Crammed in the Closet

So it turns out my sister's gay. Quite a big bomb-dropping, for a regular family, I guess. If you ask me it's just a ninth-inning attempt to reinvent herself like a third-rate Madonna, or a 1970s David Bowie. Anything to liven up her boring life and make herself more noticeable in a family spilling over the brim with shwat-a-veev—whatever it is the French call it.

Of course, she has her own story: That she's always been gay, that ugly dude she went to the prom with was actually a lesbian, and she told me this all before. I suppose it's possible I'd forget it, if I was watching TV or thinking about something else. When I get hungry I can't concentrate on nothing. But I still say she's making up this whole life as being gay just to be more interesting—backstory, that's the acting term we use.

She introduced me to her checkmate, or whatever the cool new term for it is, and we didn't get along very well. I didn't remember her name at all and kept calling her "Marcy," like that chick in the Peanuts cartoon. Like I'm the one who cut her hair into a bob and made her wear glasses. I tried to get along with her for my sister's sake, I really did, but the bitch was saying all kinds of stuff to bait me. Like she had never seen my show before and that it must have been tough being a child actress. I told her it must have been tough being a lesbian for her, and she took it like I was serious, instead of implying it was hard for her to find women to date her.

I'm taking all of this pretty cool, really. She invited me to her office for lunch and promised she wouldn't get mad if I made paperclip slingshots, so it was off to as good a start as we get. Then instead of a good old fashioned paperclip war I get this Very Special Episode of Ellen dropped on me, which I'm fine with, only to have her tell me my parents don't know and I can't tell them. She said they're so closed-minded and everything, but I would understand 'cause I'm more worldly. I almost knocked her out but her butch friend wrestled me to the floor. It may be true I've packed the pounds on my thighs a bit in the last few months, no reason to call me out on it, and I definitely don't see how it helps me be more understanding of lesbos.

In addition to keeping her secret that she's a sci-fi fan (I'm pretty sure Marcy was that dude dressed as the centaur at the convention, upon thinking about it) now I have to not tell everybody she's lesbo. I wouldn't mind keeping the lesbian secret, actually, if she'd just let me tell the sci-fi one. But no, she says mom and dad won't understand. I asked if she tried to talk to Toot but she said he only wants to talk about the Leader of Glorious Light, the one true prophet. Which leaves me alone to carry the new family secret.

The last thing I want to do, of course, is be the only secret-holder, 'cause then when it comes out to everyone they know it was me who let it slip. It's better when almost everyone knows because then they can't trace it back to me. So I told her mom and dad were down with lesbians, dad especially—they star in over half the tapes in his video collection. That only got macho Marcy to wrestle me to the floor again then, and don't tell anybody, but I'm afraid I'm starting to like it.

She gets all sobby on me then (sis, not Marcy, though Marcy did offer me a cigarette) and tells me I'm the only one left in the family she has any relationship with. I thought she was getting weird, but she meant "relationship" in the broad sense of the word. Or the sisterly, non-broad-on-broad sense. And she gives me a big hug and says she can trust me with her secret.

And I suppose she can. I mean, besides writing columns about it at the commune, but that's practically like keeping a secret. So we had a little bit of coffee, talked about my career, her career, the new gym her and Marcy are opening, and then I left without even getting any paperclips and rubberbands. But I did manage to get wrestled to the floor once more before I left.

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