By Jen Hodsdon

Homesick

When you’re gay, there’s nothing like going home to make you gayer. Ask any of The Gay that you know and, unless they grew up on a lesbian commune or in New York City – in which case they probably get their gay on just to head back to the homestead – they’ll tell you this is true. 

If, like me, you grew up in rural Maine, going home involves a special kind of self-awareness. Especially if you’re going home for one of those hetero rituals they all take for granted: marriages and their attendant bridal showers and bachelor parties, anniversaries, and baby showers. For me, getting married would (literally) take an act of Congress, and would probably occasion a celebration larger than some ham salad finger rolls in a church basement. Becoming impregnated would involve, at this point, thousands of dollars worth of donor sperm and some intimate moments with a turkey baster. Neither is likely to happen.

But my sister’s husband did what husbands sometimes do, and, about seven months ago, knocked her up. So my family planned to gather on a recent Saturday afternoon to eat ham salad and watch my sister open package after package of pastel-wrapped baby blankets and tiny, frilly outfits. I could not refuse — she’s my sister, after all — so I wrote the date on my calendar and began to fret.

About a week before such a family gathering, I can feel a lavender glow start to emanate from my head. The glow at first causes me to think about what outfit I will wear to see my family. This is a time-consuming and pointless task, because I will ultimately decide on jeans and a nice shirt – the holiday/family event compromise I always reach. 

But before I can get there, I need to consider office casual (rejected given the socioeconomic class of my family, which is vehemently working); femme-er than usual (rejected because it would give some satisfaction to some of the more disapproving members of my clan); queer hip (rejected because I can never quite attain it — not that they’d ever know). 

Then there are exhausting considerations like makeup/no makeup, hair product/no hair product – each decision seeming to embody the entire canon of queer theory. Finally, sighing, I go for the jeans and the nice shirt.

I blend pretty well here in the city. I have a professional job, a live-in partner, and a nine-year-old daughter. Living in Portland enables me to even forget sometimes that I’m actually a participant in the love which dare not speak its name. But as pre-family-visit week goes on, the lavender glow intensifies until it reaches its ultimate state: a full-on, neon pink triangle that floats above my head and prompts rural strangers to shout “dyke!” at me as I fill my gas tank at the local station. My hair is short. My daughter knows the definitions and correct usages of “sexist,” “butch,” and “poet,” and has actually seen The Vagina Monologues. My lover is a transgender man. I attend graduate school for creative writing. All of these factors somehow conspire to make us, when we visit the country, the gayest people in the area.

It wasn’t until the morning of the visit that I realized my entire extended family was likely to be there. I see my aunts and uncles fairly often, so they are almost immune to the lavender aura. In fact, they sensibly invited me to be responsible for the vegetable platter, knowing that I actually, and exotically, sometimes eat them. Sometimes even raw. But the larger family unit is made up of near-strangers whose descendents I can never keep track of. The last time I saw them all was at a funeral last summer, and I could feel their eyes on my neat button-down shirt and my exposed neck. I couldn’t quite hear the whispers, but I waded through the thick remnants of them every time I got up to fill my coffee cup. 

I imagine I must seem to them like a True Confessions story: “Perfectly Good Young Woman Gone Horribly Astray.” Back when I was a young person in that green and spacious place, I had a vague sense my gym teacher might be a little odd, but the term “lesbian” didn’t cross my consciousness until late in my adolescence, when I was thinking about applying it to myself. In this era of prime-time gay, there is no such luxury. I must be what I am or else never see any of them again.

We arrived at the baby shower early to help decorate. My aunts, bless them, welcomed our little family and put us to work hanging up pink balloons. In gratitude, I withheld my comments about their assumptions concerning the baby’s gender, and refrained from making sarcastic vomiting noises over the ruffles and bows. I wanted allies in case shit went down.

But the much-anticipated arrival of the extended family never came. It appears that my sister, who had the gall to move away to New York and then return with a husband From Away, does not merit a visit from the extended family. 

Upon realizing this, my anxiety turned to protective anger. The glowing pink triangle above my head dissipated with a small puff of nag champa-scented smoke. Didn’t they want to welcome my sister’s daughter properly? Who were they to ignore an invitation to celebrate this family event? 

I plopped myself into a chair next to the seat of honor, and loyally oooh-ed over every crib set and package of diapers. She’s my sister, my family, my people. And when the squares of pink and white cake were passed around, I didn’t eat any, but it sure looked sweet.

Jen Hodsdon’s column will appear monthly.