This podcast is supported by Cartier.
In celebration of the Trinity Collections 100th anniversary,
Cartier shares testaments of love in all its forms from around the world.
Please keep listening for today's love story later in this episode.
Love now and...
Did you fall in love?
I love love.
I'm stronger than anything.
You should go love love.
And I love you more than anything.
You should go love it.
From the New York Times, I'm Anna Merton.
This is Modern Love.
Today on the show,
author and advice columnist,
John Paul Braemer.
John Paul has built his career
answering people's burning questions about love and relationships.
In his column,
Ola Pappi.
Ola Pappi, I suck at first dates.
Ola Pappi is my crush just leading me on.
Ola Pappi, is it a bad idea to live with my ex?
Ola Pappi, I came out, no one cares.
The column runs in New York Magazine,
but it didn't start there.
It began on a blog started by Grindr.
Grindr is an app that is known for
Young Gay Professional Seeking Love.
And I'm putting that nicely.
Is that their official tagline?
Not at all.
Young Gay Professionals.
That's what I tell people...
That's why I tell straight people when I'm back in Oklahoma.
To the code what John Paul saying,
Grindr is a hook up app, mostly used by gay men.
And to him, that felt like the perfect place
to source a ton of problems.
I'm using the inexhaustible well of Gay Drama here.
So I was like,
oh my God, I'll never run out of stuff to write about.
What kind of questions did you get?
There were ones that were simple as like,
I moved to a big city and I still can't find friends
or a boyfriend and I'm lonely.
But then there were ones that were really quite dire.
Like, oh, I'm into my coworker
and he's giving me some signs that he might be into me as well.
But we're in a country where homosexuality is illegal
and I don't know what to do.
And I'm sitting there like,
I'm sitting there in like a coffee shop in Chelsea.
Like, I don't know how to answer this.
Wow, I mean, so how would you respond?
I don't want to try to pass myself off
as a therapist or an expert,
but I kind of drew on my own background of,
okay, well, who were the people who gave me advice
when I was first coming into the gay community?
I just come out, I was getting the lay of the land.
Who were my mentors?
And you know, it was really informal in Oklahoma.
There were just guys at the gay bars that I met
and there were like old queens there
who would kind of take me under their wing
and be like, here's how we do things.
Here's the kind of guys to look out for.
And I thought, okay, I can do that.
I can be an informal mentor figure
that you meet at a bar.
Okay, so John Paul, before we get into the essay,
you chose to read today, I wanted to ask you
about a question you got recently that's very timely
because it's Mother's Day this week.
It was from someone who called herself helicopter mom.
And she writes that her son is 29.
He is his first real boyfriend
and she feels super protective of him.
So the question she asks who is,
what is the best way I can support my son
while he's navigating his first relationship?
Yeah, it just sounded like she was really afraid
of the human condition, which is that, you know,
and the human condition were vulnerable creatures.
We're going to get hurt in life.
And I think that when we love someone,
especially a child, I have to imagine,
and you take a look at the world that they're stepping into
and you just wish that you could shield them from things
and you wish that you could protect them from harm.
But making peace with that is sort of,
it can be really difficult to do.
But I think, you know, trying to make the case
to this mom that we learn to live by living.
And it's through disappointment and hardship
that we open ourselves up to wisdom and change and growth.
Do you remember a specific moment
where your own mom or grandma was overpowered
by their protective impulse for you,
kind of like helicopter mom in this letter?
Oh gosh, yeah.
And you know, it's not super characteristic of my mom,
but I grew up in rural Oklahoma, very rural area.
And I went to college like an hour and a half away
and so I was able to visit all the time.
And so I finally got a writing job
after I graduated that was going to take me to DC.
And I was going to move pretty far away.
I mean, that's a big leap from rural Oklahoma.
And I think that it made my mom kind of nervous
because both she and my dad accompanied me
to my first trip to DC.
And you know, I was going to meet my roommates,
but my mom just had to go with me.
Like absolutely.
I was like, no, no, I want to make sure
that you're going to be in a place that's safe.
And I want to see these people for myself.
And something about having like five roommates
around my age in this new big city,
really spooked her, I think.
