The Things That Matter

by Nate Berkus

  When I was a freshman in college I came out to my family and friends. My stepfather was actually the one who first brought the topic up with me. At the start of the summer, it turned out, he’d found a letter from a guy I was dating at the time. But he didn’t mention what he’d read until late August, as he was driving me to the airport for the flight back to Chicago. He told me he knew I was gay, but that he was not going to tell my mother—that was up to me. Then he said something that I still think is kind of remarkable. “The reason I didn’t talk to you about any of this at the beginning of the summer, Nate,” he said, “is because I wanted you to see that the fact I know you’re gay would never make me treat you any differently.”

  Steve, me, Dan, Bob, and our father, Bob’s wedding, 2004, Newport Beach, California (Illustration Credit 1.9)

  He went on to tell me that in many ways, he was relieved. Whatever conflicts he’d observed in me as a kid, whatever had driven me to become who I was, finally made sense to him. “It’s been hard for me to be a stepparent to you,” he said, “because frankly, I’ve found it hard to relate to you.” My references, my interests, my obsessions, practically none of it made sense to him. And now it did.

  I waited until I came home for Thanksgiving two months later to tell my mother. She was extremely supportive. I should add, too, that she was surprised by the news; frankly, I don’t think she had ever broken stride long enough to consider if her design-obsessed son might be gay. She told me whoever I was, she loved me regardless, but that she needed to take some time to surrender—and, I imagine, grieve the loss of a fantasy that probably every mother has about her son or daughter. You have to keep in mind that in 1992 the world functioned under a strict don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy. Marriage, raising children, genuine equality—these concepts weren’t even a remote possibility for openly gay men or women. This meant that my mother had to let go of the idea of the life she had always envisioned for me. She was also afraid of telling her own parents, who, as it turned out, were incredibly wonderful and unconditionally loving and, above all, wise when they found out. “You’re very lucky,” my grandmother said to her. “Don’t you see? Nate is telling you this because he wants to keep you in his life.”

  My father had a harder time. This was a guy who had worked in and around sports for many years, a world that still doesn’t have many gay people in it, at least not many who are open about it. And Orange County, California, where he lived after marrying my stepmother and having three more sons, isn’t exactly famous for its liberal Democratic base. “I don’t understand,” my dad said to me. “You’re an attractive guy. You can probably go out with any woman you want. This just makes no sense to me. Why have you done this? Why have you chosen this life?”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “It wasn’t a choice.”

  For a few years, that was as far as we got. I still saw my father and showed up for family events. I didn’t unplug is the point I’m trying to make, but whenever I went to visit, on vacations at the end of the year or in the summer, no one asked any questions about my personal life. My brothers had no idea, either, as my father and stepmother made me promise not to discuss it with them. The tension was tangible. We were reduced to awkward, superficial conversations, until I couldn’t take it anymore. It was no reflection on them, I told my dad and stepmother, but I had to tell my brothers, if for no other reason than to explain why whenever they asked me if I was going out with anybody, and if so, whether the woman and I were serious, that, actually, I was dating—just not women. My siblings were okay with it, but you have to remember we all came from a fairly sheltered upbringing, and it wasn’t until they were older, and got out into the world, where they met other gay people, that it all fell into place for them. Today, I’m happy to say that our whole family is really, really close. And, of course, maybe it goes without saying that not a single one of them will make a serious design decision—or even buy a side table—without first asking me to weigh in.

  The topic jelled for my father during a business trip he took to Chicago when I was 26 years old. I’d been running my own design firm for three years. I invited my boyfriend to have dinner with my father and me at a restaurant downtown. It all went okay, but as usual, a lot was left unsaid. I drove my dad to the airport at the end of his trip, and when the flight was delayed, we went across the street to a hotel bar and ordered a couple of drinks.

