AT GLOBAL NATIONAL I had the chance to build something from nothing, and I was determined not to preside over another debacle. I threw myself into creating a new kind of newscast with a fervour that probably struck observers as delusional. The network was brand new and its owners, the Asper family, weren’t known as big spenders. The patriarch had once famously quipped that his employees were in “the business of selling soap”—attracting advertising dollars, that is, not revolutionizing journalism. I thought if we could build a great newscast with solid ratings, they’d see the wisdom of investing more in it. In the meantime, we’d have to manage on a shoestring budget, relative to the other two national networks’ flagship newscasts.
I was convinced we could beat CTV and CBC if we created something distinctive. ESPN had revolutionized sports coverage by injecting personality, humour and sharp insight into its broadcasts, and I wanted to do something similar to network news. In rehearsals, I tried to set a relaxed and personal tone. Instead of preaching the news, we’d share it with viewers, and we’d do it using cutting-edge digital equipment and graphic-rich explanations. Offering an opportunity to think outside the box turned out to be all that was needed to assemble a talented team of reporters, photojournalists and production staff. They were young but creative and hard-working. I was optimistic but I warned my managers to be realistic: it would take years for the broadcast to reach its full potential. This was a marathon, not a sprint.
On my seventh day on the job, I was in the shower when Cathy called out, horror in her voice: a second plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. Like many people, that’s when we knew it was no accident. It was just after six a.m., Vancouver time. I pulled on a suit and raced to the studio on nearly empty expressways, in such a hurry to get to the anchor chair that I forgot to wear underwear. For the next sixteen hours, on a set where the paint was barely dry, working with reporters and cameramen who were still learning each other’s names, on a network that had only flipped the switch on national satellite feeds the week before, we started to cover what we knew already would be the biggest story of our lives. We didn’t have months to find our way and cohere as a team. We had to mature, that day, and punch above our weight.
We got on the air faster than our more established Canadian competitors, and my familiarity with New York—and experience anchoring wall-to-wall coverage of breaking news events—gave us a significant editorial edge, just as my familiarity with the royal family had given ABC an advantage the night Diana died. On September 11, as we switched between the live video feeds American broadcasters were supplying, I recognized street corners and could name the officials surrounding Mayor Rudy Giuliani at press briefings. Commuting from New Jersey, I’d walked through the World Trade Center so often that I could rattle off the names of its underground shops from memory, as well as the names of some of the world’s leading financial companies, located in the highest floors of the towers. Several of my neighbours in Summit had worked in those companies. As the day wore on, I had the sickening realization that there was no chance every one of them had made it out alive. But there was no time to let myself feel, no time to do anything except scramble for information and try to provide context. I took only one quick bathroom break that very long day because I didn’t feel I could afford to move away from the anchor desk. We were braced for another catastrophe, wondering whether there were more American targets. Or Canadian ones: in a little-remembered sidebar to that day, Canadian fighter jets had to force an unresponsive Korean Air jumbo jet to land in Yukon after its pilots failed to respond to hails. Years later, then prime minister Jean Chrétien admitted he had given the order to shoot the jet down if the pilots wouldn’t land.
Driving home that night, with majestic coastal mountains on one side and the endless ocean on the other, I was overcome by a flood of conflicting emotions: gratitude to be safe in this lovely corner of the earth, but mostly sorrow. I pulled over on the side of the highway. A city I’d worked in for seven years had been attacked, and thousands of people were dead, including men I’d chatted with at Summit’s Fourth of July fireworks celebrations and fathers who’d sat beside me on the little wooden chairs outside the ballet studio, as we’d waited for our daughters’ class to finish. On air, my game face had not slipped. But by the side of the highway, where no one could see, I wept.
Back at work the next day, I outlined what we needed to do, starting with throwing out our plans for the newscast. We had to be strategic, trying to anticipate events rather than simply reacting to them. The US, for instance, was clearly going to become more paranoid, with good reason. How would that play out in terms of cross-border trade and travel? Would it affect Canada’s willingness to participate in any international military conflict? And what moves would our own leaders likely make to ensure national security? These were the kinds of issues we needed to investigate proactively in order to provide distinctive coverage. And we needed to get reporters and crews ready to go into war zones, as they would surely have to do.
