Out of the Frying Pan of a Closet and Into the Fire: Bobby Flay Made My Cousin Gay!*

Without naming him, I wrote of my cousin Richard few years ago. He's a cousin on my dad's side -- the side of the family with whom I do not have especially close ties. Actually, that's not entirely true. I do have especially close ties with by dad's brother Steve and with his family, and I have, at the very least, close ties to my Uncle Michael's and his family, and to my Aunt Cristelle and her family. It can even be said that I at least have ties to my aunts Marie-Therese, Elyse, and Claudine, and to their families. To my dad's remaining three siblings and their spouses and offspring, however, I am persona non grata, which is more than OK with me.  I am perfectly happy to have my very existence denied by these people. 

I hold a very special place of antipathy in the hearts of my  Aunt Angelie and her spouse and progeny for good reasons which have been discussed elsewhere in my blog without giving names. In an infamous incident, my well-being was placed in jeopardy, which resulted in the unity of their nuclear family being likewise placed in jeopardy. Alas, all's well that ends well, at least for me. I cannot speak to the wellness of the unity or of anything else pertaining to their family.

When Aunt Angelie's son Richard returned from his  mission a couple of years ago,  the transition from living the uber-regimented life  of an LDS missionary to the life of relative freedom of civilian life was fraught with peril. One would need to qualify the term freedom as it pertains to the lives of the offspring of my Aunt Angelie and her husband, as the only child of their to have experienced bona fide freedom was their son Josh, who was literally disowned by them for having failed to remain on his LDS mission when he suffered a life-threatening intestinal ailment. 

Still, the metamorphosis from life as a twin automaton salesman for LDS, Inc., to  life as a soldier in God's army serving under my drill sergeant aunt was jarring to Richard even by the most conservative of estimates. Family members did not, at the time, grasp the magnitude of the issues with which Richard was wrestling. We were led to believe that he suffered with a mere lack of direction in his life which compelled him to spend hours at a time in front of the family's living room television, thoroughly engaged with Food Network programming. Richard's fascination with all things related to Bobby Flay did not escape the attention of his mother, who honestly believed she could change her son's true nature to what it should have been according to LDS teachings by the simple act of cancelling her family's cable TV connection.

Alas, in real life, true love, even when unrequited, is not so easily circumnavigated. Richard enrolled in one of the church's universities, where, once again, he had access to cable television and to the Food Network. Not only did he reconnect (albeit with a one-way connection) with Bobby Flay;  he found a kindred spirit in his Food Network addiction: one whose connection was not limited to mutual passion for food, but to mutual passion for each other.  The close encounter was, to the consternation of his parents, not of the heterosexual kind.

Richard is no longer enrolled in The Lord's University, nor is he, at least as far as she is concerned, enrolled in Aunt Angelie's family. Of course my parents (meaning, of course, my mother; even my dad would have had the common sense not to have touched this situation with the proverbial ten-foot pole) almost immediate involved themselves in the drama. They have offered to fund Richard's education on the condition that he take the remainder of this academic year off and work at any job he can find (they will supplement his earnings to help him meet his living expenses if necessary and will fund his health insurance for the remainder of this academic year) and give himself the better part of a year to get his head on straight (with straight not equating with heterosexual in this sense) so that he will be prepared to focus on his education when he returns to university.  Richard essentially tanked a year's education, so this request from my parents was not an altogether unreasonable one.

If the family rumor mill is to be taken seriously,  my aunt plans to sue the Food Network and the celebrity chef himself on the grounds that Bobby Flay made her son gay. Good luck with that one, Aunt Angelie.

Any way I look at it, it would seem to be a step in the direction of mental health that the current object of my cousin's affection is a person with whom he interacts in the flesh as opposed to one whose daily TV appearances dictated the schedule of his life.

* I'm being ironic. i'm not REALLY accusing you of causing my cousin to have become gay. Please don't sue me, Bobby Flay.

Don't Think Twice . . . It's All Right

I know I said I was going to sleep a couple of hours ago, but some things are easier said than done. My dad says if I'm not asleep in an hour, he will intervene with pharmaceauticals  because he doesn't want me to get sick. Whatever, I'm getting a little tired of being awake  myself

Meanwhile, I may as well clarify things in my own mind by detailing the events that led to my latest break-up. Jared doesn't read this blog. His mother knows about it and possibly reads it on occasion, but she has six kids and manages the office for her husband's medical practice. She has better things to do than to obsess over the details of my love life, even if it does involve her son. Furthermore, she's not a blabbermouth. If push came to shove, she'd take her son's side, because there is that mother-son bond thing, but by the same token, she knows he's fallible. She wouldn't  further the rift by letting him know how the whole thing is playing out on the Internet. Furthermore, what I'm writing is true if biased. The conversations between Jared and my brother, by the way, are from the best of my brother's recollection. I trust his memory for details.

