The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (23 page)

DOUG   
Again her said forget it. And
that was that.

            The
next morning, as Andrew got out of bed, he said, “If you want to talk to her,
fine. We can sit down and talk.”

            When
Andrew decided to sit down with Denise, he didn’t just open Pandora’s Box, he
jumped in. Denise is many things, among them canny, whip-smart, compassionate,
and intuitive. Above all, she is persistent. Not that she needed to convince
Andrew and me, because once we’d all sat down together in her office along with
associate producer Rebecca Wharton, Andrew and I were enthusiastic about her
approach to the subject. Nevertheless, Andrew warned her, “Good luck with my
father. We’d do the show, but if you need to talk to my parents, I can’t
believe they’d do it.”

ROSLYN
   
The
first time Dennis called, I said I didn’t want to do it, and I was sure Sheldon
didn’t want to either. I also felt it would be an intrusion, and God knows we
didn’t need any more stress.

            I
was curious, though, as to what her approach would be. I asked her what she
planned to focus on, and when she explained that it was her intention to leave
out the politics and zero in on the intended couples and their families, I was
impressed. So often people forget that gays and lesbians are born into
heterosexual families. Knowing what our family had been through to date, I was
happy to hear that the viewers would get an insight into the emotional turmoil
that is created when one has a gay child, much less a gay child who wants to
get publicly married. As our conversation progressed, I found myself responding
easily to Denise’s engaging and sensitive manner.

            After
her second call, I felt I had a relationship with her. Of course, that’s part
of her job, bonding with people on a deadline. Even knowing that, I responded
to her warmth. On this call she invited us to New York, to stay in a hotel,
where we’d do the interview. She asked me to speak to Sheldon again. He’d
already said it was out of the question after Denise’s first call, and he’s a
consistent man. Once again, “Forget it.” By the third call, Denise was wearing
me down. “I have another idea. How would it be if we came to Montreal with our
crew, and did the taping there?” I said, “Maybe if we have some reassurances…”
She offered the chance to immediately retract anything in the interview we
didn’t like the sound of. This escape hatch was appealing, so I considered her
offer. But Sheldon remained firmly opposed.

SHELDON   
I thought I’d heard the
last of it until Andrew called. “Denise wants to fly up to Montreal and take
the two of you out to dinner.”

            “If
we go, it’s a tacit acknowledgement,” I said, “that I’m interested in doing it.
And I’m not.”

            “What
are you worried about?” Andrew said. “You get a free meal out of it!” We both
laughed, and I said OK. “Just be sure to say she shouldn’t interpret this as
evidence that I’m giving it serious thought.”
At least it should be an
interesting meal
, I figured.

            When
Denise and her associate producer, Rebecca Wharton, flew into town, we
suggested a warm, intimate French restaurant, Le Mas Des Oliviers. What
impressed me about Denise, aside from the fact that she was obviously no fool,
was her approach to the program she was producing. I’m always offended by the
kooks they show on television in gay pride parades. She wanted to portray the
norm – illustrating to the rest of the world that plenty of gays and lesbians
come from normal, well-adjusted, middle class families. People could watch the
show and see that this isn’t an aberration, that you don’t have to be crazy to
face a situation like this.

            So
I liked everything she had to say, but I still felt I couldn’t be a part of it.
After all, I’d look like a hypocrite. First I’m so distressed but having a
large public affair. Then I’m willing to go on national television? People
would say, “This guy’s an act!” Denise was clever, though. She never asked
during the course of the evening if I would participate in the show. After
dinner I gave her a tour, and tried to give her and Rebecca a feeling for our
city, its character and its contrasts. We drove for miles, taking in the views.
As we got out of the car, she asked me to give it more thought. When she got
back to New York, she started calling me directly. And sure enough, she started
to wear me down, too. She had one stipulation, though, that I couldn’t
reconcile.
She wanted to interview us before the affair.

            “The
purpose,” she explained, “is to see you with all the anxieties, and let you
express them. If I show that, people will see how you felt before, versus how
it actually turns out.” I had to admit it made sense, but I just couldn’t do
it.

DOUG   
I heard about this last
roadblock. I had had no burning desire to be part of the show at first, but the
more I thought about it, the more I’d grown passionate about what this program
could mean to a bread audience, and how perfect Sheldon and Roslyn could be for
it. And the way the wedding was shaping up, I imagined how much it would have
meant to me, a kid in Van Nuys, to see that such a thing was possible. Now that
I’d fully pictured the scene, I was frustrated that we could be so close to
being a part of it, yet have it fall apart over a tiny detail.

            I
called my friend Sue Pomerantz, the assistant director who had been my partner
in creating the short segments I’d written and produced for
Turning Point
.
She’d been at ABC for many years, and I’d confided to her each twist of the
negotiation process over the wedding, and now over the program. She listened to
this deal-breaking dilemma, and after a moment’s thought, came up with an idea.
“What if Sheldon and Roslyn did the interview before the wedding, but could
wait until
after
the wedding to decide if the footage could be used? If
they could pull out of the show, if they weren’t happy with the wedding, or the
reaction to it, how would they feel about doing the interview?”

            As
soon as we got off the phone, I left a message for Denise, repeating Sue’s
idea. I don’t know if Denise had already gone down this road with Sheldon and
Roslyn, but the next evening we got the word. They were in.

ANDREW   
In my family’s weddings,
there was always a litany of different celebrations, from engagement party to
shower. I looked forward to some of that too. Many of these are typically given
by friends, but my friends weren’t talking about planning anything. I know it
was hard for them, since there’s no protocol for this situation. Still, I found
it hurtful. I’m nervy though. So I suggested to my old friend Diane that maybe
we could have a brunch or a small party at her house. She seemed open to it, at
first. A few weeks later I asked her about it again, and she put me off.
Finally she said her mother didn’t want to do it. And her tone suggested Diane
herself thought it was a serious imposition to do anything for our wedding. I
told Doug about it, and he egged me on, asking why Diane was reacting so
coolly.

            So
I called her up, and said I was hurt. “It’s not just about the wedding
planning, but about the wedding itself. You’ve been saying things that echo my
father’s reactions. It’s stuff I expect your mother to say.”

            “This
is new and different,” she explained. “It isn’t the norm. You can’t expect
everyone to treat it like any other wedding. So you can’t expect this to go by
the rules you’re used to.” Still, she apologized if I’d felt hurt.  For the
time being, we left it at that. Soon, though, I noticed a turnaround in her
response. About a week later, Diane offered to help put together an engagement
party for us, in our apartment. She got together with Doug’s friends Debbie and
Anita to organize the guest list and the food. And even more important, she
told me, with sincere enthusiasm, how “wonderful and courageous” it was that we
stuck with our plans. Though I’d never looked at myself, or anything we’d done,
in that light, her change of heart moved me tremendously. I waited so long to
tell her how pained I’d been by her trepidation, and now I wished I’d done it
months earlier. It seemed that by being honest with her, I opened up a door
between us that had been shut for far too long.

            Before
this, I’d been weighing whether to ask her to sing at our reception. You see,
Maxine and I always made jokes about Diane singing at family celebrations.
Prior to one of her sister’s weddings, when Diane and I were traveling in
Europe, she spent the whole summer with headphones on, singing the Barbra
Streisand favorite “Evergreen,” prepping for her big moment. It always seemed
natural to ask her to sing at our wedding. Now it finally seemed right.

            She
agreed, sounding genuinely excited. With one caveat, however. If Doug would
play the piano.

DOUG   
It was a sentimental request
that made me misty. OK, so I cry at hallmark ads. Ever since Diane moved to New
York three years before, we’d sit together at the piano. I’d play, we’d both
sing, and Andrew would cringe. I’m more of a classical guy, and my pop folio is
pretty thin, so we’d do the same two or three dozen songs, as the old saying
goes, until we got ‘em right. Anyway, our favorite duet was, “Your Song,” the
old Elton John standard. It was the first pop song I ever played, back when I
was too young to know why growing up to be just like Elton wasn’t every
parent’s dream for their son. Diane’s request that I play backup for her was too
perfect to pass up.

            Her
turnaround set into stark relief exactly where the rest of our crowd stood.
While most of our friends were wholly accepting of our wedding, some were less
enthusiastic that I would have imagined. It seemed that our plans were pushing
all sorts of different buttons. Several of our gay friends aren’t open about
their orientation. Other friends, who fit loosely into the category of
bisexual
(although, as somebody once said, labels are for food, not people), were
currently in heterosexual relationships. Among some in each group, I noticed a
vague reticence.

            And
when I told them all about the
Turning Point
episode, that reticence got
hiked up a notch. “Will I be on camera?” was the question I heard most often. I
explained time and again that we’d already hired a videographer to shoot and
edit our wedding video, and that his cameras would be the only ones at the
ceremony. Still, I could tell that many of our friends imagined blazing lights
and on-camera correspondents shoving microphones at them, asking how it felt to
be at a real live gay wedding. So I can just imagine how Andrew’s sister Debbie
felt when she heard about
Turning Point
.

ANDREW   
I was sitting on the
balcony, in pre-wedding tanning mode, when Debbie called, saying they’d heard
about the show.
How could they have found out?
I wondered. We’d tried to
keep this totally secret from everyone in Canada. The only people in Montreal
who knew were my parents. And my siblings were the
last
people they
would have told. I’d told Diane in confidence. Even though she’s good friends
with Debbie, she wouldn’t have told…
would she?

            As
expected, Debbie said they didn’t want to be on television. “Are you just doing
this for the Hollywood aspects of it?”

            “Hardly.
For a long time I didn’t want to do it at all. But we finally saw how we could
help other people.” I said I respected her wish not to be a part of it, if that
was the case.

            She
said, “I don’t know if Abraham will even come to the wedding if I tell him
about it.”

            I
tried hard to compose myself, feeling pissed off at my sister and even her
husband for this underlying threat of a family feud. Again we were being forced
to accommodate other people’s fears and misgivings about an event that should
have been about us. But rather than lash out at my sister with anger, I
internalized it all, continually trying to reassure her that neither she nor
any other guests at the wedding would be on television unless they consented.
When I got off the phone, my ambivalence about doing
Turning Point
began
to surface. I was ready to pull out of the show, but that was the last I heard
from Debbie, so it was forgotten… for the moment.

DOUG   
Forget
Turning Point
,
just the wedding video itself was causing consternation. No, not among the
guests – between me and Andrew. And, as usual, comfort level was the issue.
(Have you noticed yet that “comfort level” is nearly a universal all-purpose
euphemism for “homophobia”?) After all the discussion about whether we’d have a
wedding, we’d made a down payment and signed a contract. I wondered, though,
what we would do about the traditional “couple walks hand in hand through the
woods” section. You didn’t know there was such a tradition in the world of
wedding videos? Neither did I, until I’d looked through several others while
researching our own. And it turns out, nearly every video out there has a
section in which the happy couple pose in schmaltzy romantic tableaux, making
goo-goo eyes on a beach or in a park. This section of the video usually comes
before the actual wedding footage, and is often shot during the weekend of the
wedding.