I called my mother this morning to complain about the adoption agency totally screwing us up (see below) and she asked if she had told me that my uncle who lives out west was coming to visit this weekend. I said no. She said, “I was going just bring it down when we came to visit but I’ll just tell you now.” Dramatic pause. “He wrote us a letter.”

At this point my mind says to me – He’s gay.

She says, “He has a live in boyfriend.”

My mind – Woo Hoo! I’m psychic!

The other bit of weirdness here (about my mind – not my uncle) is that I have this recurring daydream about singing in a band with him. He used to be a drummer in a band but I don’t sing in bands. There is always this gay band manager who is very disapproving about how I dress. I always found that an odd detail to be in my daydream. Who puts critics in their daydream? I have this daydream when I start singing duets very loudly. What can I say? I’m strange. Anyway, this month in the Ninth Wave studies I’m supposed to be focusing on improving my psychic abilities by noticing anything that may indicate that I even have psychic abilities. I’m a skeptic so I wasn’t paying much attention until this morning. But what if that’s the sum total of my ability? The ability to sense gay people from 1500 miles away? What good is that? Figures that I would have that psychic ability and not the ability to pick lottery numbers. All this went through my head in the middle of this conversation with my mother.

Back to the story – Turns out that he sent the letter to another uncle of mine (who has known about this for years) and had him distribute the letter to the rest of the family. My mother says that this shows a complete lack of gumption. “Runnin’ away and hiding for years and then can’t even send his own letter out!” Leave it to my mother to get to the heart of the matter. He’s bringing his boyfriend to PA with him and wants to know who is willing to meet with him. My mother is planning on going to tell him not to be such a wimp. My parents are very anti-gay from a religious viewpoint. The rest of my family is probably anti-gay from a redneck viewpoint but if the boyfriend is willing to play poker with them (and especially if he loses money to them) they will love him forever. Our family motto ought to be “Never let your principles get in the way of a good poker game.”

I’m feeling quite relieved to know that we are not a statistical anomaly. I have a large extended family. Simple statistics say that at least one person should be gay. I’ve wondered why no one was. (Again, my mind is a bit odd). I was laying bets on a few of my cousins coming out at some point. I hadn’t figured on my uncle. Makes sense though. He’s 8 years older than me. He lived next door to me growing up. He’s like the horrible older brother I never had. But from a purely analytical point of view he would be considered a catch. If it was possible for a scheming woman to get her claws into him it surely would have happened by now. I guess he’s been with his boyfriend for a while. My mother says she met him when they visited a few years ago but they didn’t say they were together. Too bad they felt they had to hide it. A couple of lost hands of poker and everything could have been fine.