour, not wanting to miss a moment of how close I was to my heart’s desire. Then I felt his hand touch my body. Over that long hour, he had slowly, imperceptibly, been inching closer. I felt his breath on my cheek, and over the course of many more minutes, as if locked in slow motion, I turned my face toward his. Then, in the most loving way possible, Jason kissed me. I repeat: he kissed me. I’m not kidding.
That night a whole host of other things transpired, with varying degrees of success. I won’t describe them here because my mother wouldn’t want me to, but let me tell you this: it was all far better and more right than I’d ever hoped or dreamed. And Jason did take me out on a proper date soon after, and he did pay. Even better, a week or two later, he cooked me a homemade dinner: tortellini alla vodka. Years after I had fallen for him, Jason became my very first boyfriend. I still adore and admire him, and without giving too much of his privacy away, I’ll say that more than a few aspiring young filmmakers in Hollywood these days likely call him “sir.” Turns out I had good taste. This handsome old charmer now helps run a major TV studio.
Thanks to that night of pasta, salad, and stories, I began to find my voice. If personal stories had the power to change hearts like they had my own mom’s, and if changing a heart had the power to change a mind, then how could I turn away from such lifesaving power? I couldn’t. From that night on, I knew what I was called to do. I wasn’t put here to re-create the French New Wave in the year 2000. No, sir. I was here to help tell the personal stories of diverse people who are treated differently under the law and by their neighbors because of their differences. Because that’s what I knew. That’s where I was from. It was in my bones. And by sharing such stories, maybe I could help move the needle for a group of people who truly needed that—a people I was fast coming to see as new family members, my LGBTQ family. I felt called to this new kind of mission the way the South and our church had taught me to defend our own, and to fight for my mother and brothers.
That’s what Hungry Jackal Productions would become: not just a middle finger to a teacher watching our senior thesis films, but a production company with a philosophy; a troublemaking machine built to try its damnedest to move the needle toward understanding, compassion, and greater social justice for people of diversity. I had learned from great masters of yarn spinning, and now I was determined to use those skills to spin gold out of all of the lives and loves that had been made invisible for too long.
CHAPTER 18
Milk Calls
I
INT. SAN FRANCISCO APARTMENT - MORNING / 2008
A CELL PHONE rings on a COFFEE TABLE. In no big hurry, a blond, youngish-looking WRITER, 30, finishes pulling on JEANS, then a warm COAT. The call goes to VOICE MAIL. He seems relieved. He looks at the phone. He’s missed three calls from this number this morning.
Somewhere in the eight years after I graduated from UCLA, I got up the guts to come out to Marcus and Todd in a bar in Wildwood, New Jersey. Two shots each of Crown Royal, and neither seemed too concerned. In that time I also came out to my once Special Forces military stepfather, and he just gave me a big supportive hug. It’s a surprising truth to some, but genuinely straight guys rarely give a damn if someone is gay. Less competition for them, right? It’s more often closet-cases who act on and/or vocalize the self-loathing homophobia that lives in their conflicted heads.
In that time, I also wrote countless scripts that went unread by anyone of influence. Then, after self-financing two documentaries with high-interest credit cards and parading them around film festivals, I landed a real job: directing and producing episodes of a reality TV show for TLC and the BBC called Faking It. Now I had checks coming in—not big ones, but big enough to attract an agent happy to take a percentage. That agent was now obligated to read my scripts. Thanks to him and the venerated, openly gay director Paris Barclay seeing value in one, I got my first paid union writing gig. It was exactly what I was looking for—a biopic for MTV and VH1 about the gay, HIV-positive activist Pedro Zamora. I flew to Miami, met Pedro’s friends and family, and wrote a script that I hoped would inspire others to activism. It was happening. I was beginning to share LGBTQ stories with the world, at least on the small screen.
But what mattered most to film industry folks was that I was now a member of the Writers Guild of America—a “working writer”—and with that label came an even bigger opportunity. HBO had just green-lit a new TV series about polygamist Mormons called Big Love, and I was one of the only writers in Hollywood who had been raised Mormon and was willing to share the details. Despite my short résumé, my Mormon roots made me valuable enough to land a staff writer position on what would become a hit HBO show. I spent the next few years sharing what it was like to be LDS—yes, the dietary requireme
nts, the clothes, the homophobia, and the misogyny, but on more than one occasion, I found myself in the unexpected position of having to defend my childhood faith. On long calls each night with my mom to confirm old church memories, I was occasionally reminded of the little things I missed about it.
Employing the LDS thrift I’d learned as a kid, I soon had the required down payment and good credit to buy my first home. It was a cozy nine-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom bungalow in the Hollywood Hills with a terraced backyard. Sitting up there at night, I could hear the concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a dream come true. And although this milestone had taken nearly a decade to achieve, I was branded an overnight success by LGBTQ magazines like The Advocate. I was grateful, but I wasn’t satisfied. As suddenly successful as I may have seemed from the outside, I was far from satisfied writing on a polygamist-themed drama series. I didn’t just want a paycheck; I wanted to make films that moved the needle, and that was never Big Love’s aspiration. But with this steady HBO job, I now had the stability and confidence to dedicate nights and weekends away from Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and our heady, experienced Big Love writers’ room to telling an LGBTQ story I felt strongly had been lost for far too long. This was a story that I had only learned of thanks to a big turn of luck fifteen years earlier—a story that had saved my life when I first heard it in that Salinas community theater called the Western Stage.
II
Back in 1988, with no car to actually escape Salinas, I decided I would spend a second summer working at the Western Stage. I’d been asked if I’d like to shadow an artist in the company. I considered my options and chose a Latino director who had caught my eye with his confident swagger and style—long, colorful scarves wrapped over and around his denim overalls. But that wasn’t the only reason I chose him. He was also expert in every department of our theater, and as I was increasingly interested in directing, I wanted to learn every aspect of the job. He already had a handful of other apprentices, but thankfully he agreed to take me on as well, and he quickly set out to teach us all the meaning of the word “possible.”
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