The Tribe

I am gay and adopted. I have always found it easier to tell people that I am gay rather than I am adopted. I am gay is straight forward. I love women. But when i tell people that I am adopted, I see it in their eyes. I see them trying to figure out why my mom gave me away. I never think about it. All I can say is I am fucking awesome and it is her loss.

And then there are the kids. Of course my mother didn't stop at me. There are 7 of us that I am aware of. That is 6 new people I have to come out to. 6 new people I am afraid to meet. I am very self aware. I am not just smart. I am smarter than the average person. Why? I'm adopted. I have been fighting against my genetics my whole life. I have OCD. I follow the rules. I break no laws . . .I am not the one seeking out a litter of adopted kids or foster kids fucked up by the system. I don't know how to relate to them. When I met my older brother with his prison slouch and in-articulation, I just looked at him and looked at him and saw myself in his face and then lost it. It is like everything that i worked for is face to face with me and I refuse to admit it. Am I that? Am I him? I'm not. Then he sends the little ones my way. They are younger. I see what young fucked up kids are like everyday at work. Am I them? Are they me? So one by one, they trickle into my life and I have to say "I am gay". Because I am 36.  Because I am proud of who I am. Because I love me. Because I know I was never anything but this nerd, but this loner, but this gay athlete, competitive, driven, introspective, intelligent . . .I can go on. Because I am way past begging for acceptance or forgiveness for my own adoption . . .I say I am gay. I say I am proud and I ask "Now what of it?" And I wait. I wait til these new young doppelgangers fuck up. They do. I wait cause despite our genetics, they know nothing of me. Except that I am gay. 

They say it. Those that remember her say it. That I look like our mother. They are a lil afraid of me as I am of them. And I wait until they say something beyond repair. So the one most like me. Sarcastic. Loner. Funny. Says some off handed shit like "oh I tolerate my gay manager." I ask "tolerate? So you tolerate me?" His response, little me. I am literally looking at a younger version of myself. We all look exactly like our mother. Every fucking one. So I look at him and wait til he tells me how he is tolerating me. He says "I'm not judging you" I respond " you aren't in a position to judge me" He says he tolerates the gays you know as long as his kid is a gay girl but if his son was transgender, he would give him, or more aptly her, up for adoption. So I ask, sitting next to one brother I met two weeks ago and one brother I met two hours ago and I ask "are you fucking serious? You think foster care and adoption is a way station for kids you don't consider perfect like you are?" They agreed.

I come out and I wait. I wait for me to catch my breath. I wait to tell these kids they no longer need to tolerate me. I hate my birth mother. I hate her for fucking up these kids. I hate her for being everything that I despise. Her irresponsibility forces me to look in the faces of young kids so ignorant that they can live in a shelter and still judge others. I hate that these kids feel there is a reason to throw a child away. I hate that I came out and waited and has probably decided to cut my losses and forget the Tribe.

The Quickest Courtship Ever

I have always believed in Chosen Family. For me, and a lot of people like me, it was best to choose which people I allowed in my life. I didn't get along with my mom and she died when I was 23. I vowed then that I would be cautious as to who I allowed into my inner circle. It has worked out pretty well so far. I know and love a merry band of misfits and we do not judge one another. We call ourselves the Strays and support each other in the best ways we can. We are all different. We are all a mess. We all love each other without fail. 

I was recently reminded of the last time I told a friend about the Chosen Family choice:

My neighbor growing up in Queens now lives in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. One day, I was walking by and saw her talking to a dude on the corner. I basically grew up with this chick, we went to the same schools, she was raised with an adoptive brother right next door. I was concerned, seeing her with this dude.  I am always in mom mode. I announce it and never apologize for it. It is what it is. I called her over to me and asked her if she was ok. She said yes and explained that the dude is her biological father. She found him. Or he found her. Either way, I left her with one piece of advice. I said "I want you to remember, you are an adult now. You are choosing people and situations in your life. Be ready for them and be careful. At any time, you can say no and call me if you need to." She never called and I assumed everything was fine until she ran into me some time later and told me that dude was rearrested. Oh, I forgot to mention, he was in prison her whole life. She said she soured of the fatherly bond when he began to dangle the "I know where your birth mom is" carrot. She explained to me she didn't actually want to meet her Mother. Even so, I know it affected her. Most adopted kids would be affected. I am not most. She also explained Dad was making up for lost time by sending her a shopping list of all of the things he insisted she buy him so he could be comfortable in prison. She had had it. I was reminded of this story when recent events with Michael made me think "Why am I letting this happen to me?"

