I think secretly, deep down inside herself, my mother harbors the thought that I might possibly be... You know.

Gay.

No, not “as in happy,” you smartass. I mean homosexual. A fairy. A poof. An other-side-of-the-fence-dweller. You know… Like Tom Cruise. And like Tom Cruise, I think she thinks my relationship with my wife is simply a mask I use to cover up my deeply hidden desires to smoke poles (I mean no offense to my male homosexual readers. Females smoke poles too, it’s not a specifically gay-male reference, and hence is not meant to be an insult. Smoking pole is smoking pole, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a girl who likes to do it or a guy who likes to do it… Like Tom Cruise).

And what might give me the idea that my mother might secretly think I prefer the company of men in matters romantic? Because, at one point, she not-so-secretly thought that I did. And she even suggested to me that I was openly and publicly.

Twice.

And I say “suggested” because for my mother, being gay wasn’t so much something that she would “accuse” me of being as it was something that she felt the need to be encouraging and loving and supportive of; something she felt that – if I’d just relax and come clean and admit it – I might slip into and wear proudly be all that much happier for it, like a silk bathrobe or a tattoo of Bert and Ernie.

And WHY did she feel the need to suggest this? Well, she had it on good authority that I might be… You know. Gay.

Because a vengeful and angry ex-girlfriend of mine named Mandy told her I was.

Now, the “Mandy Situation” (as that entire relationship has hence been referred to by just about everyone who had any experience with it) was quite an interesting one. Mandy was a sweet girl. And I need to make sure that’s clear now, before I get into the story, because it’s really important that that fact come out in this story. Because she really was sweet, and she probably deserved better than what she got.

But only probably. And that, only by a very, very slim margin.

I met Mandy through a mutual friend – the same friend who I met my wife Andrea through, oddly enough – and just as quickly as I’m explaining it to you right now, I somehow ended up agreeing to take her to her Senior Prom.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

“Prom?”

“Sure.”

Just like that.

And honestly, I don’t even remember who spoke which lines – except that I’m fairly certain she’s the one who said “prom.” But I’m also fairly sure she’s the one who said “sure” as well. And she may have said both the “hi” and the “hello.” Such was the nature of Mandy – a sweet girl, to be sure. Demanding, high maintenance and pushy, but sweet.

Shortly after her Prom (which was shortly after we met – so shortly, in fact, that my tuxedo ended up being cheaper to buy than to rent), we began “dating,” a term that she used to mean “We will soon be getting engaged and then married and then I’ll start spitting out babies in-between my career as either a successful hotel chain owner and operator, or a botanist – not sure which.” I, however, took “dating” to mean “You’re leaving for college at the end of the summer, and once you’re gone, I’ll be able to call you twice a month and send you some jewelry through the mail to fulfill my boyfriendly obligations to you.” And it really was that way. And that was perfect for both of us. She got to feel like she had a man back home, and I got to get out of dating the weirdoes I had been dating because I now had a “girlfriend.”

This went on for a little over a year. She’d come home twice a month and demand that I go shoe shopping with her or buy her some new clothes or scale a barbed-wire fence to escape children demanding balloon animals so we could go see the movie Titanic. You know… The standard stuff a boyfriend is expected to do. And once those little manic 48-hour periods were over, she’d drive back to college and I’d go back to playing whatever the hot new game for the Sony Playstation was at the time and building websites and generally trying to be by myself as much as possible.

Until one day, a phone call came.

“Guess what?!?” she asked excitedly.

“Uh… What,” I asked through a haze of recently interrupted sleep at five in the morning.

“Guess where I am?” She asked in answer.

“Uh… Where?” I said, clearly unable to care.

“Look out your window.”

Oh no.

I did. And believe it or don't, she was there in her car, calling from her cellphone. Suprise, suprise.

“Uh… Hi?” I said. “Like… What are you doing here? It’s Thursday.”

“I just quit college!” She announced gleefully.

“You WHAT?!?”

“Yeah, isn’t that great!?!” She half asked, half didn’t ask. “We can be together all the time now!”

