Every now and then, like yesterday morning I run into a fellow American who has spent time in Germany.  When I tell them I want to visit there someday they all tell me I should definitely go.  They always say Germany is a really great place and their time there was just wonderful.  And if some of their time was spent in Bavaria, I always ask them what Bavaria is like compared to the rest of Germany.  And the first thing they always say about Bavaria is that it is a Very Conservative part of Germany.  Also, generally very expensive to live in.  But Very Conservative is always the first thing that comes to their minds, when it comes to Bavaria.  Not just conservative, but Very Conservative.

So I’m guessing it would probably be hard to be a gay kid there.  Or to be a gay kid whose family is from there.

On the other hand, it’s hard for gay kids here in the U.S. too, in some states.  The mostly rural conservative states anyway.  You see a lot of them who have fled to the more liberal, tolerant states or cities to get away.  But it’s hard to get away from your family.  Those kids, they always have the most difficult time of it, even when they’re out and proud and living in the gay ghettos.  What happens is they just learn to live with the stress of family relationships and move on with their lives.  Because one way or another it’s going to be hard.  Everyone who comes out of the closet does so knowing what is on the other side of that closet door.  So you might as well just be yourself.  You can’t please everyone.  But you can be real.

That’s something I learned ages ago, ironically well before I entered adolescence and found myself having to deal with being gay.  See…mom’s family positively hated dad, and dad’s family.  After my parents divorced when I was about two, mom moved me back across the country and I grew up here in Maryland instead of California (which I will probably go to my grave regretting except for the fact that I met you).  And since I had dad’s face, I got a lot of flack growing up just for being his son.  Stinking Rotten Good-For-Nothing Garrett Just Like Your Pap was grandma’s favorite name for me (where mom couldn’t hear it), even though I was a pretty well behaved kid.  But I had his face, and grandma hated dad, and I was handy.  So I caught the flack.  And gay people catch a lot of flack too, simply because we are handy.

So you see, when I turned seventeen and came out to myself I’d already had a childhood knowing that some people would hate me just for something I was and couldn’t help being.  But I knew I was loved too.  Mom never let me doubt that.  So much as it distressed me, I just learned to live with the fact that grandma and others just didn’t like me because I was my father’s son and I would never change that, and I got on with my life.  Mom loved me.  I knew I was loved.  I knew I could be loved.  That was all I needed to grow up on.

Here’s what gay people know: strangers can gay bash you, beat the living crap out of you, take your life from you, but only relatives can chew your heart up and spit it out.  What we learn from it is this: your family are the people who love you just as you are.  That’s the real family you have.  Everyone else is just a relative.

Just a fact.