I. First Week of July, 2006:

Some earlier version of myself would've considered the following situation a complete nightmare: I'm wearing a bikini and lying in the sun, for one thing. I'm on a cruise ship named "Star" headed towards Alaska with 3,000 other persons, mostly in the 0-12 or 40+ age bracket. Omniscient deck-wide speakers blare We are Family for the fourth time that hour, lesbian moms in visors slather SPF 45 on their hyperactive children and I'm drinking a nine-dollar vodka tonic from a neon pink cup, and though it's strong, it ain't nine dollars strong.

I turn to the girl I'm seeing (cue sinister music, like the kind that played in the nightmares I used to have about being gay when I was a teenager, like Nine Inch Nails, which I just realized is it's own kind of lesbian nightmare, just that title, Nine Inch Nails?) and I say: "I don't have any desire whatsoever to return to my actual life. I would like to stay here forever."

"If they had Diet Dr. Pepper at the Garden Café," Haviland responds, "I would be in complete agreement with that statement."

I put on my shades. A seemingly endless stream of children, dripping ice cream like a car's exhaust, run by us and twist their pool-water-wet bodies in and out of the waterslides and jungle gym-ish labyrinth below. It'll be hours before the sun sets, but when it does, I'll think to myself that the sun could set on this moment for every night of my life and I'd be completely satisfied; out here, on the water, with the gay people and the sunshine.

Though seriously, the drinks are really expensive.

****

II. 2006

Haviland, my current best friend and former kinda-sorta-more-than friend, invited me on the cruise as her plus-one: Rosie O'Donnell, a friend of Hav's since they performed together on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof, had invited her to sing on the ship.

I imagined the cruise itself as a launching point from which to craft our personal vacation: light on glacier "excursions" and Pirate Parties and heavy on sunbathing, dildos, beer and yoga. The gay family thing was just a coincidence. The gay world I knew was young and trendy and hot and urban. Families, bleh.

Granted: I donate to the HRC. I support Gay Marriage, I go to Pride, and refuse to befriend anyone who doesn't support gay marriage (this is literally the only politically-related dealbreaker for me, as I tend to be nonjudgmental of other's opinions/behaviors ... to a fault)—but somehow that whole gay family 'thing,' along with homosexuality itself—was, for most of my life, too closely tied to my Mom, and consequently, I wanted nothing to do with it.

Back then: when I argued for gay rights, it was mostly in theory. It wasn't for my Mom, and it certainly wasn't for me.

When I told my Mother I was cruisin', she was jealous: "Why don't I get to go with you! I'm your gay family!" Speaking of teenage nightmares....

III. 1997

My Mom came out in 1997. So did Ellen DeGeneres. I admit: I responded with a catastrophic tantrum ("You're turning me into a freak!").

I was 15. I wanted these things: my first kiss, breasts, freedom, for my Mom to stop yelling at me 3-4 times a day, for home to feel less like a war zone and more like home.

I also wanted my father back; he had died almost two years earlier. I wanted my family to be normal and I wanted to be normal, too.

I had gay friends, loved Rickie from My So-Called Life, pinned a pride ribbon on my backpack, and never used the word "faggot." But my friends, I thought, could afford difference: they had normal married parents and big houses on tree-lined streets and no curfew. Also, their mothers didn't go out to themed dances wearing tuxedos or fight and slam doors at three a.m.

My mother's psychological state at the time was tumultuous at best: many of my friends were afraid to even come over ... what would happen if they knew she wasn't just "crazy" but also gay? Would they think I was gay too? What if I was? I hadn't been able to prove otherwise, yet, because I liked boys who didn't like me back, which was all of them.

At 16, I left home. I also stopped lying to other people about my Mom as soon as I got my first boyfriend and become reasonably self-assured, slowly allowing myself to accept and then embrace my own differences. I'd identified as bisexual since my senior year of high school, after my female best friend pulled me into the closet (yes, literally, the actual closet) and kissed me. But I'd never dated a girl.

I also developed a remarkable ability to pass, and it turned out I was so good at it, my own mother was missing all the signals I tried to shoot her way when I moved to New York City and my life drifted farther and farther from the hetero-normative world I'd been in before.

So I didn't know how to respond to my Mom when she asked why I wasn't taking her on the gay cruise. She said: "You're not even gay." I was on Fifth Avenue walking to work, it was hot and cars made loud noises and I didn't know how to respond and I couldn't lie so I said nothing. I told her I couldn't hear her. I said the trucks were noisy.

Six months prior to the cruise, I'd lost two friends at once when they'd discovered I'd been hooking up with both of them and not taking either seriously. They were going to date each other. This seemed brave. I wondered if they were happy together and why I didn't want to be happy.

I if I dated a girl, I would have to tell my Mom. I knew I could be with a man if I wanted to, and so every desire I'd had toward a woman was blocked, abruptly, by the Don't Tell Mama Wall. Immature, to be sure, but then again: I was.

