As unexceptional as it is for me to think of myself as gay, the process of coming out was a long and circuitous one. (What, you may ask, should I have expected, that the path be straight?) It was not, I’m sure, as arduous as that of numerous other gay men and women, but it took many, many years. I knew I was attracted to men even before I really knew what sexuality was. I grew up in a tavern in a small town in northern New Jersey and most of the patrons were blue collar men. Trust me, I noticed a lot of them.

I have no idea when I first knew what a homosexual was, but I remember quite clearly when I started to realize there may be something wrong with being one. My older brother, who was perhaps thirteen at the time, told me that the way they treated homosexuals was to show them pictures of naked men at the same time as giving them an electric shock. He didn’t call it aversion therapy, I’m sure, but it seemed to me at age ten a rational way of dealing with the issue. I also wondered when I would have to have the procedure.

Several years later, and on the other side of the continent, my mother decided to have a “talk” with me. I had no idea of her agenda, of course. We had decided to take a drive to visit some family friends who lived in a big, old house on a scraggly piece of land in a small town about two hours drive from us. We often visited them on a moment’s notice, both families enjoyed each other’s company. It was a little odd to me that it was only Mom and me going, but what the hell, I was fourteen or fifteen and not that inquisitive about such things. We had a nice visit. Then, on the way back, my mother initiated “the conversation.” It was obvious she was having a hard time starting, but I didn’t help. In fact, I didn’t say anything. After a lot of hemming and stammering, she said she thought I might be (might be, mind you) gay, that she didn’t know if I’d had any overt experiences, that I could talk to her any time and that, if I needed it, we’d find a good therapist.

I didn’t say a single word the entire ride home, which couldn’t have made her task any easier. Thinking back on it, it must have been excruciating for her. What if she’d been wrong? What if her supposition put the thought into my head for the very first time, made me question, then experiment, then BECOME gay? My silence couldn’t have eased her trepidation, yet I remained silent. Being a parent can’t be easy sometimes. When I got home, I went downstairs to my room, dragged out my dictionary and looked up the word “overt”. I was disappointed. I’d thought it was something sexual. To be truthful, “overt” is the only actual word I remember from her long talk, the rest is only a vague sense of extreme discomfort and the sound of my heart beating fast.

I hadn’t had any overt experiences at that point, though. My first was when I was seventeen, with a twenty-eight year old relative of that same family, ironically, at their house during a weekend visit. My heart beat fast then, too, as I recall.

Many years later, again in another corner of the country, I finally “came out” to my mother. I was in my mid twenties and living in Los Angeles. I had moved here in part to have a big, anonymous place to figure out what all this sex stuff was about. I told myself and others I came here to be in the movies, which was true to a point, of course. I’d been here a few years by then, living in a house in the Silverlake area. I called my mother long distance (back when long distance actually meant something momentarily) and this time it was I who hemmed and stammered. Which I did for some fifteen minutes before I got out the operative sentence. I’m sure my mother figured out within the first two seconds what was up, but there wasn’t much she could say until I actually said, “I’m gay.” She said, “I know, honey.”

I cried and said the thing that hurt the most was the thought that I would be with someone who wouldn’t be welcome in her home. She said, “Oh, Honey, anyone you love I love.”

She proved it, too. When I was with Jerry, my one long-term boyfriend (if two years can be considered long-term), we took a trip up to her cabin in Idaho. One day I’d been out doing something in town with mom’s husband. That night, Jerry told me that my mother had asked him if he felt like part of the family.

“Of course, Toni,” he’d told her.

“Good,” she’d said. “Could you pick up all the coffee mugs in the living room and bring them into the kitchen?”

He said he’d felt very welcome, indeed.

The one thing she asked of me was that I not tell my great aunt. She didn’t want any blowback from that side of the family. I did anyway (many years later, of course, I said it was a long process.) Aunt Lou’s only comment was, “Well, do you have a friend?” I said I had lots of them and she said that’s not what she meant. I told her no, I didn’t have a friend and she told me I’d find someone and then changed the subject.

