Tongue in Cheek
|
Tongue in Cheek The Favorite Aunt |
by Kevin
Isom
Every
gay man always has a favorite aunt. We seem to be genetically predisposed
to it. Even if we don't have one, we'll make one up - an older friend
will do just fine. Some of us have both - my boyfriend has an actual aunt
who lives in another state and a friend-from-growing-up "aunt," whom he'll
still take on outings. In any case, if you're a gay man, you probably
have one. In my family, it's my Aunt Barbara.
When I was growing up, going to her house
was always a welcome escape. Compared to my own everything-must-be-in-place
home (my mother, I am convinced, was once a member of Housecleaning Youth),
my aunt's house was like stepping through the looking glass. No, I never
actually saw a talking rabbit - but you could never be quite sure. It
was as if everything had been perfectly organized, and then, just for
the fun of it, tossed into the air and allowed to land where they might.
Over here you'd find the antique Chinese
porcelain fish bowl. "Monstrous, isn't it? Look down inside. Do you see
the goldfish swimming in the water? No? Too green to see him? Well, I've
been meaning to clean it, but you'll see him poke his head up every now
and then." Over there you'd find a rare species of orchid, only just about
to bloom. Or at least, it would have been, if the cat hadn't knocked it
over while chasing the dog, who was after my uncle's newspaper. There
was always a story.
We shared a love of plants. I was a budding
horticulturist, and the greatest praise I had from my aunt was an assertion
that my thumb, like the goldfish water, was green. I could root anything.
She would give me an African violet leaf or two, wrap them in aluminum
foil, and I would take them home, carefully coat them with root stimulator,
and gently stick them into vermiculite so that they would propagate. I
think I liked plants so much because they were one of the few things in
life you could reasonably control. If you cared for them, they would usually
reward you. They weren't like school and the other kids there, for instance.
They - and she - never treated you badly for who you were.
Like all favorite aunts, my aunt has the
requisite wicked sense of humor, though she would never admit to it herself.
She delighted in telling the story of her own aunt - because it could
never be, say HER, who actually said such things - who was faced with
an obscene caller night after night. Finally, annoyed and determined,
the woman responded to the obscene caller with, "Well, dear, I beat my
meat, too. I use a good meat tenderizer hammer, and I pound that bleeding,
flattened piece of meat until it tears apart with ease after broiling
for 45 minutes at 325 degrees." He never called again, my aunt explained
with a wicked smile.
My aunt's husband, my uncle, died recently,
rather unexpectedly. And at his funeral, Aunt Barbara was not wailing
with grief. At least, not publicly. She was mad. She is a believer in
the power of individual choice, and she was angry - at herself, at my
uncle, at the doctors - for failing to make better choices to avoid my
uncle's fate. I think it was the horticulturist in her. She believed that
if he'd had the proper care, she could have tended to him longer.
Only, sometimes, you can't control the
way things turn out. It's part of the throwing things in the air approach
to life that makes the most sense to me. You hope that they land in the
best possible place, but it they don't, then - oh, well, it was just as
good a place as any. There is beauty in disarray. That's the only way
to accept life - and death.
After the funeral, even without her husband,
she still hadn't lost her smile. As I was leaving, she introduced me to
a friend and said, "Kevin is a writer. He gets to travel, and he writes
articles with tongue in cheek." Yes, with tongue in cheek. Just like my
favorite aunt.
Kevin Isom is the author of It Only Hurts When I Polka and Tongue in Cheek and Other Places, available at bookstores and online. He may be reached at isomonline@aol.com or www.KevinIsom.com.