In July 1997, as the female leather titleholder for New Mexico, I ran for the International Ms. Leather title. The contest that year was held in San Diego, California, and since my parents lived but two hours away in the suburbs of Los Angeles, I called my mother and asked if she - and perhaps my father - would like to attend.
To this day I’m surprised and awed at her answer. My parents, like most, lived their lives in a “don’t ask / don’t tell” world. The quirks, addictions, and proclivities of their own children were more easily tolerated if they were ignored. My sister lived at home through a good chunk of her meth addiction; one of my brothers didn’t feel he could come out of the closet until long after he’d moved out and built a life for himself. The other brother is so private he discusses nothing, not a word, about his personal life to any of us. So it goes, so it goes.
Yet I don’t kid myself that my mother, if not my father, knew of my lifestyle long before I gave her the invitation to see it with her own eyes. We had never actually broached the subject before that phone call, but I wanted to ask her to come to the show for several reasons, the most important being that she’d been very ill for a couple of years already. My sister and I even joked that we’d have to get an extra ticket for Mom’s oxygen tank.
“Are you sure you want us there?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Then I guess we’ll make plans.”
My cousin and sister made the plans and all four trekked down to see me take second runner-up - that’s third place for those not fluent in pageant-speak - in the contest. I have a lot of great memories of that weekend and made some lifelong (thus far) friendships, but what sticks with me most isn’t about the event weekend at all; it’s two massive life moments that took place later.
The first happened later the same week as the contest, when I stopped at my parent’s house on road trip back to Albuquerque. I was with my father, who was smoking on the front porch. He had not said one word about the contest, his experiences at the show, or the trip to San Diego. We were alone and, on the way back into the house, he simply said:
“If there were groups like yours around years ago, I’m not sure where your mother and I would be right now.”
For me, it was the one and only time he ever acknowledged that he and I might have something more in common than obstinacy and misanthropy. I think his words were half pride in my accomplishment and half despair at how differently his own life could have turned out, had he taken another path. I don’t know for sure because he never said another word about it, not even on his death bed in 2008.
The second moment occurred just after my mother passed away in December of 1997. If you do the math, that’s just five months after the contest weekend and, about a month after her funeral, something struck me: She knew it wouldn’t be long. The women in my family are incredibly intuitive about these things. That’s why she came to San Diego and that’s why she wanted the entire family - aunts, uncles, cousins - at Thanksgiving that year.
What does that mean to me, exactly? Only that her willingness to see me onstage in full leather, flogger proudly flagged on the left, speaking to a packed audience about alternative sexualities and freedom of expression was her final gift to me. It said that finally, she knew who I was and whatever that turned out to be was fine with her.
There is no greater love of a parent for his or her children than acceptance. Not resignation, not nagging to change, not simple tolerance, but full love and acceptance in the knowledge your son or daughter is genuinely happy. Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have had it in my lifetime. My love, my partner-in-crime, The Maestro, he’s damned fortunate to have it, too.
Now go hug your mom or dad or both.
I mean it.
