I'm a Fag not an Asshole!

I wish I could explain to my grandmother that I'm a fag and not an asshole.

Huh?

I chose not to go to my brother's wedding last weekend b/c he refused to invite Ivano. My abbreviated bloggers digest version of the story is that he could not put the rules of the Catholic church above human decency and family. Kinda strange, if you ask me.

So, I didn't go.

Neither did my grandparents. But that's because they are super old and not in the greatest health. They barely traveled when they were well...so it's no suprise that they didn't make the two hour trip from their farm outside St. Edward, NE to Lincoln, NE for the big ceremony.

Much of the family came out to see them the next day. And they brought the wedding with them, in the form of a slide show they projected on a big blank wall of my uncle's new farmhouse (props to Douglas for designing the new house). My grandmother, who has serious memory problems if not dementia or Alzheimer's quickly figured out that I wasn't at the wedding, based on my absence in the wedding photos. She asked why I wasn't there. Apparently, people stammered and said things like "He just couldn't make it."

And that makes me sound like an asshole. Who would skip out on their brother's wedding for no good reason? It's not like I'm broke or burdened with some life situation that keeps me here. No, I just didn't show up. And she didn't understand why. And that makes me an asshole.

but I'm not an asshole. I'm just a fag who drew a line in the sand. And unfortunately that line left a big fat line right through the little white lies I have been telling my grandmother since I came out in college, which ironically was in Lincoln, Nebraska, the very place of the wedding.

My excuse for not telling my grandmother (and grandfather and my two farmer uncles who share the farm) is that she (they) wouldn't understand. That it would be too hard for them to understand, and that it would just make trouble. But now, I can clearly see the (obvious) downside to this series of little white lies: I give them no choice but to think that I am an asshole. And while I've never been a grandmother (and don't expect to be one anytime soon), I don't think that its very nice to sit there and think that the grandchild who convinced you to show him how to make chokecherry jelly is an asshole. The little boy who followed so close behind as you ducked your head to get into the chicken coop is a total chicken shit and doesn't care about his family. That the young man who caused you to celebrate Thanksgiving one day late so that he could be a part of the celebration because he had wait tables on the real Thanksgiving day is a piece of rotten turkey. That the boy you let dig up the ground under the lilacs east of the porch to try to put in a wildflower garden at age twelve is a ratty weed that doesn't show up at weddings because he is "too busy doing a whole lot of nothing."

I don't like it. I don't like it for me. I don't like it for her. I just don't like it.

I don't know if there is anything to be done about it at this late date. I don't even know if I have undoubtedly made the wrong decision.

But I DO know that I don't like making my grandmother feel as if there is something people are not telling her. I don't like forcing her to connect the dots and find that she has drawn an asshole grandchild. It's just not nice.

Of course, there are situations and will be future situations in which I have been, am and will be an asshole. Shit happens. And the correlary is that assholes make shit. There fore assholes happen. But not like this. I guess this is a glimpse into my own frailties, but I don't like being judged for things I didn't do. I would much prefer my grandmother -- and anyone else -- be pissed at me for my own shortcomings and not those that I manufacture in a weak attempt to protect her (them) from the truth.

UPDATE: It's true that my grandmother may not remember any of this. I hope this is the case. It's also true that I AM an asshole in the sense that I am not good at staying in touch with her. My excuse for this is that I don't like lying about what it is that I am up to out here in San Diego. In addition, there is a more visceral avoidance of the whole situation. And events such as the wedding force me to see this all so clearly. I should just suck it up, stay in better touch, and let go of my own issues regarding my inability to transcend and/or erase my own white lies. Why must I too let MY white lies trap me? Why must I too connect the white-lie inspired dots, fulfill the asshole prophesy, and not stay in contact?

Oh yeah, because the key word in the phrase "white lie" is "lie."

I think my grandfather gave me this answer years ago, when he said that it is too much work to lie, because you always have to remember what it is that you said last.