  The conversation was painful at first, but I’d had enough small talk to last a lifetime. My dad let me know that he and my stepmother lived in perpetual fear that someday the phone would ring and the news wouldn’t be good—that they’d hear I had done something to myself, hurt myself in some way. “Why would you ever think that?” I asked. “Because,” my dad explained, “the life you’ve chosen for yourself is difficult, and empty, and worrisome, and—”

  I looked him in the eye and told him I was going to explain things to him one time, and that I really needed him to hear what I was about to say, and that if, when I was finished, he didn’t believe me, that was all right, too. “Do you respect me as your eldest son?” I asked. He did, he told me. “Do you think I’m smart?” He did. “Do you think I’m competent?” He told me he did.

  I went on: He knew how I was raised, that we had sat together at the dinner table, that I had absorbed what he’d taught me, that he’d seen up-close how I operated both in the business world and in the world in general, and so far, did he respect what he saw? Yes, he said, he did.

  “So, Dad, I’m going to tell you something now, and it is the one thing that will determine whether we have a true relationship or we have next to nothing: I did not choose to be gay,” I said. “Why would I choose something that would make my life more difficult? We live in a world that treats homosexuals as second-class citizens, where the laws are stacked against us, where people disapprove of us. Look at me! I didn’t choose to be five-eight. If I had any choice in the matter, I would have chosen to be six-one. Let’s be honest: Moses couldn’t part my hair. Do you really think this is the hair I’d have come up with if it were up to me? I find it completely without logic that you believe I have chosen my sexual orientation.”

  My father sipped his drink for a while, and said at last, “I’ve never really thought about it that way.” Then, “That makes sense. I believe you entirely.”

  “Okay,” I said, “then we’re good.” And from that moment on, we’ve continued to be good, to connect.

  Paris, 1991 (Illustration Credit 1.10)

  A few years later, I wrote a chapter for Crisis, an anthology devoted to helping teens come out. I tried to drive home the point that as gay people, we carry with us the terrible fear that if we tell the world this single piece of information, that we’re gay, no one will love us. What an awful thing to carry around. But I also wanted to make it clear that we have a responsibility to take care of the people we love, because after you share the truth of who you are, they have to go through their own process of accepting this information, and mourning the loss of the life they had envisioned for you.

  The life I’d envisioned for myself began taking shape during college, when I spent a year in Paris. If boarding school was one of the first turning points of my life, Paris left corduroys and quadrangles in the dust.

  Apart from a few family vacations, if that’s how a pontoon boat trip to a Minnesota lake should be categorized (let the record reflect that finding a leech sucking the bottom of your foot is not one of those Kodak moments you want to press in a scrapbook), I did not grow up traveling all over the world. The study abroad program Lake Forest offered allowed me to spend my junior year in Paris, which was the first time I had ever lived in Europe. I took to France—the people, the spectacular beauty and texture of everyday life, the fact that cheese did not come in individually wrapped slices—as if all this time I were a French expatriate who found himself accidentally coming of age in Minnesota. Along with New York, Mexico City, Rome, and Patmos—a little Greek island in the Aegean Sea that has to be se
en to be believed—Paris was and still is one of the few places on this planet where I feel totally at home. In Paris, the history belongs to everyone. It’s an incredibly egalitarian city. No matter how much money you have, you can pull up a seat, sip an espresso, and gaze at the Luxembourg Gardens. Partaking in a culture that brought the past into everyday life got under my skin, and has never left me. I found everything about the place fascinating, from the story of the French monarchy to how Paris became world headquarters for luxury goods, to how the French prize a frayed pillow with stuffing coming out of it—they accept things as they are.

  THE LIFE I’D ENVISIONED FOR MYSELF BEGAN TAKING SHAPE DURING COLLEGE, WHEN I SPENT A YEAR IN PARIS.

  At first the pressure of not speaking French was awful. I was interning at a fashion buying office, and my boss insisted that I answer the phones. Whenever I stumbled or said “le” instead of “la,” she would yell at me. When she finally had the decency to fire me, I found an unpaid internship working for a costume jewelry designer, where I set up the showroom and took appointments for American buyers.

