Boyfriend Meets the Family

*Everyone’s name has been changed because I sure ain’t asking permission to talk about them online

It’s always been a treat taking the people in my life who don’t know my extended family, to meet my extended family. 

Matt, my college boyfriend, got to meet them for the first time one 4th of July. 

I don’t think there is any level of appropriate preparation aside from one of those secret briefing manila folders the government gives out in the movies. And even with a super official manila folder with detailed case studies and psych records, I still don’t think he could have been properly prepared for what he was about to encounter.

We pulled up in the drive where my cousin’s husband, and his beard and beer belly were hanging out with my uncle-in-law, Lee. Lee is bald on top but rocks the horseshoe hair and a dirty blonde mustache. These two are drinking Natural Light straight out of the box, in the front yard, shameless in their white trash glory, sitting around on chipped, half-broken, mismatched lawn furniture. 

We get out of the car, greet the front yard welcoming committee just described, and walk through the front porch into the living room—lit by a low-light, warm bulb. The living room has many shades of brown with fixings from the 80s. As you’re taking it all in, the smell of cigarette smoke, dog, and musty hoarder house hits you. 

My cousin, dressed in scrubs, is cutting my Uncle Dale’s hair in the living room. Bare-footed kids are running around, crusty snot caked on their noses. The noise of another 4,347 family members envelopes you and suddenly they’re all around you, coming and going but most of the ruckus is coming from the kitchen.  

And my poor, dear, sweet boyfriend… My boyfriend who was raised in the pristine home of his well-to-do grandmother in an adorable suburb. The moment we walk in the door, Matt’s first greeting in the middle of the chaos comes from my Uncle Dale, the ex-con, the one getting his haircut in the living room. Dale just glances out of the corner of his eye, sees there’s somebody he doesn’t recognize, and half shouts, half grunts in our direction…

“Who’s that queer?”

He didn’t even take the cigarette out of his mouth.  

Code red. The horror! But Matt was good, man. He was on top of things. I think he must’ve read the manila briefing folder and realized that homophobic name-calling was within the realm of possibilities because without skipping a beat he flicked his wrist and snapped back in a high-pitched voice, “oh heyyyyyyyyyyyy”. 

My mom cackle-laughed and my uncle half smiled, confused as to whether the kid was playing along or if he had actually hit the nail on the head. 

The rest blurs together with any other holiday in the Ramsey house, everyone eating on paper plates and standing around because there was never anywhere to sit between all of us. Each person with a 32oz styrofoam gas station soda in our hands. 

My uncle David, often described as an asshole and a know-it-all is also funny and sweet. He’s skinny as a rail and has looked like the actor Sam Elliot my whole life. Just like Sam Elliot, he never seems to get any older. Same handle-bar mustache my whole life, too. 

Uncle David, fed up with the fact that no one could move an inch in ma’s house shouted, 

“Either this house is getting smaller or these people are getting bigger!” 

And he wasn’t wrong. Everyone was getting bigger, or rounder. My mom and her brothers and sisters are a Botero painting. My grandma always joked that my grandpa was just as wide as he was tall when she met him and then shrugged it off with a, “must have been French”, whatever that was supposed to mean. 

Well, everyone followed in his fat french footsteps. Not only were the people getting rounder. The house was also getting “smaller” as in tighter quarters because my grandma never passed up the chance to collect trash. 

The house has since burned down but it wasn’t a very big house. There was no dining room. There was a table tightly shoved into the kitchen where everybody sucked in their gut and shuffled around, plates held high to avoid getting gravy in anyone’s hair. For most of the day, Ma would be at the stove cooking something while cranky moms would wash the dishes. I can still feel the sticky plastic tablecloth on my elbows. 

When we left, Matt didn’t have a whole lot to say. Maybe he needed time to process it all. But Matt survived it and I got to spend time with my kin so, win-win.    

Even though this may be hard for a lot of people to wrap their minds around, I was proud to show off my family, all outdated jokes told in poor taste excluded. That part is fucked. Family is messy, complex stuff. You can love people and hate parts of them.

When you spend a lot of time in classrooms, offices, meetings, and on social platforms where everyone is always trying to show the best side of themselves, it is relaxing to walk into my grandma’s house where you can be unapologetically informal. Everyone is just letting it all hang out (figuratively and literally–gross, I know) and everyone is openly such a weirdo that nobody has any room to judge anyone else. There’s no need to worry about gossip because they’ll say anything then and there right to your face. And that is liberating. 

But maybe chaos and crass loud mouths are my comfort zone because that’s the way I grew up. Either way, I get a kick out of showing that off. And my family loves a guest because they get a kick out of playing up to the role. Matt, I hope you enjoyed the show because we sure have a good time putting it on.