I was trying to write a poem for my father, who has been on my mind a lot lately, to reflect my admiration for him…why? Well, just recently, I went to see the movie MILK, and as with most other gay men who grew up not really knowing who Harvey Milk was, until recently, I was very moved by the story. When Harvey admits to himself, to paraphrase, “I am forty years old, and I haven’t done anything with my life,” it had a specific resonance with me in regards to turning forty myself this year and sometimes feeling, what have I done for gay rights? It seems like this is the time to be counted and recognized as an upstanding, moral, contributing member of society, who happens to be gay, just like Harvey Milk was. I wonder, sometimes, what can I do? (Even when I know that there is more that I can do.) Has my coming out made any difference, even to my own family, for example, when I send my dad a copy of a reading I did at church this past year for Gay Pride and the only response I get back is “thanks for sharing?” Thanks for sharing!? After all the emails I receive from my dad about his political views and religious perspectives, that’s the only thing he can say. I felt insulted. Cheated. I wanted more.
But I had already gotten more: at the family reunion, about 4 years ago, in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Let me paint the picture for you. My boyfriend and I drive up to the community center where it is being held and my dad’s brother is being lifted out of the back of a run down pickup truck in a recliner, carried into the meeting hall by a band of my cousins. (I found out later that my uncle had just had surgery on both of his knees, but it didn’t take away from the absurd opening scene to the redneck family reunion). We enter the meeting hall to see it decorated with red, white and blue for Memorial Day and several of my first cousins singing old time religious hymns. We settle uncomfortably in the meeting hall into some open seats and anxiously await when it will all be over. After we all eat, it comes the time for each of my dad’s siblings and himself to introduce their respective families. Knot in my stomach. My dad’s most religious brother (who, as a preacher years ago, called me out during the middle of a church service as needing prayer for my underage drinking) introduces his three sons, their beloved wives, and each of the kids. Next, the most redneck, beer-drinking heathen brother introduces his kids. The sisters introduce their children.
And then it’s my dad’s turn. Oh my god, I can’t breathe, he is just going to say my name and nothing else. Nothing about my partner. Or “This is Richard’s friend.” He introduces my older brother, his wife, kids. My brother Clark.
“And this is my son Richard, in from Chicago, with his life partner, Dan.”
What? What? Did I just hear that? I was stunned. Shocked. Embarrased. Proud. My dad, a lifelong Republican, a career military man, a hunter of wild game, a sports enthusiast, a stern disciplinarian, had just stood up in front of his entire mostly fundamental, religious, Southern family and introduced me and my gay partner. Me, his middle son, a lover of literature, a sensitive writer, a lifelong liberal, a peace-loving soul, a man lover! I felt chills running down my back and gave a quick sideways glance of pleased shock to my lover as my first cousins, the Allison Family Singers, started singing one of those religious songs that I grew up with, that I cut out of my consciousness for years, but this time, as they sang, “There’s Power in the Blood,” I felt a little something, a familial connection because of what my father had just done and I felt that the shivering sensation of redemption and validation that I was experiencing was not unlike the Holy Spirit that my father often refers to.
I felt the same type of shivering sensation, of validation, of redemption, of wanting and needing to do more, when I heard Sean Penn recite Harvey Milk’s haunting premonition: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Hearing that, seeing the horrible fate that befell Harvey Milk and yet all the good that has come from his legacy, sent shivers through my body at the movie theater.
Again, I felt moved by the Holy Spirit. I think even my dad could relate to that.
