accepted

I came out to my father 15 years before he ever said that he accepted me.

I had kissed a girl who came to freshman weekend at my college. Afterward we wrote back and forth and her father found a letter and called my father.
Hell, I hadn't thought to ask the age of the gal who followed me to my room one evening because she was attracted to my "energy." She landed the first kiss.

So my father and I sat down and he said that if I was gay, he'd be disappointed but he would still love me.

Flash forward to a bad relationship with a lying, stalker-type gal I'd met online. She was the first lesbian I had met since I left school to care for my mother about nine years earlier. After I broke up with her, it turned nasty, with her calling me at 1,2,3,4 a.m. I unplugged my phone at night in order to get some sleep.

One evening, shortly afterward, my father called me, "Are you okay?, he asked.
"Sure Dad, I'm fine."

He called back a few minutes later and asked again.
"Why do you ask, Dad? What's going on?" He told me that the woman had called my Dad's house and left a very explicit message about our sexual relationship on his answering machine.
He said, "Is she trying to blackmail you? She can't. You told me years ago and I love you. No one can hurt you."

Wow. It took that long for him to say anything more about it. That crazy woman was a nightmare but what her behavior led to was every child's dream; a parent's expression of love, acceptance and protection.

It really is a shame that she turned out to be a bad egg, because she was fabulous....