And so, you know, I did bring my mom and believe her not.
They did not ask me to live with them.
Oh, that is so sweet of your mom to support you,
even if she's nervous about your decision to move.
And you know, John Paul, you actually kind of helped me out
because that story reminds me of the modern love essay
you chose to read today.
Absolutely.
It's by Kevin Hershey.
But in his case, Kevin is watching his grandmother
make a big decision that he has to accept.
And like your mom, Kevin's way of supporting his grandmother
through her decision is by being there for her along the way.
The essay is called Young Gay and Single
among the nuns and widows.
And before we hear the essay,
do you think you could come up with an olapoppy pen name
for Kevin, kind of like helicopter mom?
I know I'm putting on the spot.
I know you can do it.
I can also brainstorm with you.
Okay. Yeah.
So my mind immediately needs to play
with the none aspect of the whole thing.
So, you know, what about like getting none?
But it's NUN, like not having sex.
But then.
Oh, that's a really, really good one.
I'm jealous that that one didn't come to my brain.
Yes.
I mean, it has to be getting none.
Getting none.
The olapoppy pen name for Kevin Hershey is getting none.
That's again, NUN.
It'll make sense once we hear John Paul read the essay.
How about you take it away?
Hung gay and single among the nuns and widows by Kevin Hershey.
When I graduated from college in Portland, Oregon eight years ago, I dreamed of taking
my Spanish major and spirit of adventure and moving abroad, where I would quickly acquire
a gay lover who would introduce me to new languages, foods, and sex.
Instead, I moved back home to St. Paul, Minnesota, and into my Irish grandmother's Catholic
senior living apartment, where she and I barely spoke, and where she, at least, didn't
need.
At 90, having lived a long and healthy life, she had decided to die by starvation, and
I had decided that my mother's request to be there for her.
My grandmother had moved to the United States from Ireland 65 years earlier.
While she spoke with a thick brogue and still chose tea over coffee, she did not glory
and tales of the beautiful country she had left behind.
Sean and Jimmy hated Ireland.
She would often say about my brother and cousin who had studied there in the early 2000s.
It rained the whole time and their feet were never dry.
Of course, all I heard is how much they love their semesters in Ireland.
They never complained about having wet feet.
But my grandmother had left that dank, grey island, brutalized by British imperialism, and
never looked back.
She landed in New York City, the bright and bustling opposite of her slow, seawashed
homeland.
She wore pink linen pant suits and turquoise floral tops, never beige Irish wools or long
plaid skirts.
She preferred pasta with red sauce to potatoes and brown bread.
And then, having reached 90, she had decided to die with seemingly as much confidence and
determination as when she left her home country.
Having been healthy her entire life and still blessed with the full ability to walk, talk,
and cook, my grandmother stopped eating.
There was no discussion in the family as to whether we would force feed her or somehow
coerce her into living more years that her body could have managed.
She simply remained in her chair, draped in rosaries, waiting for what she believed to be
her next step.
Heaven.
My grandmother's matter of fact death announcement came a month after my college graduation.
As the jobless and largely aimless person I was back then, except for the aim to experience
new languages, foods, and sex, I became the most obvious candidate to be there for my
grandmother during her final weeks.
And so, for the next six weeks, I spent my days shouting over the TV she was no longer
using her hearing aids, as she peacefully lay in bed and starved herself to death.
In the morning we would listen to public radio, or I would, she probably couldn't hear,
and I would make eggs and toast and put them on a plate for her, knowing that she would
wordlessly refuse to eat.
Within an hour, I would be eating them myself.
I would follow a recipe for Irish soda bread I found on yellowing newspaper in her drawer,
only to eat half of it myself and pass the rest out to the neighbors, mostly nuns who
were thrilled to get bread from a real Irish kitchen.
In the evening, an old Italian priest would knock on the door and deliver the blessed
wafer, which my grandmother took solemnly on her tongue.
I took it too, not because I believe it to be the flesh of Christ, but because I knew it
was the only way to share a meal with my grandmother.
Needless to say, my living situation was not at all conducive to gay sex or most other
sins, so I had none to confess before swallowing the wafer.
