Becoming a Gay Adult

I love my mother. She got on her knees and scrubbed the kitchen tiles with steel wool...something about applying her feminine touch. Being a man, I have little affection for totally scrubbing away all trace of previous ownership. I'm more like, get it liveable and then live in it. that maybe just me, not my sex She however, found it intolerable to have the dust, grime, matter from previous remain. And so she scrubbed. The apartment is very clean and having lived with her clean-up job for two weeks on my own, I have to say I like it. And haven't had to buy food really for two weeks. Sweet. I'm having a night at home after seeing a matinee of Spamalot (good laughs), and now nibbling on bon bons, especially enjoying Devil's Food Cheesecake from the recently? opened Junior's in the theater district, yum! (immersive advertising) It's Dirty Pretty Things tonight and bedtime...well...anyway, we'll see. It's weird not being driven to go dancing and bars...

Admittedly, I could have left the office at 5:30pm. But I was glued to my seat. The image of me dashing out of my apartment to catch the 3:50am bus to get to the office at 5am and my mom trying to hand me anonymously a banana out the front door, was at once hysterical and well, hysterical. Like a woman laced in the Victorian tradition, I feel at a loss for breath when I'm with my mother too long. She was sitting in semi-darkness waiting for me to leave, as if waiting to pounce, and I babbled something about leading orientation and meetings, and all the things I had to do at the office, when all I really wanted to say is, "you're stifling me, and it's beyond your control. We can't do this. We can't be together like this. We need space to love and live peacefully on earth together and I love you, and all the things you've done like scrub my kitchen floor, and buying me a kettle and gloves to hold hot pans, and the post-it suggestions on all my kitchen ...

Well, I'm settling into my new place. I like it. Tom called. It was uncomfortable, especially since he prefaces his calls with dramatic reports of dying prognoses. Am I becoming callous? And then my mother called a week ago and announced a visit. I keep thinking to myself, her Majesty has come with the white gloves to check out the apartment she helped me buy. That's terrifying. She's there now (I just got back from the alumni board meeting which successfully happened the same weekend she came to visit, but that's done now and I'm back in New York (albeit huddled in my office blogging as I wish I had a couple more days of excuse not to be there while she putters around and dreams up curtain colors)...I presume she's also come up with a list of chores for me to do in my own home. I'm 37 years old and I'm terrified of my mother. It's 11pm. I need to go home. This is ridiculous. It's my home, even if she dropped trou to make it happen and ...