the talk

among the dreams i had last night, one such was of my mother and i shopping at the hancock center h-e-b. what were we shopping for? shaving cream.

i found this hilarious. mostly because i never had any sort of puberty talk with my parents. (shocker, i know.) the first time anything remotely resembling "the talk" happened was when we were going to cover, well, puberty, in my eighth-grade health class. we had to get a permission slip signed by our parents, and for a couple of days, the girls would go to the female health teacher's class, and the boy's from her class would join ours. i remember taking the permission slip home and giving it to my mom to sign. she got a horrified look on her face, like i had just handed her a dead rat with maggots crawling all over it. she threw it on the kitchen table and said i had to get my dad to sign it. so a few hours later when i dad got home from work, i told him to sign it. he didn't even read it; he just blindly signed it.

maybe it's the repressed culture of a mexican catholic family, or maybe it was just my family in general, but there were never many talks that involved sexuality or sex in general. i remember when i was about seven or eight and i found my gay uncle's "art". i was in the tv room at his house watching g.i. joe, and then i decided to snoop around. i found a photo album of my uncle's, and there were, well, lots of pictures of him with pretty men. never any pictures of him and any women. i didn't think anything of it. then i got to the later pages of the album, and found, well, artsy pictures of mostly naked men. (artsy pictures that i would later discover on my own in my teens years, thanks to the internet access at the local library.)

that wasn't the first thing that tipped me off about my uncle. when i was in first grade, i had this great teacher named miss solitaire. (yes, that was her actual name.) she was fun, and showed us willy wonka and the chocolate factory and the neverending story. and sometimes her roommate julie would come in and read stories to us. it was at the christmas pagent that year (i played an elf, and my uncle made my costume) that i found out my uncle and teacher were good friends. i was so excited. i remember telling my parents that i wanted my uncle and miss solitaire to get married, then she could be my aunt. my parents laughed at that and said her roommate might not like that. i remember saying she could live with them, too, and help take care of gramma. they laughed some more and gave me a beer to drink.

the next time i got close to any sort of "talk" with my parents was when i was in fourth grade and got into a fight with a boy in my class who called me a "joto". now, i had no idea what joto meant, but i know when he called me it, everyone around stepped back a bit. i got mad. i didn't know what joto was, but i knew i didn't want to be it if it meant everyone else didn't like me. i didn't even know what it meant? so me and this boy got into a fight (i broke his nose), and we were taken to the principal's office, where they called our parents. i got let off the hook because i was the smartest kid in my class and this was the first time i had been in any sort of trouble. but the way my parents reacted when they came out of the principal's office, you'd think i had pissed on the pope.

when we got home, my dad slapped me hard across the face, while my mother sat at the kitchen table crying. i had no idea what i had done. i was just trying to defend myself from a bully. i remember my dad yelling at me (not asking, yelling) "are you a joto?" i said no. he slapped me again. then he yelled at me again. i said no again. then he yelled "do you know what a joto is?" i said no. then he said "yeah, right." and walked away.

it wasn't until the next day at school that i asked my friend manuel what joto meant. i remember him looking at me dumbfoundedly. then he told me what it meant. i was in shock. this was the first time i had ever been told that sometimes men are with men like they are with women. i still didn't really comprehend what it meant, as i still didn't even really know what sex and sex roles were. i was in fourth grade, for jiminy crickets sake! how was i supposed to know all this?

back to eighth grade. a week after the puberty stuff was covered in health, i got my first facial hair. and it kept on coming out sporadically over my face for the next couple of weeks. (to this day, my facial hair is pretty sporadic, with it mostly coming in on my left side and still spotty on my right.) i had no idea what to do. i remember my sister telling me to shave because it looked like i had pubes stuck to my face. i remember every time i got close to asking my dad how to shave, he and my mom would start getting into a fight, or he'd yell at me and say it's my fault my mom wasn't home. (at the time, both of them were cheating on each other.) so seeing them as not an option, and with my older brother working night shift, i taught myself to shave. and by shave, i mean i put too much shaving cream on my face and cut myself 10 times. the next day, i remember my dad asking me "what the fuck happened to your face? did you get into another fight?" (note: i hadn't been in a fight since the one in fourth grade, at this point. yet it always came up for some reason.) i said "no, i shaved." he didn't say anything; he just walked away, grabbed a beer, and went out to the backyard and lit up a joint.

it wasn't until i was in ninth grade that i ended up having "the talk". it was with my first boyfriend's mother. he wasn't even my boyfriend at that point. he was just my friend danny, and i'd go to his house and we'd do homework, and listen to music, and sometimes we'd make out. i'd stay there late a lot because, well, his parents loved me, and i didn't want to go home. so one night, after dinner, danny's mom and i were having some coffee, and she asked me if danny and i had done anything more than kiss. i choked on my coffee a bit because, well, that was the most candid anyone had ever been with me about, well, anything sex related. i said no, and that i really wouldn't even know what to do if things ever got that far. so with the help of some handy fruit, she explained everything to me. (note: i forgot to mention, she was also a nurse, so i'm sure this was all old hat to her, anyway.) we ended the talk with her telling me i could always turn to her with any questions, and that i shouldn't feel pressured to do anything i'm not ready to do. when she dropped me off at my house that night, i think that was the first time i was ever jealous of other people because they had awesome parents.

to this day, my parents and i have not had any sort of "talk", and we probably never will. maybe it'll come up if i ever meet "the one" and decide to torture him by having him meet my parents and family. but i doubt it. considering to this day, no one in my family will acknowledge that my uncle is gay, well, there you go.