Though CTV and CBC both had much larger teams of reporters, most of whom were highly experienced, I knew we could own this story if we were passionate about finding new ways to tell it. Our ratings-winning live coverage the previous day had given us an opening—and had also given our team a reason to believe in me and my ambition for our newscast. The immediacy and complexity of the challenge we faced, right out of the gate, helped our team bond. One huge benefit of newness: no one was burnt out or disillusioned yet, and there was no deadwood on our team. United by a sense of mission, most days, we outhustled the competition.
I drove the team, and myself, very hard. I wanted almost complete control over the script that would be loaded into the teleprompter, and I wanted to write as much of it as humanly possible. For one thing, speaking my own words eases my jitters. I’ve never met an anchor who’s cavalier about going live, and I’m no exception. Even after thousands of live broadcasts, I still clear my throat, twice, while the opening graphics roll. I still worry about choking.
I’d also learned that editorial control is the surest path to success. I’d worked for half a dozen seasoned anchors in the US and Canada, and the more involved they were in shaping their shows, the more successful they were. No one was more hands on than Peter Jennings. Like most anchors, he wrote the introductions to the top stories in his newscast, but he also approved every word written by everyone else. It seemed excessive to me until the day a tape jammed in the machine midway through World News Tonight and, suddenly, a correspondent’s report stopped abruptly and TV screens across North America went blank. But just for a second. Because he’d been deeply involved in editing the story, Peter was able to paraphrase the rest of the report, smoothly covering the glitch.
Leading a team and a newscast is all about improvising and rejigging. You plan out a show six hours before airtime, but segments are shortened or lengthened depending on how events unfold, and some stories are jettisoned altogether to make way for new ones. Extra seconds can’t be added to a television show in the same way you can add pages to a newspaper. You’re always nipping and tucking to fit things into a finite template, even while you’re on air. During commercial breaks or when field items were running, I’d sit at the anchor desk and write against the clock, either because reporters hadn’t accurately estimated the length of their reports, or because something had gone differently than producers in the control room had expected. I became a very fast writer and developed a weird ability: I can glance at a page and know precisely how many seconds it will take to read it on air. This paragraph’s explanation of the process looks to be a forty-four-second read. It’s a useful talent for a broadcaster, but no one else.
Like every anchor I ever worked alongside, I also spent a good portion of the day asking questions and playing devil’s advocate, challenging reporters and producers to be sure they’d considered every angle and had the facts straight. It introduced a level of tension to the relationship—no one enjoys being grilled—but at Global National we couldn’t afford to get things wrong. One big lawsuit would have crippled the operation.
And then there was managing up. The Asper family were not hands-off proprietors; after 9/11, for example, they had strong feelings about how we should be covering the Middle East. I’d always been shielded from these kinds of demands by an anchor or executive producer, but when the owners suggested I step back and allow their designates to choose the experts who appeared on the broadcast, I didn’t have to think twice about how to respond. I let them know I’d resign before I’d agree to that. I wasn’t bluffing. I remember telling the network president, who flew to BC so he could personally twist my arm, “It’s a shame. My family loves Vancouver and I intend to stay in Canada. But I just won’t do it.” In the end a compromise was reached: our newscast was shortened by five minutes to make way for a “commentary” section delivered by editorialists who shared the owners’ political views. I couldn’t stop them from doing it. It was their network after all. However, I did insist on saying goodnight and signing off before the commentary began, to create an editorial moat between news and opinion. The owners and I maintained a cordial respect for each other, and when the commentaries proved to be bad for ratings, they quietly disappeared.
Belatedly, I realized I’d left GMA with more than just scars. I had some new skills. I could now hold my ground when I thought managers were dead wrong. And all that ad-libbing had given me a greater sense of comfort with the camera and less fear about going off-script. I’d started GMA wanting to be myself, and at Global National, I was finally able to do that, on air and off.
