Do It For Me

“What’s the point of me doing this, Cam?” Alex stared across the black plastic table outside Starbucks at his significant other. “My dad doesn’t need to know.”
“Why shouldn’t he know, as well as the rest of your family? You are who you are, and he can’t change that.” Cam said.
“Look, it’s only been two months since, since-” the breath vanished from Alex’s lungs. “you know? And we’re not ready for this.”
“Who says he has to be ‘ready’? He’s your father; he has to accept that this is a part of your life.”
In the silence, cars rushed past the Starbucks not five yards away. “What if I’m not ready for this to change the way my family looks at me?”
“Look: I did it; Rob did it; hell, even Jasmine did it, and her parents are devout religious leaders. You’re not the first person to have had to tell your parents, so why is your position any more delicate than ours?”
Alex sat back and stayed silent. “Set a specific day and time in the next week to do it so you are more likely to hold yourself to it. Remember: you’re only telling them something about yourself…Do it for me!”
“How about Saturday?”
“It’s not up to me to approve when you do it. Just know that we’re going on a temporary break until your family knows.”
Five days later, Alex loomed over the bathroom sink, “Alright Alex, it’s just three little words. You can do this,” his reflection agreed with him, but didn’t provide any more words of inspiration. Mom, would you understand? What would you tell me?
            “I-” the strength was fading from Alex’s eyes, “am gay.”
Turning the faucet, Alex closed his eyes against the shock of the chilled city water. In his mind, Alex appeared in the small dining room downstairs with the big Persian rug and the antique table. Four hazel eyes would glare over eggs and newspapers in response to Alex’s confession. Where is the pair of brown eyes when I need them?
            “Well that’s a great way to start the morning, Alex,” Peter would lean back in his chair.
“Peter, get out of here,” their father would set his reading glasses on the weekend newspaper and rub the bridge of his nose. “Look, I don’t know how you are so sure, but what’s done is done. There’s no going back: no way to change, right? That’s what I’m supposed to say in this situation as a parent. So let’s try to move on, and be as normal a family as we can be.”
“But I don’t want to move on; I can’t move on.”
“Ever since your mother passed,” invoking her took one’s breath away every time. “I’ve been doing my damnedest to keep you two as happy as can be. I’ve done everything I can to feed you, clothe you, and keep you both in good schools. All on my own. You have to help me just a little bit by not putting up divisions between us.”
A chill would open a cavern in his chest, and his brows would furrow. “I don’t know,” Alex would exhale slowly, “how I can create divisions in this house. But I do know that this is the truth. You can’t change me. I’m only telling you so that my boyfriend will continue to see me. He wants a proud boyfriend, not one that’s still too timid to tell the world who he is. I shouldn’t even have had to tell you, because it doesn’t change me, or you, or Peter. I’m telling you because Cam gave me an ultimatum, and I didn’t want to lose him. How does my sexuality change me, your son?”
Alex’s father would just stare at him. “Breakfast is in the kitchen. We’re going to Peter’s soccer game at three.”
Alex would stumble into the kitchen and lean over the sink. Peter would lay a hand on his shoulder after a suspended moment. “What was all that for? What would you have done if Mom were still here?”
Alex blinked the tears from his eyes in front of the bathroom mirror. He looked up, seeing more closely now into his pools of brown that his mother possessed before the lumps on her chest closed them forever.
             “Mom, I need you here now more than ever.”