Murder in the Cathedral

You have selected "regicide". If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one!
--Springfield Police Dept. Automated Crime Report Hotline

Here’s my impression of yesterday’s limit holdem tournament: dominated, miss a huge draw, miss a huge draw, get out-flopped, dominated. This type of play gets you a 19th place finish - out of 21 runners. But who cares about that. I want to take a moment to turn this page into a bit of navel-gazing, a TGOD if you will (that’s Totally Gay Online Diary, for those who don’t know).

My non-poker weekend plans ended with a phone call to my grandmother, the grand matriarch of our clan. I call her every week or two, but this weekend was special -- it was her birthday. Now, maybe this makes me a horrible grandson, but I can never remember precisely how old she is. I have to ask her every time.

"I’m 84. I’m the oldest surviving member of my family now," she said proudly. "My grandmother died at 83."

Once upon a time, my grandmother wanted to live until she was 100 years old. She thought it would be the most amazing thing to have spent an entire century plodding around the planet. Think of the things you witness in that length of time, she’d say.

After the death of my grandfather 12 years ago from lung cancer (pipe smoking will do that), and as age began to deal my grandmother infirmities like glaucoma, hearing loss, and a weak heart, the talk of living to 100 became infrequent, until it finally stopped altogether. Life's no fun when you have trouble seeing and hearing it, when your partner of 50 years is gone, and when you're alone for that long. Instead, my grandmother set a new target for her lifespan. "You know what I’m waiting for now," she reminded me yesterday.

My grandmother is waiting for me to get married before she dies.

As the youngest of five grandchildren, I managed to neatly sidestep all of the parental and grandparental demands for offspring. Any desire for progeny has long since been satisfied by my brothers and sister, each of whom has produced multiple issue. I have five nieces and nephews, ranging in age from 8 years to 5 months. I adore each and every one of them, and spend as much time as possible with them when I visit. I even put together a photo set a few months ago for my oldest niece, after she sent me a letter - a genuine, pencil-and-paper letter - enclosing a school project.

My qualities as an uncle are of no consequence to my grandmother. Her singular goal is to make sure I get married. The thing of it is, I totally believe that were I to get married, she would die soon thereafter. Life has become a bit of a bother for her, and based on little comments she makes now and again, I think she’s ready to go. The only problem is this troublesome, sarcastic grandson who can’t seem to "settle down". It is, as grubette said to me, "sweet in a creepy way."

I appreciate that my grandmother wants what she thinks is best for me. That IS sweet of her. Putting aside whether or not I have any actual desire to even get married, the real issue is not any pressure, real or imagined, exerted on me by the responsibility of holding in my hands the remaining sands from the hourglass of my grandmother’s life. The real issue is that I’m gay.

(...Ok, ok, that’s a total lie. Had you for a second there though, didn’t I? Trust me, I know how believable it is. In addition to being called "130 Pounds of Fury", I have been given the nickname of "GHB" - the Gay Heartbreaker. The fact that GHB is also a date rape drug is a delicious irony.)

The real issue is that, despite wanting someone to be genuinely excited about and by, I just can’t seem to meet the right woman. Sometimes I wonder if I expect too much out of people, if the standards that I’ve set for what is acceptable, in combination with the personality and physical traits that I find desirable, are just too high. Since I broke up with my girlfriend and moved back east from Los Angeles three years ago, plenty of people have caught my eye, but none of them stirred my soul to the point that I stuck around longer than three months. That seems, in a word, preposterous. Yet the flip side of the coin is even more distasteful to me - the danger of "settling" for someone that’s less than I want or deserve. I know all of life is a compromise, and that nobody’s perfect, but where on that scale does "compromise" turn into "settling"?

I, and by proxy my grandmother, turn that dichotomy over in my head on a regular basis. In the end, I still believe we’re both waiting for this person, whoever she may be. Every once in a while, I think her name might be Godot. For my grandmother’s sake, I hope not.