As the years progressed, my mother began wearing a pin that said, “Straight but not narrow”. She called me her fairy god son, and once asked if I were bothered that she had used me as an example when she showed the documentary Pink Triangles, about homosexuals in Nazi Germany, to her YWCA luncheon group. One of the group had said, “Gay people are disgusting.” My mother was horrified and said, “That’s my son you’re talking about.” I gave her retroactive permission and told her she could use me to enlighten someone anytime she wanted.

Oh. By the way. I’m gay. Did you know?

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

One afternoon a friend was visiting and mom pulled out the lox and some crackers, cut a small slice, put it on a cracker and offered it to her friend, who was skeptical, but tried it.

“Oh, my God, what is this?”

She liked it. So much so that she went through the entire pound as they sat there in the kitchen chatting. Mom watched in horror, not willing to be so impolite as to take it away or tell her how much it cost or how difficult it was to get. Her only solace was the thought of the woman going into a deli to buy some and seeing the price of it and turning pale. Thinking of that moment usually made mom chuckle.

Another of her treats, also purchased in delis, was halva. Halva, however, was just puzzling. It is a confection made from sesame seeds and always tasted to me like sweet sawdust. Some halva was plain, some was swirled with chocolate, some had pistachios in it. It all tasted like sawdust. But mom loved it and whenever she found it, would buy some and cut small pieces for each of us. She considered it such a treat, was so delighted by it, that I would never dream of turning it down and she gave us each such a small piece that I was always able to force it down without much of a grimace.

Many years later, after my mother died, I was having dinner with a friend in a deli in Los Angeles. In the display case by the register they had halva for sale. I told my friend how much my mother had like it and bought a piece for each of us. It still tasted like sweet sawdust, but I savored every crumb.

“Yuck,” my friend said. “How can you eat this?”

He was only eating halva. I was eating a memory.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

I rarely say “dandy” anymore, although I’m not sure why. I have found recently that I answer that question with the word “fabulous.” A friend once said to me that he could tell how good I really was doing by how long I stretched out the first syllable. “Only two ‘A’s today?” he’d say. If it were a one “A” fabulous, it was merely a good day. A five “A” fabulous would likely send one into convulsions of ecstacy. I think I usually hover around three.

I like the word fabulous. Okay, yes, it sounds really gay, but so the hell what. And they called Frank Sinatra fabulous and no one would ever consider calling him gay. I dare you to say you’re fabulous and, at least for the few moments you’re saying it, not actually feel fabulous. It’s impossible. The vibrational tones of that particular combination of letters won’t let you. I challenged one of the tellers at the bank I go to to try it. The next time I was at her window, I asked if she had. She said she’d tried it once and it didn’t work. I said to try it one more time. The next visit I was at a different window. That teller asked me how I was and I simply said “Fine.” The first teller called over three windows to say, “well, I’m fabulous!” She smiled and so did I. She was, indeed, fabulous. It works, I tell you.

More people should say they were fabulous. The more they say it, the more fabulous they’d be. President Bush should say it. If he were fabulous he might not be so inclined to incite war and strife all over the place. Andy Rooney should say it. At least momentarily he wouldn’t be so grumpy. It probably wouldn’t last with him, but we can all savor moments.  We should start a movement. The Be Fabulous Movement.  “How are you? You’re fabulous, of course!” It would be the only acceptable answer.

I think it’s a dandy idea.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

I am the color of a summer buttercup
held up to the chin
It glows, do you like butter?
Of the center of an egg
Not a store egg, flat and pale
but farm fresh, straight from the chicken
firm and tall and deep
nutritious, full of flavor
and surprise
Of a leather bound book, soft and supple
I am the color of scotch broom and lily
the delicate feather of a macaw
a winter fire, roaring with heat to keep out the storm
Like the sun on a spring morning
when your desire to run through a field of tall grass
overwhelms you
or the moon on an early autumn early evening
lazy and alive sitting fat and low in the dark sky
when you ache to disappear into the arms of a lover
and entwine yourself with the beating heart of life
I am the red of hunger and the yellow of fulfilment
blended together
bright and vibrant
and I will infect you with my energy.

