Back when I worked at SkyTel, Ben was one of our customer service trainers. Sharp as a tack and totally professional, Ben was the sort of person you suspected might sleep dressed in a suit and tie. Chronologically, he was in his early twenties, but he projected the air of someone far older and far more mature.
Beneath that lean, handsome, insurance salesman exterior beat the heart of a religious conservative. On one occasion, Ben led a customer service training class in singing a hymn. He loved to debate religious issues of every stripe. Eventually, he would leave a promising corporate career to preach for a very small, very rural, and very conservative church. For Ben, religion was a lens that brought the entire world into focus.
Even so, he wasn’t a judgmental person. He took my frankness about my partnership with Clyde in stride. We worked well together. We respected each other. We clicked.
So it surprised me one day when, during some rare downtime, Ben stepped into my office, closed the door, and said, “Can I ask you a … personal question?”
I blinked. “Sure.”
Ben seemed unusually uncomfortable — formal, almost rigid. “It’s about you and Clyde. There’s something I just don’t understand.”
I gestured to a chair. “Sure, Ben. Of course. Sit down.”
He sat, but did not relax. “I’ve been thinking about it lately, and there’s something I just can’t quite understand about what you guys do.”
I prepared for the worst. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“I mean, I can’t picture how this particular thing would work … between two guys.”
“I don’t quite know what you’re asking,” I said, even though I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he was asking.
He took a deep breath, held it, and then released it all in one big rush: “How do you decide who does things like dishes and laundry and house cleaning when both of you are guys?“
I’ve never been more relieved by a question in all my life.
On top of not being the question I thought he was going to ask, Ben’s question was a remarkably honest one. Like a lot of straight, conservative people, Ben lived in a world where personal plumbing determines household responsibilities. Men earn the livin’. Women do the cookin’ and cleanin’. That being a given: how do you decide, in a relationship between two men, who puts on the aprons, whips up a pot roast, and keeps the place tidy?
“Each of us has his own strengths,” I said. “We divide chores up based on who does what kind of thing best, or who prefers to do it. We … negotiate.”
“What if neither person likes to do a particular thing?”
“That’s why we have a maid.”
Ben laughed. I laughed. The moment passed.
I haven’t seen Ben in years. I miss him. I miss his professionalism, and his ability to be true to his beliefs without striking out at others. But most of all, I miss his honesty: his ability to set aside assumptions and, in a very simple, straightforward, and unthreatening manner, ask me what he wanted to know.
LOL.
I think that is the only real question my husband had for our son when he officially “came out”. The issue of “who is the girl” drove my husband crazy. I kept asking him what the heck he meant by that question. When he finally admitted that he wondered who got stuck with running the household I told him to just ask. Our son’s answer mirrored yours. Hubby was so embarassed to realize how simple the answer was that we still laugh about it– Now when there is a chore to be done that no one wants to do, we ask each other “who’s the girl” then follow our son’s lead and flip for it or hire it done.