Shortly after we launched, one of my roommates from university casually mentioned that he was glad I was back in a serious news role. Ken Bacchus was best man at my wedding and the friend who introduced me to the insanity of camping near the tire-warming track at drag races where, at hangover-busting volume, drivers spin their tires with the brakes on. “Never liked you on those other shows,” he said, in an offhand way. “Which ones?” I asked. Ken replied, “The morning and noon shows. Made you look like a wimp.” It was like being told I’d been walking around for years with a huge piece of spinach in my teeth. I decided to focus on the underlying message: Be yourself. The camera doesn’t lie.
In only a few years, we became the most-watched newscast in the country. Professional success changed a lot about me. Anxiety and stress took up much less mental real estate. I felt both more in control of my own life and more generous towards others; I relished the professional growth of our staff and enjoyed mentoring them then watching them soar, solo. And I came to love that adrenaline-fuelled moment after the newscast animation ran out, when I could tell more than a million people what had happened that day.
Even better, though, by six o’clock the newscast was completely over, and for the first time in my professional life, I had my evenings free. I’d finally manoeuvred to a place where work still dominated, but my family occupied a protected space. Best of all, we weren’t spending that time shuttling from one medical appointment to the next. Shortly after we’d moved to Vancouver, Cathy had had another MRI, which revealed that there had been no significant changes to the lesions on her brain over the past few years. Her new neurologist believed she’d been misdiagnosed and that she didn’t have MS after all. Cathy still tired easily, but the universe had smiled on us. If there are words adequate to describe our relief and joy, I don’t know them.
For me, there was more cause for relief: I realized I’d had a more positive influence on my kids than I’d thought. I’d insisted they get jobs during the summer months at the cottage; even when the work was menial, both of them cared, tremendously, about doing it to the best of their ability. I was proud of their work ethic, and felt they’d learned something from watching me.
I wanted to be more to them than a distant role model, though. However, my initial attempts to become more involved in their lives didn’t go over very well. After years as a parachute dad, dropping in to lay down the law then taking off again, I didn’t have a lot of credibility. We had to get to know each other better.
It was easier with Erica. Whereas Alex was closed off, shying away or stiffening when I tried to put an arm around his shoulder, Erica was cuddly and affectionate. She was younger, of course, but I’d also parented her in an entirely different way. I’d had no preconceived notions about what a girl’s life should be like, so I’d been better able to stand back and watch her personality emerge, rather than trying to mould her. I hadn’t expected her to be good at all the things I’d wished I was good at as a child. My main expectation was that she not hide or shortchange her impressive intellect.
Nevertheless, when Erica was fourteen, Cathy had to point out to me that my words carried tremendous weight with our daughter, and I needed to choose them a little more carefully. At her new school, Erica had fallen in with a drama-infused pack of girls who alternately clung to her, then slammed her, which, over time, sliced away at her self-confidence. She hated conflict and just wanted everyone to get along, so instead of defending herself, she internalized the negativity. She was very hard on herself—too hard—so even a hint of disappointment from me when, say, she didn’t study for a test, crushed her. I learned to focus on encouragement and praise, trying to help her strengthen her emotional boundaries so that when a friend crossed a line, she could protect herself accordingly. I started to feel good about myself as a parent, for the first time.
I was making less progress with Alex. True, he’d let me introduce him to martial arts, and I think he surprised himself with his own strength, agility and fighting spirit. He discovered he could be tough, and asked me to help him get started weightlifting, too. I was relieved that the bullying seemed to have stopped, and he had a group of friends, even a girlfriend. But at home, and especially with me, he’d become withdrawn and angry—why, I didn’t know. I couldn’t get him talking, either. Most of the time he was home, he was in his room, on his computer.
Thinking a father-son trip might be a bonding experience, I took Alex to Japan. He had a passion for Japanese culture, so I figured this was a chance for him to take the lead. I hoped he’d let me in a little, let me see what was going on in his head. It didn’t happen. He remained a puzzle, full of contradictions: at home, he’d immersed himself in all things Japanese but in Japan he insisted on eating at Wendy’s. Normally wilful and stubborn, there he seemed tentative, melancholy. We were sharing tiny hotel rooms, yet instead of familiarity this seemed to breed formality, on Alex’s part. Had I become the stranger in my son’s life that my own father had been in mine?
I remember thinking, on that trip, “Maybe it’s just too late.” Maybe the gap between us had widened to the point where it was no longer possible to close. But I wasn’t going to stop trying.
