My friend (who remains nameless for his own protection) asked if
I would pick him up to go to a special dinner being held for
someone we both know. It would be the first time he’d gone out to
anything social like that in ages. Since my husband wasn’t
acquainted with those who had invited us, he decided to stay
home.
“Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?”
– Ernest Gaines
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
– Dr. Seuss
My friend (who remains nameless for his own protection) asked if I would pick him up to go to a special dinner being held for someone we both know. It would be the first time he’d gone out to anything social like that in ages. Since my husband wasn’t acquainted with those who had invited us, he decided to stay home.
My friend’s mother has been ill recently. His father died when he was a small boy, and he has always been close to his mom. He makes her dinner every single night and watches TV with her. When he gets off work, he relieves her daytime help, and he will not leave her all alone for even one evening since she has become bed ridden. This time, however, he felt he could because she was temporarily staying in a nursing home.
He barely fit into my car – he is well over 6-feet tall and weighs more than 300 pounds. He kept thanking me for driving, and he enjoyed and appreciated every little aspect of the evening, almost like a man who had just been let out of jail. He is living what I would call a celibate gay lifestyle – he identifies himself as gay, but his last serious partnership ended years ago.
He has such sadness and loneliness in his life. Can you imagine living your days working in a caretaking profession, not being able to genuinely be who you are, having no partner, no social life, and after work taking care of an elderly mom day in and day out? While I have had mostly positive experiences with organized religion, he has mostly experienced being judged and feeling condemned, so he doesn’t have the support network of a church or faith-based group. It has not been easy for him to find ways to meet other gay people in this area. Most people don’t know he considers himself gay. He’s in this weird gray limbo where some people know and some have no idea. Sometimes he can be himself, but most of the time he’s not.
So, on this rare night out, we were sitting at the table, watching people on the dance floor where a DJ was spinning hits, sipping our fuzzy navels, content, I thought, to merely observe from a distance. All of a sudden, he surprised me by asking, “Do you want to dance?!” I looked around, but I was the only other one at the table at that moment. I had never imagined that this big gay man would want to dance!
Then I thought about the words from a country song made famous by Lee Ann Womack which say, “When you come close to sellin’ out reconsider, Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance, And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.”
So there I found myself, on the dance floor, and again, I was in for a surprise. At first I was terrible, not having danced for quite some time, but he was leading, and he was twirling me around the floor, and swinging me this way and swinging me that. He could really move! It was like having a ballroom partner. I would spin 360 degrees, and then he would grab my hand and we’d cha cha back and forth. It was unbelievable – he was so light on his feet! He told me he hadn’t danced since the days of disco, but that was impossible to believe. I felt like I was on “Dancing With the Stars,” as people actually stopped and watched us.
We spun around the floor to “Dancing Queen.” Yes, that’s right, I’ll admit it – ABBA was playing. Suddenly the burdens weighing us down began to lift – hurt toes, hurt psyches – both were forgotten as we became light as a feather. As we danced, our differences no longer mattered. Gay, straight, married, single, fat, tall – the labels we give each other fell away, and all that mattered is that we are friends.
