Oy Vey My Daughter's Gay (12 page)

“I had a terrible education. I
attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”- Woody Allen

Christmas was coming round again; the fourth one since
Lila came out. John, Lila and I were conversing, guardedly, about Lila being
gay. Meanwhile, my class was conversing, unguardedly, about the existence of
Santa Claus.

Eight-year-olds are notoriously angst-ridden about Santa
Claus and are on the cusp of non-belief. The non-believers in my class were
superior, scathing and determined to prove to their naïve counterparts that
Santa didn’t exist. It was for their own good, they assured me. Fed up with the
anti-Santa lobby pestering me for my vote, I wrote on the board, ‘Is Santa
real?’ and sat back to enjoy the fun. The kids debated Santa’s existence
through a philosophical Community of Enquiry, in which I had previously trained
and subsequently introduced into the school curriculum. Like the more
traditional ‘circle time’, it involves the pupils sitting in a circle and
taking turns to talk. The crucial difference is that, in a Community of
Enquiry, the teacher’s role is that of a facilitator rather than a contributor.

Word filtered through to the staffroom that this travesty
was about to take place. My colleagues were aghast. This subject was
sacrosanct. I tried in vain to convince them that I would have no input in the
children’s discussion, which, to be fair, was a bit of a stretch. (It
is
possible
for me not to talk, but I find it useful to have a roll of tape handy for my
mouth.)

Granted, I had, on occasion, had a reputation for being a
controversial teacher, but give me some credit! I didn’t plan on marching into
my classroom and declaring, ‘Yes, boys and girls, it’s true. There’s no Santa
Claus. As a Jew, I’ve
never
had any presents from him, so be thankful
you’ve had a good run up until now and stop that snivelling!’

With some trepidation on my part, the Community of Enquiry
went ahead and, surprisingly, the believers won. Santa Claus lived on. And what
was the clincher? Milk and carrots! “Santa must be real,” the believers
reasoned, “because the milk and carrots left out on Christmas Eve were gone the
next morning.” That, ladies and gentlemen, proved to be irrefutable evidence.
(Thank goodness for that tape on my mouth.)

It wasn’t the first time I’d addressed a difficult topic in
my classroom. Some years before, in a previous school, the extremely sensitive subject
of paedophilia had arisen in my class of eleven-year-olds.  It had been
reported on our weekly school radio news programme that Michael Jackson had
been accused of child molestation. The class discussion that ensued eventually
resulted in a criminal conviction, as one of my pupils revealed that both he
and his sister had been the victims of their mother’s paedophile boyfriend. I
shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t had the moral courage to
open that conversation. I’m sure that, had the gay issue ever arisen in my
classroom, I would have dealt with it with confidence and sensitivity.  It
would still, however, have been quite a challenge.

Reading time was always religiously adhered to in my
classes. One of our favourite authors was Morris Gleitzman, an irreverent,
hilarious and award-winning Australian writer. The kids and I were enchanted
and, together, we read every book of his I could get my hands on − until
we hit a stumbling block in the form of his novel, ‘Two Weeks with the Queen’.
One of the main characters in the book is a gay man whose lover is dying of
AIDS. After debating with myself at length as to whether I possessed the moral
courage to enter into this controversial area, and being unable to reach a
decision, I decided to seek advice from my colleagues.

“I’ve got a dilemma,” I said in the staffroom over lunch.
“I want to read my class a book where one of the main characters is gay and his
lover’s dying of AIDS. What do you think?”

“Is this a book written for children?” a colleague said,
aghast.

“Yes. In fact, the author’s won lots of awards.”

“Well I certainly wouldn’t be happy if a teacher read that
to my eleven-year-old son,” she said.

“Me neither. I would definitely complain to the Head
Teacher if my daughter told me her teacher was reading about that in class,”
another colleague agreed.

“But the thing is,” I persisted, “I’ve read all his other
books, so it’ll seem strange if I miss this one out.” I was feeling distinctly
uncomfortable by this time and I could sense I was out on a limb. The staff all
knew by now that Lila was gay and, although nobody said anything specific, I
sensed discomfort in the air.

“Well, I think you’d be better to err on the side of
caution,” someone else said in a conciliatory tone.

“I don’t know,” I said, weakening, and hating myself for
it.

“At the end of the day, it’s up to you, but why would you
want to stick your neck out and cause yourself the aggravation from the
parents? I know I wouldn’t,” the first colleague said.

“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded, disappointed in them,
but more so in myself.

