searching for isabella

The narrator's grandmother's question about finding their real parents sparks a journey into their family's past. They discover family secrets, like their grandfather being a bigamist, and uncover their ancestry. The narrator reflects on their upbringing in a small town, their family's sense of humor, and their own journey of self-discovery as a gay individual. They visit their grandmother in a nursing home, contemplating the idea of bringing her to live with them. However, various factors such as family issues and their husband's health condition prevent them from doing so. The narration also touches on the narrator and their husband's HIV test results. Chapter 1. Parents. Did you find your real parents? My grandmother asked from her nursing home bed. That statement sent me on my quest, if you will, my journey into the past, to find out who I really was and if this was true or just the ramblings of my grandmother, my father's mother, who was in the early stages of what we now know to be Alzheimer's or dementia. It was 1992. My grandmother had just moved into a nursing home because she'd fallen too many times for her to be safe by herself, and apparently no one in the family could handle her and the fact that my great-aunt, her sister, was also in the same nursing home. They soon became thick as thieves even though they had not spoken to each other in 30-some-odd years and no one really knew why. Maybe that was foreshadowing of things to come and come out in more than one meaning. This was the time I would learn a lot of family secrets, some of which were rather funny looking at it, but also kind of scandalous. Like the fact that my grandfather, whose middle name I got as my first name, was married before he met my grandmother, lived in Pennsylvania, worked as a lumberjack, left his first wife in 1920 or so, moved to New York State and married my grandmother. He had changed his first name but not his last so he was a bigamist. Apparently they had three or four kids together and I heard she had several more after he left so I assumed she remarried. My uncle, my father's brother, had been in contact with the family and received some pictures of the stepchildren. I'm guessing they would be my stepuncles and stepaunts. I had seen the pictures of the stepchildren. One was a dead ringer for my father of the same age. The resemblance was uncanny and I'd been asked on several occasions if I was someone else. I jokingly told people, no, that is my good twin. Their reaction when they saw I was serious... I relate to some people the story of my grandfather and the fact that we did some family research on my father's side of the family and traced back our ancestry to the Isle of Peel, a form of my father's maiden name off Australia. I told people we stopped there because we didn't want to find out that we had a family relation to Bluebeard since Australia was used as a penal colony back in those days. That was just the beginning of the strange and twisted family history that was beginning to unfold and this was all before Ancestry.com or the internet. I really wish I had listened more to my great-aunt Mary and yes, I had a great-aunt Mary. Doesn't every gay man? My mother's cousin. She was the expert on family genealogy and family trees and how to tell the difference between a cousin and a cousin once or twice removed. As I was sitting in the parking lot of the nursing home, Madonna's song, Vogue, came on the radio and I had to jam along with it. It was a warm June afternoon. The nursing home my grandmother was in was decent enough. It was dimly lit, depressing and very drably decorated, but the care she received there was phenomenal. It was a stark contrast to what would happen in years to follow. Sometimes the brightest and shiniest of places can hide some very dark and hateful things. The word initially still triggers me. As it turned out I knew a friend who was the administrator of the facility. I didn't know his alter ego at the time. Fluffy LaRue. Let's call him her and yes pronouns are important. There are very few drag queens that go by their drag name in and out of drag. At this point I was still a baby gay just learning the lingo and the history. Since then I've met some drag queens who refer to their alter ego as their evil twin sister and keep their drag separate from their male persona. It's kind of the same way in the leather community. You never really know what some people are into when you see them in street clothes compared to a leather bar where they are flagging their hankies. I was searching for my tribe where I fit into the community and this statement question really shook me as to where I fit in even more. It just echoed. Did you find your real parents? Growing up in the 70s and the 80s and knowing I was different from other kids and not really having a word for it and living in a small town where there was one African American family after moving from the suburbs in the city where I had returned to many years later as an adult was difficult. We had moved to the small town on a farm because an African American family had moved next door. That may not have been the real reason but that's what it looked like from my perspective. I'm not trying to vilify my parents and make them sound like they're racist nor am I going to defend their reasoning. There may have been other factors that played into it. For whatever reason, we moved to a small town and we began to renovate it to our family needs. It's funny because when I was growing up in that time, we went to visit my mother's side of the family at one of her brother's houses for a family reunion. My father made the statement, stay away from your mother's cousin so and so. He's funny, meaning that he was light in the loafers or fruity, basically meaning he was gay. But those were the terms and phrases used back then. Now, telling this to a 10-year-old, I was thinking, mom's whole family is funny? Why? My uncles always told joke and limericks. Some were quite dirty and off color. Okay, let's just say plain racist. I do believe that I inherited my dark and sarcastic sense of humor from my mother's side of the family, just without the racism. It's kind of funny that I became the funny one and in a way, kind of sad that I wasn't there for a cousin who came out after