Uh, I Thought We Discussed This Already?

My mama has a lot to do with me resisting the urge to place a choke hold on a select number of people in recent weeks.

This year continues to be one of immense highs and lows. While I’m certainly maintaining my composure to bad news that tries to eat at the good a lot better than I was earlier in the year, I still sometimes need to reach out to my mom in order for a much needed reality check. And encouragement.

Our relationship has seen its own highs and lows over the years, but in the past few it’s been consistently on the up and up.

That is, after we kind of got over the hump of me telling her I was gay.

I’ve mentioned this on the site before, but for those of you new to The Cynical Ones I told my mama I was gay after following the publishing of a piece I penned for The Root about the suicide deaths of two nine-year-old boys. They were alleged to have been too overcome with grief over being taunted with gay slurs, so in order to better discuss the issue I discussed my own bouts with homophobia.

It was the first time I had ever flat out revealed my sexuality in my work, and at the time many of my pieces for the site made their way onto the home pages of MSN – where my mom routinely checks for reading material.

I won’t say how she responded exactly – that’s all part of the plan – but we didn’t speak for a minute and despite things are better now, we refrain from discussing that.

In each of our defenses, I probably wouldn’t bring up a girl if I were straight.

And hell, I don’t have a man so what I am gonna say to her?

“Oh, Mama, do you think Willow Smith would accept me as her stepdad? Or, “Can I have Romeo Miller for Christmas?”

Then there’s what I’m really feeling: “Whenever he marries a vagina, I hope she gets her period that day.”

Damn, that was mean. Whatever.

If I expressed any of this to my mama, it would just make both parties uncomfortable. I’d rather stick with, “I miss you. Don’t hurt people at your job. I’m going to buy you a nice house in D.C. when I get some real money.”

Plus, listening to her shade people and then sorta kinda feel guilty about – then rinse and repeat – that’s more fun.

Granted, our conversations do often managed to find its way to a discussion about me going back to church. That’s another story, though, and one that likely won’t end with an amen.

Anyway, while talking to my mom the other day about something bugging me she randomly inserted, “Well, you know when you go on to have your own wife and kids.”

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Didn’t we discuss this already?

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if she’s still over in Houston lightning candles and saying novellas trying to pray my gay away.

I don’t know why, but lately it seems like she and some of my friends believe I’m not really all that gay. Like, maybe I’m doing this shit just to piss people off and one day I’ll wake up in a vagina and suddenly decide that I want to be drafted out of Team Peen.

In fact, one of my friends told me (jokingly, but…), “You’re not really gay. You’re just doing a case study for your book and TV shows.”

Gay for play: The remix.

About a week ago another said, “Well, I know you’re gay but sometimes you do throw me off at points.”

This is punishment for being single.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to respond to my mom – or if I was going to respond at all.

We’re on good terms, so I wondered if revisiting this was going to sour the relationship

But if I let her slide once, it would only encourage her. She can continue to feel disappointment about it, while I can continue to no longer care after looking at certain R&B singers from behind.

Before I got off the phone with her I said, “Mama, I love you more than anything. But that wife thing? That’s not happening.”

She quipped that if I didn’t want to get married, then that’s okay. Surprisingly, she added some stuff about not letting anyone dictate how I run my own life. I’m not sure whether she included the gay thing or her own not-so-subtle talk of a wife and spawns.

It was relatively a lot less painless than I expected. That’s going to change in the coming months as I write more about certain topics — largely surrounding myself.

Perhaps she merely wants some more grand-babies and since I’m now officially in my late 20s and all of my cousins have a litter of kids it’s hard to keep ignore that wanting.

Yeah, I need a book and development deal first. Oh and a mate.

Maybe I’ll eventually take one of my female friends’ up on their offers to give them or myself a baby. Or maybe I’ll adopt some American child who deserves better than the foster system.

In the meantime, maybe it’s time I bring back the call tone (wait, is that what that bullshit is called).

That way the next time my mom calls me she’ll hear Toni Braxton’s “Find Me A Man” and remember, “Damn, he did tell me he was into that funny shit.”