I quickly learned how the human body can function with little food.
For several days we would walk together down the hall to daily Catholic Mass, while the
other mass attendants wore threadbare slippers and even bath robes, my grandmother, even
in the face of death, wore suits splashed with tropical patterns and a glistening gold
watch at her wrist.
Far from my gay South American fantasy, I found myself single and surrounded by the pasty
white faces of nuns and widows.
No men rid my daily life other than the bloody, crucified, well muscled, and oddly sexy,
Christ hanging above the altar.
Despite how close we were, especially as I saw her through to her end, my grandmother
didn't know I was gay, and I didn't tell her.
Within weeks she could no longer get dressed up or walk down the hall to mass or leave
treats for the neighbors.
Her pearly white skin turned dishwater gray, her piercing green eyes became as cloudy
as the sea she had once crossed.
Perhaps out of religious fervor, or simply a need to cover up the smell of decay, the
priest lit a tall red candle, picking Jesus with his crowned heart of flame popping out
of his chest.
Like lace curtains barely concealing Irish poverty, the rose-centred candle did little to hide
the aroma of death that permeated the room.
One day as my grandmother lay in bed, the funeral of Margaret Thatcher flashed across the
screen.
Having not spoken in days, my grandmother nodded at Thatcher's face on the screen and
said, I won't be seeing her in heaven.
Like many Irish people, my grandmother had never forgiven Margaret Thatcher for her hard
line stance on keeping the North of Ireland in the United Kingdom, particularly her infamous
indifference toward Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike while interned by Thatcher's
government.
I don't know if my grandmother saw the parallel that, like the Freedom Fighter Sands,
she too was on a hunger strike, against aging, in her case.
My grandmother stayed alive for six weeks without food, almost as long as the 66 days Sands
lived on a hunger strike at age 27.
Her death left me again jobless and without purpose, single, living with my parents, and
full of that driftless feeling that you're afraid will never pass when you're in your
early 20s.
I tried my best to buy a grinder to make it seem like I hadn't just spent the past several
months in a Catholic senior living community going to daily mass while seeing my grandmother
to her death.
I never told most of the men I met about that, neither then nor in the years that followed.
On my first date with Matin, though, I immediately opened up in a way I never had before.
Something in his warm brown eyes said that I didn't have to lie.
As we walked through Central Park, he told me lovingly about his Muslim-aronian parents
and the various foods, prohibitions, and celebrations that seemed to govern their lives.
I knew that, like me, he was no stranger to prayers and incense, candles, prayer beads,
and rituals for rituals sake.
We shared a kiss in the park, and I invited him for a drink.
He said he would love to, but that he had promised to bring his grandmother around
in food in the hospital.
There's no way she's eating the American hospital food.
He said with a laugh, if I don't go, she'll starve.
As I watched him walk away to fulfill his family duty, I was filled with a calm curiosity
that I'd never felt after a first kiss.
Years later, Matin and I have taught each other our grandmother's cooking.
He has filled our kitchen with sense of saffron and sumac, and he has learned to love Irish
soda bread with carrigal butter.
Despite his halal diet, we don't let a St. Patrick's Day pass without blood puddings,
bangers, and Guinness.
My grandmother died not knowing I was gay.
It's not that I thought she would object.
It just didn't come up, and I didn't raise it.
Matin's grandmother, still living, doesn't know he's gay either.
She comes from a country where homosexuality can be a death penalty crime.
Mine left a land where Catholicism once ruled that then became the first nation to legalize
same-sex marriage through popular vote.
And these straight people can't imagine hiding a core part of their identity from their loved
ones.
And some gay people would surely consider Matin and me to be cowards for not being honest
with our grandmothers, for not trusting them with the knowledge of our true selves,
and say it isn't real love if you're keeping such a major part of yourself hidden.
My only response is that love is complicated and diverse.
In many immigrant families, it's intertwined with duty and care.
For Matin, love is in the past down Persian ropes, the five daily prayers, and the perfectly
brown rice at the bottom of the pot.
For me, it was being there to comfort my dying Irish grandmother as she chose to leave
in the manner she wanted.
Cursey Margaret Thatcher's name to the end.
