House Cleaning by Donny Kaye

Housecleaning, thoroughness, reward and perception were all interconnected in my early years of formation with my mother. By the ages of seven, eight and nine I was responsible for the weekly cleaning of our modest home in Athmar Park. My father was a laborer at the nearby rubber factory and consequently our resources were few. This meant that what belongings we did have were cared for in the most particular of ways to extend their life as much as possible. My parent’s European heritage as well as having survived the Great Depression resulted in the lived experience of the old adage, cleanliness is next to godliness.

Weekly, the house cleaning tasks were evident and it was my job to complete those tasks, thoroughly by noon on Saturdays. If the tasks were completed to my mother’s satisfaction, “The Best Little Boy” was rewarded with a trip to JC Penny on Broadway. There I would get to pick out new underwear, or socks, possibly a new striped t-shirt as my reward. The essentials hardly seemed a reward but if I didn’t meet the cleanliness requirements, I went without! Children of today might regard this as abusive!

I learned that each cleaning task in each room of our unassuming home was essential and non-negotiable if I was to receive my reward. Cleaning meant the whole house, in its entirety, not just the front rooms of the house or any type of weekly rotation of cleaning; it meant all of the rooms from the back door and out the front. “Spic and Span”, early on became my motto!

Being “The Best Little Boy” also meant distinguishing early on, the best cleaners for different tasks such as vinegar water, baking soda, bon-ami, as well as the skillful operation of the Hoover and manipulation of the ringer in the rag-mop bucket.

I trained early-on in life and developed some useful life skills when it comes to housecleaning. I also realized as a child that house cleaning served to cover up some of the unique character of our meager belongings. I don’t know that it was a direct teaching but I certainly learned that if it was clean and orderly, there was less likely a question to be raised about quality or fundamental characteristics. It certainly taught me that some things were best kept in the closet, even if the closet in the back of the house existed like the legendary “Fibber McGee and Molly’s” closet.

Some of what I learned as a seven-year-old has transferred into essential skills and learning for life. Especially these past 10 years I have come to realize the whole house does not have to be done immediately and that it's possible to approach it one room at a time starting with the most essential of the living spaces. If that space that is the most lived in is attended to in a good way, the other spaces of the interior can hold and be dealt with as necessary. And when the main interior space is cleared, the need to cover up what is fundamental diminishes into nonexistence. Since that day in the quiet and isolation of the bathroom when I first acknowledged my homosexuality, the cleansing that was necessary for me to begin this journey into wholeness began. One day at a time; one revelation to the next. First, my former wife, a few close friends, and then my children, extending into coming out clearings with 39 others, the cobwebs of a lifetime resulting from a closet not opened. Recently someone asked me about my coming out. Specifically, they were curious to know how my parents and siblings had taken the news.

"I waited until they all had passed!” I responded.

All had passed except for my nieces, whom I have come out to and one remaining brother-in-law, whom who has known me since I was two. And whom I haven’t been ready to face, much like that closet in the back of the house filled with the messy keepings of a lifetime. Last Wednesday I made that call and scheduled a face-to-face visit with my brother-in-law whom I've been avoiding for nearly 2 years. After dusting off some of the space between us with light conversation, I came clean and revealed that I was divorced and finally acknowledged to him what I have always known, that I am a man of a certain sexual persuasion. He moved toward me, close in. With eyes soft and moist, he responded by acknowledging having known me since I was two, that he and my sister realized long ago, when I was a child, that I was different. At eighty-six he even used the words, "coming out" with me as he assured me that my orientation made no difference in his love for me.

A true cleansing had occurred, a housecleaning of sorts. The skills I have learned over a lifetime applied to that final space within. I had come clean, no longer needing to hide the orientation within me that I presumed objectionable to those who have become the fabric of my life. The experience of confiding in him and experiencing his love was about acceptance, both mine and his. We parted with a long embrace, him whispering to me his love for me and his acknowledgment of how courageous it was for me to have come and sat with him. I walked from his front door with a spring in my step. Whew! A sigh of relief! This house is finally clear, it might even be called clean. I know this won't be the last house cleaning I will have to do regarding this room of my house. Many more conversations will occur allowing me to come clean about the essence of me, just as the housecleaning that is always there as a result of living and the passage of time. But for this moment, like Saturdays when I was 7, 8 &9, the house is clean! What’s my reward? Clean underwear, so to speak. And maybe, just maybe the satisfaction that comes with recognition of a job well done! I think I’m going out and play!!

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.