It gets better… right?
ROXY BOURDILLON TRIES TO SEE THE FUNNY SIDE OF PARENTAL REJECTION
ROXY BOURDILLON
Ten years ago I came out to my father over the most intensely awkward Bella Italia meal of my life. Perspiring profusely, I gabbled, “I just thought you should know. We can speak about it… or not…”
Then ensued the most excruciating silence in the history of excruciating silences. Imagine triple root canal, no anaesthetic, and the dentist keeps elbowing you directly in the tit, but his hands are so far down your throat no one can hear you scream. After what felt like 101 ice ages, he replied in his fruitiest public schoolboy tones: “Changing the subject now would be as if there was a giant pink elephant in the room and I was peeping round it to say, ‘How’s the weather?’” We tittered nervously – he’s such a card – then proceeded to discuss… climate change, carbonara, everything we could think of apart from the giant pink lesbian elephant, for the next 45 minutes. And 10 years.