My brother Matthew called me to ask me the status of my relationship with Jared. I said as far as I knew, it was the same as yesterday, the day before, or a month ago. He asked if the relationship was supposed to be exclusive. I told him we'd never actually discussed it.  He told me that it was not exclusive -- that Jared had dated two girls twice each in the past two weeks. He said there could be more, although he doesn't know where Jared would find the time for any additional dating if he's    still attempting to keep his grades up, which one would assume he is. I asked Matthew first of all if he was sure, which he said he was, and secondly,  if I needed to deny having heard the information from Matthew. Matthew though about it and said no. Jared should know that Matthew would tell me if Jared dated someone else while he and I were supposedly in some sort of relationship

I didn't call or text Jared because I'm not a Jodi Arias-style stalker, even without the blood, gore, and homicidal tendencies. Two days later, which was a little less frequent that we had been speaking or texting, he called.  After the initial exchage of social pleasantries, I asked him if  he considered our relationship to be exclusive. I said I didn't want to put him on the spot, because we hadn't discussed it, and I had no right to assume that we had an exclusive relationship without hearing it from him.

He immediately jumped on the offensive, blaming my brother. "Matt called you and ratted me out, didn't he?" he demanded.

"Yes, he did," I answered truthfully.

"That asswipe!" he blurted in a manner unfitting for a young man who had submitted mission papers and was expecting a response shortly.

"He's my brother. I would do the same for him. In fact, I have done the same for him," I told him.

"That's different,' he muttered. "Girls blab. Guys are loyal."

"Loyal to whom? " I asked him.

He hung up on me.

The next day he ended up at an event Matthew was also attending. The two allegedly had words that were hostile initially but quickly grew more civil. Jared wanted to know why Matthew had told me,as he considered Matthew a close friend. Matthew told him that he wasn't totally sure where regular sibling relationships fit into the hierarchy of loyalty but twin trumps friend every time -- even best friend.

Matthew asked Jared about dating both of the girls at once - one a girl from school and one from his family's Mormon ward at home.  He asked if it didn't feel just a bit slimy to be leaading the two of them on, never mind me.  Jared answered that neither had any reason to believe that anything was exclusive at that point. Matthew said he disagreed - that if you take a girl out, then ask her on another date for three days later, she has a reason to believe you're not dating someone else in the meantime.

Jared asked if it was Matthew's Mormon heritage coming out in him. Maybe he planned to marry both of the girls he was dating.  Matthew told Jared he could probably forget about including me in the polygamous set-up, as he couldn't see me going along with it.

Jared was understandably miffed at Matthew's dragging of religion into the discussion, but Matthew said that LDS boys who two- or three-time girls are asking for  polygamy jokes at their expense.

"Well, I'm not exactly dating either of them anymore," he confessed.

"Why?" Matthew asked, mildly surprised.

It seems that he had explained his upcoming mission dilemma to both girls -- that he had filled out papers but was waiting to see the location and timing before he made a decision for certain as to whether or not he would go. The Mormon girl flipped her lid and told Jared not to bother calling her until he was committed to serving a mission. The other girl was equally upset, and told him not to waste her time if he was considering taking off for God knows where for two whole years, and that she did not want to hear another word from him until if and when he had made a permanent decision not to go off on one of those "Mormon missionary things." Jared apparently is attracted to cerebral women. I hope that doesn't say anything about me.

"It sort of makes Alexis look better all the time, huh?" Matthew commented to Jared.

"Yes,but I'm not sure that's the dorection I should be going, either," Jared responded.

"Maybe not, but before you call her again, if you call her again, make up your mind what it is you want. If it's a casual relationship, be up front about it. If you expect a relationship to be exclusive, be up front about that, too. But hold up your end of the deal. Don't tell her the two of you are in a steady relationship, then feel free to date someone else."

"That's fair," Jared replied.

"I'm not sure  she wants you back, anyway, " Matthew added.

He's right. I'm not sure I want Jared back, either. Too many things are up in the air right now, with his mission being the most cumbersome of them all. Then there's the issue of whether or not either of us wants to date the other, what sort of relationship we'd want even if we did decide to see one another in some capacity, and whether or not I can trust him enough to have any sort of relationship with him. Maybe neither of us is mature enough to be involved in anything more than a fun-and-games occasional trip to the beach or some campus function when he happens to be around. Or maybe he really wants to go on his mission.

I'm certainly glad I never gave up my viriginity to the guy, not that he was pushing me hard in that direction, anyway. Regardless, however rotten I'm feeling  now, it would be worse if I had let the physical aspect of the relationship go any further. I don't feel as though I have to hang onto my virginity forever. Depending upon my schooling situation and how long I wait before marrying, I may not hold out until marriage . . . Or then again, I might. Nevertheless, it's not something to be given away lightly, and not to be a prude, but I'm certainly glad to have held onto it for at least this far.  I'm feeling lousy and generally used, but had I allowed him to take that from me, I would be devastated.