To Grandfather’s House We Go

A tale of lechery most foul…

When I was in my early twenties, my boyfriend and I accompanied my mother to East Texas to help my eighty-something-year-old grandfather pack and move. He was putting my grandmother into a care home because she had dementia, downsizing from their 4,000-square-foot 5-bed, 4-bath home on the lake to a modest 2,800-square-foot 4-bed, 2-bath closer to town.

On the first night of our visit my boyfriend and grandfather were cooking together which I was excited about because they were both gourmands and I thought it would be a great way for them to bond. My grandfather slapped him on the booty with a spatula and I thought, okay—he’s just being a little cheeky after drinking too much wine. Later that night he complimented my boyfriend on how strong he is and asked him to massage his shoulders and upper back.

The next morning my diabetic grandmother sat at the kitchen table eating a piece of cobbler from the night before.  My boyfriend looked at her and raised an eyebrow at my grandfather, who said, ‘What am I supposed to do, not let her eat pie for breakfast?’

Later my boyfriend and my grandfather were going through the garage together, just the two of them.  My boyfriend couldn’t help but notice a conspicuously placed penis pump box sitting on a shelf at eye level, but he said nothing and pretended it wasn’t there.

We went through the attic and found my grandmother’s precious antique bisque dolls from her childhood.  My grandfather had assured her that he had stored them properly, but they had been crammed into an unclosed cardboard box, sitting for years.  They had been given no protection from the heat produced within these uninsulated walls, or from the filth that accumulated in this space, untouched and unseen.  

My boyfriend and my grandfather drove to the dump, again just the two of them, in my grandfather’s truck to throw away whatever old garbage was too far gone to donate or salvage.

I sat with my grandmother listening to her ramble in a loop. Topics included her belief that my cousin had stolen her cardigan sweater, increasingly racist permutations of the same stories she had been telling me for years, and her fantasies of my grandfather’s death.

At this point in our visit she had already told us to push my grandfather down the attic stairs, push him off of the dock and into the lake, and drown him in his iced tea. I chalked it up to her dementia.

Sometime into the journey to the dump, my grandfather—completely unprompted—said to my boyfriend that most men his age have gray pubic hair but that his was still dark. My boyfriend was uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say; he said they spent most the trip in silence after that.

After they arrived home, my boyfriend came into our guest suite, shut the door, and told me everything that had happened.  I told him I would do whatever I could to keep them from being alone together because we had about three more days before we were going to leave. 

I immediately called my dad who said that both of my aunts’ ex-husbands had said my grandfather had hit on them, but everybody thought they were being ridiculous. My grandfather had also asked both ex-husbands and my dad to massage him. My dad admitted that he felt creeped out for some reason he couldn’t (daren’t?) identify,  but he did it anyway because he didn’t want to upset the powerful patriarch of the family.

I sat my mom down in a locked bedroom to tell her of my findings, expecting her to react strongly, but she wasn’t at all surprised. She dropped the bombshell on me that my grandmother had told her in 1998 that she and my grandfather hadn’t had sex in years. My mother already suspected that he was gay.

For the remainder of the trip, we labored through sorting and packing the 50+ years’ worth of accumulated possessions that filled their massive house and helped move everything to the new home without further incident.

This would be disturbing and unexpected for anyone to experience, but it was especially so for me because my grandfather was a conservative straight-laced veteran; I would have never expected this from him. My mom always said he was like the white version of Bill Cosby in the Cosby show—the Cosby comparison did not age well, but may be accurate.

My mom confronted my grandfather about being gay the next time we visited. They had a big blowout fight where he almost hit her and we left in the middle of the night.  We were cut out of the will and lost out on a not-insignificant inheritance when he passed away, so all I have left are these fond memories. 

Maybe things would have been different if my boyfriend had let him hit.