Page 79 of Everything We Thought Was True
LENA - LOS ANGELES, CA
October 2015
Istepped onto the stage and walked toward the podium, smiling at Kate, who’d just introduced me. In the last few days, I’d frantically reworked the speech, and now that I was here, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get through it. I touched my mom’s pearl ring for good luck.
I looked out into the audience and caught sight of Kevin, handsome and supportive, smiling at me. And there was my dad with Oliver at his side, the two of them beaming.No turning back. This was my story. And it was high time I fully owned it in all its flawed truth and beauty.
I’d always guarded the different parts of my life from each other. If I could keep them in isolation from each other, nothing could ever hurt me as deeply again. I built a quiet construction of separate rooms, like protective compartments, around me. But most of the time, I felt alone in the center of that house. The trip to San Francisco with my father had flung open the front door. And then reading my mother’s journal, with its implicit permission to stop hiding, had knocked down the walls.
“Good evening. My name is Lena Antinori, and I’m a deputy US attorney for civil rights. I spend my days trying cases for marginalized groups, including the LGBTQ community.”
I spent the next ten minutes giving them an update on federal and state LGBTQ rights law, outlining its bracing contradictions of idealism and pain. I described how the glimmers of hope when legal battles were won and progress was made were pitted against the glaring recognition that the war continued to wage.
With the legal recap behind me, I shifted gears.Now for the hard part.I was diving off a cliff—petrified but exhilarated. I took an audible breath amplified by the microphone. “I wrote my speech for this event over a month ago. That comes as no surprise to those who know me well. I’m quite the planner.” Some light laughter came from the audience. “I intended toonlytalk to you about the legal landscape. But that’s not solely why I’m here.”
The audience seemed to realize something was up. There was a change in the air.
“What most people don’t know about me, including even those I work with, is that I’m the daughter of a gay father. That statement isn’t something I typically share in casual conversation. In fact, for much of my life, I’ve hidden that truth. Or maybehiddenis too strong a word. Let’s say I didn’t freely divulge it.” I tried to smile, but my face felt plastic, like it might crack.
I looked at my work colleagues—Marcus, Brad, and Toby, and his partner, David, seated together in the audience. I’d invited them in the last few days, after I revised the speech. I’d been hiding in plain sight all these years. Now it seemed so misguided to have kept this vital part of my background from people who dedicated their careers to ensure acceptance and equality for others.
Juggling my private life as the child of a gay parent and my professional identity as an advocate for marginalized individuals had been exhausting and, I was convinced, had eroded parts of me. Children of so-called normal parents didn’t bear that burden. The world didn’t require them to shape-shift in order to survive.
I wanted to heal the gaping wound of society that forced my father, and by extension our entire family, to live a lie, and by not coming out about being the daughter of a gay parent, I wasn’t the advocate I claimed to be. My silence all these years had made me complicit. It was time to trade my privacy for transparency.
I took another deep breath, pulled my shoulders back, and stood up taller. “I’m here as one of you. The child of a gay parent. That’s what COLAGE is all about, and I realize that’s really why I’ve been invited to speak. Not just for my legal work.” I looked at Kate, who was seated in the front row, smiling at me.
“So many of us go through life with our stories hidden, feeling ashamed or afraid when our whole truth doesn’t live up to some established ideal. We grow up with messages that tell us there’s only one way to be a family, a couple, a daughter, a member of society. That if we don’t experience love in a certain way, or our parents don’t, we don’t belong. Until someone dares to tell that story differently. For years now, I’ve dared to tell my clients’ stories but not my own.”
I cleared my throat. The audience members watched me intently, some leaning forward in their seats, a few nodding, inaudibly encouraging me to go on. I realized my pause had lasted a long time.
“And so I stand before you today, admitting that I’ve rewritten this entire speech in the last few days. I’m finally ready to talk about my journey as the child of a gay parent. This is my coming-out story. Because as much as I thought I was supportive of my father years ago, I realize that I’ve been a hypocrite. And as children of LGBTQ parents, it’s our responsibility to come out too.”
The audience applauded, and I stopped to take a moment. My eyes met my dad’s, and I saw a spark of pride in them. I swallowed. I couldn’t stop, or I would lose it.
“It took me a long time to arrive here. I’m not talking about LA traffic, which I’m sure you hit on your way here, or the many years of legal training required for me to achieve my current position.The first gay person I ever loved broke my heart, and it took me many years to forgive him. Only then could I accept him.”
These were not new thoughts. They were a version of what I’d been thinking for years but had never actually said out loud—until now, in front of an auditorium full of mostly strangers.
“I was thirteen years old when my parents separated in 1983 and my father officially came out. Yet it would be years and years before I could freely tell anyone outside my family about my father and who he really was—before I could take all that hurt and anger and embarrassment and weave it into my story. I would take steps in the right direction but would often fall short of fully owning it. I'd get on my soapbox about civil rights issues and even sexual orientation discrimination but not come clean that I had a gay father. Sometimes I’d even say I had gay ‘family members’ or that my father was ‘seeing someone,’ but not who exactly. I was constantly playing the pronoun game, skirting the issue. The wounds of homophobia are like tentacles, their grip on not only the gay person but also on their children.”
I swallowed and licked my lips, which suddenly felt bone-dry.
“Growing up with a gay parent when homosexuality was not only not as acceptable as it is today but abhorred as an abomination of nature and religion, and downright illegal in some states, is an experience that has left me profoundly changed. I wouldn’t be who I am today without the fierce, unconditional love of my mother. I also wouldn’t be who I am without the risk-taking bravery my father exhibited.”
I glanced down at my notes and then back at the audience.
“Was it easy for my dad as a gay man? Not at all. He experienced so much loss: the loss of friends and family members who turned their backs on him, his fear of losing his job, and the worst kind of loss—several of his friends dying from AIDS. Was it easy for my mom, who was besotted with my father only to realize that the thingthat was keeping them apart was sexual orientation and that she needed to let him go? Absolutely not.
“In time, a clearer picture of myself emerged from my upbringing with these two people, as flawed and authentic as they were. I realized I was now a piece of the story too. As my story took shape, I sought to understand how they revealed different parts of themselves by looking closely at how they had loved each other, however imperfectly.”
My childhood, the events of my past, rushed at me like a wave crashing onto the shore. Everything looked crystal clear, each memory a piece of the puzzle that fit in exactly as it should and brought me to this moment, right here on this stage.
“Sometimes it only becomes clear what something’s really about later on, when time and life and memory have done their filtering and perspective has brought things into focus. My father lived his life on his own terms. It’s taken me a long time to realize I actually admire him for that. They weren't always terms I agreed with. I certainly didn't like what his terms were doing to our family. But I realize now that he needed to be true to himself, even if that meant losing everything. As much as things were lost, things were gained too. Because in the end, I gained my real father. Not the one he thought he had to be.”
I hadn’t fully accepted that truth until this moment.
“And it means the world to me that he’s here today, listening to me claim my truth. Even better, he’s sitting beside his new husband.” I gestured to my dad and Oliver, who were smiling radiantly.
