Jpatrickm

Ok, so we really didn’t have an earthquake that big, but it sure felt like it with the email I received about the LA Pride & Anna Nicole Smith pictures I posted. It appears that some people, and by some people I mean my Mother, felt I crossed the line by posting those scandalous images here on my blog. My friends and I have this saying when someone just goes completely off the hook and gets pissed. We call it a 10.0 (pronounced ten point oh), taken from the TV miniseries last year about a 10.0 earthquake hitting the west coast and demolishing civilization there. Well, my mother Betty went 10.0 on me. I decided to write about it because, all kidding aside, I think this is an important subject and since her email, I’ve been thinking about my life and this blog and what it really is like being gay and 34. In all fairness to her, we talked this over and she gave me permission to write this and to graciously post her 10.0 email.

I only came out to my family a few years ago. Right from the very start they have always been great about it and have been completely understanding, loving and supportive. My Mother does her best to understand it all and see things from my perspective and we’ve had an open dialog about being gay all along. The problem I run into most is that the gay lifestyle depicted on TV or in the movies isn’t really how I live or how my friends live. We are not running around in parades in leather pants, or cruising dark parks or partying constantly. Sure we go to our share of parties and bars but we have normal jobs and live professional adult lives. I go out for drinks with my friends just like straight people do. So when I posted the pictures of LA Pride, my Mother had a very bad reaction, suddenly thinking that those scenes depicted in my pictures were somehow representative of my life.

Gay Pride celebrations are different things to different people. I go to them because they are usually just fun outdoor events with good music, food, drinks and a bunch of crazy things going on all around. To me, gay pride parades represent our freedom to be whoever we want and celebrate this in public. How some people choose to celebrate may seem crazy and immoral to others, but that’s their choice and that’s the whole point. One part of society should never need the permission of the other part of society to be who they are. We have gay pride parades because we live in a free society and we can. I remember when I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire, Sunday afternoons were always football time. My father would setup camp in the living room and watch TV all day. This annoyed my Mother to no end and she would devise ways to divert my father’s attention from the TV, usually without success. One afternoon she herded up all of our chickens (we lived on a farm) and ran them in through the door on one end of the house straight through the living room and out the other side. 12 chickens running frantically through all the rooms and around the furniture, circling my father who was sitting intently watching his football. Needless to say my father barely flinched. He looked at the chickens, looked at my mother and then cracked a beer and resumed watching TV. My Mother just wanted to provoke some reaction, any reaction, just some sign that she was there with the chickens. She ran the chickens through the house because she could. She wanted to be noticed. She didn’t need anyone’s permission to do it. Gay pride is the parade and celebration of the rights of gay people to exist, to matter and be noticed, no matter how outlandish and crazy it may seem. We don’t need the permission of the straight people in society to be who we are.

If you’ve ever met my mother Betty, you know she says it like it is. She can be funny as hell and very direct. Here is her email to me:

Subject: I don’t need it!
Joe, what the hell are you thinking? Wait until I’m dead before you show your lifestyle to anyone who tunes into SeacoastScene with your blog. I’m sorry, but I’m trying real hard to accept it all and I do, but don’t push it in my face. For God’s sake, I’m your mother. Heterosexual or Homosexual, I don’t need to see the graphic detail on a web site that you ask me if I seen lately. I tune in once in awhile to see what’s happening with you, but I’m lost. Where the hell is your morality? I’ve had enough “real life experiences” and not this from my child who I love so much. Is this what I live with now of your life in California. There has to be another way, not this Joe. There are gays who live differently. Please help me to understand.

So I had several reactions upon reading this. My first thought was, “oh my God, I’m being judged… again.” This quickly changed to surprise and the thought of, “ok, how do I fix this.” I’ve been down this road before with my Mother, discussing gay related issues such as gay marriage and I knew it was just a matter of getting things out into the open. I knew the pictures were scandalous and graphic, but they weren’t OF me. I had nothing to be ashamed of. I didn’t do anything wrong. So my next step was to simply reply and do my best to explain the pictures and why I posted them.

Here is my reply:

Subject: RE: I don’t need it!
Hey Mom,

Those are just pictures of other people not me. I went to an event that was just one big party and some other people choose to party a certain way. It’s all public and it’s all there for anyone to see. I posted the pictures mostly as a “Do you believe this shit?!” and not as, look at me, look what I’m doing. I can understand your anger but I’m not in any of those graphic pictures. Just because I take photos to document something, which I’ve done my whole life as the observer on the sidelines, doesn’t mean I endorse things I see or participate in them. I’m 34 and have spent my entire life sitting and hiding either at home or in the army or in jobs where I wasn’t out and now that I’m comfortable with who I am, I’m just seeing what’s going on in the world around me. The most graphic of all of the pictures (I’m assuming you are referring to) is Anna Nicole Smith being the ridiculously trashy lady that she is while filming her TV show right there in public. That is not some reflection of my lifestyle. I go to clubs and take pictures of the dancers and the people around so that I can document what it was like and what was going on. I have a lot of friends who thought the pictures were hilarious and that doesn’t make us all bad people. That’s not my life in California and I personally do live differently. MTV and Cable TV have shows worse then those pictures.

I’m sorry if the pictures offended you in anyway. I just assumed people would understandably separate me and who I am and who my friends are, from what they see in those pictures. With the exception of Dylan and maybe 1 or 2 other people, every person in those pictures was just someone there at the club that I didn’t know and had never met before. I take pictures. That’s what I do.

You don’t need to understand those pictures or gay pride or their morality. You just need to understand who I am and what my real life experiences are and know that I live my life very differently, and occasionally look around to see what the other people in the world are doing.

Love you lots.
Joe

And so that’s how it was. I didn’t take any pictures of the lovable families walking around with their baby strollers, although there were many there. Just like the media, I went after the drama shot. I was just taking pictures of the most outlandish things I saw.

It occurred to me that maybe there are other people looking at this blog that may not know me very well or at all and so I thought it was important to write about this and to post these emails. There are probably thousands of conversations going on simultaneously around the world between Mothers and their gay sons, each trying hard to understand life, about being gay and where they fit in this world. I have friends who were completely disowned by their families when they came out and had their Mothers and Fathers tell them God hated them and they never wanted to see them again. I know my Mother loves me unconditionally and so I am fortunate in that we just have to discuss things openly to move on.

The final phase of my reaction and emotion to our email exchange was basically frustration. I love my family to death so my frustration isn’t an attack on them and I hope they understand that. My Mother wrote, “I’m trying real hard to accept it all and I do, but don’t push it in my face.” I couldn’t help but feel we were back to that permission thing. Do what you like so long as I don’t know about it. I can be gay as long as I don’t broadcast it. It’s the same “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” argument in the military. It’s tolerance, not acceptance. I could say, “what was your face doing in my gay life?”. Of course that’s not really fair.

My Mother ended her email with, “There are gays who live differently”. Yes, there are a lot of gays who live differently, in fact most of them do, but I found myself asking, how do you know? I’m 34 and my family has never visited me as a gay adult. Now I’m not attacking them on this but it’s the truth. I visit them quite a bit, so it’s not like I don’t see them. But how would they know how I live and how my friends live if they’ve never bothered to see? How can gay and straight people truly coexist if we never learn about how each other lives. You’re certainly not going to learn about it on FOX TV. How can you judge my morality and my life if you’ve never seen how I live. (I’m not trying to guilt everyone into running out and buying a plane ticket now. It’s just an observation. lol)

I’m glad and grateful that at least my Mother could write to me about how she felt. After all is said and done, however, in the end I’m left explaining my lifestyle on a blog. Asking for permission to be accepted and normal.