"My Moms Are Getting Gay Married, but I Won't Be There"

"My Moms Are Getting Gay Married, but I Won't Be There"

Queerspawn

CONTENT WARNING: Mention of incest and sexual assault.

PDF version of the essay "My Moms Are Getting Gay Married, but I Won't Be There." Essay published under the name Kimmi Lynne Moore in Spawning Generations: Rants and Reflections on Growing Up With LGBTQ+ Parents, edited by Sadie Epstein-Fine and Makeda Zook (Bradford: Demeter Press, 2018), p. 156-164.

"Writing and publishing ”My Mom’s Are Getting Gay Married but I won’t be There,” for Spawning Generations, was a catalyst for me in my journey of healing. It led me to pursue a dream of centering art in my life and activism work. In 2018, I graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a Masters in Fine Arts in Community Arts. My thesis, “What Were They Feeding Me” sprung directly from what was missing in my original essay, my family’s legacy of white supremacy. My thesis work investigated the ways in which I have inherited structures and legacies of power and trauma. By focusing on incest and white supremacy, I began to understand how these systems feed off of each other to create deeply rooted social disease and decay. This work was guided by the literature of many Black and anti racist white scholars before me, most prominently, James Baldwin.

“This problem, which they invented in order to safeguard their purity, has made of them criminals and monsters, and it is destroying them.” -James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, 1979'

By researching and engaging with physical objects and stories from my own heritage, I explored how certain legacies have been passed-down and others have been silenced. I have dug, and will continue to sift, through generations of warped storytelling in an attempt to learn the true evil and destruction of whiteness. The artist statement, images and video of my thesis, show part of that exploration. An attempt to make visible and physical what my family has hidden away inside our bodies.

By researching and engaging with physical objects and stories from my own heritage, I explored how certain legacies have been passed-down and others have been silenced. I have dug, and will continue to sift, through generations of warped storytelling in an attempt to learn the true evil and destruction of whiteness. The artist statement, images and video of my thesis, show part of that exploration. An attempt to make visible and physical what my family has hidden away inside our bodies.

My mothers attended my thesis and we are seen at the end of the video embracing. This painful unearthing has led to a lot of growth, reckoning and healing.

There is more to come." -- Robin Marquis

Robin Marquis

Queerspawn, F0196-01-001-013, The ArQuives

[2009-2018]

MPEG-4 Audio File [00:17:53], Hard Drive

"Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing, Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing, Thumbelina what’s the difference if you’re very small, when your heart is full of love you’re nine feet tall. That was the song my mother Berta sang to my mother Nonny as they fell in love in a faded yellow canoe the summer of 1978. Before I was assigned a gender, a name, before my dimples, shiny pearl head, and pruny, translucent queer body arrived, I was the miracle nestled in a walnut shell—a blessing to parents who were brave enough to make the impossible happen.

Born in 1988 in New Mexico at the height of the AIDS crisis, when my dad handed his syringe full of sperm off to my moms, they couldn’t yet test to see if he was positive. Like many other white queers, they crossed their fingers, appropriated Navajo sweat lodges, and waited. Berta worked for the health department, and it was her job to tell people who came in to get tested when they were positive. Luckily, my dad never had to have that talk. So my mothers and father created my brother, then me—symbols of life amid death. I was a femme fairie that was passed with awe and reverence from lesbian to gay arms. We knew these arms held sacred blood. No, the blood was killing us, no, we were told “our lifestyle” was killing us, no, we were told god poisoned us, no, we were told we were killing each other. And no, they would not help us, we were told
our blood was a weapon.

On a llama farm, encircled by adobe walls and surrounded by orchards, Berta would sing to us old Irish, Scottish, and Appalachian ballads for an hour every night, teaching us not to be afraid of the shadow side. Nonny taught me to grow my armpit hair longer than strangers’ stares, and she never once apologized for her radiance. My brother and I had birthdays that were two years and 364 days apart. For the one day a year that I was only two years younger than him, we would have joint birthday parties of capture the flag through the deepest desert arroyos with everyone from the surrounding villages. I learned young how to lose to older boys.

