TERMS OF ESTRANGEMENT

A gay father reaches out to his son to explain the breakup of their family in this epistolary memoir.

Elsasser-Chavez, a novelist, playwright, and high school English teacher in Los Angeles, frames his story in a series of letters to his teenage son, Travis, who cut off contact with him in 2019, after the author came out as gay and asked Travis’ mother for a divorce. Both events were difficult for the conservative Christian family to accept. Much of the book presents an agonizing account of Elsasser-Chavez’s unsuccessful, decades-long effort to deny his sexual orientation through Christian “conversion” efforts that included prayer, psychoanalysis, and aversion therapy that required him to sniff a jar full of dog feces while looking at pictures of attractive men. During his 23-year marriage, he notes, his unfulfilled romantic longing and his sense of sinfulness and shame led to depression, substance abuse, and suicide attempts, all of which traumatized his three sons. Elsasser-Chavez also revisits his failed attempts to break into Christian broadcasting and television as an actor, producer, and writer, and he offers shrewd analyses of pop culture, as when he notes “a staple Disney mantra: ‘Children: follow your heart, disobey authority, and all your dreams will come true.’” He also dispenses advice to Travis on everything from changing a tire to accepting “your feelings and emotions while learning an efficient way to rope them in.” Elsasser-Chavez writes in anguished, plangent prose about the battle between his sexual longings and antigay church doctrine: “In the Christian universe, being called a ‘sinner’ lessens the sting of the pronouncement because it just makes you one person [among billions] of other sinners….But homosexuals are ‘broken.’ Which implies damage that can never truly heal.” Equally captivating are his quiet, evocative depictions of family life: “Knocking on our adjoining wall to say ‘goodnight.’ You guys knocking back. Man, that kills me.” Elsasser-Chavez’s narrative is a richly textured coming-out story, and divorced parents will relate to his hard-won insights into wounded families.

A heartfelt and moving saga of self-acceptance and reconciliation.