Like I said, sweet girl. Clueless, demanding, smothering, clingy, a poor judge of other peoples’ feelings toward her and really bad at choosing her priorities. But very, very sweet.

“Yeah, uh… That’s… Um… Hey, you want to hear what it sounds like when a relationship ends? It sounds like this—”

*CLICK*

And that’s when the doorbell rang.

And THAT'S when the longest 14 hours of my entire life began.

And the worst part of it was that I didn’t even get to break up with her in my own house. No. In an effort to be courteous to my housemates, I rode with her to a Waffle House to break up with her. And when that didn’t work, I rode with her to the park we once spent a few hours in which held some sort of meaning to her to break up with her. And when THAT didn’t work, I rode with her to her house to break up with her. Which was really smart, since she lived nearly an hour’s drive away from my house.

it’s really odd what the multiplication factorials are when converting from “time driving” to “time walking.” But it was okay, because it gave me five good hours to think about how long the last fourteen had been. And how great it was to have someone switch almost instantly from nearly clawing your eyes out and calling you a name which, to them, probably makes a whole lot of sense, but to you, sounds mostly like every conjugation of the verb “fuck” and every variation of the noun “fuck” that could possibly be strung together at once, to literally clinging to your pants leg begging you not to walk out the door. Again.

And so, when I finally got home, I crawled back into bed. And I attempted to go back to sleep. And I succeeded, for all of about twenty minutes. Until another phone call came.

“Hello?”

*sniff* “Guess where I am…” *sob*

Oh, no.

I walked out the door, right past her car, where she sat still clutching her cellphone, and got into my car and drove to the one place I knew she wouldn’t dare to follow me –

Mike’s house.

Mike hated Mandy. Mandy hated Mike. It was a difficult situation, until it became an ideal one. I knew I could sack out on his couch and not have to fear her sudden appearance, as Mike’s mere presence struck a fearful chord within her and made her turn a ghostly shade of white.

And so, in retaliation, she went to the one place she felt she could go exercise her last resort to get me back. She went to my mom’s house. And she stayed for nearly 12 hours a day, every day for a solid week. At first, it was simple demands.

“Mrs. Peacock, you’ve GOT to help me get Joe back!”

Then it turned into very long and drawn out laments.

“Mrs. Peacock, why won’t Joe come back?”

And from there, it just began spiraling downward, turning into a day long examination of her character and what could possibly have driven me away, reflecting into an examination of MY character and what possibly could have made me want to leave.

And that's where the correlations were drawn.

So, imagine my surprise when, at the end of the week, I called my mother to find out if the coast was clear – which it was – and I went over to mow the grass and was confronted by one of the most bizarre and, frankly, surreal conversations I’ve ever had with anyone at any time whatsoever.

“What’s this about?” I asked in response to my mother’s request that I take a seat at the dining room table.

“Joe, honey,” She said, taking a seat across from me, “I want to go ahead and say right up front that I love you.”

“I love you too, mom,” I replied with a queer look in her direction.

“I mean it,” She reaffirmed. “No matter what you ever do or say, I will always love and support you.”

“That’s… That’s really great, Mom…”

“And if you want to have a relationship with Mikey—”

“What?!?” I said, taken aback. I narrowed my eyes and spoke very slowly. “In what context, exactly, do you mean the ‘relationship,’ to take in this instance, Mother?”

“Well… You know… Like… If you and Mikey are… Gay. Together.”

“Gay? TOGETHER?!?” I shouted, nearly as perplexed at the fact she would think her girl-chasing son of 20 years would be homosexual despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary as I was at the fact that she would actually say “Gay together.”

“Son,” She said, “I know all about it, and it’s okay. Your father and I accept the fact that—”

“WHAT!?!” I couldn’t believe this. “You told DAD that I was gay too?”

“Well, I didn’t,” She replied. “Mandy did.”

Sweet girl, that Mandy. Misguided, in denial, absolutely psycho and completely off the reservation. But sweet. Very, very sweet.

“Mom.” I said, clearly and distinctly. “I want you to tell me exactly what she said.”

