The look of pain and disgust in her face haunts me to this day. Each time it pushes itself into my memory I wave it away before it can sink in and affect me too deeply. It was the moment my relationship with my mother changed forever and though we’ve discussed everything again and again and on the surface things are fine, I maintain an arms length because of the pain and the disgust of that moment. I don’t blame her, but I’ve never actually forgiven her either. She was unprepared for what she saw, for what awaited her when they came to bail me out of my first big mess.

My car had broken down on the side of the road, the drive shaft dropped out of it as I hit a pothole and I couldn’t afford to get it fixed or even get it towed off the side of the road. Not knowing what else to do, I called my parents for help. They jumped on a plane the next day, rented a car and called to let me know they were on their way.

I embraced the freedom an out of state college offered a kid from a small town with a well-known and large family. I was finding myself and felt a newfound happiness unlike any I’d known in my life allowing me to truly explore the person that I was, unafraid of negative family reactions and free from fear of being rejected by the very people I needed to accept me the most. I’d bleached my hair to a badly damaged, yarn-like texture the color of snow melting in spring. I wore my new favorite shorts, the ones I’d taken out to a club months before and passed around with a black sharpie in the pocket, covered with drawings, scribbles and words. It was the late 1980’s and I’d stumbled into the crowd that worshiped all things Depeche Mode becoming a quick study. The music was something I’d never heard before and it lit a fire in me that filled me with joy and possibility. My uniform quickly became that of the underground club scene, such as it was, in St. Louis. I was very close to being happy.

Until I saw them.

My mother cried that day. She sat in the back seat of the car in a deathly silence while we drove to the garage to recover my car, and while my father went to deal with the mechanic we sat together in the car quietly. She started to ask her baby son if he was gay but the tears choked her words and she stopped mid sentence. The only thing I said was “no” as I felt the tears form and the shame return like a sledgehammer.

I still see their faces from that day, captured in my heart like a Polaroid. Their expressions clearly showing their dreams for my life evaporating.

Shortly after I found drugs and the pain went away. The faces faded into the background and rarely emerged from the gloom in the hours I was sober and alert. I’m amazed that close to 20 years later, I can still picture the moment, feel the panic and remember the shame and the pain of breaking my parents hearts and I’m forever colored by that moment.