I received a similar response from John and from the few
friends I’d consulted. In the end, I decided against reading the book in class,
although I was unhappy with my decision. I felt I had let both the kids and
Lila down. Ironically, I knew that I would almost definitely have read it if I
hadn’t had a daughter who was gay. As it was, I balked at the possibility of
being ‘accused’ of promoting a gay lifestyle. I imagined parents berating me
with comments like, ‘Just because your daughter’s gay, doesn’t mean our
children should be encouraged to be so, too.’ (I knew if I read the book, there
was a strong chance I’d take the opportunity it provided to tell them about
Lila.) The legalities were a bit murky, too.

Consequently, I was a bit contrite when I told Lila about
it the whole sorry episode.

“I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed,” she said. “You’re
always so open and honest with your classes. This would have been your chance
to stand up for an important and personal cause. Knowing the kind of teacher
you are, I’m surprised you didn’t jump at the opportunity. You’ve never shied
away from difficult subjects in the past. There could be gay children in your
class and this could have been really important for them,” she said.

“I know. I just can’t be bothered with the potential
conflict it might cause with the parents. Maybe I’m getting old and lazy.”

“I am a bit surprised, but I’m not in the least upset and I
certainly don’t blame you,” she said, laughing. “I’m just playing devil’s
advocate here. Anyway, I haven’t even read the book. I’m really interested to
see how the author handles the gay characters…”

“Well? What did you think of it?” I asked Lila some weeks
later. “Have you read it yet? Isn’t he an amazing author?” I babbled.

I was totally unprepared for her response. “To tell you the
truth, I’m a bit disappointed,” she said.

“Seriously? How could you be disappointed?”

“Well I liked his writing, but, finally, an author got up
the courage to put a gay character in a children’s book and he has to be dying
of AIDS? Why couldn’t he just have been the next-door neighbour who led a
boring but happy life? It would be good for children to see that gay people do
that too, just like everybody else.” I realised then that I still had a long
way to go on my journey of understanding what it really meant for Lila to be
gay.

“If
God had wanted us to fly he would have given us tickets.” - Mel Brooks

Maybe that first plane journey when Lila was five days
old started her love of travel. Or maybe it was her solo trip to Scotland at
the age of five. Checking out her reviews on ‘Trip Advisor’ recently, we were
amazed to discover that, since she joined the website, she has, to date,
clocked up 660,000 miles and visited around one third of the world! That’s a
pretty big carbon footprint, Lila!

As a family, holidays have always been our weakness: from
cheap package tours where we were appointed our hotel on arrival to American
trips and long-haul adventures to South Africa and Australia. No wonder our
neighbours thought we were wealthy. Little did they know that most of it went
straight onto our credit card.

My favourite activity was going straight from school to the
airport when I finished teaching on the last day of term. It was such a high:
literally and metaphorically. My colleagues were aghast. “But what about your
last-minute packing?” they said.

“Simple,” I replied. “When I go out to school in the
morning I just pretend I’m leaving for the airport. There’s no difference. John
brings my case to the airport and I meet him and the kids there.” My colleagues
remained unconvinced.

John and I don’t argue a lot, but, when we do, we always
seem to select an impressive and all too public setting like Times Square in
New York or The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. In the former scenario we were
anxious to secure cheap, last-minute Broadway tickets for sixteen-year-old
theatre-mad Lila.  But we weren’t so anxious to stand in the large queue at the
cut-price ticket office, which was snaking around the corner. “Why don’t you
just go into the theatre and ask them if they have any tickets?” John said.

“Why don’t
I
go in?” I asked. “Why don’t
you
go in? You always leave everything to me.”

“Well, it’ll be your fault if she doesn’t get to see a
Broadway show,” John said. The decibel level was rising. People were beginning
to stare.

“Why don’t
I
go in,” Lila said calmly, but loud
enough to be heard over the shouting.

John and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. In
the end we
all
went in and, thanks to Lila, we were rewarded with
ten-dollar seats for that very afternoon’s performance of ‘Les Misérables’.
John, Lila and I were enthralled and have become lifelong fans of the show.
Thirteen-year-old Lee, on the other hand, proclaimed it the worst afternoon of
his life!

It has become something of a personal boast that John and I
always travel with hand luggage only. On our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary
we embarked on a round-the-world journey, which included eleven flights over
three weeks. And we still managed with just hand luggage. When we arrived in
Sydney, Australia, we greeted John’s aunt (who has lived there most of her
life) with, “Hi. Lovely to see you. We’ve come to do our washing.”

When we went to book in for our next flight, the ground
staff greeted us with, “Where’s your luggage?”

“This is it,” we replied.

