HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
STRAIGHT TALK
THE THERAPY WAS
THE BEST TRAINING
EVER IN HOW TO
LEAD A DOUBLE LIFE.
it to his face, inhaling Jacob’s lingering scent. Ashamed, he then
stuffed it into a storm gutter in the
street and retreated into his home.
Mathew lived in Great Neck,
N.Y., a wealthy suburb overlooking
the Long Island Sound. His family’s house was a 1980s modernist
palace of dark-stained wood and
shimmering glass, with an indoor
pool, a man-made stream winding through a Japanese garden,
a semi-private dock, and wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows
offering a commanding view of the
water and the Manhattan skyline.
His father had the place built not
long before Mathew was born: It
was his proudest possession and
a symbol of his arduous climb up
the American economic ladder,
Mathew said.
An Israeli immigrant of Persian
descent, Mathew’s father began
his years in America as an uneducated cab driver, and slowly built
up a commercial real estate empire. Relatives had followed him
to Great Neck, reconstituting the
tight-knit and insular community
they’d had first in Iran and then
in Israel. Mathew’s family was not
very religious (they didn’t keep
kosher or regularly attend temple), and according to Mathew,
his father didn’t see homosexuality as a sin. But the family had
never fully assimilated to the culture around them. Being ope