Dan, my neighbor since I was two, has been my lifelong physical and emotional abuser for being gay.

In 2011, I was almost lynched by four strangers w a baseball bat in Frederick because they saw me hold Kevin’s hand at an earlier time. The assault seemed normal to me because of Dan, and it was the reason I moved to the Baltimore area.

My Dad is a real estate mogul / slum lord with lots of property throughout the Baltimore area. I lived in one of his units during that time — his one mitzvah to me being that he gave me a couple months free rent there so I could escape from Frederick immediately following my near-lynching, so I could be safe in the short-term while having flexibility to figure it out later.

He was my landlord through a lot of what was to come.

Kevin and I were only six months living together in Parkville – a fringe neighborhood of Baltimore, right outside of Towson- when I got the job offer at the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring. This was following the four years of long-distance that our relationship constituted before that.

I would do the commute for a year, before we moved in with Kevin’s abusive and alcoholic college best friend in Silver Spring, at the complex we had the grill out that one time. Kevin didn’t have a permanent job, and I wasn’t making enough for us to live alone.

The Discovery job** was a big decision — it was the night shift, the exact opposite schedule of Kevin. But it was my way out, because I hated my job at Abilities Network. It required so much driving between clients — around 120 miles a day— and the pay was shit, a complete dead end job.

In taking the new job, it meant that the moment we fixed the discrepancy between the faraway zip codes of our relationship, Kevin and I would suddenly be transported into different time zones, despite sleeping in the same bed every night.

Effectively, we were long distance again, and we were both heart broken because of it.

But it was my way out.

The certainty of even more time apart was why we got engaged.***

I went to my grandmother’s house early that soon-following Easter to tell her the news in person – both about the new job and the engagement. She essentially called me a faggot upon the news, and went on and on about how God hates my lifestyle. She loved me though, she said, and, while she wouldn’t accept the marriage or my husband, she would do me the honor of still attending the ceremony.

Nope.

I have her an ultimatum: she has one year to have the conversations needed to get her accepting us, or I disappear. (Thanks, Dan Savage.) That she will have a gay grandson or none at all.

We wrote letters for a 8 months, most of hers repetitiously just telling me I’m a horrible, disrespectful grandson, until I told her we need to cool it. I told her she hurt me deeply, and I need time before we continue.

But I emotionally got to the place where I could show up for those conversations with my grandmother. Despite the 90-minute one way commute to my night-shift job, I visited on weekends for a couple months to talk about it.

And I was stonewalled the whole time, so eventually, I pulled the plug. And that’s when my parents (Dad) started their escalating attacks.

In these entries, it was six months after my brother’s had just moved to Denver. His move immediately followed his wedding – a huge cause of celebration that roared throughout the larger family.

The incident in these passages, Chris and I were going to surprise my grandmother for Mother’s Day. We both hadn’t seen her in the exact amount of time, at the wedding not even half a year prior. Being presented to her on the exact same conditions my brother saw her made me understand the discrepancy of our values to the family.

My treatment was so cold, this was the day I decided to begin my estrangement proceeding with the entirety of my dad’s family. His reactions would culminate in the surprise move to be with Chris in Denver, abandoning me in my time of need on my first day being unemployed, while simultaneously giving the only asset to my name to my brother for no real reason.

Chris accepted the gift — no questions.

My Mom saw what’s up, and she gave me her car as remediation, at cost to her.

I wrote the alienation to inclusion essay last night, trying to understand the transition between the two experiences and to flesh out the interplay between my estrangement and the creation of a new family.

The two are inextricably linked.

*************

**I was the only employee that worked those hours. I have a history of silent jobs. Then, too, I almost solely focused on my writing, for lack of anyone to talk to.

🤐😕

***Just for reference, my brother’s engagement lasted 8 months, his proposal happening well after I asked Kevin. Ours lasted four years.