II

The sexual abuse started when I was born, and it shifted into grey areas in fourth grade by the edge of the Rio Grande River. Russian olive trees and dense sage brush strained for moisture in the cracked desert earth creating a maze of caves. To enter, you had to get on your knees and crawl. At first, I wasn’t allowed. I would stand half a field away as their lanky silhouettes wandered toward the overgrown banks and disappear one by one crawling on their scuffed knees. On a day I remember like I remember my nightmares when I wake up swimming in sweat, on a day that I’ve been told I don’t remember enough to prove anything, one of the boys suggested that I was much more valuable in the cave with them than standing a safe field away.

I don’t remember much about before or after. I don’t actually remember how old I was. I don’t remember my feet moving. I just remember musty knees and cold shadows. My brother handed me damp paper and crawled off deeper into the underbrush. I was left with the leader of the pack T*****, and a sick feeling in my stomach. T***** told me that this is what boys liked. I looked at the musty curled pages of porn in my lap and saw the first images of expressions and positions that I would start practicing, perfecting and teaching to the other kids within the surrounding 43 miles of side winding dirt roads. Ten years later, my brother would reaffirm this lesson when I asked him what I should do with my first boyfriend, “Watch porn, guys like what girls do in porn.” In the mustiness of the cave, I crawled to find my brother because I knew this was when my part was supposed to start, but when I found him he yelled and I was confused because my role was to touch and be touched and say yes, or usually to say nothing at all, always while floating high, high above. I don’t remember how I got out of there. I couldn’t feel my fingers but I could smell them, so I vomited into the cracked earth that willingly drank it up.

III

Shadow is where my family lived for survival, for comfort, because of the exhaustion of unknown danger. Not the obvious kind of danger that was talked about or ever addressed. It was the kind of danger we stored under our first layer of skin. It kept my little mouth jabbering all around the big gaping holes in who I was. Drawn to opulence from birth, raised by DIY dykes, closeted bisexuals, drag queens, and radical faeries, I quickly learned how to adorn my being with shields of appalling colours and loud opinions to distract from questions I never wanted to answer. I thrived on stage where I embraced every way of being that wasn’t my own.

I lied about who my nonbirth mother was often, saying that she was my grandmother, a friend, a roommate, a stranger. When I had to talk about her on playgrounds, after soccer, at friends’ houses, I pretended she was my dad. A quick change in pronouns and we were hidden. The questions that came from peers and adults were multiple and daily—“What does your mom do?” and “Is your mom picking you up?” and “Who’s that?” and “What’s your last name?” and “Where’s your dad?” and “Can I come over?”—and would cause a ripple of nausea, then tingles that started in my toes and quickly bee swarmed up my body until my neck was cold and my head felt foggy. I think people call it fight or flight. I just knew how to lie or hide in caves. This usually diverted the barrage of questions, confusion, judgments, prolonged pauses followed by, “Ohhs” of discomfort and understanding that understood nothing.

It’s hard to figure out which lies started first, which shame was more prevalent, what made me hide more, where the fear came from. The skills I learned were interchangeable, unshakable, and together they multiplied. Trying to understand and explain what has made me the way I am is like picking tree sap out of my hair. It’s easier to just cut the dirty part out. At any sign of danger, discovery, desire, I can muster up the cave instantly and disappear into the mustiness. Shame is something queer people are as closely connected to as our desires.

IV

Last week, my mothers announced over the barely audible speakerphone of their shared flip phone, “Honey, we are going to get married!” No, actually it didn’t go like that. The conversation started with a twenty-minute dialogue about the newest gay marriage law that passed in New Mexico—how exciting and strange it felt that many of their friends were getting married after decade long partnerships breaking the silent community pact to reject hetero lifestyles, which was interrupted by the occasional bickering between the two about details of irrelevant stories. I hoped they hadn’t eloped behind my back.

