If you're conscious and able to read the English language, you will laugh all the way through Family Outing. But be warned: Sometimes your laughter will be the horrified kind. Funny or not, this book may just piss you off.
Books about gay parenting have been coming fast and furious for years, and so have memoirs about being the child of a gay parent. In her 2005 book Families Like Mine, Minnesota author Abigail Garner gave what might have been the most honest and all-encompassing picture yet of what it's like to grow up in a gay-identified family. Garner interviewed hundreds of teens whose parents were gay, and talked about her own experiences as the child of a gay father and straight mother.
Troy Johnson builds on that tradition. But especially if you're the lesbian parent of a boy, his book might be disturbing to you. This is no "I realized she was just like everyone else and then everything was super" tale. It's the kind of book you really ought to read, but it might feel like a mouthful of tacks covered in hot fudge.
That's because Johnson tells the absolute truth about what having a gay parent was like for him: It was kind of a train wreck. He acknowledges the other factors that made his childhood rough — his mother and father's divorce, learning that his mother was gay from a vengeful ex-partner, and other difficulties helped out. But in describing how he felt about having a gay parent, he pulls no punches. He loved his mom, but he had other, more unruly feelings as well.
A difficult story like this might be best heard from someone like Johnson, whose irreverence is nothing short of hilarious and whose bluntest statements are always tempered with his love for his mother. The first chapter of the book is called "Tattle Dyke and Freckle Spawn." Tattle Dyke is appropriately named, because she's the one who tells Troy and his sister that their mother is gay. Freckle Spawn is Tattle Dyke's daughter, whom Troy and Kim despise almost as much as Tattle Dyke.
"Tattle Dyke was unnaturally gaunt, her metabolism souped up like a stock car from a lifetime of smoking. She had slivers for lips, as if they had been surgically tucked and pinned to her gums. Her helmet of black hair looked like a compressed afro, and her facial expression was always that of someone who has just watched a relative die," Johnson writes of his mother's former partner.
The book begins with Tattle Dyke outing his mom, and Johnson relates everything he remembers feeling about it, and everything that happened after: his blossoming into an unusually creative juvenile delinquent, his rage that he couldn't express, his confusion about what his mother's homosexuality meant for him, and his embarrassment at being the child of a lesbian.
Perhaps the hardest thing for him to discuss, although he does it anyway, is how his relationship with his mother changed because his understanding of her changed. "Kids of straight parents can't relate to this — and for good reason. They don't call them straight parents. They just call them parents. When someone asks, 'what are your parents like? Who are they?' kids of straight parents don't think," 'Well, Dad's a heterosexual.' They think, 'Well, Dad's a plumber, and he likes beer and NASCAR.'"
Because everyone else's reaction made it clear that who his mom had sex with was now the most important thing about her, he explains, he became preoccupied with it — and the way he found out damaged his ability to trust her and to know that she was the same mom she had always been. Hearing the news from someone he hated, instead of his mother, allowed questions to creep in that she could have answered.
"I didn't say that my knowledge of her sexuality had shrunk the comfort zone between us. …I didn't tell her that against my will some demented part of my brain was constantly flashing images of her doing lesbian things," he writes. "I didn't tell her that on at least one occasion I had wondered whether, when cuddling me as a child, an inappropriate part of her had tingled."
There's really no way to summarize what's brilliant about Johnson's memoir. Anyone will enjoy it because it's hilarious, but gay parents and potential parents really ought to read it. His innermost thoughts, fears, and problems might be any child's in the same situation. It's a good read, but it's also a clear warning that coming out to your kids can be traumatic in ways you never dreamed of.
Troy Johnson
Arcade Publishers
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