Thanksgiving, 2004. Alex walked into the kitchen, shoulders slouched, refusing to look at me. Cathy, Erica and I were babbling away, but he sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter and said nothing. He didn’t seem to be listening. But he didn’t vanish to his room, either, as had become his habit.
By that point I’d learned that asking teenagers “What’s wrong?” doesn’t get you anywhere. They’re tough interview subjects. You need to draw them out. So I asked Alex what book was he reading for English, that sort of thing—but he responded with halting monosyllables. Well, at least they weren’t sullen, angry monosyllables. I decided not to push.
When we sat down at the table, Alex finally said, “If you have the time, I’d like to have a family meeting after dinner.” Asking for a family meeting was basically code to brace for impending trauma. It was never “Good news everyone, I won the lottery!” It was “We’re moving again” or “Mom is sick.” And Cathy and I had always been the ones to call these meetings. Alex was clearly nervous. His hands were trembling slightly, and he still wouldn’t look me in the eye. Was it drugs? Bullies? Oh God. Was his girlfriend pregnant? As conversation limped around the unnamed elephant on the table, I tried to calculate the correct response to each crisis. I wanted to get out in front of this thing, whatever it was.
Finally dinner was over and we moved to the TV room, where Erica sat down on the couch beside Alex, and Cathy took the seat facing them. The kids seemed to be a team, but Erica’s demeanour was completely different than her brother’s: calm, lighthearted, even. Strange. In what I hoped was my best, soothing interviewer voice, I asked, “Alex, what would you like to talk about?”
The emotional weather in the room changed immediately. Alex hugged his knees to his chest, and suddenly he was crying. A few moments of fraught silence passed. I needed to know what was going on. Now. Alex seemed to be holding himself so tightly because he was afraid of blowing apart; I thought the threat must be inside him, not something that was being done to him.
Could he be gay?
Why did I think that? Well, I’d wondered, off and on, for some time. Not because of the way Alex looked or acted, but because he had always set himself apart and had difficulty getting along with boys. When we were still living in Summit and he was being bullied, Cathy and I had taken him to a psychologist, hoping that therapy might help him cope. At one point the therapist spoke to us privately about the challenges facing a sensitive boy in our culture, and I remember saying, “Maybe Alex will grow up and be gay.” I’m not sure I would have floated the idea if I hadn’t thought the therapist himself was gay. He asked how I’d feel about that, and I said, “I’d just hope Alex would be all right and safe.” During the intervening years the thought had returned to me occasionally, most recently in Japan. One day, I’d suggested he go wander around by himself for a bit. As he ambled off, I noticed how thrilled Japanese girls were when this blond boy walked past—and noticed also that he seemed to be entirely unaware of their interest. Sure, he had a girlfriend, but … Was he gay? It wasn’t a raging debate in my head. It was just a question mark. I’d been certain of only one thing: I sure as hell shouldn’t come right out and ask. If I was wrong, how could our relationship ever come back from that?
But now, seeing my son curled up in a fetal position, weeping, I wanted to ease his burden. If he only had to say one word, “yes,” maybe it would help him start talking. I remember thinking to myself, “You’d better be right,” and then I asked.
“Alex, does it have something to do with your sexuality?”
A wail came from deep inside him, a primal and barely human sound I’d heard only once before, in a refugee camp in Kosovo. You’d hear it late at night, this wave of sorrow and loss passing from one tent to the next.
Hearing that same sound coming from my child was terrible, and I lunged towards him, hugging him tighter than I ever had. He tried to break loose, furious, but I wouldn’t let go. I thought that if he didn’t feel my love and support now, in the most vulnerable moment of his life, he might doubt me forever.
And there was something else: I needed to hold on to him for my own reasons, to express the intense rush of relief I was experiencing. I’d been imagining he was going to tell us something catastrophic. But being gay? That was no big deal. We could all cope with that, no problem. I told Alex how much I loved him, how proud I was of him, how I would never let him go. He struggled a little longer, then gave up. I couldn’t tell if he’d just resigned himself to being hugged, but it seemed like a good sign, a sign that we were starting a new chapter. He was going to let me in.