After the break, John Paul on the things he never told his grandmother, and why she still
knew him better than anyone else, stay with us.
This podcast is supported by Cartier.
For my 20th wedding anniversary, my husband gave me an amazing letter.
We were having lunch in the park.
The same park we got married in.
And in the letter, he talks about all of the journeys and things that we've done.
And he says, if I said to you, you're going to watch African sunrises from Ghana.
If I said to you, you'll eat breakfast in Paris and sleep in the desert, dance in the streets
of New Orleans or ride a camel all while by my side at the time it would have seemed like
a wild dream.
But yet those dreams are in fact our memories.
I cried like a baby when I read that letter.
And I cry every time I read it.
It made me feel in love.
It made me feel in love.
With love from Cartier.
I'm David Marquez.
And I'm Lulugar Sienavaro.
And we're the hosts of the interview from The New York Times.
David and I have spent our careers interviewing some of the most interesting and influential
people in the world.
Which means we know when to ask tough questions and when to just sit back and listen.
And now we've teamed up to have these conversations every week.
We'll try to reveal something about the people shaping our world.
And we'll get some great stories from them too.
It's the interview from The New York Times.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay.
So, John Paul, you just read the essay Young, Gay and Single Among the Nuns and Widows
by Kevin Hershey.
And you said that there were some striking similarities between Kevin's story and your
own.
Tell me more about that.
So I come from a Mexican-American background and a very Catholic background as well.
And I never came out to either my abuelo or my abuelo before they died.
I tried to come out a couple times to my abuelo, but she kind of had selective dementia where
she would just forget certain things.
So one time I kind of injured and said, I think I'm gay.
And she turned to me and she was like, you know, me, Rachel Maddo's, a handsome woman
and then just like moved on and kind of forgot again.
What a response.
Yeah.
An Alzheimer for sure.
And then, you know, also strangely, my abuelo also a very strong-willed woman.
She chose to die in kind of the same manner that Kevin's grandmother chose to die.
She just was, you know, she's very stubborn and she was like, nope, I'm done.
And she stopped eating.
And we kind of believed her because when she says that she feels a certain way that she's
going to do something, it is impossible to change her mind.
And so we knew that that's how she was going to go.
And obviously there's just a lot here that I was like, wow, that's like from my life.
I want to go back to this moment where you said you kind of tried to come out to your abuelo.
You know, did you say several times?
So that, that, that time that you mentioned was not the only time?
Like once or twice, but it was always like a probing question.
Similarly to Kevin, I kind of thought like this isn't something that I really need them
to know.
Like we were so set in what our daily lives look like and the way that we knew each other
and the kind of love that we shared.
And I understand what he's saying when he said that some would say that that's cowardly
or that like she never knew the true me.
But I just don't see it that way because I think that with my family and with my grandparents,
I almost inhabited a true or me than I do here in New York where I'm kind of out and
about.
Tell me more about what you mean by that.
The moment when you really come out to a beloved family member, that's a big moment, right?
It's a moment where you're like, yes, we have entered a new phase of our relationship.
But I guess what I'm talking about is more subtle and kind of just more ingrained into
the everyday nature of things.
And so they're facets of me back when I lived at home.
And with my grandparents that I haven't communicated to anyone else on earth.
And I think it's just a sacred, it's just as important.
It's just as central to who I am than any other part of it.
And so it shared something very special with my grandparents that I just never felt
the need to bring this other part into it, I guess.
Is there a moment you can remember where you felt like you were being your true self
with your grandparents, like a self that people in your community in New York don't see
as much?
So when I was a kid, you know, my grandparents, my wellos, they were poor their whole lives.
And the way they lived their life looked very different than the way that I live mine.
And so seeing what they did to cope and seeing the little life hacks that they would implement
in their house that was sort of falling apart.
And the way they would like steal food from buffets, which you know, you sounds like you
wouldn't be able to steal food from buffets, but they found a way.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, I know exactly what you're saying, bringing like, Tupperware's to the Golden Gral,
I like, understand that.
Yeah, totally.
Exactly.
You know, like little things like that and that's a huge part of my identity.
That's what my childhood looked like.