me. It was fortunate that he did have my mother's cousin to help him, though, but I do think that my coming out did hinder his experience, and I do regret that. I definitely did get my mother's side of the family's humor. I do remember the biggest fight my parents had was over a funeral because my mother's side was English, German, and Irish. My uncles and other family members were telling jokes and limericks at the funeral. It's what we do. Like when my current husband and I went to his great aunt's funeral, I turned to him and said in a whisper, well, you're guaranteed one thing, no coffin jumpers. They'd break a hip. He laughed out loud. His stepmother was furious, asking what was so funny. He didn't tell her right away. That was like the time I was watching a Monty Python movie or show and was laughing hysterically. My father walked in the room and stood there for a few minutes. He stood there and finally said, I don't get it in a confused voice. Dad, if you don't get it, I can't explain it to you. It's British, I told him. He shrugged his shoulders and walked out. The funny part of this story is that my father loved all those British television shows that were shown on PBS at the time. Yeah, they were cultural and educational and a lot of period stuff. But if you can't understand the humor, you miss out on all the jokes. My father's lineage is French, and he was very stoic and reserved. I guess it was just how he was raised, the period, when he was raised, on how men and women should act. I think part of us moving to the country was an attempt to make me more of a man, type of thinking, since I was a sensitive kid and kind of flamboyant in my walk and demeanor. I do remember my father trying to teach me how to walk like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood in Hang Em High. I'm not really a western fan, but I loved that movie. Finding Grandma's room wasn't hard, but I was still upset by the looks of the facility. It was, like I had said, very dimly lit, and it seemed to be decorated very minimally. There was no track lighting. That is a Steel Magnolias reference. My grandmother and my great aunt were actually roommates and were getting along quite well, which was surprising because, for some unknown reason, they'd not spoken to each other for many, many years. They'd lived previously, my great aunt with her husband, who made sauerkraut in his basement. I still remember the smell. I hated it, and yes, I am German. And they lived not far from each other, my great uncle having a small farm and old girly posters from the 1940s, the pin-up type calendars of that period. I guess after my great uncle passed, my great aunt was sent to the same nursing home just before my grandmother. I didn't see her as much at that point, but I had heard from staff that they became quite close and that my grandmother was inconsolable when my great aunt passed away. Grandma was in bed, sleeping when I arrived in her room, and there were times that I struggled with the idea of kidnapping her and bringing her to live with my husband and I. But there were issues with that, not that my then-husband would have said no, but family issues and our work schedules. It would almost be like having a small child in the house, and the idea of trying to have sex while she was in another room and if she needed something at the wrong moment. Awkward! And there were his health issues, being newly diagnosed as being HIV positive. Yeah, the hits keep on coming. My husband decided to get tested because I had mine, and it came back negative. It was funny because the counselor who gave me the test asked me have you ever had sex with an IV drug user? He asked as he was working on paperwork. As far as I know, I said matter-of-factly. He nearly dropped his pen. That was the most honest answer I have heard, he stated. Most are like, no, hell no, he continued. So my husband decided to get tested by his doctor, and then the ice storm hit March of that year. We were without power for ten days, but our phone was restored in three days. That was when he got the phone call from his doctor's office. You're HIV positive, he was told by the doctor over the phone. How do you respond to bad news over the phone? Yes, it was 1991, but still! He sat there in a darkened house with no heat or electricity, probably thinking he wished we didn't have a phone right then. It was on March 12, 1991, as he called it, Black Tuesday. I was at work and I came home to a candle-lit home, which really sounds romantic until you realize there's no heat, no lights, but we had a phone line, yeah. Yes, this was before cell phones. This was a landline. The phone was attached to the wall. Google landline. When I got home, he sat me down in the kitchen, which was a central part of the house, and the scene of many a house party with friends. I sat on the counter where we had used our blender to make mixed drinks for a party one time and left the lid off and hit the button. Up and all over went liquid alcohol and everything straight up to the ceiling. All he could say in his drunken state was oh look, a fountain, as he looked up in amazement. Turn it off, turn it off, I screamed as he stood there in awe. He sat me down and told me about the phone call from his doctor, and when he finished, he looked at me. If you want, I will release you from our vows, he said quietly. We had just had a union ceremony, basically an early form of day weddings. The priest we went to had been doing them in our city for the past 20 years and made us go through marriage counseling before he would do our ceremony. It was three sessions, my history, his history, and our history together as a couple. The priest said that the counselor had sent him a 12-page report on us. He told us it was the most extensive report he had ever received from him, and we also had registered as domestic partners in our city. We were number 27 of couples who registered. I was tempted to ask for a marriage license, but I knew that would be pushing it. I was more the activist than he was, and I still am. I stood there, shocked by his statement. I walked over from the counter from which I was leaning against, went over to where he was sitting, and gave him the biggest hug I could. Hell no, I said. We promised for better or for worse. I am not going anywhere.