It’s time for another edition of SE(N)O, an essay series on A+ for personal stories we wish we could tell on the accessible-to-our-employers-and-everyone-we’ve-ever-known mainsite, but can’t for personal and professional reasons.

This is a story about the family that I lost and found and almost found at various The Cheesecake Factory restaurants across America.

The Cheesecake Factory, Tampa Bay FL – 1998

How I came to be at the Cheesecake Factory when I was sixteen was more or less because my grandfather — a man I’d only met once or twice when I was too young to clearly remember — was dying. I’d found out through my grandmother, a hard lady who I’d also only met a couple of times, but who’d be sending me hundred dollar bills in Christmas cards every year since I was thirteen, when I had written to tell her that my parents had gone AWOL. She never wrote much inside except “take care” and so when the last card arrived with a scrawled note about my grandfather, I’d read it as an invitation to work every waking hour at the poultry store to buy the airfare and pay them a visit. And then it was over. En route to Tampa airport my grandfather suddenly declared that I couldn’t leave his country without eating the biggest piece of cheesecake that I’d ever see. Over the weeks he’d made similar declarations about many other things- eating bagels, shopping at Sam’s, watching trials on Court TV. He was the consummate educator on US of A culture. The restaurant was packed and so I’d slunk down into the booth as far as I could, mortified to wearing a bright yellow and aqua fish-patterned Ken Done matching t-shirt and shorts set- a ‘Welcome to Florida’ gift that I’d put on that morning in a last-ditch attempt to impress them enough that they’d ask me to stay longer, like forever. I ordered shepherd’s pie even though I hated shepherd’s pie. Everything about the restaurant — from its huge wooden booths to its phonebook-sized menu and the enormous meals slathered in this and stuffed with that — felt so overwhelming and excessive. Ground meat and vegetables, though? That was safe, and familiar. When our server came by with a glass of Coke the size of my body and my grandfather told me that it’d be refilled for FREE, as many times as I liked and I wouldn’t even have to ask, that they’d just bring me a new one and we wouldn’t be charged, I didn’t believe him until he showed me the check. Back home things just didn’t come that big, or that easy. After the cheesecake was served — plain, New York style, and as predicted, the largest thing I’d ever seen — and we’d climbed back into the truck, my grandfather slipped me his money clip — this silver-plated thing with a golf decal and a wad full of green bills — and pulled me against his body for the longest, hardest hug. When I heard his lungs struggle underneath his jacket, I cried. So did he. For two weeks he’d made me feel loved, and wanted, the way that I’d assumed having family was supposed to feel but never really knew for sure. He’d taken me to Disney World. He’d taught me how to drive in the Target parking lot, and shown me off to his favourite waitresses at his favorite diner, and then suddenly, it was over, forever. I had to leave and he had to die. I didn’t know how to say that kind of goodbye.

The Cheesecake Factory, Beverly Hills CA – 2003

When I’d emailed my aunt and uncle to say tell them that we were related and to ask if they’d like to meet while I was en route to South by Southwest, the reply was, “that would be fine.” Not the enthusiasm that I’d hoped for but back then, I was the eternal optimist. I’d never seen a straw that I didn’t wanna clutch. In the following months my head filled with all these Princess Diaries-style fantasies where we’d bond over our music careers; we’d spend all night swapping stories from the road and at the end, they’d realise that I was this piece missing from their lives like I was so sure that they were missing from mine. Discovering that music ran in my blood, that he’d played drums for Leonard Cohen and she’d taught Dave Navarro the guitar and that they both worked on tours, like me, was like all the years I’d felt so lost without family didn’t even matter. These strangers were the proof that I’d done okay, in the end. That I’d ended up exactly who and where I was supposed to be. I’d suggested that we meet at the Cheesecake Factory because it was the only restaurant in America that I knew. I’d suggested the Beverly Hills location, specifically, because 90210 had led me to believe that it was a fancier choice, and I so badly wanted to impress. There was a half hour wait for a table and so we milled awkwardly in the entrance with other families who, unlike us, had no trouble making conversation. Everything I’d planned to tell them about the past 19 years of my life felt too big for that foyer. When the host ushered us to a little wooden table in the centre of the room, my aunt starting flicking through the plastic menu and talking about how her dietician would. just. die. She’d given me a detailed breakdown of her botox and pilates regime before the drinks had even been served and asked, could I believe that she was closer to 60 than 30? I said that I couldn’t. I said, “oh really?” and “wow” in all the right places. When I asked my uncle what was good on the menu and he’d said, “the shepherd’s pie”, I ordered it even though I knew that it wasn’t. Over the next hour my aunt told stories about a Swedish synth-pop duo she was producing while my uncle mostly sat in silence, looking like person defeated. At least we had that much in common. We didn’t have dessert because my aunt doesn’t ‘do’ dessert and so I pretended not to, either. As we left, my uncle invited me over to their house to jam on his drum kits. He nodded his approval and said, “you’re really good,” and it was everything, or at least it was enough. I left.

