a true story...

Many years ago, I "came out" to my brother, and he had a terrible time accepting it. Actually, he remains uncomfortably homophobic about gay people in general, and he used to be quite preachy about it as well. We eventually found some common ground in a few areas that we could still talk about.

One evening I paid him a cautious visit, we had a good time talking, and I stayed for dinner. Afterwards, over beers, he volunteered that he had been practicing the violin and asked me if he could "play a song". He was self-taught in the guitar and fairly good at it, so I allowed that a tune might be nice. He plays the violin in the same home-taught manner you might hear on the old backcountry "fiddle" recordings. He selected Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze", the one I always used to tell him is called "Bringin' In The Sheeps".

My brother wasn't bad at the violin. Those old Bach notes squealed and groaned and squeaked, and my brother's syncopation was pure funeral home organ time, but it was Bach all right, and my brother did manage to bring some of the native richness of the violin tone into the music. I thanked him but said just the one song was fine. I complimented him on his practice, remarked that he had talent with several musical instruments, and said I hoped he'd pursue it.

This hit a note with him, something else we could talk about safely, so he told me how one of his neighbors had made a very similar remark, and had asked him just how many different instruments he played, and then that neighbor had acted very strangely and departed abruptly.

So I asked him, "Well, what did you tell your neighbor?"

He said, "That neighbor of mine is always asking his pushy, nosy questions, so I told him I play the guitar, the violin and even the skin flute."

In its heyday, our whole family had been mischief-makers, but now there was only a look of puzzlement in my brother's eyes. I asked, "Well, do you know just what kind of instrument a skin flute might be?"

He thought it had to be some kind of bagpipe or maybe some Greek bellows instrument or other; he knew he wasn't making it up, and he'd definitely heard of it before. I told him it was actually a vernacular term for the receiving side of a blowjob.

His jaw just dropped, and his eyes glazed over. "Oh, no! What ... what kind of person must they think I am?"

"My world and welcome to it", I told him. Still horrified, he said that he would have to set things right with his neighbor the first thing next morning. That's my story, but you know what? After that, regarding the whole question of what people would think of him, if they knew that he had a gay brother, it just never got mentioned again.