Love Means No Boundaries - Andrew Grey

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Love Means … NO Boundaries
    Robbie felt a glass being pressed into his hand as his parents began talking the way they usually did, almost as though he wasn’t even in the room. “I have something I need to tell both of you.”Their conversation stopped, and Robbie wondered what was going through his parents’ minds at that moment. “This isn’t easy for me to tell you, and I don’t knowhowyou’ll react, so I’m just going to say it.”Robbie took a deep breath and took a gulp from the glass in his hand, the alcohol burning as it slid down. “I’m gay.”Robbie waited for the reaction, but the room remained nearly silent, with only the ticking of the clock in the corner filling the void.
    Robbie knewthere was a ton of nonverbal communication going on between his parents—looks and gestures that he couldn’t see. They could communicate silently to each other when they didn’t want him to worry or knowwhat they were feeling. Apparently they’d been doing it for years, but Robbie hadn’t known about it until Arie told him about it a year ago.
Finally he heard his father, “Are you sure you’re not just confused?”There was a softness to his voice he hadn’t heard very often, not since before the illness, and the momentary warmth washed over him. He really missed that tone.
     
“I’m not confused, Papa. I may be blind, but I knowwhat I feel and think.”He tried to keep his voice level and use reason as opposed to letting his emotions rule the situation.
     
“But honey, howcould you knowif you can’t see?”He turned toward his mother’s voice. “I just do, Mama. I knowhowI feel.”He had to give them credit: they didn’t yell or scream.
     
Instead, they seemed to be trying to understand. “I knowthis is hard for you, but I’ve felt this for a while, though I haven’t been able to face it in myself. It took me awhile to get up the nerve to tell you. I didn’t want to lose you.”
    He heard his mother sniff softly. “Nothing you could do would ever make us stop loving you. We both love you very much, honey, 137 Andrew Grey
and we only want you to be happy. But this is a bit of a shock.”She wasn’t lying. He could hear it in her voice. He tried to imagine howhis father was taking the news. The tinkling of ice in a glass indicated his father was having a bracer.
“I know, Mama, but I wanted you and Papa to knowwho I was. I didn’t want to lie to you anymore.”He felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. His parents were talking and listening.
    “There’s more.”He may as well get everything out in the open all at once. “At the last stop on the orchestra tour, I met someone. A boy named Joey.”
    He heard his mother’s gasp. “Is he someone from that farm you were staying on?”Robbie heard the scorn in her voice. No one would be good enough for her son. “I knewI should have made you go with Arie.”There were so many things wrong with that statement; Robbie didn’t know where to begin, so he let her comment go as hurt feelings.
“It’s all right, Claudine,”his father soothed. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Robert Edward.”The tone was harsher now, and the use of his full name meant he was in trouble.
     
Robbie pressed on trying to make them understand. “I knowI should have told you sooner, but I wasn’t ready to deal with it myself. I had to leave him, and this last month has been very hard.
     
I’ve missed him terribly.”
    “You knowit’s more than you being gay. We can deal with that and accept that. You’re our son, but being gay doesn’t excuse you from family responsibility and proper behavior.”He did. The funny thing was that he hadn’t been as nervous about telling his parents he was gay as he was telling them about Joey. He knewthere was no way they were going to take it well.
Glasses tinkled as drinks were refilled, and Robbie figured both his parents had downed their drinks and were reaching for refills. “What will they say? I’ll be drummed out.”His mother was138
    Love Means … NO Boundaries
always given to the dramatic. “What will the U.D.C. ladies say when they find out that my son, my gay son, is dating a damn Yankee?”
    “He may be a damn Yankee, but I think I love him!”That declaration, a surprise to himself as well as his parents, had the desired effect of stunning them into silence, and Robbie had never been more relieved for a dinner announcement in his life. As he got up from his chair, the glass