When they finally said they were going to get married, I burst into tears. My mom Nonny said, “Are you ok?” and I responded, “I’m just so happy,” (only a half-truth) which was met with a, “We don’t really understand you,” and then Berta piped in, “It’s her moon in Cancer.”

My moon in Cancer does have something to do with the fact that I am always a blink away from tears, but it wasn’t why I started sobbing uncontrollably. After 37 years of partnership, my parents had the option to finally be recognized as partners in all aspects of their lives. We would finally be seen as a family. Also, only a half-truth.

Love would not win when marriage swooped in, as the gay mainstream propaganda was promising. We wouldn’t ever be a family in the way I needed. My childhood would never feel safe, validated, and protected. I would never stop perfecting the art of lying, and I would not be attending my mothers’ wedding. I would not get to see my parents kiss for the first time in public and maybe the fifth time in my life. I would not get to hear them tell each other, our community, and me why they have loved each other for decades, instead of the usual explanation that I received that went something like “Both of us were always the ‘lesbians’ who got broken up with so we could never leave each other.” Or when they referenced their astrological charts with some bafflement that they had stayed together this long because according to the stars “We are just ships passing each other in the night.”

I would not be at my mothers’ wedding because when my brother and I were born into a community overflowing with love, we were also born into a tradition of incest that was passed down like a last name. We inherited it like the dimples that all three of our parents claimed came from “their side.” My brother taught me everything: how to walk, how to play Dungeons and Dragons, how to debate, and how to date older men, starting with his friends. The last time I was sexually assaulted because of him was at his bachelor party by his groomsmen, some of the same playmates from the cave. Since I have started digging deeper, refusing the silence that others choose, I have found out too much for any lineage to hold. I am so afraid of what I still don’t know, and it all plays like a slide show on my grandma’s projector, the one from 1972 that she liked to keep hidden in her basement. The slides are dusty and out of order, the projector burdensome—indecipherable whirs, a cacophony that no one wants to witness.

*Flash* My brother with his best friend M** at age four holding weapons in the shapes of wooden blocks and a forgotten little girl with blood in her underwear. Charges were pressed against my parents, but fortunately for someone other than me, they were dropped. I’ll never know her name or remember her face but we are sisters in ways no one wants to be.

*Flash* My Grandpa H’s funeral two years ago, sitting on Aunt K’s lap swaddled in grief, she whispered in my ear that we have the same “thing” in common with our brothers. I had to swallow back bile because three months before, my dad had told me the same story. Neither of them knew they were in the same cave, with the same brother, and the same silence, but now I know, and it burns.

*Flash* One month ago, when I was interviewing my Aunt S for an art piece about the matriarchy in our family, she mentioned that my Grandma ML “worshipped her brother and he raped her.” Later on she shared that my aunt MB had accused Grandma ML of continuing in my family's legacy of passing on scars in the cradle, but no one has ever believed MB, except me, and she is estranged (like I am becoming), so we’ve never talked.

The projector breaks every time and everyone sits motionless with blankets of denial wrapped tightly around bodies and bones. We are all still freezing.

V

On November 18th 2012, I wrote a letter to my brother. It took me sixteen months to put down the first two words.

“Dear B****,”

In the letter, I spent more time explaining theories about cycles of abuse, PTSD and the struggles of being part of an oppressed family than explaining how my spine felt cracked. I wanted him to look at it, and say, “I’m sorry you’re broken. I’m sorry I helped break you.” I don’t know if that was a mistake. Continuing my role as the person who
kept our family together, I wanted him to have a way out, an excuse for why he did what he did. I handed him the patriarchy as an option, his lack of male role models, being part of a marginalized family, his own history of abuse, anything he could latch onto. I named C******, M**, and T*****, encouraging him to blame them. I was already jumping
at a false forgiveness before I even had pen to paper. I wanted it all to be over with, and I felt disgusting. I was standing in an arroyo bed, and the flash flood was pulling me under, lungs coated in mud. I needed an explanation that would shift the load I am still carrying that actually belongs on the backs of my ancestors and all sixty-four of my living family members.

