On Thanksgiving that year, the three boys invited me to be their guest at several local Thanksgiving celebrations. It was the first time I opted out of my families’ invitations back to Boston, St. Louis, or Chicago, and it may have been the first time my families realized that they had finally lost me to the Queerside. The invitation was to drive to Modesto to be with Tomas’ extended Mexican family, and then head back to the city to have our second Thanksgiving with Ricki, their friend and owner of Blondie’s Bar & No Grill in the gritty Mission neighborhood, which was the straight equivalent to a Café in Manhattan where I had my first lesbian butt grab.
My parents had raised me well and taught me to bring something when I was invited to someone’s home, so I went to my favorite wine shop the day before and took the salesman’s recommendation for a sixty-dollar bottle of David Bruce Pinot Noir. When we arrived at Tomas’ family home, I was greeted in Spanish and smiles, and a long table to seat an army. Tomas’ family were farmers, and while they didn’t partake in my uppity wine from the city, what I appreciated most about them was how they welcomed their son’s sexuality and Michael (who was Tomas’ boyfriend) with open arms, especially since culturally, this was still taboo in their home country.
On the drive back up to the city, I marveled at how my unusual holiday had already panned out. Smushed in the backseat between Tomas and his high school friend (who had recently come out), I thought about the comparability of what was happening at my own families’ Thanksgivings: silver place settings placed at Queen Anne chairs; blue-eyed, blonde-haired nieces and nephews that would be crawling or newly-walking; the crystal bowl of real cranberries; and how Dad, dressed in his four-color cords, would be handing my sisters a taste of the crispy turkey skin right about now. Then dinner would be followed by political conversations separating the elder Republicans from the younger Liberals, while my stepmother would infiltrate the debate by offering more coffee from my grandmother’s silver set at the head of the table.
