RENéE: When did you realize you were gay?
ME: Hmm. I can’t point to any moment in particular. But I do remember not feeling quote-unquote “normal,” whatever that means. Just less aggressive, drawn more to the beautiful things in life. I remember being around seven years old and throwing rocks in our suburban neighborhood. That’s what kids, boys especially, did back then, roam around looking for things to do and throw. The rule was be home before it gets dark. Can you imagine telling your child that now? You’d be shamed out of suburbia. But it was a different world. The entire neighborhood was the playground, with mothers everywhere keeping eyes on kids who were not necessarily their own. At one point—it must have been early summer, because I wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, I remember it clearly—I found myself atop a mound of dirt. Which seemed substantial to me at the time, but may have only been a few feet high. The boys were throwing rocks into a nearby bush, and so I picked up some rocks and began to do the same. “Why are we throwing rocks into that bush?” I asked one of the other kids. “Because there’s a rabbit in there,” he said. Horrified, I dropped the rocks I held in my hand and ran down the dirt mound and stood in front of the bush. I threw my hands in the air, waved them the way one might surrender to opposing forces, and yelled, “Stop! You might hurt the rabb—” when a rock hit me so hard over the right eye that I fell back into the bush and blacked out.
When I came to, maybe five minutes later, my eye was filled with blood. I closed it and looked to the mound of dirt, where a half-dozen boys had been standing, and saw that it was now empty. It was the first time I had ever felt profoundly alone, deserted. I rose to my feet, my head aching and my stomach wobbly, and heard the pack of boys yelling. They were coming my way with my mother in tow. “Mrs. Kelly, Mrs. Kelly,” they yelled. Because she was Mrs. Kelly then. “Clint’s eyeball’s hanging out.” And I had an image of myself as a deformed monster, my beautiful blue eyes, which even complete strangers complimented me and my mother on, were ruined forever. Terri grabbed me by the shoulders and looked at my face. “Is my eyeball hanging out?” I asked. “No,” she said, “but you’ve got a bad cut. I’m taking you to the emergency room.” “I was trying to save a rabbit,” I said. She was holding my arm as we walked through the neighbors’ backyards to our house. “Well, now you’re going to the hospital,” she said.
I didn’t know if she was mad, inconvenienced, or frightened. Maybe a combination of all three, plus some emotions I wasn’t yet aware of. Anyway, that was probably when I realized I wasn’t like the other boys. But of course it wasn’t sexual back then. I don’t think I was sexually attracted to men until high school. Not that I acted upon it. That didn’t happen until college in Boston.
RENéE: Do you think the country is ready for a gay president?
ME: Hell no. [laughs]
RENéE: What’s so funny?
ME: It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The country would go apoplectic. People talk about the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. Damon and I are completely monogamous, but a heterosexual couple can swing every weekend, and somehow their marriage is more sacred in the eyes of God than mine. I’ve got a real problem with Chinese restaurant–style religion. “I’ll make two choices from Leviticus and three from Deuteronomy, and ignore the rest because they inconvenience me.”
RENéE: That probably won’t endear you to a substantial portion of the American electorate.
ME: Probably not.
RENéE: So what do you think your chances of winning are?
ME: I’d calculate them to be somewhere in the neighborhood of zero. But if I really thought I’d win, I wouldn’t run. That job’s gotta suck. I’d like to go to bed now if that’s OK with you.
RENéE: Sweet dreams, Mr. President.
YOU YOUNG, ME RESTLESS
The bare masts of sailboats rock back and forth in Biscayne Bay like metronomes keeping different tempos. The sky is clear, thank God, except for a few puffy clouds to the south. It’s been raining for days, making me grumpy as hell. I’m hopeful my foul mood will lift today, but I’m not placing any bets; it’s only eight o’clock in the morning. From my seat at the table—Damon usually sits to my left, but he’s not here now—I look directly out the sliding glass doors of our terrace into the tops of palm trees. Sometimes an iguana riding the fronds will stare back at me, but not today. To my right is an unobstructed view of the water and, across the bay, the cranes that relieve the enormous flat-decked cargo ships of their burdens in the port of Miami.
We bought this apartment to escape the winter doldrums of the Northeast. I need to see blue and green, and birds that aren’t pigeons, I told Damon when attempting, successfully, to convince him we should shuffle some of our money around. We’ll probably sell it soon, now that I’ve renovated and redecorated it. I need a new project.
My hand is curled around the mug that holds my cappuccino. Despite how pretty it is, with its pink-and-white arabesque pattern, the cup reminds me that I am a failure. I designed it along with coordinating plates and bowls for Macy’s, but the line was not reordered. Sales were fine, the buyers said. Not great. There’s no room in the retail world for fine, I’ve discovered. I wonder if I should have tried harder to promote them and give a little shrug.
The caffeine seems to be waking me up, albeit slowly, so I decide to check my social media accounts. Usually someone is out there, somewhere, wanting advice on what shoes to wear to an upcoming wedding or how to break into the world of television. I enjoy answering them. Nothing of any interest on Twitter today, just a few people saying nice things about my recipes on The Chew. I tap the little heart icon to let them know they’ve been heard. On Instagram, I discover some old messages in my inbox. (I didn’t even know I had an Instagram inbox.) There’s one from six months ago that catches my eye, from a fan who’s attached a screen grab of a young, fairly pretty comedian’s post. She, this comedian I’ve never heard of, has taken several images of me on a recent episode and arranged them into a collage and written a caustic caption about what a terrible haircut I have. Many of her followers have chimed in, some with LOLs, others with derisive comments about my face or sexuality.