The next day we had a session with a professional photographer, scheduled months earlier; we wanted to give my parents and Cathy’s father a family portrait as a Christmas gift. In the morning, Cathy, Alex and Erica wanted to cancel, but I insisted we go. If we didn’t, I thought, Alex might view it as evidence that we no longer wanted him in the picture. Literally. But all of us were a little raw and uncertain. We got through the session, half-heartedly, and one of the photos still hangs on the wall at our cottage, a reminder of that strained moment in the life of our family. Erica, Cathy and I are laughing, apparently genuinely, while Alex is off to one side, half-smiling and separate, his left arm barely resting on my shoulder. You can tell he’s trying, but a fault line has opened between us.
I’d expected that once relieved of the burden of his secret, Alex would feel liberated. Euphoric, even. Instead, he was dark, guarded, distant—but only with me. I couldn’t figure it out. I’d told him I loved him and accepted him, yet he seemed angry at me. There was a new dynamic in our relationship: I was under surveillance. Alex was constantly studying me, waiting for me to say or do the wrong thing. Every word I spoke, every gesture I made, felt self-conscious. Our conversations were stilted, carefully focused on mundane details. For the first time, I didn’t feel like myself around my son.
Cathy wasn’t having the same difficulty, although she’d been the most surprised of all of us by Alex’s announcement. Interestingly, given how close they were, she’d had no idea he was gay, though once, after our Japan trip, I’d raised the topic. Erica, it turned out, had already known; Alex had confided in her a few days before Thanksgiving. The three of them seemed to segue effortlessly to the new normal. The night Alex came out, they were already joking and laughing about Cathy’s initial confusion. She has difficulty hearing in one ear, and when I’d grabbed Alex and held him tight, Cathy had asked, alarmed, “What’s going on? What did he say?” Whereupon Erica had leaned forward and bellowed at the top of her lungs, “He said he’s GAY!” Even Alex, whose eyes were still red from crying, smiled.
Subsequently, though Cathy wasn’t walking on eggshells with Alex the way I was, she was, like me, worrying about him. Depression, isolation, harassment, discrimination, AIDS, sexual exploitation, physical danger—we’d never been concerned about any of these things when we’d assumed Alex was straight. Now we wanted to protect him, but weren’t sure how. We didn’t know any families with openly gay kids, and we could count the number of close, openly gay friends we had on one hand. One finger, actually: a journalist we’d been friends with since the 1980s. We really didn’t know a thing about how to parent a gay child.
But if Alex didn’t have a way to meet other gay kids, we thought he might wind up connecting with guys he met online, and I suspected they’d be older, even predatory. The anonymity of the internet scared the hell out of me. Alex was naive, still a child, really. I could too easily imagine him being victimized. I didn’t know his mind, but knowing he was angry, I could also imagine him taking it out on himself. Taking risks. Getting hurt. Hurting himself.
Cathy found Gab Youth, a gay youth group in Vancouver where he could socialize without fear, and lined up a therapist who specialized in talking to gay kids. Meanwhile, I was online, checking out sites for gay kids. A theme, on all of them, was how intolerant and rejecting fathers are. There were posts from kids who’d been kicked out of their houses by their dads, disowned, to all intents and purposes, because they were gay. I knew if I didn’t acclimate quickly, it could be the undoing of my relationship with Alex. It could also be the undoing of Alex. The online research I was doing indicated that gay kids are far more likely to attempt and to commit suicide than straight kids are.
I wanted to show my son nothing but acceptance and support. I knew that sexuality is genetically determined; I also knew in my heart that homosexuality was not a defect or disease but an orientation, in the same way that being left-handed is an orientation. It was perfectly clear to me that being gay wasn’t a choice Alex had made. He was suffering, and his distress upset me deeply, not least because it was obvious that it wasn’t caused by his attraction to men, but by the stigma attached to that attraction. It was completely unacceptable to me that my child was experiencing anguish about an aspect of himself that he had no control over, any more than he had control over the colour of his skin.
I experienced anguish, too. He had the same right to happiness that my daughter did, but it seemed to me that life for a gay man would be more difficult and also potentially more dangerous. I feared for Alex’s health, his safety, his future happiness. I feared for myself, too; maybe he’d turn toward men who could understand and empathize with him in ways I never could, and I’d lose him altogether. What could I offer him that he couldn’t get elsewhere, with less awkwardness? I was afraid he’d replace me.
