They Call Me Baba Booey by Gary Dell'Abate

graduated from high school he moved out of the house—no drama, no fight, he just walked across the stage, shook the principal’s hand, and moved into Manhattan. I’d visit him at his apartment about once a month. He was driving a cabthen and, one afternoon, while I was waiting for him to come home after his shift, I decided to snoop around his place. I get antsy just sitting. I like to stand up and walk around and go places. As I rifled through some stuff in the bathroom I noticed a bunch of gay men’s magazines in the cabinet. I was shocked, and a little scared. I worried that at that moment someone was going to come walking through the door. I quickly shoved them back in the cabinet and walked out of the bathroom. At the time, it never occurred to me they were Steven’s. I assumed they belonged to his roommate.
    For a long time, the only person who knew the truth in my family was Anthony. Steven had told Anthony he was gay when he moved into the city after high school. For years, Anthony kept pushing him to share the news with the rest of us, but that wasn’t Steven’s style. I’m sure he was afraid of how my parents would react. He also hated the idea of making a scene. He’d been watching drama unfold his entire life and had worked hard to sidestep it. It just wasn’t his way.
    But when I was a freshman in college, Steven decided it was time to tell us—or maybe he just got tired of Anthony pestering him. He called Anthony and said, “Okay, I’m ready for them to know.” Then he said, “You tell them.” So Anthony did.
    Anthony was convinced my mom would lose it and my dad would sit at the kitchen table and stoically accept it. But it was the other way around. In that moment, my dad seemed stunned and in a state of disbelief, while my mom was totally accepting. I’m not surprised. As long as my mom could focus her worry, she was strong. It’s when things were good and she looked at her own life that she started to lose it.
    A couple of nights later I went to Anthony’s place on Long Island and he told me, too. He was as blunt as Steven was reluctant. As I sat down in his living room he blurted out, “You know Steven’s gay, right?” I just said, as casually as I could, “Ohyeah, of course, I know.” But I had no idea. I was blindsided. I remember leaving Anthony’s and walking to my car feeling numb. It was just so shocking. It didn’t help that Anthony had said it so matter-of-factly. For a day or two I desperately wanted to call Steven and tell him that I knew and that I loved him and that no matter what, he was my brother. But he would have hated that. I would have been doing it for me, not for him.
    I realized that he tried to come out to me once, in his own way, a few months earlier. He’d invited me to a Sylvester concert at the Felt Forum, the arena attached to Madison Square Garden. Sylvester had a couple of big disco hits, like “Disco Heat” and “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”
    When we arrived I didn’t pay much attention to the crowd. Then Sylvester made his entrance, like a black Liberace. He was super gay. He wore a full-length mink coat, was accompanied by a twenty-five-piece orchestra, and opened with an orchestral version of “Disco Heat.” Suddenly, I was surrounded by the Gay Pride Parade. Everyone started jumping up and down, blowing police whistles. I thought I must be the only straight guy in the room besides my brother.
    The truth was, as much as I loved Steven and accepted that he was gay, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with homosexuality. This was 1980; none of us had heard of AIDS yet. No one in our lives was gay. Gay people lived … somewhere else. So the idea that my own brother was gay was something I struggled with at first. I couldn’t call my friends and discuss Steven’s situation with them. They’re good guys, but we were a bunch of Italian guys from Long Island. We called each other fags as an insult. I didn’t see the upside of telling them.