Eerie Silence

It’s been very quiet around the house lately… too quiet. The calm before the storm?

It’s an uncomfortable quiet, thick with tension. My parents aren’t saying much and neither am I. It’s just strange. Something’s going on here… I just can’t figure it out.

In other news, my dad is convinced my brother is gay. I wanted to tell him he’s got the wrong son! Well, I guess… I’ve had my suspicions about my brother. Double whammy for my parents if we’re both gay!

By the way, did anybody see the gay twins on Tyra last night? Hot! I was just about to turn the TV off and go to bed when her show came on. The show was about coming out in case you didn’t see it. I watched the part about the twins which included showing them coming out to their parents. It seemed too easy, but there were cameras there at the time. That can change everything. It was a really short part – I was a little disappointed – and I stopped watching after that.

Getting back to my brother, it all started when he went out this past weekend for a night on the town with one of the guys he’s now working with. Not a big deal, right? Well, not to my dad!

After being proved wrong that my brother would come home drunk and/or stoned, I guess my dad had to resort to accusing my brother of being gay. Of course, what should we expect from him? He’s always been so negative about everything. If I’m ever in a good mood, it’s best to avoid my dad as much as possible. It’s almost like he wants us to be a failure. He even told me flat out to my face in high school that when I go to college I’ll get into drugs, sex, and alcohol and eventually just drop out. I almost want to do that just to spite him, but that would only prove him right…

And I don’t know where all that comes from. Neither my brother or me have ever been in any kind of serious trouble. My parents have had it easy with us! Maybe my dad thinks we’ve been too good. Of course, I’ve always been the more troublesome of their two children. I talked back. I was a real bitch at times. I lied all the time. I used to steal some of my brothers things. I ran through the house and knocked things over. And I got whoopins almost everyday of the week when I was little too!

Anyway since my brother’s night out and me filling him in on some of what my dad had said while he was gone, me and him have had a running joke about him getting drunk. Monday evening, my mom, my brother and me all happened to be home at the same time. I joked about my brother getting drunk, and then my mom dropped the ball. She told my brother about my dad thinking he was gay (I wasn’t about to tell him). It was weird. While she talked about what my dad had said, she used the word “gay.” When she asked my brother if he was gay, she used the word “queer” and said it in a condescending way. What the fuck?

I don’t like that word, queer. I never have. It has too many negative connotations for me to be comfortable with it, especially with the way my mom said it. I think I would rather be called a fag than a queer.

He denied it. But so have I. In fact, I think I’m long overdue for the question. It’s been a few years. They’re slacking! My brother, like I always did, seemed very uncomfortable and quickly changed the subject. Like usual, I suddenly fell out of the conversation when the topic arose. After having previously added a comment to everything each of them had said, I wonder if she noticed my silence. The entire conversation ended shortly after as both my brother and I walked away almost at the same time. For us to be so different, we seem to have so many things in common… maybe even some things in common that we just won’t admit.

My mom has always said she wished she could have had a girl. Would two queens be sufficient?