When his mom started dating women, writer Brett Berk was amused. But now she's gayer than he is -- and he's confused.
When I came out to my mother over 20 years ago, her response transcended typical maternal empathy. "As a girl," she said, "I had crushes on female teachers." Aside from this being a shocking example of her skill at steering conversation toward herself, it was simply shocking. After a long marriage to my dad and a five-year trawl through the singles scene ("Honey, I've spent more time on my knees than a maid!"), she was then married to her second husband. And though she had a crew of best girlfriends, their idea of bonding stopped well short of Bound.
But since that marriage collapsed, she's been, as I like to say, going with girls. Initially, I thought it was just a phase. "I don't fall in love with a gender. I fall in love with a person," she said, explaining her infatuation with her first female lover, the addled ex of a famous closeted actress. But with each successive woman, she's plunged deeper into the muff. And when she recently announced her intention to marry her current partner, I made a realization: My mom is trying to out-gay me. Here's the evidence:
Home
While I live in New York City's West Village, the original epicenter of gay life, my mother, since igniting her sapphic torch, has resided in the queer pot of gold at the end of our nation's rainbow: Key West. Her most recent roommate there was a drag queen, and before that she lived with a guy named Gay Bruce, who literally answered their phone, "Gay hello!"
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