And you know, when I meet people here in New York and you know, just the other day I was
at this nice literary party thing and having a really good time.
There is this aspect of where I come from in my past, the things I've seen and the things
I know and the things I understand that another person here just wouldn't be able to wrap
their brains around.
And it's something that, you know, I don't really communicate to just everyone.
And so that was a version of me that my grandparents fostered and that they knew really well and
that they said, hello to every morning.
And it's intimate.
It really is.
And it's important.
Yeah.
I mean, I love what you're saying.
Your sexuality is just one piece of who you are and your grandparents knew all these
other parts of you so deeply and so well.
I think that's really beautifully put.
So I guess I wonder, like, do you think we have a duty to show our true selves to the
people we love?
Yeah.
So I would actually say that it kind of goes both ways.
So when we come from immigrant backgrounds or we come from, in my case, you know, my
well those days, books, Spanish, they knew a lot about Mexico.
That's where their families were from.
I, there was a lot I didn't know about them.
So it wasn't just like, oh, I'm gay and I'm keeping the secret from them.
There was just so much about the intricacies of their inner lives that were not made
privy to me and that, you know, there is a narrative in place where it's just like,
oh, the immigrant grandparents suffered so that their grandchildren could have a nice
comfortable life.
And in that narrative, you know, their lives get kind of papered over and they get sort
of utilizes a way to be like, oh, well, it was all leading up so that I could live the
life I have.
And so I'm not saying that it's like narcissistic or self-absorbed or anything, but I am saying
that, you know, your grandparents probably also have things about themselves that you
haven't seen and that you don't know.
And so it's not like you're the only one holding a secret or whatever.
We all kind of have things that go uncommunicated even with people that we love.
And so I would say, no, I don't think that that makes you cowardly.
I think that that makes you just a complicated human being like everyone is.
Is there something that you learned about your own obuela maybe later on in life that surprised
you that kind of jolted you out of that narrative?
Oh gosh.
Well, you know, it's difficult because, and I won't speak for every Mexican family, but
at least in my case, my grandparents were fabulous.
So every time I talk to them about their origin stories or where they come from, it just
changed every single time.
Like, I'm pretty sure one time my obuela just completely ripped off the plot of Coco
to talk about who like my great grandfather was.
It's a great movie.
Yeah, it's a great movie.
It's like, oh, and me, you know, your great grandfather, he was an amazing musician and
he fought in the revolution and he played for the new president.
But no, like it was so hard to get the truth out of them, but it's funny.
You know, there's, we do have running jokes about like, you know, Abelito, yeah, he was
probably gay.
Like I remember, he passed not too long ago, like a few months ago.
And my mom sent this picture to us all of my abelito in the military.
And he is sitting on a bed with another man and he looks happier than we have ever seen
him in our lives.
And we're all just like, man, that's why he loved the military, huh?
Like, it was just like all to say, like, there are things that we just don't know about
our grandparents.
Like he was like so into fashion.
One thing that we quote all the time is that one time my sister wore this like striped
shirt or something.
And my abelito was just like stripes really.
No, grandparents can be so savage.
They can really be, they can just catch you to your core.
But it's interesting what you're saying.
Like those moments where our grandparents give us a glimpse into who they are as people,
those comments or those quips or those stories or whatever, they make us realize there's
so much.
We don't know about them, like even if we're super close with them, you know, in the
author Kevin Hershey's case, even if we live with them, even if we care for them, there's
still so much we have to discover about the people we're closest to.
I think that's, I think that's a really important thing, a really beautiful thing to remember.
Absolutely.
John Paul, thank you so much for this conversation.
What a treat.
Thank you for having me.
I'm very happy to be able to have you.
I'm very happy to be able to have you.
Modern Love is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Joza, Riva Goldberg, Davis Land, and Emily
Lang.
The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell, original music by Dan Powell, Mary and
Luzano, Rowan Nemisto, Carol Sabarro, and Pat Akusker.
This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez, our show is recorded by Maddie Masielo and Nick
Pitman, digital production by Mahima Treblani and Nell Gologli.
The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones, Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love
projects.
I'm Anna Martin.
We're listening.
