Guest Post: Beans & Rice by Aris

Dec.6.2011 at 6:50 am | Alix B. Golden

Y’all know I like a good story. I especially like it when the stories can benefit someone else, so here’s introducing the first part of Aris’ story…

On July 12, 2000, after a major and dramatic disagreement with Daddy over my sexuality, I was led to leave my parents’ home. He had confronted me with a stack of emails to and from me and Jerry four days prior and we agreed that none of such conduct would take place in his house. However, he approached me a few days later reasoning that as long as I was in the house, “IT” too was in the house, so I had to decide right then and there to change or leave. I left (duh!). Up to that point, he’d kept this discovery of his away from Momma and offered to spare me the shame of having to tell her, but in my anger and 21 year-old pride, I insisted that I would tell her myself.

Maybe she knew all along or maybe she didn’t. Either way, it wasn’t easy to actually form those words in my head and then verbalize them to her. It wasn’t until later that night when I was sitting in the cushy recliner next to her side of the bed that I realized I had never actually said those words to any one. I’d never said “I’m gay.” Even to this day, I can count the times I’ve said it since then. Interesting.

Anyway, I told her. She frowned and shifted uncomfortably in the bed several times before getting up to come and catch the tears that were clouding my frightened eyes. I had kind of imagined she would be sorta okay with it, but at the last minute I was scared she would reject and not want anything to do with me. I swallowed hard and told her I was sorry.

She said “That’s okay. Momma still love you. Nothin you ever tell me can make me not love you or love you any less than I do. I still look at you like I did the day you were born.”

Daddy was laying on his side of the bed visibly angry, but I tried to pretend I didn’t notice it.

I told him “Daddy I know you’re mad and you don’t understand it, but I’m sorry.”

It was becoming difficult to talk while restraining the sobs piling up in my chest. I felt like I was waiting for some dramatic and cathartic climax so I could yell and cry and scream “WHY?! WHY?! WHY?!” Daddy came through for me.

He looked over and said “Son, why don’t you just try to change?”
to which I replied “Cause Daddy, I ca-”

Before I could complete the last syllable, he sat straight up in the bed like a reverse lightening bolt, pointed at the front door and yelled “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

My sadness morphed into a dark pentagram of defiance, despair, rage, confusion and frightening uncertainty as I smacked my teeth and said “PEACE OUT!!”

There were no thoughts for a minute. I was walking, talking, yelling, looking around, seeing, hearing, breathing…but not thinking. No thoughts at all. Not a single one. My mind was completely blank, likely making room to take in this scene that was so completely out of place in the Banks’ Family house hold. As I came out of their bedroom, I heard the thud of Daddy’s foot steps behind me. They only sounded like that when he was coming to give me a whoopin. Then I heard Momma yell “…Bob! Come back here! Wait a minute! He didn’t mean to say that! Metrice!”

I turned around to see Daddy pulling himself out of Momma’s arms and say to me “I want my car keys buddy!”

Daddy had co-signed on my new car about a month and a half earlier and made the down payment.

As he reached me and tried to wrestle the keys out of my clinched fists, I yelled, “I ain’t givin you nothing until I get the seven hundred and ten dollars I’ve paid on this car already! When I get my money, I’ll give you your keys!”

(Angry enough to actually talk back to him, but not quite dumb enough to curse at him. How ya like me?)

Daddy said “I will go and write you a check right now!” and went into his study to pull out his check book. Momma took the car keys from me and I walked through the living room and out the front door.

Just started walking. Stepped in a puddle at the edge of the drive way and realized that I wasn’t wearing shoes. I fell down on my knees buried my face in my hands. What the hell was going on?!

Momma, her voice quivering, called out to me, “You need a ride somewhere Sweetheart?”

“No, I’ll just walk the gas station on the corner and call Jerry.”
“You sure you don’t want me to give you a ride? Just wait right here, I’m gonna talk to your daddy. The only reason why he tryina take your car is because you said ‘peace out’ and he felt disrespected. If you just apologize to him, he’ll let you keep the car…” She spoke with the kinda uncertain certainty that falls on a mother as she tries to explain things to her child that she hasn’t begun to understand for herself. It made me think about the period in my life where all I had to do was trust momma. A period the aroma of which still hung in the air around me as it had just slipped away about seven minutes before. “I’ma tell your daddy to come out and talk to you, so just apologize to him, okay? Please, do that for momma?”