A lil about me. I don't do stress. I don't stress about money or work like normal people stress. I have a coworker who stresses about money every minute of the day. That is no way to live. If I get pissed, I devise a solution to alleviate my pissed-off-ness and I'm over it. I'm easy breezy. I like to read. I like independent films. I enjoy my solitude way more than would be considered healthy. I have patience for old people and children and absolutely no patience for stupidity. This, you all know as the reader. This, Michael refused to learn. My temperament  . . So when Michael used my gov'ment name as his alias, I needed time to think. His use of my name doesn't just affect me. It affects my brother, my sister and nephew who are all legal possessors of this name. Not Michael. His complete lack of responsibility in this situation was jarring. When I called him on his shit his response was "you are my sister." I tried to emphasize that his choice of "petty" crimes [his words] will probably result in my getting fired from my State job. He insisted what he did was not illegal and he had to use an alias. I was done. While I was trying to have this serious conversation with him about how utterly fucking violated I felt, he interrupted twice to hit on some young ladies who were passing by him on the street. Fuck. That. Shit. I hung up. I thought about what he just said. He told me in a span of two minutes 1. It's only petty crimes. 2. In reference to using my legal name and address he said "he had to" "he didn't" "oh yeah" and that I'm pressuring him too much. 3. He also said I don't give him credit for not committing felonies and/or being arrested already. He has been out a month.

After this exchange, Michael proceeded to leave me very curious voice mail messages. I'm choosing this? To have this clown in my life who is jeopardizing my job on a daily basis? Who has no fucking care in his body about how he is violating my hospitality, and MY NAME AND ADDRESS! Yeah, that's done. I thought about this long and hard and realized for the last 12 years of my life I chose not to have crazy in my life and in my fruitless efforts to get to know this dude, not only is this crazy, it is dangerous. I told him to come get his shit one day when he called me, quite unapologetically, asking to come over. He made excuses about needing to make two trips. I said absolutely not, thinking back to the voice mail he left which basically said I should praise him for not taking some criminal up on his offer to make $3,000/ day to do god knows what.  He came. He said his shoulder hurt. I told him "I am telling you my feelings [when I spoke to him previously he said I only care about my feelings pertaining to my anger with him using my name. My feelings?] You cannot come here anymore. If I see mail with my name in my box for you, I will burn it. You using my mailbox is not good for me. You coming here is not good for me. When you get your shit together, call me. We can have lunch, but you cannot come here anymore."

So that's how I broke up with my brother. I imagine it was somewhat like having a date from Craigslist. You have no idea what you are getting and it’s not at all what you bargained for. He stalled; he made excuses; he needed to make a second trip. He left a fucking bag full of utter garbage in my house that I just threw away. I could have many emotions at this point, but I don’t. It is not my way anyway. I walked him out. I walked him to the corner. He said "is that all you have to say to me?"  Not an ‘I'm sorry’ in sight. I said “yeah, what do you want me to say?” I knew at that point I was validated in what I needed to do. This dude has been in my life a month. A month where I was paranoid about everything he could think of in his criminal mind to jeopardize my career. It was a month not of my choosing. I reaffirmed to myself that my philosophy is ‘I choose who to allow into my life.’ I would never choose the utter chaos this stranger brought me in the span of 30 days. My actual brother called me and I told him what happened and he said it was all my fault. I knew it was because I chose it.

Who Is This Guy?

REAL TALK: I wish this was funny

My brother has been out of prison for four weeks. His freedom has created interestingly frustrating challenges for me. There are obvious major differences in us. I'm smart enough to adjust. Unfortunately, he is not. Here's a little background which I believe is the root of the problem.

