Today My Mother Asked Me If I'm Gay

She was serious. And squirming. I'm pretty sure that she was embarrassed to even be contemplating such a thing about her own daughter. In hindsight, it makes sense. She doesn't know anything about my personal life, so it's not an unreasonable thought. The whole string of back-to-back questions started in Korean but ended in English, a telltale sign that she was dangerously stepping out of her comfort zone. "So you're not ever going to get married?" which turned into "Even if you have a boyfriend, you're not going to get married?" which led to, "You don't have a boyfriend right now, right?" which then led to "Are you doing the lesbian gay thing?"

Wow. Really? Is this really happening?

It would have been so fun to pull her leg a little, but the woman sitting in front of me had had a rough winter; today was not the time for cruel jokes. She never gets jokes, anyway. After I burst her bubble and acknowledged that I am not, true to form, she still took it upon herself to ramble on about how God did not design humans to live alone, that I need a church-going Christian man and should get married and have children. It's amazing how she circles everything back to the paramount importance of getting hitched and popping out kids; that and how nice it would be if I would bring her on vacation to Europe. So I told her the truth: I would be the worst thing to ever happen to this unknowing Christian schmuck who got suckered into dating me and perhaps more significantly, I let my passport expire. Luckily, I don't need it for New York.