Lemon Fell yesterday

The drop of the lemon – Thud! It came just as I put down the phone after my father spoke to me. “That’s a good answer” he said (I translate from the Bulgarian, our secret language so he could ask without much fear of being heard za6to si gay?) The lemon green with one side yellowing came down just as in me the desire for tears was swelling. The fall came so abruptly like Newton’s apple. I looked outside my window and decided to go and collect that lemon just next to another one I had seen earlier. So I went round the house, and I walked towards the tree, round the back, I could feel how picking up those right lemons would be like therapy. Inside me, the ebb and flow of my emotions meant I was dealing with this. What was it? Relief? Satisfaction? We had finally spoken about it.

My mother had called him earlier “Your mother is annoying with these messages, saying I am the reason for your orientation, but you must tell her, tell her this is the way I am, but leave daddy alone. She thinks I hate gays. I do not have a problem you are my son. I cannot ask you, ‘ why are you gay?’ why are you not a man? I cannot punish you like that. Why are you gay?”

“Are you asking for real?”

“Yes”

“I don’t know”

“That’s a good answer”.

So there were the too lemons, nearly ripe yellow and I could tell that more were coming. This was just the very beginning, the start of it all. I know my relationship with my father will continue to ripen and mature, after all he considers me to be all grown up now.

“You’re a big person now, we can’t be seeing each other all the time.”

“But when was the last time we saw each other? Last month?” I pleaded.

“OK, we’ll see” he said, as always