Y'A
I grew up in a quiet neighborhood in Queens the youngest of three adopted kids. I wouldn't say my mother was strict. I would say my mother was insane. She had rules for everything. When you eat; how you dress; when you can use the phone, etc. I swear that woman must have had OCD. While talking to my sibs as adults, I realize we all have OCD. Thanks mom. I was a very good student. I graduated college. I have a career. . . By no stretch of the imagination did my Mom and I get along. She died when I was 23. As I get older, I do realize that I miss subtle things about her. My mom let me be weird. She let my OCD grow to its full bloom. She let me dress the way I wanted to dress when I was a kid. I appreciate that now that I'm a thoroughly weird adult. As a kid, I viewed my mom's sensibilities as psychotic, but now as an adult, I'm slowly beginning to realize I'm turning into my mother. This is probably because I feel like I am raising my 37 year old brother. While in my house I told him to pull his pants up. I said you can't coming here looking like that and I had to repeatedly tell him to cover his mouth while he coughed. That does not bode well for Michael. My mom would have giving this guy the boot three weeks ago.

Michael
 . . . . . . .
Yup. That's it. I know as much about him now as I did four weeks ago. As much as I pepper this dude with questions, all of his stories are shifty. He never looks me in the eye and I told him he is the worst liar I have ever met. I told him we are supposed to be getting to know each other. I know HOW he is. I don't know WHO he is. Upon meeting me, it should take you about twenty minutes to realize that I will probably never get a drug reference and I don't speak slang. At all. I don't even understand slang. This means I understand about 30% of what Michael says. Every time I see him [which at this point is too many times], he talks about weed like I know what he is talking about. Michael's best friend is named "They". "They" and weed come up a lot. For example: I asked Michael about his Parole Officer. He said [I couldn't repeat it if I fucking tried cause I had to ask him several times to  repeat himself] "They" told him she is the best Parole Officer and she won't turn you in if you have a dirty piss test. I swear to fucking God he said this. I basically told him "They" will get his ass back in prison. He also told me about his friend from prison who is now "Pimpin' Hoes". His friend asked Michael if he wanted to be in on the action. Michael apparently being a feminist, declined because he "can't believe these women do not have self respect and that's not the kind of crime I want to commit". So I asked "What kind of crimes do you want to commit Michael?" Stammer, Stammer, Stammer. I asked him how often he thinks about smoking weed since I know more about that than I do about him. I told him he needs to stop listening to "They", don't pimp hoes, and maybe he needs a meeting about his desire to smoke a blunt. He said he only thinks about it once a week. Right.

My main problem with him is he has no concept of boundaries. He asked me to put his name on my mailbox and I refused. At this point, a whole bunch of shit started coming to my house with his name on it. He was pissed I wouldn't put his name on the box, but I don't care. I never gave it another thought. That is until I came home yesterday. I opened my mailbox and in there is a letter addressed to someone named Mark MY LAST NAME/Michael HIS FUCKING ALIAS. Michael 1-Y'A 0. I flipped my lid. This guy had his friend send mail to my house using a fake name that included my actual legal surname. This is just the tip of the iceberg of all of the things he has done that will eventually cause an aneurysm. If I met this guy under different circumstances, I would never speak to him again. The problem is I don't want to speak to him again. He seems to not give two shits about what my job is for him to do all of these things including using my name. He disrespects my hospitality and I'm running out of patience. The reality is, Michael has been looking for me since he was 5 years old. He made a promise to our birth mother that he would find me. He found me. Meanwhile, there is a huge divide. I am not 3. I am a responsible nerd that basically grew up in the suburbs and I don't understand how this man can roam the streets all day begging to get into trouble. You would think he would at least pretend otherwise in front of me. But like I said, he is a terrible liar. His "tell" is consciousness. If he is awake, he is lying. It is no wonder that he spent most of his adult life in prison. I have to figure out something fast or this will be a short reunion.

Getting To Know You

So my brother Michael came home from prison last week. We are in the Getting To Know You phase in our relationship since we basically just met. This has been more difficult than I imagined. Firstly, his release was a surprise. I mean I knew he was being released, but coming home to find his shit in front of my front door was not how I expected to find out. His stuff in my house is making my ocd go haywire. I had to usher him out of my house this morning just so i could clean around his stuff. I'm becoming rather anxious. In addition, I wanted to tell my sibs that Michael was in my life. After repeated attempts, it is clear my brother is avoiding me for some reason and I haven't spoken to my sister yet. So I go it alone. Michael and I look so much alike, but the similarities end there. Here are a few golden nuggets just from 7 days of him being in my life.

