Excerpt from "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Come Out Of The Closet And I'm Feeling So Sad" by Charlie Anders

Coming Out story number one

It felt like a new situation, but it had many familiar elements. Me in the kitchen trying to steal my mom’s attention from the stove. NPR on the radio. Meat juices on my mom’s hand, spices dotted everywhere. “Mom, I have something to tell you, mom I have to share something.”

My dad had made my mom a spice rack with compartments for every former colony that had given rise to flavors. Saffron from Sri Lanka, five spice from Hong Kong. It was a declaration from a silent man. She used it for two years, but at the time of my announcement she was already keeping her most-used spices in her cabinet, where China and Latin America could jostle.

A deer wandered past our window. Sour cream and oregano masked the meat smell. I felt the yeasty bubble of mom’s presence surround me. I’d always felt safe close to her. Unlike my dad, she expressed emotions, even if they were mostly annoyance.

“I’m gay, mom,” I told her back. She still rummaged with her clean hand in the cupboard. Her back formed a stansion, shoulders raised and neck pinched with the spice hunt. The stove ticked, the fridge muttered and beyond the window squirrels played. (Or at least, the squirrels seemed to me to play. They may have seen it differently.)

My queer friends back in San Francisco had told me that at moments like this, you find out how well you know people. Of course, it would be irresponsible to toss bombs with lit fuses at your loved ones just to see how they react. Most of the time, I knew what my mom was going to say before she said it. This moment fell into the maybe two percent of times when I had no clue, but did that make it more important than the other 98 percent?

Then my mom turned, dripping meat on the floor. She put her non-meaty hand around my neck. “You’re gay, that’s wonderful,” she said. “Thank you for telling me. This is such a surprise. Have you told your father or Trisha yet?”

“You’re the first to hear.”

“Well, I’m honored you chose to tell me first!” It sounded pat, like she was saying what she ought to in this instance. But it was also the way my mom talked, like a bureaucrat with a heart.

Then she took me to find Dad. We guessed he was in his workshop. He built actual pieces of furniture — dining room suites, even — in that room, so it had a huge sliding door to let in the big blocks and let out finished pieces. My apartment in the city boasts a sleigh bed and table my dad made, and I always get compliments on them. My parents’ house was full of his work too — everywhere but the kitchen.

I figured once my mom got on board the happy-you’re-gay express, my dad would shrug and book a seat next to hers. He generally went along with her on most things, but sometimes surprised all of us with an ardent and non-negotiable demand, like the time he insisted the whole family go to the New England Bluegrass Festival.

My dad missed being a baby boomer by a year and a half, as a result of my grandparents’ impatient shore leave coupling. The distinction may matter, especially since he’s eight years older than Mom. Dad sported a ponytail and beard when I was little, but now all that remains is a small mustache under his sparse gray hair. His neck bulges halfway down, the cousin of the ring beneath his ribcage.

“Jared has something to tell you, Mark,” my mom said, her satisfaction at having been told first buoying every word.

When Trish and I were kids, dad would greet us after school, one tool or another in his right hand. He’d ask some questions about my day before returning to work. My sister and I would watch TV for a few hours, the sounds of hammering and planing forcing us to amp the set to top volume and crouch close to the screen. Mom would clamber home, head too full of pressure sore statistics to talk, just as cartoons yielded to sitcom reruns and news.

When I tell dad I’m gay, he says he’s glad in the same tone he’d always used when I’d told him of good grades as a kid. “Good to know where you stand.” We all stood looking at each other for a few moments, then my dad turned back to his big block of wood.

That was the end of it. I slept well, and we didn’t mention the gay thing again. I doubt my parents ever talked about it once I went back to San Francisco. That was the way my family worked: the occasional bulletin on the state of your soul would set the record straight, and then we could go back to talking about sports or nothing. Nobody had ever come out with a revelation that we couldn’t all nod and tuck away.