Summary

Chapter 3: That Old Catastrophe – Bechdel describes her father’s death as being queer in every sense of the word. She explains that four months before her father died, she came out as a lesbian to her parents. She realized she was a lesbian not from any personal encounter, but from learning about homosexuality academically. Bechdel’s coming out didn’t bother her father, but she received a mixed message of support and concern from her mother. Bechdel ’s coming out also prompted a call from her mother in which her mother revealed that Bechdel’s father had been molested as a boy by a farmhand, after which her father had gone on to have affairs with men and boys, including Roy, the babysitter. Bechdel recalls feeling upstaged by this.

Bechdel recounts how her father had an obsession with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life, and...