The Gay '90s House
an excerpt

“Quick: you have 30 seconds. Entertain us.”

They looked at us expectantly. I could feel my dad jiggling his knee. My mother looked from Fran to me, Fran to me, Fran to me. I caught Fran’s eye and shrugged. We stood up and performed our lip-sync rendition of “Dedicated to the One I Love,” except there was nothing to sync our lips with, so we had to sing, and Fran got confused and kept singing “Dedicated to my one-eyed love,” so I had to make it part of the routine, pointing between my two eyes, winking, doing what I hoped was recognizable as a Cyclops impression. Behind us, my mother got up and quickly recalled her 1980s jazz-dance classes, doing the Roger Rabbit and the Running Man with all her might. Our father beat-boxed from his seat. I avoided looking at our interrogators. When it seemed as though 30 seconds had probably passed, I got louder and began drawing out the final notes: “My one-eeyyyeeeeed looooooooooooove!” My father did a beat-box flourish, my mother ended up in a sassy arms-crossed, leaning-back pose, Fran dropped dramatically to the floor, and I jumped up on my chair, one eye closed triumphantly, arms raised to the air.

Silence. We waited two or three seconds, then resumed our seats. Someone coughed. Slowly, the man from the big home-improvement chain began clapping. Clap. Clap. Clap. The nice 30-something woman joined in. Clap. Clap. They stopped. My mother threw her arms wide and said, “Ta-da!”

Phyllis Curry-Chiu leaned back in her chair. We breathed heavily from the exertion of entertainment. Phyllis Curry-Chiu put on her reading glasses and looked down her nose through them. She opened the leather portfolio notebook that had been sitting before her on the table, unopened, throughout our questioning. “Hmm,” she said. She made a single mark on the page, snapped the portfolio notebook closed, and nodded at us. We were dismissed.