The moment when family members stumble upon physical evidence of your lesbian relationship.

“Honey, I think she found the toys!”

“Toys, what toys? I’m at work, what are you talking about?”

“The dicks, babe! I think your mom found the dicks!”

“Which ones?”

“All of them!”

“Fudge!”

Note: Part of this was a real phone conversation, people. Have you ever had anything similar happen to you or someone you know? How did you live it down?

For most lesbians, conversations usually surround them. The lifestyle, why did they choose it? Did they choose it? What will the neighbours think? What about your parents’ friends? It never seems to end but in truth, it’s not always about the lesbians. Lesbians have friends and family too, these people are oftentimes affected by the LGBTQ relationships and the spotlight (good&bad) they receive. However It’s not always doom and gloom, on the contrary, our colourful lifestyle is sometimes a comedy show as far as our extended families are concerned.

Here are a few examples:

1: A parent innocently ventures into a lesbian couple’s bedroom and finds sex toys.

We’d just moved into a new place and her mom offered to come over and help us unpack. Of course, we were happy as I had to work long hours and I hate having tons of boxes strewn all over the house.

Apparently, her mom had innocently gone into the bedroom to answer the cordless phone as that was the one closest to her…and the door was open…and she knew nobody was in there. She heard a buzzing and thought a cellphone might be a drawer. The way I heard the story my poor momma-in-law reached in, felt around and pulled out a six-inch dong. We’d left the batteries in and as ya know, it went off. So shocked she was that in an effort to shove it back where she’d found it; she bumped into others. We’re talking about a variety of shapes, sizes etc. I think this may have been something the poor woman was more than willing to take to her grave (after a thorough washing of her hands, of course) but alas, my partner walked in on her with one in her grasp so they had to talk about it. I have the sense of humour of Seth McFarlane so of course, I am not the least bit embarrassed. My partner on the other hand seems to be taking quite a long time getting over ‘the incident.’ Think she needs therapy, perhaps?

2: A child accidentally finds said toys and take them to school for show and tell. You know this because Xander’s kindergarten teacher called.

OMG, you’d think we’d be way more careful with our toys after that first incident. Well, FYI we were! In fact, we started treating them the way one does a loaded gun in a house with small children. But kids have this uncanny ability to find themselves in places they ought not to have been. And they get a hold of things that were deliberately placed out of their reach.

So you can imagine our shock when we got a call from our three-year old’s teacher. Apparently, our son had found ‘something like a sort of bendy, rubber plaything.’ In his tiny defence, it was his favourite colour, green because The Hulk is green too and that’s his all-time favourite superhero. So he took it to school to show his friends, once again my partner couldn’t bring herself to go fetch it. So I did. I thanked the teacher for handling ‘the situation (first an incident, now a situation) as best she could. Turns out that wink and that aura said she wasn’t as daunted as I thought she was. Talk about being saved by the gaydar. I know that will stay between us… and whomever she shares her bed with.

3: You and your partner didn’t quite have ‘the gay talk’ (there’s the birds and bees talk then there’s the gay talk) before your older child walks in on you.

As I’ve already established my kid is still wearing pull-ups and knawing on his crayons. This means he’ll probably soon forget that he took that double-ender to school for show and tell. Just like that, we’re off the hook. My partner however has an older daughter who lives with her dad. She comes over most weekends and when she does, she stays in her room with earbuds in like most middle schoolers (who hate that their mom is gay) do. She’s still having difficulty accepting the fact that her mom wasn’t ‘stolen’ from her dad by me…..or the other women she has no clue about and rightfully so.

We could have a full lovemaking session that goes on for hours with that kid in the house. What with the earphones to block us out and staying in her room to avoid me and Xander. Still, I’m ever mindful when she’s over and will curtail most daytime sessions of hanky-panky to a quick romp. That’s what I wanted the day my partner decided to keep things going. Honestly, we were simply cuddling (nekked) under the covers when the usual angry banging on the door was replaced by busting the door wide open. The angry middle schooler wanted us to know that ‘the kid’ was hungry and bothering her and it’s not her responsibility to make him a sandwich. Of course, she immediately took stock of us cowering under the covers and started yelling a long slew of eewwwws as she grabbed Xander and told him she’d go make him a snack.

We all had a very uncomfortable conversation after (I wanted to be stern with house rules but my partner wanted me to let her handle it) but in a weird way, it made her less angry. She started hanging out with our son and now refer to him as her little bro. She even allowed me to take her to a soccer game and the biggest shock of them all…she hugged me and then ran off before I could ‘turn it into a big deal.’

The moral of the story is that embarrassing situations will happen, it doesn’t mean you should hang it over your own head for the rest of your life.