What if the lowest point in your life became the beginning of your greatest personal transformation?
There are easier ways to move out of your parents’ house. I do not recommend mine.
My Mother Found My Gay Boyfriend—and Told Dad to Get the Shotgun
I was nineteen years old.
I had a boyfriend.
His name was Chuck.
We had been together for nearly two years.
And, according to my parents, we were absolutely not together at all.
That was because I had spent those same two years pretending I had stopped being gay.
You know.
As one does.
My parents believed I had returned to heterosexuality.
Chuck and I believed we had become masters of espionage.
And for a surprisingly long time, both sides lived happily inside their preferred version of reality.
Then my mother took out the trash.
Welcome to Funday-Sunday
Chuck and I had a little tradition.
We called it Funday-Sunday.
He would sometimes sneak into my bedroom Saturday night after my parents were asleep.
Sunday morning, we’d wait for my parents and younger brother to leave.
Then I’d make breakfast.
Very domestic.
Very romantic.
Very secret.
Very stupid.
On this particular Sunday, my parents were planning to go to the Azusa Swap Meet.
Perfect.
Chuck was sitting in my bedroom.
Fully dressed.
Reading People magazine.
I was sitting in the dining room waiting for my family to leave so I could begin breakfast.
Everything was going according to plan.
Then Mom decided to empty the trash.
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Never Underestimate a Mother Carrying Garbage
To get to the trash cans, Mom had to walk past the glass door leading into my bedroom.
And there, through the glass, she saw him.
Chuck.
My supposedly former boyfriend.
Sitting on the edge of my bed.
Reading People magazine.
This is not how a secret gay relationship should end.
If you’re going to blow two years of covert operations, I feel there should at least be champagne.
Maybe a dramatic embrace.
Maybe somebody caught naked.
Something worthy of the occasion.
Instead:
People magazine.
Mom dropped the trash.
Then she screamed:
“Johnny! Get the shotgun! We have an intruder!”
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I Thought There Was a Raccoon
I was still sitting at the dining-room counter.
And when Mom screamed for Dad to get the shotgun, my first thought was not:
Oh no. She found Chuck.
No.
We lived in a canyon.
There were coyotes.
Rattlesnakes.
Raccoons.
Mountain lions.
Various wildlife capable of disrupting a perfectly good Sunday morning.
So I assumed something with fur or scales had wandered into the yard.
My primary concern was that whatever animal Mom had discovered was delaying my family from leaving.
Because I wanted to cook breakfast.
For my secret boyfriend.
Priorities.
Dad Actually Got the Shotgun
My father heard Mom yell.
And he got the gun.
This was suddenly less funny.
My brother ran outside.
Dad ran outside.
Eventually I wandered out too, mostly annoyed that Funday-Sunday was experiencing such a lengthy wildlife interruption.
Then I saw Chuck.
And Mom.
And Dad.
And the shotgun.
Oh.
That intruder.
Chuck stood frozen.
Mom stood furious.
Dad stood holding a shotgun that, thankfully, he was not pointing at anyone.
My brother stood there trying to understand why our Sunday morning had suddenly become a Tennessee Williams play with firearms.
And I stood there realizing:
We had been caught.
Really caught.
Not suspicious-parent caught.
Not explain-it-away caught.
Not “he was only stopping by” caught.
My boyfriend had spent the night in my bedroom under my parents’ roof after I had spent two years insisting he wasn’t my boyfriend anymore.
There are moments when even I know a lie has run out of road.
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Mom Wanted Dad to Shoot the Intruder
Mom was enraged.
She wanted Chuck gone.
Immediately.
She screamed that he was trespassing.
She told my father that trespassers could be shot.
Dad did not shoot Chuck.
Thank you, Dad.
That would have made this memoir substantially darker.
Instead, something unexpected happened.
My father became very calm.
And for perhaps the first time in this whole battle between my mother and me, Dad stopped being background scenery.
He took control.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
He simply raised his hand.
Mom stopped talking.
That alone may have been the most shocking event of the morning.
My Father Gave Me Two Choices
Dad looked at me.
Then he said something very simple.
Chuck could leave.
And I could stay.
Or:
I could leave with Chuck.
That was it.
No debate.
No loophole.
No charming.
No manipulating.
No brilliant excuse.
No fake epiphany.
No imaginary straight airline-pilot future.
Choose.
For a young man who had spent years believing every problem could be maneuvered around, this was remarkably inconvenient.
For Once, I Couldn’t Lie My Way Out
I understood exactly what Dad meant.
If I stayed, Chuck was gone.
Really gone.
My parents would watch me.
They would know where I was.
The secret life would be over.
Or I could leave.
Right then.
I had spent years insisting I was grown.
Independent.
Capable.
Too smart to be controlled.
Fine.
Dad was calling my bluff.
Go be grown.
At the time, I didn’t see wisdom in that.
I thought:
Fuck ’em.
I had money.
A job.
A car.
I could take care of myself.
Of course I chose Chuck.
Then Mom Took the Car
Minor complication.
The car I considered mine was legally theirs.
Mom reminded me.
If I walked out with Chuck, I would not be driving away in the car.
I looked at Dad.
Surely he’d intervene.
Nope.
He backed her up.
So my grand declaration of independence was becoming increasingly less grand.
I had less than two hundred dollars.
My driver’s license.
And the clothes I was wearing.
That’s what I left with.
Not even a dramatic suitcase.
Hollywood has lied to us about these moments.
When you dramatically leave home in the movies, somebody always packs a leather bag.
I didn’t even have toiletries.
I Walked Out With Chuck
And so I left.
With my boyfriend.
The same boyfriend my mother believed had corrupted me.
The same boyfriend I’d hidden for almost two years.
