LGBT Book & Video Blog

Family Outing: What Happened When I Found Out My Mother Was Gay

Review By Kelly Davis

Agreeing to review a friend’s book having not yet read a word of it is like going to see a co-worker’s band for the first time—you risk having to respond to “So, how was it?” with, “Tight, man. It was tight.”

So, Troy—your book? Tight. Kidding.

But seriously.

Troy helped start CityBeat six years ago and was the paper’s music editor until last November. For that reason, this review was supposed to be farmed out to a freelancer who doesn’t know Troy personally. That writer had the book for a day or two and then sent it back because she found some parts of it offensive and juvenile.

Is the book offensive? Sure—it gets a little raunchy at times; there’s a mention of pubic hair in the first paragraph. For anyone familiar with Troy’s writing, it’s to be expected. And, as he points out in the book’s introduction, you can’t talk about homosexuality without talking about sex; and you can’t talk about being a teenager and coming to terms with your mother’s homosexuality without talking about coming to terms with your own sexuality. Sex, as Troy explains, became a bigger part of his life than it would for most kids—“epic promiscuity” is how he defines his sex life from his deflowering at age 15 to well into his adult years, all to prove to himself and others that he wasn’t gay, too.

If sex became Troy’s defense mechanism, then sexual references, humor and vulgarity (it’s mild, really) are the book’s defense mechanisms. Amid the clever analogies and witty turns of phrase, the book, written as a memoir, can be heartbreaking at times. Troy found out his mom was gay in 1983, 15 years before federal legislation banned discrimination against gays in the workplace and only a decade after the American Pyschiatric Association removed homosexuality from a list of mental illnesses. She was a woman, Troy writes, “whose lifestyle wasn’t allowed in her own home” and whose ex-husband let Troy and his sister know that it was OK to feel embarrassed by their mom. In the book, when Troy graduates from college, she’s not invited to the big family party, and when his sister gets married, she makes sure that her mom and her mom’s girlfriend sit on opposite sides of the room.

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posted by Tom Jackson @ Saturday, June 21, 2008