I told him that I was suicidal and struggling to stay alive. I wonder if he ever thinks about me killing myself. I wonder if he knows I can’t help but think about him every day, even on good days. The only time we talk now is in my nightmares. Sometimes he tells me he is sorry. Most of the time, things happen that, even to this day, I can’t say out loud. I wake up each morning, fingernails filled with my own skin and what I think is dirt from the cave from a night of clawing my way out again and again. I am musty, wet, ashamed, and newly broken.

VI

A year later, I still hadn’t heard from him. I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking that the letter had gotten lost in the mail, and he had never seen it. On sunny days, I would imagine that he had actually written back, but it was his letter that was lost. One afternoon, my moms offhandedly mentioned that he had denied everything. They thought that they had told me months ago.

My moms very clearly stated that they “couldn’t take sides” and that “this is between you and your brother. You both have your truths.” As if this was a disagreement over who was to blame for initiating our biggest fight—the one where my brother ripped up my limited-edition Troll poster, and I smashed his massive Star Wars Lego spaceship. Have words ever hit you so hard they knock the wind out of you? Even given the laundry list of shocking and surprising ways that my parents have reacted to me—one being when I came out as queer at nineteen and Nonny (the bisexual femme) said, “Don’t be one of those straight girls that breaks gay girls’ hearts”—this punch to my solar plexus is still impossible to breathe through.

Even to this day, Nonny still doesn’t believe me. When I told her I was writing this piece a few weeks ago, she insisted I send it to her for her feedback (censorship) and demonstrated, once again, her inherited denial asking for “proof.” I wanted to tell her “I didn’t have a rape kit handily stashed in between my stuffed animals and homemade potions growing up and I have showered too many times since I turned twenty-one for any ‘evidence’ to still be present. I do not know why a life of drug and alcohol abuse, sexually abusive relationships, suicidality, almost marrying a family friend ten years my senior who had been ‘waiting since I was ten for me to be old enough,’ choosing a seventy-five-year-old child pornographer as my mentor in high school and barely escaping his attempted kidnapping isn’t enough to ‘prove’ that my truth is that of a Survivor.” But instead I just muffled my sobs, tried not to scream or pass out, and kept repeating “no”—something that felt foreign on my tongue.

She quickly emailed me with more “suggestions,” and strongly asserted that I should “include something about how complex families are because people experience relationships in different ways so that other family members don't necessarily share your perceptions, and that you recognize that this is painful for all of us?”

So I started the second hardest part of my life—leaving behind the cave and filling in the entrance with an avalanche of words. I have begun letting go of the fantasy that somehow we would work this out and that my parents would show up in a way that they never had, couldn’t, and wouldn’t. I no longer hope that my brother will want to do his own healing. Even if he does, it won’t include me. Every morning in that dawn space between nightmares and waking, there is a moment where I have forgotten and everything feels OK, until I lift up my head and the remembering and the pain floods back, a mudslide cracking through my sternum, and it takes me hours to get out of bed, if I manage it at all.

VII

I started writing this three years ago. So many stops and starts and fear and needing distance has kept this story in. Since then, gay marriage passed in all fifty states. My brother had a baby that I will never meet until maybe one day they ask what happened to Auntie K? My dad has entered my life in a way that he never had before. I love him fiercely and am beginning to let go of the abandonment I felt and hold compassion for his uncharted role as a “donor/parent.” My moms did get married in their living room by our neighbour who lived across the street. I have never had the courage or stomach to ask if my brother was there. I threw them a wedding party in Oakland, and they were late and it was awkward and magical and made me feel so alone and I saw my moms dance to a live band and kiss each other and I sung Scottish ballads with family members I had never met before and I gave them my blessings in a perfectly crafted speech and felt numb.

My moms are my heroes, and they are also Survivors who couldn’t stop the cycles of abuse and interrupt intergenerational trauma. My moms couldn’t, but they raised me to be the person who would.

17 minutes, 53 seconds