The same boyfriend sitting peacefully reading People magazine until he accidentally detonated the family.
I chose him.
At the time, I thought that meant I’d won.
I had defied my parents.
I’d chosen love.
I’d chosen freedom.
I’d chosen myself.
Victory!
Except I was scared to death.
Freedom Is More Romantic Before You Have to Pay for It
There’s a version of independence that sounds wonderful when you’re living under somebody else’s roof.
Nobody tells me what to do!
I make my own rules!
I can live however I want!
Then you leave.
And freedom begins sending invoices.
Housing.
Food.
Transportation.
Bills.
Responsibility.
Suddenly, “nobody tells me what to do” includes nobody reminding you how much electricity costs.
That Sunday was one of the first moments when my idea of adulthood collided with actual adulthood.
I had wanted freedom.
Dad gave it to me.
Immediately.
No trial period.
No orientation packet.
No snacks.
I Was Furious With My Parents
And I think I had a right to be.
My mother’s refusal to accept that I was gay had pushed our relationship into secrecy and conflict.
The things she’d threatened frightened me.
I didn’t trust her.
I didn’t believe she’d treat my relationship fairly.
And I believed hiding Chuck was necessary.
Those feelings were real.
But another truth is also real:
I was lying under their roof.
Repeatedly.
For years.
I wanted all the benefits of living at home while secretly ignoring the conditions attached to living there.
At nineteen, I thought that made me clever.
At sixty-three, I can admit the arrangement was probably unsustainable.
This is why getting older is such a pain in the ass.
Eventually you start seeing everybody’s point.
Dad Did Something I Couldn’t See as Love
For years, I remembered my father’s ultimatum as rejection.
Stay and give up Chuck.
Or leave.
But now I see something different.
Dad did not say I couldn’t be gay.
He did not say Chuck deserved to be harmed.
He did not fire the gun.
He didn’t humiliate me.
He gave me a choice.
A brutal choice, perhaps.
But a real one.
And then he allowed me to make it.
I had spent years insisting that I was mature enough to determine my own life.
Dad finally said:
Then determine it.
That may have been one of the first times anyone treated me like the adult I insisted I was.
I hated it.
Sometimes the Door You Get Thrown Out Of Is Also the Door You Needed to Walk Through
I don’t romanticize being forced from home.
Plenty of young LGBTQ people have been thrown out, abandoned, or made unsafe by their families.
There is nothing charming about that.
And my story could have gone very badly.
I was fortunate.
I could work.
I knew how to make money.
I had Chuck.
I had enough confidence—or ego—to believe I could figure things out.
But that morning did force something I had avoided for years.
I had to stop living two lives.
Not all at once.
I was still perfectly capable of lying afterward.
Personal growth is annoyingly non-linear.
But the central lie had collapsed.
I could no longer pretend to my parents that Chuck wasn’t my boyfriend while simultaneously building my life around him.
Eventually truth demands rent too.
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I Chose Love
Was Chuck the love of my life?
That’s a much more complicated question.
He was enormously important.
We would spend eight years together.
Our relationship would affect my relationship with my mother for decades.
And, like so many relationships in How I Killed My Mother, Chuck’s story didn’t simply end when our romance eventually did.
That is something I’ve learned while writing this memoir.
Some relationships end chronologically long before they end emotionally.
We carry them.
We rewrite them.
We blame them.
We romanticize them.
We finally understand them.
Sometimes decades later.
But that Sunday morning?
I didn’t know any of that.
I just knew my father had given me a choice between my parents’ house and the person I loved.
I chose Chuck.
And Somehow Mom Became Part of the Choice Too
This is one of the strange things about looking backward.
At nineteen, I believed I was walking away from my mother.
Today, I understand that I carried her with me.
Her strength.
Her stubbornness.
Her refusal to back down.
Her belief that she could survive whatever came next.
I used all of those things against her.
But where do you suppose I learned them?
My mother’s strong-willed son walked out of her backyard because she had raised a strong-willed son.
Talk about a parenting backfire.
I Thought I Was the Winner
That part makes me smile now.
I walked away with almost nothing.
No car.
Very little money.
No home.
No real plan.
And I thought:
I won.
Youth is magnificent.
You can be standing on the edge of a cliff with $200 and call it victory.
But maybe there was a kind of win hidden in there.
Not because my parents lost.
Not because I defeated Mom.
And not because leaving home somehow proved I was right about everything.
I won something much less dramatic.
I finally had to begin living the life I’d been secretly insisting was mine.
That’s where adulthood probably began for me.
Not when I turned eighteen.
Not when I got my first job.
Not when I bought a car.
It began when I walked out of my parents’ backyard with my boyfriend and realized:
Nobody was going to build my life for me now.
And All Because Mom Took Out the Trash
Life-changing moments rarely announce themselves properly.
You expect violins.
A sunset.
A profound conversation.
Mine started with garbage.
Mom took out the trash.
She saw Chuck.
She screamed for Dad.
Dad got a shotgun.
Nobody got shot.
I moved out.
And my entire life changed.
All before breakfast.
That’s family.
Sometimes the moment that blows up your old life is also the moment your real life finally gets permission to begin.
— Jon-David
More From How I Killed My Mother
This story is part of How I Killed My Mother, my memoir podcast about family, forgiveness, identity, being gay, complicated parents, ridiculous decisions, grief, spirituality, and what happens when we revisit the stories we’ve been telling about ourselves for decades.
There is much more to the story of Chuck, my mother, my father, and what happened after I walked out of that backyard.
Listen to the podcast and join my mailing list at HowIKilledMyMother.com for new stories, bonus material, and updates about the upcoming memoir.
And yes:
My mother really did tell Dad to get the shotgun.
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