Attending A Gay Wedding Dug Up Some Really Unexpected Trauma

Warning: This article contains the author’s recollections of anti-gay slurs from his childhood.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I attended a part-Christian, part-Jewish wedding of two women in Charleston, South Carolina, as the date of one of the brides’ uncles. As the two brides held each other’s faces and kissed, I, a 42-year-old queer man living in San Francisco, instinctively scanned the room for disapproving looks.

Throughout the last 20 years, I thought I’d worked through all the oppressions I’ve experienced: secret same-sex relationships, being uncomfortable around other LGBTQIA+ people, engaging in risky sexual behaviors and the absence of a consistent parental figure. So why did these brides’ open and welcome affection make me feel so anxious? My clasped hands trembled as if trying to break free from my wrists, and a flood of perspiration pierced through my black tuxedo.

However, I vowed not to allow the panic attack to cloud my thoughts or ruin my impeccable application of concealer. Being in that space, watching these two people take vows, forced me to dig up deeply buried and uncomfortable feelings.

After the wedding, I realized I needed to talk to someone who was not tied to my past.

“You may still harbor internalized homophobia from your childhood,” my therapist pointed out during our session. Upon her observation, I found myself involuntarily revisiting my childhood.

My first memory of meeting my mother was when I was 6 years old. Five years earlier, after she divorced my father in the Dominican Republic, she left me in the care of her parents and left for New York City to make a better life for us.

“A son who grows up without a father is destined to become a faggot,” my father used to say, unprompted,