My family engages in some interesting and sometimes esoteric conversations. We tend to pepper our interactions with movie quotes and song lyrics. It may baffle the average passerby, but we get it. Case in point, the other night at dinner, my son, who happens to be a gay young man, brought up something regarding the current political circus. When he made a fleeting comment about societal erasure, I stopped him.

“Did you say erasure?” I asked.

“Yes.”

He then because he’s one of us, he sang “Always” by the band Erasure at the top of his lungs while my husband stared at him in disbelief. He’s 22. He may have been surprised our son knew the lyrics to a song that was released the year he was born, but when he stopped him mid chorus, he asked an entirely different question.

“What is erasure?”

My son bristled that his father didn’t know the meaning. Or more importantly, that he didn’t understand the context as it relates to an LGBT person. The ensuing conversation was enlightening.Now, I’m going to preface the following by admitting I am an avid pupil of all of my children. I’m not quite a helicopter parent, but I’m an active one. I want to know what they’re interested in, who they are and who they want to become. My husband and I are their biggest champions. And we’ve learned over these past few decades that we need to educate ourselves in order to be welcome into their adult lives beyond a superficial level of obligatory dinners and holidays.

But here’s the reality… though I’m the kind of parent who feels as though the three people I brought into the world are literally pieces of my heart living outside my body, I will never really know what it’s like to feel what they do. Sometimes I think I could be close. Their joy is too real. Their pain is too sharp. Yet I can only go so far. And in the case of my son, I understand that while I can be an advocate all day long for LGBT rights and equality, but I will never know what it’s like to walk in his shoes.

I asked him to write a small piece for me to share on what the term erasure means to a 22 year old gay man living in San Francisco. This isn’t a universal definition. It is personal. It is skewed by his generation, his education (he’s a writer, in case you wonder) and his upbringing. Nonetheless, it’s significant to me, as a parent and a supporter of the LGBT community. These are his words…

“Erasure is about stories – the stories you learn, the stories people tell, and the stories you find yourself in. Parents tell children that they can be anything they want, until “anything” becomes too impossible. In certain situations (of dire poverty, totalitarian government, social exclusion) children aren’t even well served in being told that. What was possible for me growing up seemed boundless, until it didn’t. At various points I wanted to be President, journalist, scientist, and heartthrob; a leader of men and a force to be reckoned with; the pride of my hometown and a name for the history books. I wanted the impossible, Aryan sheen of a star quarterback and the cool, undeniable swagger of a Kanye or a Kendrick. I wanted to inherit the Earth and I wanted to do so with a man at my side. This was a problem.

Men who loved men were relegated to hyper-specific roles of murderers, hair dressers, and bitchy, but relatable best friends. They were barred from holding any kind of power. They were a demographic whose story had been told for them. But old stories can be undone by new stories, and for gay men they largely have been – with characters as arch and stylized as Kurt Hummel from ‘Glee’ and as difficult and grounded as Ian Gallagher from ‘Shameless’.

To be erased is to be consigned to one story, and in turn give the impression of one possibility of a life. In a world where black activists feel obliged to assert that their lives matter, where trans people are disproportionately subject to poverty and acts of violence, and political rhetoric has undressed itself of pretense to be wholly sexist and xenophobic in tone, the necessity of knowing you’re alive and capable of what you dream has never been more patently obvious.”Groundbreaking insight? I doubt he covered anything new. The point isn’t that it’s a new conversation. It’s an ongoing education. We can’t speak for one another. We can’t assume to understand. But we can be kind. We can be compassionate. And we can keep learning.

Lane Hayes xoLane Hayes is grateful to finally be doing what she loves best. Writing full-time! It’s no secret Lane loves a good romance novel. An avid reader from an early age, she has always been drawn to well-told love story with beautifully written characters. These days she prefers the leading roles to both be men. Lane discovered the M/M genre a few years ago and was instantly hooked. Her debut novel was a 2013 Rainbow Award finalist and subsequent books have received Honorable Mentions in the 2014 and 2015 Rainbow Awards. She loves red wine, chocolate and travel (in no particular order). Lane lives in Southern California with her amazing husband and the coolest yellow Lab ever in an almost empty nest.

Books by Lane Hayes (Dreamspinner Press):

Better Than Good, Better Than Chance, Better Than Friends, Better Than Safe, The Right Words, The Wrong Man & The Right Time

And A Kind Of Truth

Contact Information:

Website: http://lanehayes.wordpress.com

Twitter:   @LaneHayes3

Facebook: LaneHayesauthor

Email:   lanehayes@ymail.com