I was going to do everything in my power to stop that from happening. I’d encourage him to be true to himself and live by his own principles, even if I didn’t understand them. I wanted him to feel as unstoppable as any other seventeen-year-old, and on some level I knew that my acceptance and support meant more to him at this point than any other man’s could, no matter what Alex was saying. Or not saying.
Finally, late one night, when Alex was settling into sleep, I knocked on his bedroom door. This is how I remember our conversation.
“Alex, we’re drifting apart and I need it to stop. We haven’t really connected since you came out. Can I say a few things?”
“Sure.” Warily, braced for idiocy.
“I have a lot to learn and I hope you’ll teach me. But I still have a lot to teach you, too. You may not think so, but I can be a resource to you.”
“How?” Skeptically, now certain idiocy is imminent.
“Well, in relationships, for example. I love your mom and I’ve grown up with women. But I would never pretend to understand them fully. But guys? I get guys. I can help you there.”
He laughed. I exhaled.
It was the beginning of us figuring out a role for me in Alex’s new life as a gay man. Yet as weeks turned into months, Alex constantly tested me. Could he shock me? Drive me away? At the time, I felt anger must be motivating these tests, but now, I think Alex was actually looking for guidance. He wanted me to help him accept himself.
I’ll never forget coming home with Cathy after a dinner out early in 2005. Surprise: Alex was already home, with a boyfriend. I’d known he was seeing someone, his first real relationship, but I hadn’t expected to meet the young man so quickly and I was caught off guard. Cathy and I walked through the door and there were Alex and Jack, their arms twined round one another. It was different than any bro-to-bro hug I’d seen. Lingering, sensual, determined. Both of them had big grins on their faces but Alex’s eyes were trained on me, coolly scanning for any twinge of discomfort. I remember coaching myself to smile broadly, and I mumbled something encouraging like, “You guys look cute together!” And then, before we had a chance to take our coats off, Alex kissed Jack, beard on beard. Also lingering, sensual, determined.
Okay then.
Smiling robotically, I headed for the kitchen. Alex and Jack followed, and sat at the counter. I asked Jack a few questions about his schooling and family, and he answered confidently and politely, but I was distracted by my own stream of consciousness: “This is what a dad’s supposed to do: size the guy up, ensure he’s not an asshole. Right?” My head was spinning. Just months before, Alex’s girlfriend had been sitting at our kitchen counter.
Alex had had time to get used to the knowledge that he was gay. I had not, but no extensions would be granted. What soon became clear to me was that I was just fine with homosexuality—as long as it wasn’t in my face. I’d never felt comfortable watching two guys kiss on a movie screen, much less in my own living room.
But our home had to be a safe place for Alex, who faced dangers that even his younger sister didn’t. The mere sight of two boys together can provoke gay-bashers. For Alex, who was still not entirely out at school, there was also the risk of being outed on social media. There were very few places where he could act like a normal, hormonal teenager. Cathy and I decided he had to be able to do that at home where at least we’d know he was safe. That was worth occasionally having to lie in bed trying to forget what was under way downstairs—whether it was Alex or, later, Erica. It doesn’t matter if they’re gay or straight. You don’t want to think too much about your kids having sex, period.
Bringing Jack home seemed like a breakthrough. Alex was in love, and wanted to share that with us. Even with me. He was a different person than he had been six months earlier. And so was I, at least in relation to him. The more assured he became, the more tentative I was as a father. The power balance between us, always heavily weighted toward my end, had shifted. I tried to focus on the positive: Alex wouldn’t test me if he didn’t care what I thought. He still wanted to be connected, but he was, like any man, trying to define the terms of engagement.
After a week-long family vacation in Mexico where Alex missed his boyfriend more than he enjoyed his time away, we were greeted at the airport arrivals level by Jack himself. We piled into an airport limo and headed home, with the boys across from me, Cathy and Erica. Kissing passionately. Non-stop. We had nowhere else to look except the rearview mirror, where the driver was shooting us disbelieving, disgusted glances. I wanted to tell the boys to cut it out, just as I would have told Erica and a boyfriend who’d put on such a display, but I was afraid Alex would interpret this as a rejection of same-sex kissing, not simply kissing. So I said nothing. I’d gone from being the disciplinarian in the family to the dad who couldn’t say no.