Golden Nugget #1 
I work in law enforcement.  
Michael: what's your job like?
Me: what does that mean? Michael what Is my job?
Michael: I know what you are, but what is your job?                                  
Me: Michael you have been to court before you know what my job is.
Michael : . . . Wow dig.

Golden Nugget #2
Choking on his laughter he tells me the most brutally inappropriate stories about illegal activity you can imagine. Considering my job and temperment, none of this shit is amusing. He said his uncle let him hold a gun at 14. I asked if he fired it and he said not yet.
Me: yet?
Michael: maybe one day I can get a license and go target shooting.
Me: Michael with your long list of felonies, I don't think your right to bear arms will ever be restored. 
         
Golden Nugget #3
I took him to the movies. The girl taking tickets was cute from what I saw from behind. And young very very young. Michael set his eyes on her. Despite my plea that the girl was maybe 22, when we sat down he asked for my pen so he can get her #. When the movie was over, I see the girl working and I said there she goes ask her for her #. I'll be outside. He comes out after a few minutes. 
Me: Did you get her #?
Michael: no I gave her yours. 
Me:WHY IN THE HELL WOULD YOU GIVE HER MY #?
Michael: what # was I supposed to give her?
Me: you were supposed to get her #
Michael: are you mad?
Me: it doesn't matter.

Golden Nugget #4
I'm a flirt. I harmlessly flirt with old people of both genders, young people, gay boys. . . Oh do I love my gay boys. Anyone I speak to, I will flirt with them.
This tiny itty bitty twink is standing behind me on the subway platform trying to see what train it is. He was so cute and tiny, I could fit him in my pocket. I told him what train it was. He asked me for directions and I flirtatiously gave it to him and I watched him nervously get on the train

And I smiled at him as he sat down. He smiled back. Enter Michael. 
Michael: you want his #?
Me: (jokingly) I would love it.
Michael attempts to storm the train and demand this lil ass gay boy give me his #. I grabbed his arm before he made it to the door.
Me: what the fuck are you doing? 
Michael: I'm getting his #. He's smiling at you and you are smiling at him so . . .
Me: Michael he's gay I don't want his #.
Michael: he might go both ways and he was smiling at you. I know how men think.
Me: Michael it's called being nice. I don't want to fucking date him. I don't need your help to get numbers. 
And then he pouted for a full ten minutes. It's like Tarzan and Jane with him. This road to getting to know him sure is bumpy. Sigh!

Shame on Me

Like most idiots, I met the love of my life when I was 18. Michelle. I was raw with her. Naked. Vulnerable. After seemingly gaining her trust, or more like her gaining mine, I told her all of the things I was most afraid of. I told her everything about me that I feared would be used to judge me. She cut a lock of my hair and kept my only baby picture in her room above her bed. For the next ten years, she held all of my secrets, my fears and my weaknesses in the palm of her hand and used them against me at every turn. She took my heart and shoved it into a meat grinder. I vowed to never do that again. 

As I grew older and wiser, I established my friends as family. I knew I would never open up to anyone the way I had with Michelle. I learned my lesson. So when I met Nigel 6 years ago, he was actually refreshing. We were friends. We were good for each other. He called me the sister he never had. We were wrapped in each other's lives. I thought I could trust him. He told me things and I told him things. He saw me at my weakest and helped me get through. I was grateful for him. When I told him about my brother, he was more than supportive. He took the lead, insisting that I meet Michael. Family was important he said. OK Nigel.

So imagine my shock when I finally discovered that after 6 years of friendship, I was Catfished by Nigel. While I was being a big raw, open and honest vagina, Nigel was making up his story as we went along. His prolonged disappearances, and his over extension of himself towards his nieces and nephews, which I heralded him as the world's best uncle, was actually a man so ashamed he had ten children that he couldn't tell one his better friends of 6 years. He was so ashamed, he transferred that emotion onto me in an email stating that he lied to me for 6 years because he feared judgment. He feared I would look down upon him for the kids. In actuality, Nigel knows me better than most. That is to say he knows I am a kind, loving, smart, nonjudgmental person whom loves children so much I didn't go to law school in order to raise my nephew on my own. He knows that me. The only me. I, on the other hand, no longer know Nigel. 

I pretty much blamed Michelle for shoving my heart into a meat grinder. I was dumb. I was 18, then 19, then 20 And so on. I should have been more guarded. That was a mistake on my part and I vowed to never let that happen again. When I met Nigel, I wasn't literally naked with him, but figuratively I was. I blame myself for that faux pas. I brought down my guard and let someone in whom I thought was doing the same. Shame on me.

