1986 to 1990, Indiana

By Brett Krutzsch

While other mothers spent their afternoons tending a flower or vegetable garden, mine was busy cultivating a gay son.

After raising three rambunctious boys, I believe my mother decided that it was time to have a child who would truly enjoy her company, a son who would look forward to shopping trips and appreciate all of the little things she crocheted.

From as early as I can remember, my mom did things with me she didn’t do with my brothers, and that is why I am convinced that she decided to create a gay son.

Every afternoon when I got home from elementary school, I jumped off the bottom step of the school bus, ran up my family’s lawn, and met my mom at the front door. Standing in the door was a woman of only 5 feet and three inches. She had curly black hair and, since it was the 1980s, usually wore a blouse with shoulder pads.

My mom would take my backpack, hand me a snack, and lead me into the living room, where The Guiding Light was about to start. Every day from 3 p.m. until 4 p.m., we were transported to Springfield, USA, where the Spaulding, Lewis, and Bauer families fought, loved, cheated and, occasionally, killed.

During some of the commercial breaks, we discussed the characters on the show: “How can they let Roger die if Holly hasn’t forgiven him?” And during other breaks, my mom let me know the latest neighborhood gossip: “I found out Dave Clarkson makes his wife iron his three-piece suits everyday. Who actually wears three-piece suits in this town?”

We lived in a suburb outside Indianapolis, and our neighbors cared deeply about appearances. My mom frequently told me about people adding pools or tennis courts to their backyards, even though she knew they were having trouble paying their bills.

She was never catty when passing along the neighborhood news, so during those conversations, I learned, at a very young age, how silly it is to live outside your means. We were surrounded my middle-class Americans who tried to live like the wealthy, and my mom, who was incredibly frugal, didn’t want me living in a fantasy world. Even while watching soap operas, she kept me grounded.

The Guiding Light ended at about 3:55 p.m., which gave us just enough time to run upstairs to our bedrooms and change into our workout clothes. We then ran back into the living room and turned the TV station to ESPN, where our favorite aerobics program came on at 4 p.m.

The aerobics instructor — a sort of male Jane Fonda — had a perfect, usually shirtless body, and I believe both my mother and I had a crush on him. So there my mom and I would be in our living room, in front of the television, doing our high kicks, choreographed steps, and a deep-breathing cooldown.

My dad occasionally came home, just in time to see me doing the aerobics steps with such seriousness and focus that he probably thought there was a possibility my biological father was actually Richard Simmons. Dad traveled most days of the week, and by the time I was 5, all of my brothers were off in the military; the men in my family rarely witnessed my fondness for jazzercising and the other ways my mom and I passed the time.

Starting in the fourth grade, Monday nights became another special treat because my mom let me stay up past my bedtime to watch Designing Women. We just loved those southern belles! I wanted to be Julia, my mom had silly moments of being like Bernice, and we both felt bad for Suzanne (played by Delta Burke) for struggling with her weight.

In one episode, Julia beautifully sang the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” The next day, my mom went out and bought the sheet music to the song. That night, she played “How Great Thou Art” on the piano while I sang along. Have I mentioned we’re Jewish?

On Saturday mornings, the other mothers in the neighborhood schlepped their sons off to football or soccer practice. But by the time I was 11, my mom drove me to The Young Actor’s Studio, where I took acting classes.

During those car rides, my mom played her Barbra Streisand — Greatest Hits tape, and we sang along to all the songs. Our favorites were the duets between Barbra and Barry Gibb. My mom and I took turns being Barbra.

Once, when stopped at a traffic light with our windows down, we tried matching Barbra’s ability to hold the note in “Woman in Love” that she carries for more than 10 seconds. Breathless and red in the face, I turned to see a man in the car next to us giving us a look of shock and disbelief. When our eyes met, he immediately looked away and sped off the moment the light turned green.

I felt embarrassed because I knew by age 11 that boys aren’t supposed to be spending their weekends singing with their mothers. But I never liked most things boys are supposed to enjoy, so I kept singing.

Sometimes, I’m surprised I didn’t come out of the closet by junior high. As it turns out, I waited until college before acknowledging my sexual orientation. When I told my mom, she immediately and without pause said, “Oh, thank God! I’ve known since you were 4. I didn’t think this day was ever going to come.”

Do I think Saturday morning car rides belting out Babs and weekday at-home aerobics sessions actually made me gay? No, of course not.

What I think is that my mom took note of the things I enjoyed doing from a very early age and let me, as one of her favorite authors, Joseph Campbell, would say, “follow my bliss.” She recognized that I hated playing contact sports and that I had no interest in sitting around with “the guys” watching “the game,” so she never made me do those things.

Her decision to raise me based on what made me happy has helped me in every aspect of my life. I never went through a period of teen angst, depression, or the freshmen blues in college. I was always far too busy out living life and experiencing the world.

So while the evidence appears to show that my mom raised me to be gay, I know she was just nurturing a happy child who would grow into a very thankful man. But then again, every year on her birthday, after my brothers have given her a picture frame or a bird feeder, and I’ve given her something from Tiffany’s, she always says, “Thank God I have at least one gay son.”

Brett Krutzsch grew up just outside Indianapolis. He currently lives in New York, where he is an administrator at New York University and a freelance writer. His work has appeared in the New York Press.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, May 18th, 2007 | Email This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 12:02 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.