Although I don't write "gay fiction," Bernie Freed and Erik Donnekin, major characters in all three of my "Sara Stories" novels are gay, and their stories, including Bernie's coming out, are integral to the plots of Sara's Year, After Sara's Year and The Emmeline Papers.
Speaking of Bernie's coming out, I may not have given him a fictionalized version of the coming out story I shared here recently, but I did assign other chunks of my life to his. I also borrowed chunks of my mother's life for Esther Freed, his mother.
And although the following scene from Sara's Year didn't play out identically in my life, I did have a similar experience with a friend who, with good but misplaced intentions, tried to push me out of the closet by telling me that I was gay. He was right, of course, but it would take another year for me to get to the place I describe in yesterday’s Acts of Surrender excerpt.
(Flickr/ TedEytan / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Bernie stopped in front of Librairie Westmount and stared at the display of Gay, Jewish and Proud books in the window. “Gay, Jewish and proud?” he asked. “Is that even possible?” He studied the giant poster that soared up behind them, a larger-than-life photograph of the author. With his dark, curly hair, laughing eyes and magnetic smile, Ray David Blackman was as arrestingly handsome as he had always been...as he was the last time Bernie saw him, the last time Bernie spoke to him.
“I have to talk to you, Bernie.”
“Sure, Ray. What’s up?”
Ray turns away. He can’t look Bernie in the eye and pretends to look out the window. He and Bernie are sharing a padded bench in the stark, mezzanine-level lounge of Concordia University’s massive monstrosity of a main building.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Ray’s mouth moves. No words come out. Then they do. “I-I’m gay,” he says tentatively, so softly that for a moment Bernie can’t be sure he heard right.
Then he is sure and he’s just as sure that it must be some kind of joke. Ray has never been much of a kidder but….
Ray forces himself to look at his oldest friend, and the minute Bernie sees Ray’s face, he knows it’s no gag. But it’s not true. It can’t be.
“You were on the high school football team,” he argues. “You box. You go mountain-climbing. You go skiing. You’re so athletic, so...masculine. How can you be gay?”
“Mountain-climbing has nothing to do with being gay, Bernie.”
“I know, but...” Bernie shakes his head.
“I have a boyfriend, Bernie. We’re getting an apartment together. On St. Marc. We move in next week.”
“It isn’t possible,” Bernie whispers.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. I didn’t know how...and I was afraid."
Now it’s Bernie’s turn to look away. He watches the relentless river of traffic surging west along de Maisonneuve Boulevard toward St. Marc and Ray's new apartment building. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “I don’t believe it.”
“Is it so horrible?”
“No, it’s okay. I guess. I don’t know.”
There’s more, but Ray hesitates, not sure it’s the right thing to say or the right time to say it. He swallows hard and decides that it has to be the right time. If he doesn’t say this to Bernie now, he never will.
Ray forces himself to keep his eyes on Bernie. “There’s something else.” He touches Bernie’s hand. “Maybe I shouldn’t say it.”
“What?” Bernie turns his head slowly back to meet his friend’s gaze.
“I think maybe you are, too.”
Bernie jerks his hand free. “Me? You’re crazy.”
“I’m not gay, Ray,” Bernie declared to the poster. He pulled Erik’s card from his pocket and ripped it in half, then in half again. But instead of dropping it and letting the pieces scatter on the breeze, he tucked them carefully into his wallet. “I’m an idiot,” he repeated.
Adapted from Sara's Year © 2015, 2020 Mark David Gerson
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