I'm Coming Out

My brother somehow scraped together $8 in prison to send AND insure a package for me. In the package was a plethora of cassette tapes. It is a wonderful gesture that is completely lost on me. I do not have the means of actually listening to them and from what I can see, it’s all rap music. I hate rap music, but he wouldn’t know that considering we only just met about 3 years ago.  He’s 37, I think, and I am 35.  I am not ashamed to say I do not know how to react to him or act around him, although I probably should be.  I know, even though he has not said it, that I really do not live up to his dreams of the sister he was looking for.  I’m trying . . . just not hard enough.

I’m coming out. I have never told anyone this. That’s a lie.  So far I have told 6 people and it only matters to one, Nigel. He is the reason I actually met my brother in the first place. It really matters to Nigel.  It creates a lot of pressure in an already awkward situation. I knew I was adopted at either 2 months old or 2 years old without anyone ever telling me. Whether you believe it or not, I remember every important event in my life from the age of 2 on. This is confirmed. I actually would lean towards 2 months, but I digress. I have an older sister and brother who were also adopted. For some oddball reason, our mother never told us. I found a picture of Michael, my gift-giving brother, when I was 7. It was like looking into a mirror. I asked my mom who the lil boy was and she absentmindedly and flippantly said he was my brother. She expected me not to remember or not to be able to absorb the gravity of what she said. I hid the picture in my room and I still have it today. I found some paperwork in my mom’s room pertaining to my adoption like my birth mother’s name and my real name . . . .

I tucked all of this stuff away just like I tucked away the reality that I was adopted. My adoption is a dirty lil secret. A secret that my entire family kept from my siblings and me our whole lives.  Until my mother died, the fact that we were all completely different; we all look different; I am way smarter than my siblings; was ignored. By the time I was 5, I realized that the only way out of this situation would be chin down and good grades so I could go to college and get the fuck out of there. That is not a hyperbole. I viewed the first day of kindergarten as my first step towards college. My adoptive mother was a monster to put it lightly. She should not have been trusted with the care of children. Even without telling me I was adopted, she made sure I felt out of place at all times.

Not once in my childhood did I want to seek out my birth mom. When I reached adolescence, I tried to ignore the whole thing. I grew smart enough to appreciate the beast that was my mother. I could have been adopted by someone who didn’t live in a good neighbor like my mother. I could have been adopted by someone who didn’t make me strive so hard to be the complete opposite. I had goals in my childhood. And I met them all except one, so far. That was all fueled by my complete and utter hatred for my mom. I really didn’t have the time to seek out another mother who was already not a fan of mine. So why am I coming out?  Michael. I would prefer to hide my adoption forever. It is my opinion that there is no sure fire way to make a kid a head case than to give him/her up for adoption. There is no amount of therapy that can reconcile the fact that for 9 months you heard the voice of your birth mother [good or bad] and upon birth, that is the voice you seek out and it is not there. That is a reality. When I was a kid, I always thought if I told someone I was adopted, they would look at me and realize that I wasn’t worthy. Read me up and down and try to figure out why my mother would throw me away. I never sought her out because I didn’t want all of my fears confirmed.

That’s where Michael comes in.  You can’t really hide a brother in prison. I mean you can, but the brother everyone knows about lives in Queens so i get quizzical looks. I’ll explain meeting Michael in another post. And I love Michael and he really loves me and it would be disingenuous to lie about him. So I’m slowly beginning to tell people I’m adopted because of Michael and my friends have surprised me with their reactions. No one cares. No one looks at me like I’m unworthy. They look at me exactly the same way as they did before they knew. They do have a lot of questions though, and I will answer a few now:

1.       Michael somehow, while in prison, found me. I will never lose my amazement of him because of that.

2.       I, after meeting my brother, still have no intention of seeking out my mother.

3.       I feel like my brother completes me. He has confirmed the existence of unconditional love which I was skeptical about. I’m grateful to have him.

 The story of my relationship with Michael is evolving, but I am not. I am me. I am unabashed, not ashamed and adopted. The only time I wonder about my worth is when I know I need to be a better sister. I will continue to try. As of now, I’m coming out. Loud and proud.