<![CDATA[017. agh]]>The biggest conundrum has come up as of about 11:10pm last night. I’ve been invited to a friends’ wedding on July 31st, and I invited my southern boy to go since he’ll be here. He’s game, but says he doesn’t have anything to wear, so I suggested that he wear some of mine. I think we’re about the same size so we could easily trade clothes—a fact which could come in handy later. But that was not the conundrum.

The conundrum comes when I find out from my friends who are getting married that they have invited my parents, who have deemed to be in attendance. So therefore, being at a wedding with my parents and my boyfriend presents the uncomfortable liklihood of the four of us running into each other and my parents asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions like, “So who is this?” and “How do you know each other?” and “Where are you from?” and “So what brings you to Minnesota by way of Mississippi?” and “So when were you going to tell us that not only have you betrayed your family and your faith by choosing to be a homosexual, but you also have a boyfriend?” And so on.

On the one hand, I want them to know. I want everyone to know that I’ve found an amazing guy who wants to be with me despite my insanity; whose weirdness seems to be so compatible with my own. Most of the world seems to not care anymore that I prefer people of my own sex. It’s “my people,” the Christian Right, that come out as an angry mob complete with torches and pitchforks to lynch me. So I’m equally apprehensive about them knowing, and of him going home on August 5th a few days before my sister’s 25th birthday and being alone with all of them, and inevitably facing the onslaught of helpful if not misguided attempts to gently nudge me into going straight via an ex-gay ministry. The usual things: dropping pamphlets, slyly suggesting that I take so-and-so out on a date (“she’s such a nice girl, she’d be perfect for you”), or not-so-subtly hinting how they’d like grandchildren bearing the family surname.

I don’t think they’ll shun me entirely but after I make it clear that I’ve no intention of “going straight” there may be unforeseen consequences, such as being pressured to leave my church or face exposure since the official statement concerning homosexuality is that while they won’t lynch the first guy who traipses through their door, they don’t approve or condone it either. I may also be pressured to leave my job at the conservative Christian music academy where I teach piano. I highly doubt they’ll just let it go or tolerate me, and I’ll invariably become their “project.”

I’m probably blowing this way out of proportion, but I’ve been listening to Douglas Adams this morning so I’m feeling witty and self-deprecating at the same time. It’s a wonderful and rare feeling, not unlike being in love.

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