Chris Turgeon - Oh, What a Tangled Web

 

So, of course, you know in our family, a lot of people in the south had a big family bible, we had a big Webster's Dictionary. So, when I said delusions, I looked up a delusion is a fixed fake belief that's resistant to fact or to the truth. And when you delude, it's to deceive or to deliberately mislead the mind or the judgment. So not-- you think about a delusion, not such a positive connotation. So, a positive in my life was my kids. And I had a daughter first, and three years later, I had a son. And having two uncles, one in the NBA, one in the NFL and having played ball myself, I had this big gigunda's son, and I figured this guy is like NFL bound. 

 

And so about age two, I guess his sister and her friends wouldn't let him play with him. So, they gave him-- he wanted to play Barbie with him, so they gave him one Barbie with no clothes and one arm. [audience laughter] And so, he took paper towels and napkins and folded them and he made formal gowns and stuff, started building all these little dresses, so that’s good dexterity for his fingers for when he's gouging quarterbacks in the eye through the face mask. [audience laughter] And we got down so. And he got a little bigger and he got better at that stuff. So, I said the Barbie thing, let me get you GI Joe. And he got a couple of scarves from my wife and GI Joe had a fabulous sari, [audience laughter] really nice [chuckles] pantsuit ensemble. And I said, “Well, that's cool, it's pretty creative.” 

So, we were doing everything. He'd come out fishing with me, and he's a hard fishing little guy and loved being with me. We go spend weekends at the camp and do all that good stuff, go to the ball games with me. And so, he wanted to do karate. And I'm like “Yes. Thank you, Lord, yeah.” So, he's kicking everyone's ass. He's huge and really strong and winning all the time. So, I'm like he's doing his forms. One day I said, “This is great.” And then I hear [makes music sound] he's got my wife's disco thing, and he's busting moves in front of the mirror and working on his dance moves and I said, “Well, yeah, that's cool.” Once again. 

And so I was raised kind of-- my parents, my mom was a college professor, dad was a TV producer and they were really liberal. So, their three sons piss them off by all becoming conservative. And it worked for them with their parents. And so, I was trying to delude, it was for me and that I was trying to delude myself. And so finally, when Mardi Gras, he said he wanted to-- He made his own costume. And so, he was the Love bug. So, it was Mardi Gras morning, he had red shorts and this great floral tunic top that he'd made. Hat, it was all piled up with all sorts of stuff hot glued on. 

And so we're walking down from commanders down to the quarter, and some queen in the quarter goes, “Oh, honey, you're on your way.” And I said [chuckles]. At this point deluding is really-- it's a wicked delusion as deception. So, the years gone, and even when he's on the flag team in high school. And I said, “Yeah, but look, there's some cute girls on that team,” and he hangs out with Courtney a lot [chuckles], right. And so, one night, one of my wife's friends are over, and this girl had a bottle of Grey Goose surgically implanted in the side of her face. And she says, “Isn't it great? Isn't it great that Bryce told everyone he's gay?” I said, “Yeah, that's great because I'm thrilled about It.” 

And so later that night, Bryce comes home, and I said, “You got something to tell me?” And I said, “Miss Debbie is over.” He goes, “Oh, shit.” [audience laughter] I said, “Well, in between vodka burps, I got something about you've come out like--.” And he's like “Well, I don't want to piss you off, dad.” And I said, “Well, basically, I love you, and I drove you to all those theater performances and [audience laughter] I'm going to love you, one way or another,” and I realized at that point I wasn't deluding to protect Bryce, this is all about me. It was like a kind of a bullshit prop to use. And so, I came to embrace that and so he went on to come out okay and went on a full theater scholarship to a real exclusive Catholic University. And he's now making costumes on Broadway. He called me yesterday. He said, “I'm making a dress for Jennifer Lawrence. I just wanted to tell you that, Pop.” [audience laughter and applause] He’s 25 and living on the island, and I promise I wouldn't say how tall he was, 6 foot 8. And he's working with the top dogs and one of the two biggest costume shops in New York. 

 

And so, I looked back on that and said-- so if I was resistant in my fake firm belief to the truth or to reason, you got to figure out what-- once you got the thought, I got to say, what was this truth or reason to which I was so resistant? And I realized that-- I spent a lot of years being a football coach and in sales and so it was kind of a man's world, manly man's world. And the truth was that I was a father to an incredibly talented, incredibly fabulous gay man. And when I stopped deluding myself and just let the love take over, it was all good. Thank you all. God bless.