When I was fourteen, a gay couple moved into my neighborhood. My friend Matty and I discovered the new neighbors while riding our bikes toward the end of the summer. Being nosey kids, we were instantly curious about these people. Particularly we wanted to know if they had any kids our age and whether or not said children were cool. We didn’t get a good look at them, there were movers everywhere and we weren’t really sure who was who, but I did see a bunch of little kid toys getting loaded off the truck. Seems they had a least one young child.
The next day I rode my bike the two streets over and knocked on their door. Perhaps I could get a babysitting gig out of the newbies. A man in his late thirties answered. I introduced myself, told him where I lived and who my parents were and I asked if he had any kids. He did, a little boy barely five years old named David. I got excited. I could smell the money. Those rollerblades I had been spying were just a few Saturday nights away from being mine.
Mr. Addison collected my information and even listened to me as I rattled off references and offered to show him my Red Cross CPR certification card and bid me farewell. Two weeks later, he called and I had a job. That Saturday, I rode my bike over to their house, discarded it without using the kickstand onto their front lawn and rang the bell. A different man answered, I introduced myself and said Mr. Addison had called me to come babysit David. The new man smiled, introduced himself as Rob and invited me in. David was sitting at the kitchen table eating his dinner while Rob finished cleaning up the pots and pans he had used. Rob gave me the run down of numbers to call in case of emergency, told me what time they would be back and made sure I knew David’s bed time. A few moments latter, Mr. Addison (I’d later come to know him as Gary) came down the stairs, fussing with his tie. He said hello to me, kissed his son and started toward the garage. Seconds later, Rob thanked me again, kissed David and followed him out toward the car.
At this point I didn’t realize they were gay, I thought maybe they were friends or brothers or something. Nothing seemed too strange about their behavior. After they left, David and I played with some of his toys, I let him watch a Disney flick then I put him to bed reading a story. Reading stories was kind of my thing, I did it for all the kids I babysat, I thought of it as putting a mint on a hotel pillow, just a little thing that made me stand out against my competition. David was a great kid and went right to sleep.
After flipping through the channels on their huge television, I got bored and started wandering around the house looking for something interesting to do and to learn more about these people, snooping is one of the perks of being a babysitter.
I spent a lot of time looking at the photos strewn about the place. Having just moved in most of their things had yet to find a home and many of the photos were laid out on the dinning room table, waiting for their final resting place. From their posture in the photos I finally got it. They were a couple and David was their son… not Gary’s not Rob’s but Gary AND Rob’s. Huh, they were gay. I had never met a gay person. My Dad sometimes made cracks about “faeries and sissies,” but both these men didn’t seem like the people my father described. Being fourteen, my attention span was about as long as a fruit fly’s and I quickly went back to the living room to knock off a few hours playing Tetris on their old NES.
When the guys returned, Rob went upstairs to check on David while I gave a run down on how the night went to Gary. He thanked me for a job well done and gave me fifty bucks. FIFTY BUCKS! I had never made that much money for four hours work and I was totally flabbergasted. Gary offered to give me a ride home, but it was only two streets over and I had my bike to deal with. Gary walked me home, while I pushed my bike, he said it was too late for a girl to be walking by herself at night. I found the sentiment endearing.
Gary met my father when we got to my house and thanked my Dad for letting me help them out. They chatted for a few minutes while I put the bike away. When my father came back into the house he had a funny look on his face. He asked me if I knew Gary lived with a man, I said yes. He looked at me for a few minutes, searching for something I guess. After a few moments he told me I wasn’t allowed to babysit for them anymore.
Unable to find a reason for his command I questioned him. Was he insane? They were nice and David was the easiest kid to sit for. I made fifty bucks… fifty Dad! FIFTY! Looking back, I think this was the beginning of a new thought process for my father. He couldn’t come up with a logical reason to deny me the job and I don’t think he wanted to divulge his personal prejudices to me. We concluded our stand off with him telling me we’d discuss it later and sending me off to bed.
We never had that discussion.
I continued to sit for David until I went off to college four years later. I learned a lot about GLBT people during that time. Lots of people had lots to say about the “queers” in the neighborhood and I struggled to understand how people could hate someone else without knowing them.
I still don’t understand.
In high school I started a Gay Straight Alliance club after a friend came out to me and promptly got her ass beat for having the guts to admit she liked girls. Gary and Rob helped me find the resources to start the club after I told them what happened. Surprisingly, my school administration was supportive, even if the PTA wasn’t. They tried to shut us down, so my Honors English teacher that lived two blocks from the school let us met at her house when we were no longer allowed on campus.
Our club started with me, and six friends I threatened to join up with me, but we grew into an organization with over forty members. It was a safe place for the gay kids to be themselves and for the supporters to listen to their hopes and fears. We became family.
By my senior year we were back on campus, the PTA giving up the fight against tolerance and teaching sensitivity. David joined the group when he got to high school. He’s straight, but he knows what its like to watch people you care about tormented because of who they love.
Meeting his family profoundly shaped my life. I became an activist.
In college, I joined up with the GLBT group on campus and joined their educational outreach team. Our job was to go to classrooms and invite students to ask us questions about the GLBT community. I often got paraded around to talk about sensitive issues, I was the straight girl who looked like she walked out of a GAP ad after all, not many people felt threatened by my presence.
I’ve marched for Employment Non-Discrimination, and fought for Hate Crimes legislation. I even met Judy Sheppard once. It was strange meeting her. I knew who she was. I had seen her all over television. I felt like I was meeting a celebrity and yet at the same time I recognized the only reason she was famous was because her son was brutally murdered because of his sexuality. She looked like my mom. I wanted to cry when I shook her hand.
Our government legislates love. This offends me.
I recognize that people have very devout religious beliefs that render them unable to see past their faith. That’s ok. They are entitled to their beliefs no matter how misguided I may think they are. But at the end of the day, we live in a secular government and we don’t get to choose which marriages we will sanction and which we won’t. Just ask Brittany Spears about that one.
I got David’s graduation announcement yesterday. I can’t believe he’s graduating from high school. My mother told me she saw Gary at the grocery store a couple months ago, he was so proud of David, he was going to graduate in the top ten percent of his class. He got accepted to UVA, Gary told my mother. He wants to be a lawyer.
Good for you kid. Thanks for changing my life.
