Page 3 of Revisions

“This is my role,” Ivey says. “Pretty straightforward.”

“You mean showing up and asking questions?” I ask him.

Ivey smiles.

I’m not sure where he’s going with this line of questioning. “All you do is show up and ask questions?” I ask. “You must do research first.”

“I do.”

“And you have to market your show.”

“I have a team,” he says.

“So do I. I’mpartof that team. This is part of what I do as First Lady—talk to people.”

“You’re not a typical First Lady.”

I laugh. “What gave it away?” I ask. Candace and I had a colorful conversation about tool belts before she left. I think I’ll leave that out.

“Aside from the nature of your relationship?” Ivey asks.

Oh, boy. Here it comes.The nature of your relationship.Does he think this is the first time I’ve been asked this question? Not very original, Jay. “I’m only one in a long line of women to become First Lady,” I reply.

“But the only one married to a woman.”

“True.”

“You must admit, it is a stark departure from your predecessors,” Ivey comments.

It would probably be ill-advised for me to roll my eyes. Does he know about Eleanor Roosevelt? Something tells me more than one First Lady kissed a girl. “Being married?” I quip.

“Being a lesbian.”

I smile. What does he want me to say? I’m sorry? This interview is beginning to bore me.

“You’ve said publicly that you takethatrole seriously,” Ivey says.

I’m tempted to ask if he means being a lesbian or being married to one. Dana catches my eye—also, not a good idea.

“What did you mean by that?” Ivey asks. “The president has said her sexuality should have no bearing on her viability as acandidate or a leader. Yet you say you take your role as a lesbian and First Lady seriously. That seems like a departure from her agenda.”

Her agenda? There was a time when people like this podcaster made me want to reply with a string of expletives and insults. Now, I find it tiresome and pathetic. I was fortunate. To say that my coming out lacked fanfare is an understatement. Then again, I never really had a coming out. The truth is my parents had figured it out before I ever thought to tell them I was a lesbian. They didn’t react at all when I brought a girl home. No joyful hugs. No tearful disappointment. And no angry accusations. My mom said hello, offered my girlfriend something to drink, and asked about her studies. And my dad? He just told her to make sure I didn’t exist perpetually on lousy pizza. That was it. That doesn’t mean I’m a stranger to judgment.

I would have expected more blowback from my dad’s family. He’s the Republican in the House, after all. No one—and I mean no one—on my dad’s side said a word. And if you want my opinion, that’s how I think it should be. They were always excited to meet the girl I was dating. They bombarded my girlfriends with questions and told embarrassing stories about me. They never made an issue of the fact that the person I brought home was a woman—not once. Nothing changed from the handful of jocks I dated in high school to the sorority women I dated in college.

My mother’s family was a different story. When I told my cousin Craig that I was gay, he laughed and said he had known since I was in first grade. Then he started calling me the rainbow sheep of the family. If I’m the rainbow sheep, my mom is the proverbial black sheep. Like me, she has two brothers. It’s funny how history repeats itself. She’s always been more progressive in her views on politics and life than the rest of her family, but she learned to pick her battles carefully—until my uncle began hisverbal abuse towards me. Everything changed after that. Both of my uncles liked to make comments—indirectly—about me. It started when I went to college. I always understood, on some level, that they resented my ability to attend Cornell.

My mom saved as much as possible so my brothers and I could get a college education. Toby and Doug both opted for community college. After two years, Doug transferred to NYU. Toby opened a drywall business and worked on projects with my dad until he found his footing. For a long time, I thought the not-so-affectionate teasing about my academic career was about Cornell. It took me years to understand that was only part of it.

I’m the only granddaughter on my mom’s side of the family. It didn’t seem like an issue when I was small—playing tag and even touch football with my brothers and cousins. After all, I wore a dress to my Confirmation and went to the prom with a football player. But things started to change when my mom proudly announced that I’d been accepted to Cornell. It was like my uncles were saying, “How daresheget that chance?” I worked for the opportunity. I studied and competed in sports. My parents helped with my undergraduate studies. I wouldn’t have been able to choose Cornell if I hadn’t gotten a few scholarships.

For a long time, I thought all the negativity directed at me stemmed from grief over my cousin Craig’s death as well as objections to my coming out as a lesbian. I accepted the nastiness for years because of my guilt. My cousins, Craig, Scott, and I were inseparable for most of our lives until high school. Unlike many of my friends and cousins, I didn’t party. I was too busy being a closeted overachiever. Craig and Scott started spending more time together at parties. They got carried away with drinking and drugs and took it to the extreme one night when they broke into a neighbor’s house. Both their fathers are cops. You can imagine how that went over in my family.

I pulled away from them more after that until they both got sober. They were doing great the summer before I left for college. We spent most of that summer working on projects with my dad for extra cash. I thought we were all on track. But after I left for college, they fell back into the party scene—Craig, most of all. He overdosed one night. I spent a lot of years angry at Scott. The truth is, I wondered if they would have gone down that road again if I’d stayed home. It’s silly. But my guilt made it easy for me to accept Uncle Jerry’s attitude towards me.

My Uncle Jerry was always a hard ass. He made Craig’s life hell more than once. But as kids, you don’t think too much about it. Craig spent as much time as he could with my parents.

Looking back, it’s clear my uncles resented my mom. They both went straight from high school into police work. My mom worked her way through college, and my dad helped her pay for her master’s degree.

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