Los Angeles - July 2, 2008 

I made all the travel arrangements, got my passport, took the appropriate time off from work, then realized I should probably have some command of Spanish before I set foot in the Spanish speaking country. I bought some tapes and books and set out to study. I was diligent. I set aside time each day to work on it. I repeated all the phrases on the tapes. I did this right up until I boarded the plane headed for Miami where I’d get my layover to the DR.

With all this work, the only Spanish that actually stuck in my mind was the rather obscure phrase, qué lástima, which means “what a pity.” I doubted I’d ever get to use this hard won knowledge.

My father and his wife Carol picked me up at the airport. On the long drive through Santo Domingo, the capital city, to La Romana, the costal town they lived in, I kept noticing large stores with huge, bright, windowed fronts; Estevez Muebles, Frank Muebles, Pedro Muebles, Albert Muebles. I mentioned to Dad that the Muebles family must be really large. He was confused. I mentioned all the stores. Muebles, he informed me, means “furniture”. It seems furniture stores are very profitable in the Dominican Republic. They sell furniture to people on “time payments” and when the people couldn’t keep up the payments (which happens often in a country with so many poor), they repossess, then sell it again. And again. Very lucrative. He and Carol had the good graces not to laugh too loudly at my misapprehension, but it did become a topic of humorous conversation with the family and many of the people I met while I was there.

I also told them of my attempt to learn Spanish, and the one phrase I’d mastered. Dad complimented me on my pronunciation.

The trip was wonderful. Reconnecting with my father and his wife and meeting my half-brother, who was already an adult, for the first time were special experiences, but the biggest benefit of the trip, one that still moves me to this day, was how willing my father was to allow me to say anything, ask any question, make any accusation I had about his absence in my life all those years. He answered honestly and compassionately and without judgement. It was infinitely easy to forgive him, and to forgive myself for harboring any resentment. I now have a grand relationship with him.

On one of the last days I was there, Dad, Carol, my brother Paul and I piled into the car to drive across the island to visit Dad and Carol’s oldest, Ann, who I had last seen when she was around five. She now had her own family with three small boys. We got to their house, traded hugs and chatter and I told the muebles story and shared my one Spanish phrase, the one I had no hope of ever being able to use. They all thought both stories were very funny. (Ann and Dad translated to the boys and gathered friends, none of whom spoke any English.) One of Ann’s boys even tried to teach me Spanish by telling me the proper name for things and making me repeat them. None of those words stuck, either, but you have to give the kid credit for trying.

Late that afternoon, while Ann was fixing a traditional Dominican meal, her husband Daryoush went out to buy some ice cream for desert. During dinner, he was called out on some business matter. Later that evening he hadn’t yet returned, so Ann brought out the ice cream and divided it among those present.

“What about Daryoush?” I asked, knowing that he had been especially looking forward to it.

“He’ll have to miss out, I guess.”

“Qué lástima,” I said.

Everyone cheered.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Steve is a guy. He loves sports and women and action movies. And grilling steaks on a raging barbeque fire. He also loves cooking a delicate spaghetti sauce, but that is how straight Italian men behave. I’m also Italian and love making a good sauce, but prefer a Scandinavian tear-jerker to an action movie and date men. When I date. Which isn’t often. (I tell people that, if being gay means you sleep with men, I’m not gay anymore. It usually gets a laugh.)

So it was with a bit of glee that I chuckled when Steve called me a few moments ago and asked if I wanted the cuttings from his pothos. They were already rooted, he said, and there wasn’t any room for them in his pot.

I reminded him of his previous response to cuttings. He said that must have been someone else. I love inconsistencies in people. It’s part of what makes good writing interesting. It’s part of what makes people interesting. As famously gay Walt Whitman once famously said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

But the main point is that Steve is now officially an old lady.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

“It’s too hot in here. Did you turn the heat up all the way or something?”

Someone answered her, I didn’t quite hear what he said, but she replied, “If you need to sweat that badly, work out first, for God’s sake.”

