Gay Pride: Part One

1977. The beginning of a gay pride story

My acceptance into Columbia College was due to my mother’s witchery. Penny was adamant I break free from the Bronx’s limiting mentality that she feared would inhibit my intellectual potential, and she also insisted I accomplish this task while remaining under her care. I was, after all, der gracer—her first born—and she wasn’t going to let me slip away that easily.

She had to keep me close lest—god forbid!—her intuition be correct, and her eldest child be gay (very gay, I might add). I imagined her whispering secret, kabbalistic spells from the Old World to in a desperate attempt to procure for herself a future grandchild.

Getting into the Ivy League was a longshot, but we made the dream our “project.” I inherited from my mother a tendency to give my energy to the meeting the needs of others, a shared characteristic that made our work together particularly effective, if not fodder for future therapy.

Though my mother had not spent much time in college, herself, she had landed a career as a school secretary and wielded a decent executive skillset. Together, with an electric typewriter, Penny dictated a killer essay on the stoicism with which I, just shy of my Bar Mitzvah, suffered through four agonizing hip operations that opened my eyes to the fragility of life.