There was a minor family crisis today that consumed the time I’d planned to spend writing and watching Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal play doubles together at the Olympics. If Crankenstein attends church tomorrow as planned, I should have a couple free hours to throw something together.
Fortunately, my sibling is fine. Unfortunately, this has become a disruptive pattern that will worsen before it improves if my parents remain unable to address the real problem. There’s a certain Mommie Dearest rodeo quote I’d like to dust off in conversation with them about this very subject, but they probably wouldn’t recognize I was saying it in homage to Joan Crawford — they’re pretty far to the left of the Kinsey scale, even when it comes to their viewing.*
* My dad was really proud of himself for watching bits and pieces of Showtime’s Queer as Folk, something he pushed himself to do after I came out to my parents at 17. He came up with this unconventional exposure therapy on his own and my mom was too prudish then to watch it with him. I could tell from how he spoke of it — we never watched it together — that gay sex scenes, even just kissing scenes, made him uncomfortable, though he was eventually amused by an airplane bathroom encounter between Emmett and George. Just a few years later, Dad scandalized his bowling buddies by seeing Brokeback Mountain at the theater with my mom. He thought it was the best movie of the year.