I was still trying to ignore her. Again, she asked, “Did you turn it up all the way or something? It’s just too hot.”

Her friend (or the person I assumed was her friend) said, “I don’t think you can turn it up.”

“Sure you can, you just pour water on that metal thing there. If you want to sweat that much you should go work out, not turn the steam up all the way.”

A point of explanation: at the gym I go to there is a little aluminum bar on the wall of the steam room, beneath which, I assume, is the sensor or thermostat that checks how hot it is in the room. When it’s cold it sends its little signal to the steam making apparatus deep in the bowels of the gymnasium (or, perhaps, next door in the janitorial closet) and steam magically fills the room with a satisfying hiss. Often, when you go into the room, there is simply no steam (or heat for that matter) so someone will pour water on the metal thing and soon steam will bellow out and everyone will be happy. The last few weeks, however, the steam itself seems to have been set at a slightly higher temperature or something because it’s been really, really hot. I liked it. Obviously some didn’t. In any case, back to this other gym patron.

The fellow (her boyfriend?) again said something to the effect that you can’t really adjust the heat, and the woman said, “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to this guy with the towel over his head.”

That would be me.

I lifted the towel and looked at her. She was standing by the door, pretty, slight, maybe late twenties, had long black hair and a towel wrapped tightly over her swimsuit from breast to knee. I asked if she had been talking to me.

“Yes. Why did you put the heat up so high? It’s awful. If you wanted to sweat so much you should go work out.”

Now, why did she assume 1) I had turned the heat up, and 2) I hadn’t worked out? Probably because my belly can best be described as bouncy. Anyone with a bouncy belly couldn’t possibly go to a gym to work out, they would go to turn the heat up in the steam room. Obviously. I thought about telling her that, not only had I worked out first, that I’d lost 40 pounds in the last few months, (yes, it’s true. Thank you) so my belly probably wouldn’t be as bouncy in a few more. I didn’t say that. It was none of her damn business.

“I didn’t put the water on the sensor,” I told her instead and more to the point. “And it has been hotter in here the last few times I’ve been. However, I am enjoying it.”

“No, you put it all the way up. It’s never been this hot. It’s awful. You should work out, not try to loose weight in the steam room.” There it was.

“If you don’t like it,” I said, “go to the Sauna. It’s right next door.” I wanted to say it nicely, but might not have managed. I’m sure it didn’t slip into snottiness.

Her boyfriend, (I assume it was her boyfriend) said something very similar. In a similar tone of voice.  He then left and went into the Sauna.

“I don’t want to go to the Sauna. I want steam. It’s just too hot. You’ve ruined my entire gym experience!”

She left. Then, a few moments later, came back again to complain once more. I put my towel back over my head. The ironic thing is that, with her going and coming and standing in the door complaining, the heat in the room dissipated greatly, and if she’d just noticed that, she could have regained some sense of accomplishment from her workout (I assume she had worked out) and enjoyed her shvits.

I’m glad I’m not her boyfriend. (I assume it was her boyfriend.)

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

I went to the local library to look up some scripts and worked up a couple of monologues, the requisite comedic piece, a cut and pasted monologue from Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood, “Mr. and Mrs. Pew are silent over cold grey cottage pie,” and a dramatic piece from Hamlet, “Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would thaw, melt or resolve itself into a dew.” I did, I think, fairly well. Because I had already planned on moving to Los Angeles, I gave them the family homestead address in Spokane to make sure any mail would eventually get to me, then told my family to look out for anything from them. I went back to my job in Northern California, then moved to Los Angeles in another ballsy move that deserves it’s own essay.

Two years later I was happily ensconced in my Los Angeles dream, working at a tacky answering service, living in a room in a fourplex in Hollywood, sharing the kitchen and bathroom with the crack heads and hustlers in the other rooms. I was having a phone conversation (on the payphone out front) with one of my siblings when they announced, “Oh, I never told you. A year or so ago you got something from Ashland in the mail.” Now, I could have done any number of things at that point. I could have said, “Well, find the damn thing and send it to me.” I could have called the festival administrative office and explained the situation, asking if I had actually gotten in and if I could do it that next summer instead. I could have sent them my new address in LA as soon as I had one. Instead, I said, “Oh” and left it at that.

