I get why we shouldn’t confess everything to the kids tonight, I do, but this walking on eggshells is rather cumbersome. In fact, it feels downright wrong to have to hide ourselves from our loved ones. And that’s saying a lot, coming from me, Mr. Conspicuous-Queer.
“Can we have s’mores, Dad?” Brody asks me almost immediately, then his brows raise at the sight of me in my pajamas. “What are you wearing? Is thata dress?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s a nightshirt, Brode.”
“Guys can wear those?” he asks.
Cameron answers before I can. “Guys can wear whatever they want. Clothes don’t have gender assignments. Well, theyshouldn'tanyway. Even if what your father is wearing were a dress, which I don’t think that is, there’d still be nothing wrong with it.”
“Amen,” I chime in. “Worded that perfectly, Cameron, thank you.”
Brody studies me for a minute before asking, “Aren’t you worried wearing something like that makes you look gay?”
Cameron looks up at Caleb, who gives his son a quick nod, before choosing to answer for me again. Which, thank fuck he does, because there’s suddenly a knot in my throat that rivals the size of the state of Alaska right now.
“Would there be something wrong with that? My dad and Papa are both queer.”
My eyes flick back over to Caleb. Who the hell is Cameron’spapa? I know Caleb is omnisexual—he likes all the wineregardlessof the labels; if you happen to be as big of aSchitt’s Creekfan as I am, then you know—so I just assumed he had a baby mama out there that I had no idea about before…
“No,” Brody replies, sounding hesitant. “I mean, like, I don’t have a problem with it.” He bites his lip, his nervous tell. “I just—know how it looks to other people. When they think you’re gay, I mean. My friends all think me and Harrison are boyfriends or whatever. We’re not, but they make fun of us anyway.”
I relinquish Pepper back to his real owner and pat the chair next to me, inviting Brody to take a seat. “Why didn’t you ever tell your mother and me about this?” I ask him.
“I didn’t want you guys to think I have a crush on him. I didn’t want you to think I was, you know, gay.”
“Son, do your mother and I seem like the type of parents who would make you feel ashamed of that if youdidfeel that way? Because, if so, I think there’s something I should really tell you…”
I glance up at Lauren to see if she’s on board with me giving our son a little nugget of truth about me, though it literally has my gut tied up in knots to do so. I can see a smile forming on her lips as moisture pools on the bottoms of her eyelids. She nods once.
“What, Dad?”
“Brody,I’mgay.” The words come out so cracked, I worry that he might not have heard me correctly, given the look on his face right now.
He looks over his shoulder at Lauren, then back at me. “I don’t understand…”
I lean forward, resting my forearms on my thighs. “I love your mother, but I am attracted to men.”
He blinks at me in stunned silence. Finally, “I still don’t get it.”
“Hunny,” Lauren sighs, pulling up the chair next to him. “I know that this can be confusing, especially at your age, but what your dad is trying to tell you is that the type of people he gets crushes on are other men. And no, I’m not one, but he and I—well, you know we met each other way, way back in middle school, and we were best friends for a very long time. Back when we found out we were having you, we decided to become a couple.”
I nod. “And I love her very much, but as far as women go, she is it for me. She’s the only one I have ever felt a romantic attraction to.”
Brody scrunches his face up, thoroughly grossed out by the direction this discussion is going. Good. He’s eleven now, sure, but I’m not ready for the birds and the bees, or the bees and the bees, discussion yet.
“So, I think what your father means by confessing this to you,” Lauren continues, “is that it would be perfectly okay if you did experiencethose sorts of feelings. We’re an open-minded household, Brody. You can tell your dad and me anything.”
“I don’t… but Harrison does sometimes,” he confesses. “But not, like, for me. He has a crush on one of our other friends, Ezra.”
Lauren smirks. “And see? That’s perfectly okay. We don’t think anything less of Harrison because of that. It’s likely that Harrison is still just trying to figure himself out. And that won’t leave this conversation here either, okay? Because everybody here knows that it’s not okay to out someone before they’re ready…”
She spares a glance back at Caleb, who gives me an apologetic look. I nod at him, hopefully letting him know that I’m relatively over it by now. He’s expressed his remorse over the whole ordeal enough. My intention is towoosahand let that shit go.
I turn my attention back to my boy. “And how do you feel about me now, knowing this?” I ask him.
Without saying a thing, he hops off his chair and into my lap, throwing his arms around my neck and squeezing me tightly. I return the embrace, and his body trembles in my hold, dampness blooming on my shoulder. I rub his back, hoping to bring some comfort to him, since I know we’re having an awfully big conversation with him and this has got to be a lot to take in.
Actually, I think I’m glad we’re breaking this up into small chunks like this because if we waited until tomorrow to dump on him all at once, I fear he may have broken down even worse than this. The last thing anyone here wants is for either of our boys to be too overwhelmed to handle this news. I just hope his tears aren’t ones directed at me because he’s feeling ashamed.