Are we really having this conversation? And if we really are, why is she offering me a ride and not inviting me back in the house? Do my parents actually know I’m gay now? I actually said that out loud to somebody? Them, of all people? Is this supposed to happen to me at 21? Are they gonna let me go back to school? Can they let me do anything now? Am I on my own? Am I out of the house? Am I an adult? Have I eaten today?

“Okay…”

About a minute later, Daddy came out and I apologized. Momma handed me my car keys.

The three of us stood outside in the driveway for about two hours quoting Bible verses. Believe it or not, I had found an article on the web two weeks prior about homosexuality and the Bible and had been studying it intensely. For every verse they threw at me, I threw back two plus a factoid.

Fukkin gays. We thorough with our shit when we wanna be. Crafty btches, we are, CRAFTY BTCHES…

After we had each exhausted our respective wealths of Scriptural interpretation, Daddy sighed, shook his head in frustration and went inside to his study. I had been bugging Momma for weeks to make red beans and rice and as it happens, she had made it for me that day.

“Now you better get back in here and eat my beans and rice I made for you.”

You kinda gotta know my Momma to really appreciate that part.

I forced a half smile and told her that I just needed some time outside. She stood with me for a minute and we talked some more about the Bible and my feelings and she tried again to explain Daddy’s angle, which I already understood. He was a military man. Raised in the deeply Baptist, deeply homophobic south. To boot, I was his only son, I carried his name, and as the rest of my male cousins were from his sisters, I also carried the family name and was the end of the bloodline. So I could understand what he was going through (even when during our heated conversation he interjected that he hoped Jerry and I were using condoms…God, I wanted to just evaporate at that moment!!). I explained to momma that I’d known this about myself for as long as I could remember and it wasn’t like I could just change it like talking about it. She said she understood. I guess there was really nothing else she could say.

I heard Daddy call me from the house. I stepped inside the front door and he was sitting at his desk. He presented me with an ultimatum. I could either be straight in the house or be gay somewhere else. He told me that it just didn’t make sense to him and that he didn’t even want to try to understand it.

“But Daddy, I don’t understand it myself, its just…its just part of me. It always has been for as long as I’ve known myself…”

“Son, I’ll tell you something your grammamma once told me: Wrong don’t last.”

I stood there for a minute imagining how my granny sounded saying that. I mean, its the perfect thing to hear from an old person, ya know?

He continued, “Now that door you just walked through, you see that its open now. It won’t be for very long. You think good and hard about the decision you make because once you make it, that’s it…”

After staring at the floor for what felt like an hour, I looked up at my Daddy and told him that I was gonna sit outside and think for a minute. I remember sitting in my car, opening the moon roof, and looking up at the stars. I can still remember what each one looked like and where they sat in the sky. You’re gonna think I did this on purpose or that I’m making this part up, but I promise you; it was completely random. I turned on the cd player and The Velvet Rope cd was on deck. The first thing I heard was Janet singing the chorus to her cover of “Tonight’s The Night”. “…Tonight’s the night…it’s gonna be alright…cause I’ll love ya, girl, ain’t nobody gonna stop us now…”

Yeah, Janet said “girl”. How bout that sht?

I prayed so hard sittin in that car. I kept thinking about having sex with Jerry and trying to make myself not want it ever again. I even tried closing my eyes really tight and opening them expecting to be suddenly straight. Of all nights, I actually saw a shooting star on that one. I didn’t wish on it though.

I started my car and sat for a minute before slowly backing out of the driveway. This was it! I was gonna go be gay! Out in the world! I thought it would be easier to just leave versus going back to actually tell them what I decided to do. Wrong about that! Just as I was about to drive off, I stopped to look at the light coming out of the house. We had had about 9 different addresses over our lives together but the light coming out of each one always looked the same at night. It wasn’t like he light coming from the neighbor’s house, or even the light that comes from my grannies’ houses. It was our light. It was my home. It was punctuated by my mom’s silhouette standing in the doorway with her hands near her face as she watched my car. I knew she was crying.

“I’m sorry momma…”

And I drove off.

When I went back the next day to get the rest of my stuff, the locks had been changed.

Part two next Tuesday…