ninanevermore

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about a story that Glen, a guy who grew up next door to me, told me about his father, Dean. Dean is the type of person that the writers of All In The Family based the character of Archie Bunker on. The main differences between Dean and Archie are that Dean is fatter and his head is more bald than that of his TV counterpart. Like Archie, he is full of bluster and bark, but doesn't exactly bite. As a result, he served as more of a source of comedy than drama. Dean delivered mail for the US Post Office for almost 40 years now before he retired - just your friendly, neighborhood bigot of a mailman.

Glen is the same age as my younger brother, and Glen's sister, Kay, is my age. From the time we were kids, Kay was always far more masculine than Glen. Not to say that Glen isn't masculine -- he's just not as masculine as his sister. Even before any of us were old enough to be aware of what a sexual orientation was, we all knew that Kay acted more like a boy than a girl. As a child, her friends were all boys, but none of them were boyfriends. When she grew up and started dating girls instead of guys, it didn't surprise any of us. Except for maybe her father.

When Kay was about 30, her father finally noticed that she never had brought any men around, only a series of female roommates that she seemed exceptionally close to. Dean didn't feel comfortable about confronting his daughter on this, so he decided to ask his son's opinion, instead.

Glen was over at my father's house when he told us the story. He does a very dead-on impersonation of his father, which made it even more fun to hear.

"Glen," his father said to him one day, "Do you think your sister is one of them, you know, Lisbons?"

Glen knew damned well that his sister was a lesbian. In high school, he used to come home when she and her girlfriend were locked in her bedroom after school, and he could hear very well what was going on behind her closed door, no matter how hard he tried not to. Still, he didn't feel that it was his place to out his sister to his parents. He chose to play dumb.

"Huh? What? A Lisbon? What do you mean by Lisbon?"

Telling the story, Glen gave a perfect impression of his father's frustrated scowl. "You know, a Lisbon! One of them women that likes other women!"

"A woman that...? Oh! Do you mean a lesbian, Dad?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, that's it! A lesbian. Do you think Kay's one of them?"

Glen shrugged his shoulders. "I have no idea." He pretended to think for a moment. "Who knows? Maybe."

Dean grunted and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "A lesbian, huh?"

"Maybe," Glen said again, shrugging his shoulders.

"Yeah," Dean said with a sigh, "We got some of them at the post office."

With that, he turned and walked away.

From what Glen tells me, it's the last time he ever brought the subject up.

As for me, to this day I can't look at the house they once lived in without thining of the word Lisbon, and about Kay and her befuddled father, and laughing a little to myself.