Several years later (and several years ago), I quit acting, figuring that the Universe was against me. (I didn’t yet get that I had more than a little to do with the whole not getting an acting career going thing.) Three months after I quit, I got my first professional acting job. File under “Irony”. I was called by the Los Angeles Theater Center. They had my picture on file and could I come in for an audition. I’d thought it odd because I hadn’t remembered ever sending my picture to them, but when I quit acting I said that I would no longer pursue acting, but if it pursued me, I wouldn’t say no, so I went.

The play was to be a new translation of Henrik Ibsen’s tragic piece about selfish fathers called The Wild Duck. I went to their huge wonderful theatre building in downtown LA and was ushered upstairs to a large rehearsal room. The producer and casting director of the show introduced themselves to me and said that the director was still in Norway, but they were casting the smaller roles. I did the monologue from Hamlet. “Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would thaw, melt or resolve itself into a dew.” It felt okay, I knew I had done the speech better. In any case, I didn’t really give a damn one way or the other at that point. I’d quit acting, remember?

We talked for a moment or two and then they asked me to leave the room for a moment. Something felt strangely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. You know the feeling. Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters playing with his mashed potatoes. There I was in the hallway of the upper recesses of the Los Angeles Theater Center wishing I had a plate of mashed potatoes to form into some recognizable shape.

Then it hit me, and I knew why it had felt so familiar. Several years before that, (I know, I’m jumping around a lot. Stick with me,) when still that diligent but naive young actor doing everything I had heard was necessary to do to get a job, before I had spent ten years being unemployed, I had heard through the grapevine that the Los Angeles Actor’s Theater was having open auditions for their new company to be housed in a theatre somewhere downtown. I called and scheduled myself for an audition.

I was told to go to the Variety Arts Center, that venerable, stately old building. The audition was in a medium sized rehearsal room upstairs. I brought in the requisite comedic and dramatic pieces, the same two I’d used in Ashland. I walked into the room and was introduced to Bill Bushnell, the artistic director of the theatre, and his assistant. I did the Thomas piece. It felt good. It felt wonderful. I peeked over at the two sitting behind the long folding table and they had smiles on their faces. I did the Shakespeare. I was dead on. I had never done it better. It rang with emotion, with betrayal. “Oh God, God, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of the world that it should come to this… But two months dead. Nay, not so much, not two.” I felt it in my bones. I was Hamlet. Albeit an overweight one with dark curly hair, but I was Hamlet.

When I was done, Mr. Bushnell looked at me, smiled and said “That’s it.” I said “That’s it?” He said “That’s it.” I was a little surprised, but I knew that to make a graceful exit was almost as important as the entrance and the actual audition. I had been to all the seminars. I knew how to behave. As I gathered up my coat, Mr. Bushnell started asking me where I was from. I answered casually as I gathered up my appointment calendar and papers. He asked me about my training as I backed out of the room. I answered and closed the door behind me. I hadn’t lingered past the welcome point. I had done well.

As I walked down the hallway, I had a very strange sensation; I knew that I had done well. I thought that they had liked me, but the whole end part seemed very odd. I could still hear him say “That’s it.” “That’s it.” But why was he making casual conversation as I was leaving? As I went down the elevator, the odd sensation became a rumbling in the pit of my stomach. “That’s it.” It didn’t fit. Something was off.

As I got into my car, it dawned on me. He had said “Have a seat.” I pictured my bizarre exit from their point of view: a talented young actor had given a very creditable audition and then had slunked out of the room during the interview. How very odd. Is slunked a word? Well, even if it isn’t, I’m sure I had slunked. I put my head down on the steering wheel. That image, the image of me leaving in mid word has haunted often since then, as have the things I could have done to have repaired the damage and become a member of what became a very respected acting company. A company which, once established, was called Los Angeles Theater Center, headed by Bill Bushnell.