“Oh, have you sent your luggage on ahead?”

“No − this is it. We only have hand luggage.”

“You’re my heroes!” one of them replied, to our delight.

A friend has challenged me to pack for a cruise, taking
only hand luggage and I, obviously, accepted the challenge.  We plan to carry
out that feat on our forthcoming voyage on the Queen Mary to celebrate my 60
^th
birthday.  Once, when Lila came to visit us in Spain, we met her at the airport
with a hug before saying, “Right, let’s go to the car.”

“Hmmm… I kind of have a case to collect,” she said. “Don’t
be angry with me.”

John and I rolled our eyes, exchanged a superior look and
reluctantly waited for her.

We missed Lila and Lee when they stopped coming on holiday
with us. It was the end of such a happy era. Just before Lila moved from
Scotland to London, she accompanied us on a train tour round central Europe. We
visited Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Warsaw, and Krakow and had a wonderful time.
In Krakow, we realised that we had booked into a hotel in the Jewish quarter
without even knowing it. Perhaps The Mother Ship was calling me home. On our
final day we visited Auschwitz. Not an easy trip, but something that will stay
with me forever.

One of the great things about going on holiday with an
adult Lila is that we, now, don’t have to plan a thing. We simply report for
duty each morning to be told the itinerary for the day. Everything is organised
to the n
^th
degree: local transport, cool places to which only the
most intrepid tourists ever venture and quirky and cheap restaurants. My
favourite stop on our central-Europe train trip was the Gellert Hotel Spa in
Budapest. We were at a complete loss as to how to access the facilities, as no
one spoke English. Lila came up with the idea of waiting at the exit, hoping to
eventually encounter people speaking English. We were rewarded when a mother
and daughter came through the exit turnstile chattering, reassuringly, in clear
English. I pounced on them and got the information we needed. I also proved my
worth to Lila by accompanying her on what proved to be several wild goose
chases. We spent many hours trying, in vain, to track down gay cafés across
central Europe, which were listed in her presumably out-of-date travel guides.
They had either closed down or seemed never to have existed in the first place.

When Lila and Miranda got married, Miranda presented Lila
with a necklace, engraved with: ‘Our adventure is about to begin’. True to that
sentiment, they have travelled extensively since then and I wondered what
challenges travelling as a lesbian couple might present. Lila had no shortage
of examples, sleeping arrangements being the main issue. On checking in to the
hotel, they usually find they have been assigned a twin room, even although
they have explicitly pre-booked a double. If culturally appropriate (and
they’re feeling brave), they make a point of asking for a double bed.  This is
partly because they want one, like any other couple, but also because they want
to challenge people’s perceptions and assumptions and make them less likely to
embarrass other gay couples. Often they then have to run the gauntlet of the
hotel staff’s judgmental stares, whilst endeavouring to appear cool and
unruffled. Understandably, in many countries where lesbianism is frowned upon
or forbidden, like on their trip to Eritrea, they don’t complain about the sleeping
arrangements, but simply push the twin beds together. If not, they squeeze into
one bed and, in the morning, rumple the other one up for appearances’ sake.
That sounds like a whole lot more housekeeping than Lila normally manages.
Apparently, it’s no holiday being on holiday when you’re gay.

However, being stuck in twin beds when you don’t want them
isn’t an exclusively homosexual issue. John and I were assigned a twin-bedded
room −
on our honeymoon!
The saddest thing was that we accepted it
because we were too embarrassed to say anything. No wonder they say youth is
wasted on the young. When we recently returned to the same hotel, I was stunned
to find we’d been given a room with a four-poster bed. I turned to John with a
huge smile, but it turned out that the romantic gesture I’d credited him with
was no more than a delightful coincidence.

Often whilst travelling (and otherwise), Lila and Miranda
face questions on the nature of their relationship. “So, are you two friends,
or sisters?”  Sometimes it’s just easier to claim one of these, but,
understandably, it makes them uncomfortable. They have to be careful not to
hold hands in public, or make a conscious decision to do so. But sometimes they
are delighted to find themselves in a country where, happily for them, the
local custom is specifically for women to hold hands, while physical contact
between opposite genders in public is frowned on.

On the positive side, being gay means that Lila and Miranda
often get to visit quirky venues and see a side of the country most tourists
don't. While in Tokyo, Lila was taken by the cast of Rocky Horror to some
exciting gay venues and had a memorable time. As a couple, they’ve visited drag
bars in Borneo, lesbian cabarets in Paris and gay bars in many different places.
Only when they are happily ensconced in such venues do they feel safe and
relaxed enough to share a public hug and a kiss.