The Cheesecake Factory, Somewhere in LA – 2004

I’d ordered the shepherd’s pie even though I still hated shepherd’s pie because I was too fucked up to read the menu, and so it just sat there in front of me, cold and nauseating, another bad decision on the back of an entire South by Southwest of bad decisions. I hadn’t slept or eaten in days. My whole body throbbed. I couldn’t feel my face but I could see it, in a mirrored panel behind our booth, although it didn’t look anything like mine. It didn’t even look alive. The girls sitting around the table weren’t familiar, either, not as the band that I’d started managing out of high school or the family that I’d built once I’d given up on finding my own. We sat in silence, mostly. The singer scrawled lyrics in her notebook. The drummer table-drummed while staring out the window, avoiding our glares. Now and then the guitarist I’d been sleeping with would snap at the bassist I’d also been sleeping with, but at least that was progress. Neither had spoken to me in days. South by Southwest had been our dream. We should’ve been excited. We should’ve been on top of the world because that’s where they said we were, the industry people, the label dudes and promoters who threw at us praise and promises as generously as speed and cocaine. They said that we were on our way, that I was on my way. Less than 24 hours later, though, at the Cheesecake Factory? I’d never felt closer to rock bottom. When the servers came to the table with a candle-lit cheesecake, singing me happy birthday — a prank that the singer had been pulling in every restaurant in America just to make me blush — this time instead of being amused, all I could think about was how I wasn’t high enough to deal with it and how I was was never high enough to deal with anything anymore. When we walked out of the restaurant ten minutes later, I walked away.

The Cheesecake Factory, Sherman Oaks CA – 2005

It was our first ‘real’ date at The Cheesecake Factory and, without even stopping to hug me or say hello, she pulled me toward the cheesecake display. When she was talking a mile a minute about all the desserts she wanted us to try but that she’d be too full for later, I knew I was in love. I’d been scared that I might’ve been, earlier, when we were working on tour and our dates had been room service and catering carts and making out in the back of the bus — those things I’d called boredom, even though I knew that I’d never known boredom to feel so good. I’d loved girls, but I’d never considered that I could fall in love with one. She hadn’t either, and when the tour ended I was blindsided by emptiness that no drugs could numb. Three months later, we were flicking through the menus and discussing our days like nothing had changed. But it had. This time when she looked at me, with her perfect face made up of sweetness and affection and an easy smile that still set my stomach on fire, I felt hopeful, like maybe one day I could become someone who deserved it. Twelve months later, at that same restaurant, she put her hands on my face and asked, “You know we’ll always be a family, right?” I knew those words meant that she was leaving me but I didn’t care, not right then. I’d been waiting to hear them my whole life.

New York, 2010

Riese, Laneia, Alex and I had talked about going to The Cheesecake Factory on my last night in the city but then Stef told us that Twilight Eclipse was premiering at midnight, and they knew how I felt about Kristen Stewart. So we didn’t get there, in the end. That was okay though, because when your friends are trying to decide between seeing a shitty vampire movie or eating at The Cheesecake Factory — two things that I was so sure they wouldn’t do for someone they didn’t really love — it means just as much as going. Maybe even more.

The Cheesecake Factory, The Grove CA – April 2012

By the time Riese, Marni and I had driven down the mountain and checked into our hotel, I was ready to sleep forever. I don’t know where we got the energy to walk to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner but we did, we got there, and over a burrito the size of a limb, Riese asked if I’d be returning to camp in September. I said no. I said that it was too far and too expensive and that it took too much time from my job, but even as the words fell out of my mouth I knew that they weren’t true. Everything about that night at The Cheesecake Factory felt so different. I was so different. Back home, I actually had a home. I’d quit touring and drugs and got a sensible corporate job that kept me in one city. I had a family, too, and it wasn’t the one that I’d been born into; it was so much better than that. This time, I hadn’t gone to America because I’d been running from something, or towards someone. I hadn’t been looking for an escape or for a place that I belonged, but I’d found those things anyway, on that mountain, and I knew I’d always be back.

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!