“Well, basically, she said—”

“No, Mom. Not basically. I want to know exactly what she said.”

“Well… Here, you can read it for yourself,” she replied, and stood up to go and fetch a letter.

A letter by Mandy.

A twenty-two page letter by Mandy, which conveyed in rather excruciating detail first how much she loved me, second how much I’d broken her heart, third how gay I was with Mike, and fourth how that is the only explanation as to the dissolution of our relationship because what we had was REAL and PURE and only something like DEVIANT SEXUAL BEHAVIOR could possibly pull the two of us apart.

And what was the evidence she had for this fact about my desire to place my penis into the anal crevasse of my good friend?

1) At one point, she asked me, if Mike moved somewhere like Seattle, would I go with him – to which I answered “yes.”

2) She thinks my need to constantly punch him in the shoulder is borne from an innate desire to place my hands on his penis. This was supported by a passage she read from Details magazine, photocopied and given to the students in a Psych 101 class she took last year.

3) I went to his house after we broke up. She knows this because she followed me over there.

4) I hugged him upon his return from a three week trip to his home city of Detroit.

5) We were always calling each other “dicks” and “penises” and other references to male genitalia.

6) What other explanation could there be? Our love was PURE and REAL and all that other shit I just said a few sentences ago.

“Mom…” I said, tossing the letter aside and placing my right cheek on my right palm.

“Now you see?” She asked. “I know all about it. And it’s okay – we support you.” And then she hugged me.

It could have been worse, though. She could have hated me based on these incredibly ludicrous and absolutely disjointed pieces of evidence that I wanted to make beastly, sweaty love to my hairy and rather stinky best friend. Which, honestly, makes me want to puke even as I write the words describing it (no offense, Mike, but seriously – if I WERE a member of that team – I could do a LOT better than you, because goddammit, I’m a CATCH).

The other long, drawn-out “GOD, MOTHER, FOR THE LAST GODDAMN TIME, I AM NOT A GODDAMN HOMOSEXUAL, AND HOW DARE YOU BELIEVE SOME GIRL YOU BARELY KNEW OVER YOUR OWN SON” talk about my sexual orientation came shortly after I had my nipples pierced on a bet.

I went over to their place to help pack away the January snowman decorations and pull down the February Valentines’ decorations and, in the midst of everything, got rather sweaty and needed to shower before I went out on a date (with a girl!!!!!!). And since I had been living on my own for a while, I wasn’t really accustomed to needing to close the door to hide things from my parents – much less thinking about the stupid things I did on bets as things I needed to hide from them. So after the shower, I was shaving with the door open and a towel around my waist when my mother walked by and saw the little silver hoops hanging from my teats.

“OH MY… OH MY GOD!!!”

“What?” I said, wincing from having just cut myself due to her outburst.

“You really ARE gay!” She cried.

“Wait- WHAT??”

“You have nipple piercings!” She announced. “Only the gays have nipple piercings!”

“Well, no, mom, that’s not necessarily true,” I responded. “Guys who take stupid bets have them, too.”

And because I really had to get ready very quickly and meet my date (A FLIPPIN GIRL!!! I was on my way to meet a GIRL that night! To hopefully have premarital sex with [for the curious, it didn’t happen]!!! Why on Earth couldn’t she pay attention to THOSE little chunks of evidence that I really do require a vagina to be present at least SOMEWHERE in my romantic relationships?) so I didn’t get to battle with her about my non-homosexuality. Which left her with the indelible impression that I was, very clearly, doing the gay. With men. And not women, like the one I was going to meet.

It took a long-term relationship that subsequently resulted in marriage to convince my dear sweet mother that I was (and am), in fact, not gay. And when I think back on it, I tend to want to think that she was very eager for me to admit to her that I was actually gay so that she could prove to me just how supportive and loving she really is. It wasn’t so much that she wanted me to go and plough man-butt; it was much more an opportunity for her to prove, in the face of crisis and confusion, that I could count on my mommy to be there to support and love me. And for that, I love her dearly.

And you know what else I love? Taking it in the pooper. By a man. With a penis.

Just… Not Mike.