C H A P T E R 74

Torn

When you reach out for love

When you reach out to touch someone

When you long to be held again

They break your heart…within

They break your heart

—“Torn” My Starving Lion The Underground LP 2015

Dad…I’m Gay

Mitchell, my son, told me the story of how Ellen DeGeneres came out on her television sitcom during an episode of the show, Ellen, in 1997. Twenty years later, in 2017, Ellen celebrated fifteen years on her talk show. She elaborated on how things have changed within the LGBTQ community. Ellen informed the world of just how hard it was for her to say “I’m gay.”

Let’s just say how evolved I have become over the last twenty years. When I found out that my dad Matlin (Michael Jr. speaking) had been a gay man with a lover for decades, it confused me. I still had a lot of growing up to do even though I was almost fifty years old. But of course, Dad married Mom, and it was family as usual after the year 2000. But still, Dad was gay? And so was Uncle Michael. I’m confused. I hated faggots, my high school terminology.

This short story about Ellen would happen after the fact. Mitchell was only five years old when Ellen said she was gay. It just dawned on me. Little Christina was almost five when she was killed. What has that got to do with anything? Just a correlation?

By the way, if you haven’t noticed, I didn’t notice until it was pointed it out to me that the names of two of my kids, Mitchell and Maggie (a.k.a. Margaret), had been an actual person. No, Gone with the Wind was not on my mind when I named my children. I did not the name them after Margaret Mitchell. Dad had asked at one point, “Just another coincidence?”

Dad was Rhett and Mom was Scarlett as they role-played these characters back in high school. It was Mom and Dad who brought up Margaret Mitchell to me. Mitchell is my son. Mitchell is gay. No, the two cannot be the same. You know my feeling about homosexuals. Out of respect, I do not call my son a faggot.

I knew Mitchell was different from the first day I held him in my arms. Was this a joke from God? Or was it a punishment for my crimes against homosexuals? Did I have some more growing up to do? It was the latter. Okay, maybe a little of both, for I hadn’t repented of my bullying tactics toward gays. As I said, God wasn’t finished with me. Was I too old to change at forty-nine? Obviously not, according to God. I just had to get these human fleshly thoughts and feelings out of the way. Then I remembered the story about Jake—how he told his dad and his dad’s rejection of him. You know the outcome of that story. My brother, Matt Jr., was killed by a drunk son who had been rejected by his father for being gay. I had to grow up. I could not reject my own flesh and blood. I struggled.

It wasn’t until the reunion with Dad that God nudged me more than ever to accept Mitchell as my gay son. My reunion with Dad ever so stretched my heart toward fully loving my son. Mitchell is my son and always will be. It’s the gay part I couldn’t accept. Two men loving each other in a sexual way? No way. I remember slapping my guy friends on the butt and snapping them with towels in the locker room. But that was normal guy stuff. But kissing a guy, even on the cheek like the French did, repulsed me.

It was when I found that poem in my Bible, the one Mitchell wrote, that love overtook the disgust I had in my heart. This is the poem I found from Mitchell in my Bible: