Angel Wao

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” left me feeling powerful. Like my country, my family, my history, and I are filled with an ancient mysticism far past any human recording, like a fuku, like “The First”. As my Dominicanness would have it, 20 pages left into finishing the book, I get the long awaited phone call from my father who called me yesterday (and said he’d call back later that night, but didn’t) in regards to la cosa he wanted to speak to me about.

Of course it was about my sexuality.

After cleverly directing our initial greeting into a topic of conversation about women, my father told me that while my mother and he accepted my homosexuality, because I wasn’t flamingly homosexual, they knew I could change, or as he put it, try to be with a woman.

After hearing him speak (uninterrupted for the majority of the time), part of me actually thought I should try a chick out. I began to think about how I’ve thought about being with a woman before, and how my parents pressuring me to do so, sadly only made me more inclined to try.

Then I began to think whether my sexuality was a matter of nature/nurture. If it is possible that I learned to be gay, then that means that I could change it as well. Right? Maybe God really did make man for woman, and woman for man?

Although I don’t consider myself to be religious whatsoever, like Oscar Wao, I recognize and sometimes resent the fact that being Latino comes with an inherent fatalistic religiosity. Someone’s always praying to God to fix things, to make changes, perform miracles. While I feel like I can logically come up with an opinion about religion (ultimately that I think it’s oppressive), I also can’t help but naturally be just a bit God fearing, and ironically enough, also still feel some comfort when I think about Dios (for peeps sake, I capitalized my G’s and D’s!). So if I somehow, I have religion in the back of my head, yet also recognize my anger toward it, how the hell do I reconcile my homosexuality. Do I think nurture>nature?!

No…

even if it were the case that being gay was nurture, I think about how I know, for sure, that religion is purely nurtured (blatantly so in fact, because it is a direct construct of society). There are some people who grow up to be atheist and others who grow up to be devout _________ , and whoever you are in either one of these groups, you were “nurtured” through your own life experience to believe what you do. Either way, it is now part of you who you are. I guess, just like being gay is part of who I am. My whole being in fact, is part nature and nurture.

I can’t help but be a little God fearing, but I can’t help but be gay, and even if they are both a product of society, they still make me, me.

That’s how I know “trying” is not an option.

The funny thing is, while I know I could have sex with a woman, I don’t want to. Honestly, it’s not enough. The feeling for the man I’d love goes above and beyond sex, and for some reason, regardless of nature or nurture, it just doesn’t feel normal to me, to feel “that” way for a woman. The thought of me holding a woman’s hand feels strange, while holding a man’s feels natural; the thought of looking into a man’s eyes and kissing him is what is appealing to me, not a woman’s; I’ll tell a man that I love him, not a woman.

That’s how I know “trying” is not an option.

I remember coming out to my parents and it not being difficult at all. I wanted to do it. For the longest I had a gut feeling that it was when I came out to them that our relationship, the relationship within my entire family and me, would flower beautifully. I would let them know who I really was, and that, would eventually open up the doors for communication, honesty, and love I’ve felt I always lacked for my family. This however wasn’t my motivation to do so; it was that one day, I knew I’d meet someone special. I wanted the person I love to be part of my family, and more importantly, I wanted my family to know the person I’d love the most, the one I’d give my all, my heart and soul to. In that way, above all things, before anything else, I came out to my parents for the person I’d love. For the man I’d love.

That’s how I know “trying” is not an option.

So I didn’t make it an option.

I told my dad how I felt. I played devil’s advocate to his logic, gave him different ways of understanding where I was coming from, and rather than resorting to hanging up the phone in frustration (which I almost did several times), I put my faith in the never failing power of Communication.

Something clicked. O bueno, e’ asi?, and I could tell he finally understood me. Somehow, Dominican fuku, no longer loomed over our heads. He told me he accepted me as I was, this time saying nothing else, except that he loved me, te quiero hijo.

I love you too, old man.