It's like telling your Dad you've decided to go into the family business; you just can't give him that.

****

IV. 2004

In 2004, my mother and Susan had a commitment ceremony in the backyard of the suburban Detroit house they lived in with Susan's adopted son. I was living in New York but I flew back for it. By this point, thanks to medication, therapy, and probably coming out, my Mom was not the Mom I'd grown up with. We got along. We get along. But old wounds are tricky ghosts: they refuse to ever go away, for one thing. You can walk through them but they are still visible.

I wore a hot pink mini-skirt, magenta Pumas: "This's the gay color, right?" I'd asked. Mom didn't think it was funny. Actually, I kinda do still think it's funny, but that's one thing we've never had in common: I think all of life's better told as a joke, she thinks feelings are real and should be taken seriously and treated with respect.

But my inability to access feelings was what saved me, I thought. It enabled me to choose how to feel, which was power.

We went out to Belle Isle the day before the ceremony and I sat on a rock at the waterfront, not hungry for the picnic they'd brought, staring across the lake at Detroit's big vacant auto factories and feeling vacant, too. I missed my father more than I had in years. I was annoyed that Mom could re-marry, but I could never re-father. I was mad at her even though I should have been happy for her.

I had a whole section of my brain reserved for feelings I wasn't interested in having: wanting my father back, for example. There's a scene in Village of the Damned where Christopher Reeves' character's mind is shown graphically as a brick wall. I have one of those walls too. It is so strong even psycho devil-children probably couldn't bear through it. I can take it down if I want to, but why would I want to?

****

V. 2006

From the moment I stepped on board the Norwegian Star; everyone just assumed I was gay. It was a beautiful July morning when we boarded in Seattle and Haviland and I Vogued for the boarding photograph—the first of many photographs we had no intention to purchase. I noticed, though, that in every context, these photographers automatically gestured for the same-sex persons to say Cheese. It was Gay Opposite Day all the time.

Haviland and I made our way to the penthouse for Rosie's private party, cutting through the crowds of shiny happy homos.

Up there, I felt like a guest in GayLand. Rosie'd been my favorite actress when I was a kid (coincidence?), I watched her show religiously, and I had a memorable argument with my mother about her sexual orientation before her coming out.

There Rosie was, talking to me about her kids, her in-laws ... Rosie's kingdom was vast: Broadway actors, Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn, Cyndi Lauper, assistants ... I watched her children frolic unapologetically, I drank three beers, I sang Come to my Window to Haviland's video camera as we gazed at Melissa Etheridge.

Every step that'd brought them all here must've seemed obvious to them: This is Real. People are Doing This! People I worship and admire are doing this. Could I, too, do this?

****

"You should talk at the teen panel," Haviland suggested that night.

'Why?" I asked. "I don't really have an uplifting story."

"Well, you kinda do," she said. "I mean, you and your Mom get along now."

"I've got Pfizer to thank for that, not PFLAG," I say. I flopped down on the bed—we'd pushed our singles together into a king. "When I published that lesbian erotica story, she asked me how I 'knew.'"

"Go on."

"I told her I made it up. Then I backpedaled. I said I'd been with girls. She said But when I came out you were so angry—" I sighed. "It could have been anything. If she'd become a vegetarian, I would've killed a cow and eaten it right there. And I don't even like steak."

"What if it'd been your Dad who came out?" Haviland asked.

I laughed. "I probably would've thought it was kinda cool." I can what if about him all night, though. And so I don't.

****

Haviland performed a scene from Wicked for the Broadway Belters show. Rosie had pulled together a serious all-star roster; all the performers were working Broadway actors, some were Tony winners.

"Um, but my—my friend—" I tried telling the usher who'd just told me that the first show was full. The word girlfriend wouldn't hit my lips.

Haviland wasn't my girlfriend, of course, but if I'd been kinda-sorta-dating a boy I don’t imagine I would have had linguistic trouble exaggerating our relationship to get in the door.

I came backstage afterwards and told her I hadn't gotten in and the Team mobilized immediately: Haviland's girlfriend didn't get a seat, Haviland's girlfriend didn't get a seat.

"You're like the Beatles," Rosie said to the actors, regarding the crowds pushing to get into the early show. "Or like Studio 54, but with Kelli as the bouncer."

Which's quite an idea: Studio 54 where everyone's gay. Where all the cool kids are queer. Maybe they were.

Things are changing so fast lately I can hardly believe it. I don't know if I've managed to grow comfortable with myself at the same pace the rest of the world grows comfortable enough with lesbians to give us TV shows and hot outfits and magazine cover stories or if it's just conveniently worked out that way. If Spashley had existed when I was a teenager, I think it would've blown my mind.

They reserved me a second-row spot for the late show. It had a little sign on it. I felt like Bianca Jagger.

When Haviland sang, even though she was dressed like a wedding cake topper, I actually cried. I was proud to be with her, in whatever context: I was crying at musical theater. Yes, that old nightmare: musical theater, a ship, gay people, etc. My Grinch-ish heart was glowing, expanding, growing.

