Your Mother Is So Uptight.....

that people routinely jest that she must have had a rod inserted in her ass. What they fail to realize, however, is how close this comes to the truth. Whenever someone mentions the proverbial rod, you fake a laugh and say apologetically, “Come on guys, she’s not that bad.” You do this to draw attention away from your own guilty countenance, your eyes cast downward, since your mother does actually have a stainless steel rod and it’s there because of you. Let’s be clear, though: it’s not up her ass; the rod was surgically grafted into the lumbar section of her spine after her back was broken in a car crash. A car crash that you caused.

It happened the same day you passed your driving test, and afterwards you begged your mom to let you drive home on the freeway. She was naturally apprehensive, you being such a new driver and also (it pained her to admit) not the smartest of her children, but you persisted (in that high-pitched wail you always use to get your way — you know what I’m talking about) until she finally gave in on the condition that you keep it under 50 miles an hour and only take the freeway for a single exit. Immediately, you swerved into traffic without checking all three mirrors. As though you’d already forgotten your driver’s ed classes, your hands were all over the wheel instead of the recommended 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock position. Other drivers honked and shook angry fists at you and your mother politely suggested that you pay more attention to what was going on around you.

Blame the exuberance of the new driver, blame the sting of her criticism, but regardless of the mitigating circumstances, at that moment you stomped down on the accelerator, a desperate gleam in your eye. A split-second later the car was upside-down on the exit shoulder. The car had only a single airbag, keeping you safe, but your mother was thrown forward with such force that when the seatbelt stopped her it broke two of her vertebrae. Before the police and ambulance arrived, you both stayed in the car, still strapped painfully in your seats, clutching hands and crying. You sobbed profuse apologies for those few minutes that seemed to you both to last for days. Your mother, though she was in great pain, told you over and over that it would be okay.

Although her injuries were minor compared to what they might have been, her specific type of spinal trauma was degenerative. After wearing a back brace for five months, she was, at first, fine. It was only after another two years that the long term affects of the injury began to show. Before long, her pain became unbearable. The only choice, Dr. Zakorsky told her, was to fuse a section of her spine via rod-insertion. Her movement would be greatly impaired (she can no longer tie her own shoes or use a standard toilet), but to be rid of the debilitating pain it was a small price to pay.

However, after the fusion she became increasingly curt in her demeanor. She began rudely interrupting people and had seemingly lost all tolerance for others. She and your father haven’t been intimate in four years (he now discreetly visits prostitutes twice a month, of which your mother is aware, which, as much as she hides it, fills her with shame and only exacerbates her bitterness toward you). To help alleviate the burden of your guilt for having caused all this, you now drink heavily in secret. It makes things bearable, but only just. Next week you’re planning on visiting your parents, but you already know what you’ll find and it fills you with despair.

Your mother is so gay.........

that during the 2008 election, she vehemently opposed Proposition 8. Seeing as Prop 8 received the vast share of its funding from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, this marked the final schism between your mother and her devoutly Mormon family still living back in Utah. Having only returned for occasional visits after graduating Cum Laude from Bryn Mawr, her complete estrangement from her parents was largely a foregone conclusion already by the time she chose to be artificially inseminated and raise a child with her longterm companion, Terry, but the fact that her own parents, she was shocked to learn, had financially contributed to the passage of legislation that would rob her of a basical civil right cured her of any lingering hope that they might yet one day come to accept her lifestyle. By the time of the 2008 election, although not yet of voting age, you accompanied your mother and Terry to every rally and action throughout California; you held protest signs aloft and chanted in unison despite not being gay yourself. However, just by dint of your presence at so many rallies, people you’d seen once or twice and recognized by face began to draw conclusions about your own burgeoning sexuality. Once or twice at each event, other young men would approach you in a manner you felt was altogether too familiar, too forward. Naturally, wanting to be accepting of others and not wanting to offend anyone, you rebuffed them as politely as possible. After the fourth consecutive weekend, however, during which you were hit on while protesting with your mother and Terry, your patience began to wear thin. Finally, after an especially hirsute man approached you and asked indelicately if you’d like to meet him post-rally for a “blowjay party” in his van, you snapped. “Fuck off, homo!” you yelled, unkindly. You threw down your sign (“Stop the H8!”) and went to look for your mother. You found her and Terry engaged in a yelling match with a small group of Mormons and you told them you’d had enough, that you were leaving and would find your own way home from Sacramento. Your mother asked what had happened, and in your anger you responded, “Why the fuck does everyone have to be so fucking gay?!” and stormed off. This hurt your mother more than you knew at the time, and even though you apologized profusely later that day, in her heart your mother had moved you silently into that category she’d reserved for her family in Utah. Things would never be the same between you.