32. Coming Out means you go through a second phase of adolescence. or my parents are just overcompensating.

before i Came Out, i seldom said a word about crushes.

or myself.

nobody - my parents, in particular - knew a thing about my taste in...anything.

i kept to myself, opted to impersonate my mother rather than offer up my own thoughts and feelings.

as such - that is, after shipping off to college and the island of Lesbos - after practicing trial-and-error for as long as i have (emphasis on the error), i'm realizing that these feelings of uncertainty and dumbassness and self-absorption in the context of relationships and self must be akin to those my hetero peers mucked around in several years ago.

after you Come Out of the Closet you Dive Blindly Into a Dark, Complicated, Terrifying Bedroom.

and, well, world, i guess.

if i was the kind to tap into that level of sappiness.

which i'm not.

aloud.

anywho.

my understanding of Involved Parenthood of Hetero Teenagers is that mom and dad are so nosy they can't help but say and do embarrassing things in the pursuit of buried, angsty feelings and preferences.

at least, that's how it goes in movies.

with the parents constantly making assumptions and causing their spawn to blush or throw unnecessarily emotional fits.

being that my parents were under the impression that they managed to raise three of the most a-sexual, pure young women imaginable, none of the Toro girls faced much interrogation growing up.

it was only when one of my sisters accidentally let some key piece of information slip that my parents became curious.

for me, that curiosity or concern for my love life didn't come about until i Came Out, and my parents were suddenly aware of the fact that, contrary to 18 some odd years of denial and silence, i actually DID have some kind of "drive."

so those cringeworthy conversations came about.

but instead of being completely agonizing, looking back i'm pretty sure it was all hilarious.

1. just months after i Came Out, my dad and i were at Borders partaking in some Daddy-Daughter Bonding Time [as he called it].

at one point, he called me over to the calendar rack - a crazy look in his eye.

"Pssst, Vickie! Hey, Vickie!"

"...Yes?"

"Come over here!"

"What is it?"

he pointed.

right at a Sports Illustrated calendar.

i blushed.

"Oh...um...great, dad. Awesome."

"You know what I JUST realized?" he asked, in one of those non-whispers-that-was-supposed-to-be-a-whisper.

"What?"

"When I say things about women, you could be thinking the SAME THING."

afterward, when i tried to change the conversation, my dad was determined to uncover my taste in women.

and was excited to find that i was, in fact, my father's daughter.

i was nauseous.

2. at Bath and Body Works, during yet another Daddy-Daughter outing, my dad caught me looking through some scents.

"Whacha got there?"

"Hm? I dunno. Nothing. Just looking."

he grabbed another bottle of the same scent and sprayed it.

sniffed it.

"Hm...Maybe not that one."

"Okay."

"'Cos you know, women like scents. If you wanna get girls, you have to have your own scent. So make it a really good one."

i stared.

"Here! This one's pretty good. I'll go pay for it."

3. my mother doesn't like too many people.

actually, for the longest time, i wasn't even sure if she liked me all that much.

but i digress.

one day, my oldest sister brought her boyfriend over for the holidays.

after, while my mom and i were in a car together, i asked her what she thought of him.

"Eh, I don't like him."

"Really?" i asked, "He's so nice, though! And Olivia likes him a lot."

"I know. But ugh. Beside, I'm yoh mommy. I'm gonna hate any boy you bring home."

"Ha! Well, that's lucky for me!"

at the red light, she stopped, looked me square in the eye.

"Girls, too."

and i knew that she was finally okay with my gayness.

4. i was lamenting the fact that i was single and clueless and hopeless.

my mother's words of comfort were a little uncouth.

"You know, iss actually kinda lucky you're a lesbian."

"...Why?"

"Women tend to like awkward, nerdy people better. Eben the pretty ones. Look at me and yoh daddy."

5. i told my dad that i'd drunkenly gotten a girl's number, but that i wasn't sure about giving her a call.

he was pumped that i shared this with him.

"Ha! You and I ARE alike!" he exclaimed, "When I was your age, and I'd get home from some party, I'd find girls' phone numbers IN MY CLOTHES. It was crazy, but I didn't know what it meant. My friends were like, 'Man, you should totally call her.' And I'd be like, '...Why?' It was hopeless. Ha! It's nice at least ONE of you girls took after me. Nice for me, not for you."

6. my mom told me she was a little surprised by my first girlfriend.

because she had always hoped i wouldn't pick someone like my mother.

i didn't see the resemblance til after that conversation.

and then it was all i saw.

7. the usual talks about how i'm a "wonderful girl, of whom no one is deserving."

gross.

and this is all i've got for now.

11-12. Put Down That Donut. And Don't Answer the Door.

moving to Mexico City midway through my high school career was hard.

so hard, in fact, that in what felt like no time at all, i started to get...soft.

not in an emotional way.

...or just in an emotional way.

but in an, "Oh, my Jeebus...what happened to my biceps/abs/single chin?!" kind of way.

my inability to speak and make friends in the beginning was probably furthered by the fact that my mouth was perpetually full of raw teenaged angst: angst which took the form of many a donut.

soon enough, i was carrying the flabby weight of my emotions everywhere i went.

most people were tactful enough to let me quietly wallow in my own misery.

no one seemed to think it was necessary to fan the flames of my Juggernaut-esque spiral into heftiness and anger.

except my mother.

of course.

when we moved to Mexico City, it was because of my dad's new job as a defense attache for the US Embassy.

as such, he and my mother had to regularly attend fancy dinners and events, where they'd have to dress up in fancy tuxes and gowns.

him the tuxes, her the gowns.

but my mother, being the cheap-o Korean that she is, was reluctant to go out and spend thousands of dollars on new dresses.

she found a solution.

one night, as i was laying in my bed, recounting all of the miserable facets of my life (which was bound to meet a premature end, either by my own doing, or by that of my cholesterol), a knock came at my door.

i sighed and stayed still.

another knock.

"Beekieeeeee."

the sweetness in her voice made me suspicious.

i didn't move.

"Beekieeeeeeeee."

a little more urgency this time.

i sighed again.

got up.

slowly opened the door.

and immediately regretted doing it.

standing in the doorway, a big smile on her face, was my mother...wearing my 10th grade homecoming dress - the likes of which would've, at this point, only fit around one of my thighs.

my jaw dropped.

eyes widened.

stomach growled.

"I need to borrow yoh mirroh," she said in her playful, "innocent" voice.

"...Huh?" was all i managed to say.

"You hab-uh dah biggest mirroh in dah house, and I need to see eep-uh dis dress look good."

silence.

"What do you sink?" she asked, as she slowly turned on the spot, lifting her arms above her head and striking a pose.

i tried to ignore the sudden hunger pangs.

"Do you sink dis make me look goooood?" she said, posing with every syllable, "Huh? How about dis?"

i closed the door.

"Hey!" my mother shouted from the hallway, this time in a more familiar tone, "I need to borrow yoh mirroh!"

i stood and continued to stare blankly at the door.

my stomach growled again.

she knocked.

and kept knocking.

finally, i sucked it up and reopened the door.

and walked out.

and downstairs.

into the pantry.

---

*note: my mother is actually South Korean...*