****

I always assumed, therefore, that all children-of-gays suffered from some degree of internalized homophobia, because I figured I did, too. Surely they wished, like I did, that they could be "normal."

But the children on the cruise were decidedly happier than most other children, ever. They were resolutely dedicated to their parents, defending them in playground fights I woulda shied away from.

And as we sailed further from America and from the conflicted life I lived there, I let the mountain air get to my head and I thought, as Elton John sang on the speakers about every hour, that I could feel the love.

****

"Are you a gay, or a child of a gay?" Kathy Griffin asked us when she found us, equally lost in search of the de-boarding gate in Sagatuck.

"Um, both?" I answered.

"A gay," Haviland smiled.

"Good then. I think I need a gay to guide me off this boat."

It was the fourth day; I was getting used to this. To the World of Gay; where 85% of the passengers—including Kathy—swooned for the capable, casually pretty and wholly grounded Kelli O'Donnell. And Rosie's attitude—self-deprecating, sarcastic, embracing camp and speaking out--is a lot like mine. Her upcoming spot on The View was a subject of much of her comedy material on the ship, but I think it was more than that; we felt that things, perhaps, were finally changing. That even if a political win was years away, that we were putting One of Our Own in a position to get more daily face-time with the American people than our own President.

The same "difference" that mortified me at 15 was exactly what made me feel comfortable on the boat, what made me want to never get off. Maybe it was the sense of relief I felt walking down the stairs, knowing we had a secret together, that we were all different and there was no need to pretend.

Back in New York, Haviland and I were often asked if we were "really gay" when we went to girl-bars; apparently our femininity was disarming. There's a lot of posturing involved in being a girl-who-likes-girls; signals, dress codes. I've always been a tomboy, but there was something incredibly freeing about wearing ten shades of eyeshadow, legwarmers and mini-skirts to the Cyndi Lauper concert and not worrying if people wouldn't know. Because, after all, I was unlikely to tell them.

***

"Here you are! It's the young ones! It's the future!" Susan Powter called to Haviland and me from cross-ship. With her white-and-pink dreadlocks and her chiseled body, Susan led us through morning yoga sessions while reminding us to avoid "refined white sugar, refined white flour and refined white men." Her aggressive, in-your-face feminism was what my Mom always subscribed to, and which I'd quickly cast away in my pursuit of Male Affection. I loved her.

In the Starlight Lounge, Haviland joined Jill Sobule for a duet of "I Kissed a Girl." Jill, like Cyndi Lauper's violinist and her girlfriend, like Cyndi's sister, like all these fucking happy happy happy people, is queer. And like, proud?

****

Look at these children, Rosie said on our last night. Aren't they beautiful? The foster children, the adopted children, the biological children: the love, love, love, love. There were families who remained closeted in their homes; this'd been their one week of freedom. It was touching. I WAS TOUCHED.

And so, finally, it came together:

I'm still not likely to cry during "Defying Gravity," but maybe I am, sometimes. And this outsider world, this queer culture, this big gay boat, felt almost entirely right to me. It wasn't, as I'd assumed, my secret homophobia eating me from the inside that'd resulted in my reaction to my Mom.

I was fifteen years old and my Mom was insane, and I was sad, and I reacted. It happened to be homosexuality, but like I told Haviland, it really could have been anything. My Mom's better now and thus we're better—she was there for me like WHOA during my first big lesbian breakup last month. And somewhere between the lesbian erotica conversation and the "meet my girlfriend" conversation, she figured out what I'd wanted to say without speaking, and she'd said "I just want you to be happy."

So maybe haters like George W. could stand to learn a similar lesson about his own stance on these issues—I allowed personal alienation, panic and unrest—a displeasure with the State of Things—to encroach my sensibilities, to compromise my personal politics. Luckily, however, I am not the President of the United States. And, unlike Riese in '97, G.W. is not fifteen years old.

***

And so here I am again, on my second cruise. I am on a deck in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean headed back to New York City from Florida. The music is still irritating, the drinks remain expensive, the children are still screaming but still happy. I still love it here but I don't feel like I'm having a personal revolution in my head every ten seconds. This is my life, now.

I spent two weeks before the cruise writing a gay/lesbian sitcom pilot with a girl I met through my L Word blog, and last night, Haviland's girlfriend and I put together a staged reading of the work: it's got a gay Mom and a gay daughter who makes pains to separate her own sexuality from her mother's. I'm ready to stand behind it, get it made, find financing, a network, be out there with it, and wow, like, wow.

In the last year, I've written for The L Word Online and willingly referred to myself as a "Guestbian." I've even accepted, though the recent breakup's left me 100% emotionally devoid for now, that one day I might be here not as a Friend of Haviland but as a Gay Mom. I just had that thought without throwing up, which says a lot. The past year has been a total whirlwind and I think a lot of it started on that boat last year.

OK, time for a nine-dollar vodka.