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"   The cover of Robert Rave&amp;#039;s Conversations &amp;amp;amp; Cosmopolitans.  For all the Judys, the Lizas, the Barbras and the Beyonces\u2014those women, the powerful and the fabulous\u2014who many gay men call icon, most pale in the inspiring aura of our original heroine from day one: our mothers. It&amp;#039;s that esteem, though, that can make coming out to your parents, and your mom specifically, so nerve wracking. She gave us life; she reared and righted us; she was there, always. So when it comes time for the &amp;quot;mom, I&amp;#039;m gay&amp;quot; talk, there&amp;#039;s an understandable amount of anxiety that comes from even the tiniest of fears that the mother-son relationship could be jeopardized.  This would be the inciting conflict in the new memoir, Conversations and Cosmopolitans: Awkward Moments, Mixed Drinks, and How a Mother and a Son Finally Shared Who They Really Are by mother and son Robert and Jane Rave. That lengthy subtitle is enough to tell you that the Rave&amp;#039;s narrative didn&amp;#039;t turn out as bad as Robert worried it would. In the first chapter, he reprints\u2014grammatical errors and all\u2014the note he wrote to his parents to tell them he&amp;#039;s gay. His letter serves as the jump off for an oral history of his and her chapters that illustrate how coming out can certainly change a mom/son relationship without ruining it. Rather, as Robert and Jane began a new phase of re-getting-to-know-you\u2014talking about boys, grooming, dieting, and, yes, sex\u2014they built bonds they didn&amp;#039;t even know they had. Robert is snarky without being bitchy, Jane dry but not drab, and this creates a balanced and infectious humor in the book that plays nicely with the moments of poignancy that pop up time and again. Their story may be told in a different way, but it isn&amp;#039;t one we haven&amp;#039;t heard before\u2014it&amp;#039;s relatable in a comforting way. Reading Conversations as a gay man, I had to chuckle at how similar The Rave&amp;#039;s post-out-of-the-closet relationship was to mine and my mother&amp;#039;s (The Gay Glossary? I almost had to make notecards for my mom). But in the end I think it&amp;#039;s the non-gay audience, the mothers, really, who can take something from The Rave&amp;#039;s. So your son is or might be gay? Who cares? Read this book, grab a drink, start a conversation about it. You might cry some, you&amp;#039;ll probably laugh more, and you&amp;#039;ll realize that it&amp;#039;s really not that complicated. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/news/a7703/conversations-cosmoplitanswith-mom-32134/>