Free The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story by Doug Wythe, Andrew Merling, Roslyn Merling, Sheldon Merling

fell over my nuclear
family long before my sexuality was suspect. This pervasive clandestine aura
was best summed up by my sister’s ex-husband, Bob, when he observed that our
family operates “on a need-to-know basis.” If information isn’t absolutely
vital, (and even, sometimes, if it is) keep it to yourself. And, of course,
once something has been rendered unspeakable, it’s also been imbued with
terrible power. In this back-handed way, secrets came to rule our house. And
everything in our house, it seemed, was secret.
    The summer I turned twelve, my parents and I
were on a self-styled camping trip, which consisted of driving to a recreation
area in our station-wagon, which my father had outfitted with thick foam
padding in the back. It was an ingenious method of stretching the budget for a
quick weekend getaway, but even the thinnest family would have a tough time
squeezing into the back of that car. I don’t recall which order we three
sardines wedged in, but there was hardly room for a deep breath. We’d done this
once before, the previous summer, and since then I’d grown an inch or two in
every direction.
    It was near sunset; we’d come back from a drive
in the forest and parked the station wagon in its spot. The ruggedness of the
outing was grating on me, and I complained. I have no idea what I said, but my
delivery must have had some drama, a hair too much flair, or maybe even a
flounce. My father, walking around the car, carrying some extra pieces of
padding into the back, flinched visibly. I kept on with my kvetching, until he
cut me off, acidly. There were an infinite number of far harsher words that
were traded in our family, but his rueful remark, spoken with no great anger,
just a weary air of hopelessness and somber resignation may have cut the
deepest:
    “I’d hate to say what you sound like.”
    I knew he wasn’t referring to how I sounded. My
father was talking about - or, really, just barely avoiding the awful
declaration of - what I was . There was a subtext even a twelve year old
could decipher, at least subconsciously: I know what you are, and it’s so
disgusting, I can’t even bring myself to say it.
    When it came time to cram ourselves together
into the back of the wagon, I was especially bitter. It’s one thing to have to
sleep with the enemy, another altogether to be forced to spoon with him till
dawn on an inch of foam padding.
    You might think I would have been accustomed to
derision by now. I’d been taunted so intensely at school, I could hardly think
above the din of ridicule. I guess I was stubborn. Because for every kid who
called me queer or faggot, I was that much more determined to ultimately prove
them wrong. The big problem was, though they were brutal and heartless, they
were right. With the transition from Junior High to High School, the
brutalization dwindled until all that remained for me was a vestigial fear.
    The summer of the passage between schools was
marked by a relationship that became a passage in my self-awareness. A tall,
handsome, slightly wild and hyperactive boy, Mark, had taken a liking to me.
Although I could tell that he was only sexually attracted to girls, that didn’t
stop me from developing an all-consuming crush on him. He came as an
irresistible package, with parents much younger than mine, who had created an
atmosphere at home for which I’d yearned ever since my family had erected
barriers against all communication. We spent the entire summer together, and as
my feelings for him grew, it helped explain the attraction I’d felt toward men
since early childhood. I was jolted into the realization of what those desires
actually signified, and that this was the kind of relationship I really craved.
    Perhaps it sounds odd that after years of public
humiliation at the hands of countless bullies, I still needed a shock to my
system to clarify my own nature. Those taunts, however, seemed to be aimed at
someone I didn’t know. Since the thugs were,