For Indigo V.
THE DAY I STOPPED CRYING, my ex-wife, Kate, made a particularly cruel remark, immediately putting my resolve to the test. “Are you going to start crying?” she’d hissed when I’d told her about Dani’s name change. “You’re probably happy now anyway.”
Dani was already in the truck, wedged between the twin babies in their car seats. I hoped he hadn’t heard.
And I hoped neither Kate nor her husband Shawn saw my face collapse as I turned without replying and hustled back to my car. Not only was I smarting from Kate’s pure meanness, but I was outraged she would stoop so low. To taunt someone about crying: is there a more surefire way to provoke tears?
Not to mention that of course Kate knows that having a gay son would further the scrutiny of my own masculinity. And I wouldn’t have been ashamed to be gay, and I am aware that I am a mild, gentle man; nevertheless, I remain a heterosexual male nerd. Put another way: I’m not Drogo, but I’m no Prince Joffrey either. I’d like to believe I’m a bit of a Jon Snow. But maybe that’s what all heterosexual male nerds tell themselves.
Regardless, my son being gay wasn’t making me “happy.” Probably like most parents, I didn’t want my son’s life to be harder than it had to be; I didn’t want him to have to struggle with things that were easy for other people, like becoming a parent or getting a wedding cake. Yet Kate
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Sara Hosey cut her creative teeth writing genre fiction, and she is the author of three well-received young adult novels: Iphigenia Murphy, Imagining Elsewhere, and Summer People. More recently, her debut story collection Dirty Suburbia – which does sometimes explore the experiences of young people, but which is decidedly for adults – has been called “splendidly entertaining reading” by Kirkus Reviews. Her stories have appeared in Cordella Literary, East by Northeast Literary, and Mudroom Literary Magazine, and have been shortlisted for the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Award as well as the Katherine Anne Porter Prize.