  Me and Viviane, Paris, 1995 (Illustration Credit 1.11)

  I wanted to immerse myself in all things French, but I had so little money, it wasn’t always easy. I couldn’t afford to eat out. I was literally making pasta in butter on a hot plate in the little room I was renting, with its black armoire, white desk, narrow bed, and assorted trinkets I’d bought from flea markets and street vendors (I went to flea markets religiously every weekend, even if it meant buttered spaghetti 24/7). My sole connection to French culture was my co-worker, Viviane, who despite being ten years older than me was my link to the Parisian nightlife. She took pity on my language skills and empty stomach and would have me to her place for dinner. She introduced me to her friends, people who modeled for Jean Paul Gaultier and worked for Yves Saint Laurent, and they all went out of their way to make me feel welcome. I was so broke and so eager to turn into a real Parisian that I decided to sell all my clothes.

  The Ralph Lauren flagship store that had just opened in Paris was all the rage. It so happened that I had a full wardrobe of Ralph Lauren stuff that I had lugged overseas with me. Polos, jeans, sweaters, belts—if it had a pony and a mallet on it, I owned it, courtesy of the Minneapolis department store where I’d run up so much debt, and my parents, who knew how much I loved clothes. I came up with a plan: I told my host, whose teenage son was about my size, “I have all these Ralph Lauren clothes that I’m interested in selling. Maybe your friends would like to come over, and we could have a trunk show.” Before I knew it, eight Frenchwomen had bought their kids every single piece of clothing I owned. I made 3,000 francs, and for the next eight months my entire wardrobe consisted of Levi’s, T-shirts, a jean jacket, and motorcycle boots. Soon after, the language thing kicked in. I woke up one morning and realized that in my dream I’d been speaking French—and from that day forward, with a few minor changes, I was on a roll en francais.

  In my Paris apartment, age 21 (Illustration Credit 1.13)

  Paris was also the first time I fell in love with someone else’s interior. It belonged to my friend Maria, and my favorite room was the cavernous kitchen, complete with a huge old stove, Delft tiles, and an antique oak table on an iron base, surrounded by chairs that didn’t match. There were no built-in cabinets, no lazy Susan, nothing even remotely Formica. That kitchen had looked exactly the same for at least a hundred years. I remember thinking, This room is a real rule-breaker. It was so unself-conscious in its design that years later when I bought my apartment in Chicago, I think somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered Maria’s kitchen and chose to just let the 1950s kitchen be. We all have this knee-jerk reaction, where we start immediately ripping out countertops and updating hardware, but Maria’s place was lovely just the way it was and it taught me something about grace and simplicity and the value of a room that’s perfectly imperfect. To Maria and her family, that space was just part of ordinary life, the place they sat and had breakfast each morning. But to me, hanging out in that kitchen—where the wine and conversation and laughter had flowed for more than a century—was extraordinary. If I learned to appreciate old things by tagging along behind my mother as she shopped the little vintage stores of Minneapolis, France is where my love of really, really old things originated. Paris was also the place where I became completely obsessed with things and their stories—where they came from, where they ended up, how they represent who people are and all that they’ve loved and seen.

  I think people sometimes confuse loving things with being materialistic, or grasping, or lusting after things that tell the world who you are. But to me, surrounding yourself with the things you love has nothing to do with impressing other people or gaining status. Even when I was a kid, I loved the sense of accomplishment I got from finding and bringing home something I loved. What do people’s things say about who they are? There’s this game I like to play with friends and colleagues when we’re on a long plane ride. I open up a glossy magazine or one of those SkyMall catalogs in the seatback. Then I turn to the person beside me. “Okay,” I say, “if you could pick one thing on this page, what would it be? This ring or that watch? This sofa or that lamp?”

  “How come your eyes light up when you look at this particular bed?” I once asked a colleague in the aisle seat next to me, who seemed transfixed by a photo of a bed in a shelter magazine I was paging through. At first she shrugged and said she really had no idea. But a minute or two later, she began telling me all about her great-aunt who smelled like cinnamon and once had a fling with William Powell. “She seemed really stern,” my colleague told me as she stared at the picture, “but she used to sneak me lemon drops when my parents weren’t looking and she had this fabulously intricate iron bed with lace sheets—you wouldn’t figure her for the lace sheet type—and, in a million years, you’d never imagine that she would actually encourage my sister and me to have these massive pillow fights, where we’d all end up laughing until midnight. And when my marriage fell apart,” she said quietly, “I crawled home to Indiana and put on a flannel nightgown and got into that old bed and stayed there for weeks, until one day my ancient aunt lobbed a pillow at the side of my head and told me it was time to shave my legs and get back to my life.…” And her voice trailed off, momentarily lost in the memory, until a flight attendant interrupted with the offer of a drink. I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned it again, but we don’t have to—the connection was made. It turns out that we both know something about feeling alone and depleted and we both understand how to start again from scratch, all thanks to an iron bed in the house of a very smart lady who lived 20 miles south of Bloomington, Indiana.

  For me, the most successful interiors in the world are put together by people who surround themselves with objects that bring them joy, and make them feel really at home—a feeling I remember deeply from when I was a 13-year-old kid, finally in a room of his own; a feeling I remember as a boarding school student decorating his cubby hole of a room as the snow fell outside; a feeling I cherish when I think back on my days as a junior boulevardier eating a crepe with powdered sugar I’d bought from a booth on the left bank of Paris; and one I still feel today whenever I look around my New York apartment. As I’ve said over and over again, our homes should tell the stories of who we are. Not who our decorator is. Not who our friends sometimes think we should be, not who our family occasionally wishes we would be, and not who any number of style magazines tell us we must be. At the end of the day, we can’t escape who we are and what we love, and the truth is, it’s a mistake even to try. It can take a long time and a lot of soul searching to figure out who we actually are—and to showcase that identity proudly to our friends and family—so when we finally get there, let’s live with the stuff that delights and replenishes our senses, the stuff that is filled with the totems and memories that represent the chapters of our life that are written through the things we surround ourselves with.

  (Illustration Credit 1.14)
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  To that end, I credit my first source of inspiration—namely, my parents, and especially my mother. Oddly enough, for two people who probably sound so similar on paper—she’s my mom, I’m her son; she’s a decorator, I am, too; we both love estate sales and vintage stuff—we are at polar ends of the design spectrum every time. No exceptions. My mom and I connect around our love of geodes and minerals, but that’s about it. Whenever we go to flea markets together, she never, ever reaches for the things I want, and I never, ever reach for the things she wants. “Oh, look—a hand-carved Southwest pony!” she says. “I love that!”

  “I know you do,” I say. Because, well, I knew she would.

  “You don’t love it, too, Nate?”

  “No,” I say, “but I know you do, so I think you should get it.”

  We do have a few things in common. The kitchen island in my New York apartment, for example, is something she would have in her house (and ten years ago, if you’d told me I would go for it, I would have recommended you be institutionalized). Ditto for the chunky 1950s Mexican pine table that sits in my living room, which I couldn’t love more. My 22-year-old self would also be pretty stunned that the 40-year-old me could ever live with a pair of eight-foot-tall saguaro cactuses. Neither would my younger self have understood or have had the confidence for the vintage Native American fabric that covers a pillow on a chair in my living room. My unschooled, untraveled 18-year-old self, who was into classic fabrics like corduroys and cable knit and linen and suede, wouldn’t have understood, much less coveted, fabrics and objects from South America or Southeast Asia or Turkey, much less the ceramic pineapple on my side table that my late partner Fernando lugged all the way home from Mexico.