Not long afterwards, this relationship crashed and burned, and Jack showed up at our door, threatening to jump off a bridge if Alex wouldn’t take him back. I wound up driving him home, reminding him of all he had to live for, while Alex hid in his room and Cathy got on the phone to Jack’s mother, to tell her what was going on. “See?” I wanted to say to Alex. “You still need my protection.”
Shortly thereafter, he embarked on another serious relationship, with a guy who was a few years older. Ken had experienced far more rejection than Alex, and he was angry about it. He was a provocateur, and Alex was very taken with him. Alex was sweet and caring, but impressionable; the more time he spent with Ken, the angrier and edgier he became. To me Ken seemed like Rasputin, the Russian peasant who held a mystical sway over Tsarina Alexandra. I didn’t like the guy, and it was clear the feeling was mutual. I was better at concealing it, though. Game face.
The summer after Alex’s senior year, Ken came from Vancouver to spend a week with us at the cottage. One hot, hazy Saturday, he and Alex swam out to the raft that floats in front of our cottage, pulled themselves out of the water and proceeded to make out. Theatrically, with much pelvis-grinding on Ken’s part. I knew my son: this performance was not his idea. The raft was crawling with dock spiders. He hadn’t swum out there in years.
Cathy and I could see everything clearly from our kitchen, which meant that everyone else in the dozen or so other cottages ringing the bay could also see everything clearly. Before that moment, no one outside our immediate family had known Alex was gay. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to my father yet, and in fact had been putting it off. My dad had become a churchgoer and Lorraine, his second wife, was a devout Catholic. I wasn’t certain they’d be accepting, but now, I felt I had to tell them. Immediately. Their cottage is just a few bays over from ours, and they were friends with our closest neighbours. I didn’t want them to hear through the grapevine that Alex had a boyfriend. I felt I owed it to them to tell them, but even more, I owed it to Alex. I wanted to shield him from the hurt of their disapproval and possibly even rejection. I hoped that with some time, they’d come around and see that Alex was still the grandson they’d always known and loved.
I ran down to the boat, Cathy close behind. In my view we were on deadline: any minute now, our neighbours might pick up the phone and call my dad. Cathy didn’t feel the same sense of urgency, but she’s always a good companion in a crisis, taking some of the edge off my anxiety and my need to start a conversation too directly, with the headline. We untied our powerboat from the dock cleats, trolled past Alex and Ken on the raft—it was intermission, apparently; they weren’t even holding hands—and then I opened the throttle and tore across the lake, full speed, to my dad’s place.
An unannounced visit was unusual, but my dad and Lorraine took it in stride, offering us a drink before we settled into the Adirondack chairs circling his firepit. After a few minutes of small talk, I got to the point: “We have something to tell you about Alex. A few months ago he told us he was gay.”
They blinked and didn’t say anything for what felt like a minute. Then it was, “Is he sure? How does he know?” I gave what became my stock answer: “Oh, he’s sure. He knows he likes boys, not girls.” I realized, as I said those words, that I’d turned a corner. I no longer cared about my dad’s approval. If he chose to judge me for having raised a gay son, it wouldn’t bother me. And if he chose not to accept Alex, our relationship would be over.
I felt something I’d never felt before with my dad: strong. Sure of myself. In that moment I realized, in a visceral way, how hard it must have been for Alex to tell me he was gay. Ever since he had, I’d been thinking of all the ways he might be victimized, and how much more difficult his life would be from now on, but he’d already proved his courage in a way I couldn’t imagine doing at seventeen. Only in my forties did I know myself well enough to insist on living by my own policies. Alex was already well on his way to being his own man. I wanted to help him get there, to be the father he deserved.
As it happened, my father and Lorraine surprised me. They never stopped loving Alex, and however much they may have wrestled privately, they’ve only ever shown him acceptance. I’m proud of my dad for that, and that day, I was grateful for his calm, measured reaction.
But there was only one man’s approval I really cared about anymore: my son’s.