"So What're You Feeling?"

I've been getting that alot lately.

Ever since the event.

The "melancholic event," as my ex-In-Law Mormon family used to refer to it. I actually always liked that. I liked how my ex-In-Law Mormon family used to refer to it. To death. As the "melancholic event." It showed that even they, the supposedly most utterly stoic amidst the Christian and Post-Christian faiths, still had a sense of humor about life.

And death.

And so, when I'm asked, "What'm I feeling Lately?," or, "How's It been Goin'?," I've been tending to fancy an approach much like that. Of my ex-In-Law Mormon family's. Coupled, that is, with a version of my father's response to such questions. He can't stand being asked, "How are you doing?" He thinks it's superfluous -- stupid.

"How the hell you think I'm doin'?," he retorts, which silences any conversation from that point on.

I fancy such a retort, but I never deliver it. To me, there's a difference between how one feels and how one responds... In this sort of case, I mean. Lord knows I've never been the sort to refuse a conversation stopper. But within this scenario -- within the scenario of my mother's death -- I've learned to deliver the lines that folks most want to hear.

"Oh, I'm relieved She's at peace," I say. Or, "So long as her sufferin's ended, I s'pose it's all we can ask for..."

You wouldn't believe the points a comment like that can score. Especially if you're wearing a suit when you deliver it.

"So what am I feeling?," as the true friends tend to ask? I won't lie to ya. I'm feelin' relieved.

Try to put yourself in my situation: For over 20 years, every time the phone rang and you saw a particular number show up on the Caller ID, your stomach dropped two floors. You knew, at that point, you had two options: either not answer the call and pray for a time when you'd be "in a better place" to deal with it; or to answer it and listen to all the reasons why things weren't right in your mother's life -- the majority of which could be traced back to you, and your inability to live up to her expectations.

I know I possess a performative sensiblity. I know I have a flair for drama. But I am no drama queen. Truth be told, when it comes to my personal life, I fear, loathe and detest drama. Because drama between individuals is ultimately pettiness being played out on the everyday stage. I prefer my everyday stage to be clean, functional, and drama-free. Yes, as a dramatist, I value drama. But only within its truest context. In its truest context, drama is an art that conveys a theme or a message which exists for the ostensible benefit of humanity. As for the everyday, I prefer directness. In everyday life, I long for direct, honest communication.

So it as this -- the queen who can asure you he's not a drama queen -- that I can assure you: My mother's life became unglued the moment she realized I was a homosexual. That happened over 20 years ago. It became official in 1987. And since circa 1987, my relationship with my mother has been nothing less than contentious. Contentious because she was convinced she could change me ("back"), and because I was convinced that who I was -- however offbeat and different it might have been from anything my parents had ever considered as a legitimate sensibility -- was not only legitmate, but downright natural.

Such became the nature of what would become the 20+ year battle between my mother and myself.

I have been lectured numerous times as to the "Eastern," the "New Age" and the stripped-down psychological reasons why I should not have engaged in battle with my mother. But this battle, as far as I was concerned, was too valuable to risk losing to mere theory. This battle dwelt within the realm between mother and child. True, this battle lived under the rules of Maya. It was illusion by technicality, I will admit, but it was as real as any illusion that emerges from our birth into the material world as any illusion could be. For what is more real in the real world than the birth that brings us into it?

I exercised. I meditated. I got as "centered" as I could possibly get. But still, as calm and as centered as I thought I could make myself, whenever the phone rang -- if it was she who was calling -- then all centeredness fell by the wayside, and I prepared to defend myself. To fight.

What was I fighting for, even though I had recognized she was the proverbial "hot stove" from which I was obligated to withdraw my touch in order to remain unharmed? Why did I "engage" with her, despite my having been taught that engaging would only lead to the inevitable "dangerous dance," which -- even if I did temporarily succeed in leading -- would never become a dance between equals who respected each other? Why did I continue to fight a war against an insane person?

To justify my own sanity, plain and simple. Not many of you have been in direct contact with me lately, personally or via phone. But if you had been, you most likely would have heard me utter these words: "I know I'm not going to change her. I know I'm probably not going to get through. But sometimes I just need to hear myself say it -- to her -- just to assure myself I'm not the crazy one."

I might have my problems. I might be "classifiable" in some manner, shape or psychologically disorderly form. But I am not insane. I'm just a little bit crazy. Ma couldn't handle that. She couldn't handle anything that didn't fit within the narrow parameters of her socially-acceptable, Pre-Civil Rights, Pre-Feminist, Pre-Queer paradigm. And she was REALLY vocal about that inability.

Oh, well.

If she'd have suffered in silence, things might've been much different between us. But she chose to become a soldier. She chose to fight, for the sake of her beloved bourgeois aristocracy. She chose to struggle to maintain her bourgeois status quo rather than work to have a valuable relationship with her one and only child. And how did she fight? By choosing to repeatedly let me know what a disappointment I was.

So I chose to remind her that disapointment was a two-way street.

It's one thing to "Honor thy Father and Mother." It's quite another to believe that taking their abuse is the same thing.

By the way, today would've been her 72nd birthday.