When I Knew by Robert Trachtenberg

Comedian and Author, Eddie Sarfaty

This morning at Lawrence Public Library, I picked up a book called When I Knew, edited by Robert Trachtenberg. It's a collection of stories and paragraphs by the more well-known citizens of our society telling their individual experiences with one of life's greatest moments. When I knew I was gay.

My favorite story was by Eddie Sarfaty, stand-up comedian. It was called "Second-Guessing Grandma" and is also featured as the opener to Eddie's book, Mental: Funny in the Head. Eddie came out to his grandma and went through the oh-so-familiar trials and tribulations of family tension for over a week. When he called his grandma, she would ho-hum around responses and, as he puts it, pins dropped and crickets chirped between fragments of the attempted conversation. Read the story. It's just four pages and will warm your heart much more than my summary. Eddie's story was also adapted for film and became a ten-minute film featured at festivals and online here.

Other stories in the collection were shorter but still straight from the heart. Some were one sentence, others were pages. The very first entry by Andrew Freedman is, "1969; My father was watching the evening news. The announcer said that Judy Garland had died. I fainted. I was nine." Many of the tales are similar in humor and make the book very enjoyable to read. I read it in one sitting and would have had a hard time putting it down for any reason short of an earthquake.