During my second audition for LATC, that one for Wild Duck, I was called back into the room and told I had the job. I started to laugh. They asked what was funny and I told them I had quit acting about three months earlier. They also found that funny, and said that that was probably why I had gotten the job. I didn’t tell them I had missed out on the opportunity to be part of their company all those years ago. You see, Wild Duck was part of their final season.

We are told that we are often our own worst enemies. In a nod to Oliver Perry, Pogo Possum once famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I write, now. But if acting ever pursues me, I still won’t say no.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Once my mother got her tea to this tepid, almost viscous state she would put a little more hot water in to warm it up, pull the tea bell out, stir it a few times to mix all the tannins evenly and contentedly sit sipping the venomous brew. I was sure the bowl of her spoon would dissolve while she stirred, but it never seemed to.

She also enjoyed Limburger cheese. Not the pot of mildly fragrant cheese you find at your local greengrocer, jar cheese that spreads smoothly across your rye cracker. This cheese was a gently aged block of runny offal that had legs. And feet. And armpits. I used to say Limburger smelled like dirty socks, but that’s not quite accurate. It smelled like athletic socks that had been worn for eight days on a forced march across a burning desert by a very masculine man who suffered from severe athlete’s foot and profuse sweating, then stuffed into moldy sneakers and left in a damp basement for a couple of years. It actually singed the hairs in your nose. Mom would store her chunk of precious matter in a small, tightly sealed Tupperware container in the fridge so that it could marinate in its own essence to its most piquant fullness. (I recently read that the bacteria that is used to ferment Limburger is the same found on human skin that causes body odor. So, in essence, if I wear the same tee shirt two days in a row, I’m a delicacy. Who would have imagined?)

She liked her Limburger in a sandwich, but not just any sandwich. She would cut two thick slices of bread which, I assume, was rye or pumpernickel. She just called it “black bread.” Then she cut a thick slice from a Bermuda onion. Then a couple of hacks from the cheese, put them all together and once again sit down to her special treat. She rarely made these sandwiches while we were around, from fear of Child Services, I suspect, but I would know she was indulging when I turned the corner at the end of our block on the way home from school. Something in the air would quietly whisper, “go visit someone for an hour or two.”

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mother. She introduced us to some amazing culinary delights such as lox, pickled schmaltz herring and pasta con pesto so strong you sweat garlic for three days. And she never forced Limburger or smoked tea on us. It was there if we wanted it. We didn’t.

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Of course, how many people actually have the cash already set aside to purchase a car? (Or even a pack of gum these days, even that’s put on a credit card more often than not.) We usually don’t even have the down payment ready at hand. So, when a car costs less than originally expected, you don’t actually “save” money, you just don’t spend as much potential (read “imaginary”) money as you would have on the more expensive item. You can’t do anything with the money you saved, because in actuality it never really existed. Except in your mind. Which, now I think about it, is how most of my money exists.

Why do I bring this up so many years after the fact? Well, there is a new ad campaign now running from Hyundai, called Dollars & Sense, where the wide-eyed consumers, having fallen in love with the car, are admonished by either Larry Winget, Ray Lucia or Adam Smith (all presumed to be best selling authors of books about money) that they should “put the money they saved into an insured CD” or some such drivel. These renowned economists should be ashamed of themselves! What could it possibly do to an economist’s reputation to advise people to put money that never existed into savings? Isn’t that illegal? Would there eventually be a margin call? Would you have to give the car back when that happened? What if you’ve already spilled ice cream on the upholstery during your trip to Disneyland?

I don’t really begrudge these authors getting their truck load of money for giving this fictional advice in a commercial, it is good economics. For them - lead by example, I always say. Are Hyundai cars relatively inexpensive? Yes. (I didn’t say “cheap”!) Will you spend less money on one than if you buy a comparable car from another maker? Probably. Does that mean you’ve saved money? Theoretically. What are you going to do with that money? I’m going to invest mine in an imaginary gold mine in Argentina. Hey, I don’t even have to buy the car to do that. How much more money can I save, then?

_______________________________
Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend