The Wedding: A Family's Coming Out Story (31 page)

            It
was a total metamorphosis. Really, it was unbelievable.

ANDREW   
Back in the hotel, we
headed for the action in Debbie and Louie’s room. Louie was off painting the
town thirteen shades of red, but Debbie was hanging out with Geri and Steve,
George, Nancy, and Bennett.

            After
we drank a few toasts, Geri asked, “And what was with Sandra and the video?
Whenever your cameraman came anywhere close, she hid like a vampire with a
cross stuck in its face.”

            Enrique
had been asking our friends and family if they would say a few words for the
wedding video. Sandra’s a mutual friend of ours and Louie’s, and she could be
described in personals-speak as “straight but curious.” Apparently she’d gotten
an earful on the subject of
Turning Point
.

            “I
asked her what the problem was, and she said, “The camera steals your soul.’”

            “I
thought she was a TV executive, not a medicine woman,” Doug cracked.

            I
told everyone what had happened with my Uncle Gary.

            “What
did you say when he told you that?” Debbie asked me.

            I
quoted myself verbatim: “Could you say that again on camera?” Everybody gathered
in the hotel room laughed. “No, really, that’s what I asked him. And he agreed.
No problem. I ran and got the crew, and he was terrific.” I knew his speech
would go into our wedding video, but I wondered if they would use it in the
show.

            “Oh
my God,” Debbie gasped. “Speaking of cameras, can you believe what Terry said?”

            Apparently
Doug and I were the only ones in the dark, because everyone else laughed. We
looked to Debbie for answers.

            “Oh,
you guys missed some of the best stuff!” Debbie explained. “Your cameraman
asked her if she’d say a few words, and she says, ‘Sure!’ She obviously had a
lot to drink – I know, I’m one to talk tonight – but anyway, when the camera’s
rolling, and Lauren’s standing right next to her, she say, “This is so
wonderful, and it’s such an eye-opener for straight people, and this just shows
why it’s so important that everyone come out.’ And that’s why she’s ‘thrilled’
she can be here with her ‘girlfriend.’ Well, Lauren just stood there with her
jaw around her knees. You could read her mind: ‘Oh my God, you just outed both
of us on national television. We’re going to have to call our parents before
this airs. Somebody beam me out of here.’ Anyway, Terry was brilliant. It was a
really heartfelt speech, but I wonder if she’ll remember any of it tomorrow. I
wouldn’t want to be the one to break it to her.”

            “But
what she said was so right,” Steve added. “A night like this shows exactly why
it’s so important that people come out. Because it
does
create change.”

            George
broke in, “Oh, God, don’t you just love sensitive straight men!” As we all
laughed, he lifted a glass. “To Steve and Bennett, the coolest straight men in
the house tonight!”

            Oh,
that George, any excuse for a toast. He was right, though. There’s nothing
cooler than a straight guy who’s secure enough with his own sexuality that he’s
not threatened by gay men.

DOUG   
We did a little more catty
gossiping, laughed and drank, until Andrew and I went back to our room around
two in the morning. Totally drained, and light as air, we kicked off our shoes
and slid out of our jackets. It was the first quiet moment we’d shared since
we’d gone downstairs for breakfast sixteen hours before. As I struggled to
unhook my suspenders, I saw Andrew staring dumbfounded at the tuxedo jacket
he’d just taken off.

            “Let
me see your jacket,” Andrew ordered, intensely. I handed mine to him, and
thrust toward me the jacket he’d been wearing. “Put this on.”

            After
all the treacherous hairpin curves we’d negotiated in the year and a half since
we announced our engagement, now, as we stood in our hotel room at two in the
morning exchanging jackets, we finally discovered the great hidden hazard of
same-sex marriage. Andrew’s six foot four. I’m five foot ten. Clothes that fit
him hang on me like drapes. And clothes that fit me are snug as spandex on him.

            And
yet somehow we’d managed to wear each other’s jackets all night long.

AFTERWORD

DOUG   
At just seven days, our
honeymoon was more like a minimoon, or maybe a half-moon, but who’s counting?
Since we were starting our trip in San Francisco, we’d arranged to join Geri
and Steve on their flight home. And though Andrew had upgraded his seat to
business class, I didn’t have enough frequent-flier miles to do the same. So
Andrew, the amateur travel agent, had a plan. On the first leg of the trip, the
quick flight from Montreal to Toronto, I sat with Geri and Steve. Then, in
Toronto, Andrew played the honeymoon trump card. As Geri, Steve, and I sat in
the departure lounge, we watched Andrew approach the flight attendant working
the desk. Geri turned to me and asked, “Where’s your husband going?” I did a
slow take, and cocked my head back at Geri as if to say, “My
what?
” The
words had an unfamiliar, odd, yet cozy sound, and I knew I’d warm to them.

            Andrew
liked to work alone, but I wanted to hear how he’d handle this, so I snuck up
to the desk.

ANDREW   
I told the gate agent,
“I’m on my honeymoon, but we’re not sitting in the same section. I’m in
business class. Can we get one upgrade so we can sit together?”

            Aghast,
she exclaimed, “That’s awful! Where’s your wife?”

            “Ummmmm…
he’s right over there,” I laughed, and pointed to Doug, who was walking toward
us.

            She
looked over to Doug, then back to me, and winced.

            “Well,
that’s even worse!” she cried, then clacked away at the keyboard. “Let’s see
what we can do about this…” In a minute she looked up, self-satisfied, and
extended the new boarding pass to Doug. “Here you go.” Then, reprovingly tongue
in cheek, she glared over her glasses at me. “How
could
you?”

DOUG   
Maybe we’ve just been lucky,
but I can’t recall a single hotel clerk, on any trip we’ve taken, looking at us
askance when we asked for one king-sized bed. Thankfully our honeymoon was no
exception.

            Midway
through the week, I rang Wendy Roth at
Turning Point
. When I left for
the wedding, there were a few loose ends at work, and I needed to know what to be
prepared for when I returned.

            “Wendy
Roth.”

            “It’s
Doug calling, from Santa Barbara.”

            “Hey!
You should know, we all want your wedding.”

            “
What?
”

            “It
looks fabulous.”

            “You’ve
seeeeen
it?”

            “
Yeeees
.
It’s terrific! Your wedding videographer sent us the tapes. We dubbed them and
shipped them back.”

            Dumbstruck
by my own naïveté, all I could do was laugh. Wendy and I talked briefly about
work, she wished us a great rest of our trip, and we signed off. I was left to
ponder the decidedly unromantic frieze: a dozen people huddled around a monitor
in the office, the first audience for our wedding video.

ROSLYN
   
Sheldon
and I had our own honeymoon. Not that we went anywhere. This was on dividend I
never expected could come from the wedding. I’d grown closer to my husband than
ever before. We were stronger as a couple, having survived the struggle, and
had learned more about each other than we’d ever known. I discovered a side of
Sheldon that he had never allowed me to see before: his sensitivity, his
feelings. It’s not that I ever doubted that he had feelings, or that he was
sensitive. It’s just that prior to seeing our therapist, Dennis, Sheldon had
never allowed me to see him as being vulnerable, and now for the first time we
were on common ground. We were able to share our hurts and support one another
in a manner that felt safe and comfortable. It seemed so natural that I
wondered why this special understanding of each other, which we had recently
developed, had taken so long to come about… forty years to be exact!

DOUG   
Early one evening shortly after
the honeymoon, Louie dropped in for a visit. Before we went out to the balcony,
he set down his usual “New Yorker on the go and I’m goin’ with everything I’ve
got” complement of bags and backpacks. Following a brief exchange of “who do
you have to sleep with to get some food in this place” pleasantries, he welled
up and poured out directly from his soul. After all the months of bearing the
sting of Louie’s ambivalence about my betrothal to Andrew, I realized I’d never
come right out and told him how I felt. Now here he was, displaying a strength
I hadn’t tapped for him, the capacity to be truly vulnerable. He confided in me
the depth of what it meant for him to have attended our wedding. Certainly I
was aware that Louie had had a good time, but I hadn’t a clue as to the
sentiment it had stirred in him. We embraced, and he told me that he had
decided to come out to his mother. And it brought the two of us closer together
as well. “Thank you again for letting me be a part of your wedding,” Louie said
as we embraced one more time. Forget for a moment the joy it brought me, the
ordeal of getting all of us down the aisle was worth it, if only for the
inspiration it brought him.

ANDREW   
While we’re getting a
little emotional, let me point out that in the months between our wedding and
the
Turning Point
episode going on the air, I got an unexpected,
slow-daunting surprise. I never realized the impact the wedding would have on
my feelings toward Doug. That public expression reinforced in my mind the
strength of our relationship. And now that we had made this statement before
all our friends and family, it intensified the commitment to being together
through the rest of our lives. The old subconscious escape clause had to get
dropped. Instead, I was forced to say to myself,
You’ve got to get through
the tough times, and get through them quickly, because you’re going to be
together forever. So why be in pain longer than necessary? Just deal with it.

            It
brought our relationship to a whole different level. The ceremony and
celebration made us much, much closer. I started asking friends who had tied
the knot recently, like Nancy and Bennett, “
Don’t you feel the difference
now?”
And most friends answered, “
Yeah, isn’t that strange?”

ROSLYN
   
The
promos for the
Turning Point
show began airing about one week before the
show was on. It was at this point that we began to tell a wider group of people
that we would be on the program. Most people were flabbergasted, all of them
wanted to know how it had come about, and everyone wanted explanations as to
why we had finally decided to go ahead with it. Word spread like wildfire.
People made comments like, “I knew there were too many video cameras at the
wedding… I knew it was being recorded by ABC…” I tried to explain that this
wasn’t true, but I don’t think the skeptics believed it when I told them that
we had refused to allow the ABC cameras and crew to be at the wedding. For the
record, both the cameras and crew were our videographer’s. It was true,
however, that ABC subsidized the cost of the second camera.

            Regardless
of what they believed about the details, no one, it seemed, was going to miss
this episode of
Turning Point
.

DOUG
  Just a week before the show
was set to air, my Aunt Verona passed away. Since I had grown to feel closer to
her than any of my extended family, news of her death hit me hard.

            It
also put me in an awkward position. Aunt Verona’s shiva fell just a few days
before
Turning Point’s
airdate. Only two months after my wedding, I was
seeing the family I’d seen at only two family get-togethers in the past ten
years. Both parties, not incidentally, had been in honor of my Uncle George, on
for his eightieth birthday, the other celebrating his fiftieth anniversary to
my aunt Verona.

            Andrew
couldn’t get out of work, so I attended the shiva alone. Throughout the day, I
reconnected with much of the family from whom I’d long felt so distanced. Two
of Aunt Verona’s last surviving siblings, my Aunts Sylvia and Ruth, were there.
I’d only met my aunt Ruth once before, many years ago. For the past several
years she’s lived in a nursing home on Long Island. My father often spoke of
her with a warmth he reserved just for Aunt Sylvia and her. Because she’d
confined to a wheelchair, I knelt down to introduce myself. “Aunt Ruth, it’s
Doug Wythe, Fred Wythe’s son.”