Wrestling for Mom

Throughout your autobiography, you mention running
with a rough group of kids. Were you ever made fun of
for having a lesbian mother? Never. I was a pretty tough kid. I don’t
know if they were just too afraid to say anything or
what. In San Francisco, it’s really no big
deal, but I don’t remember ever getting any grief for
it. And it was very obvious. My mom’s
girlfriends weren’t the most feminine girls. It
wasn’t hard to figure out, but I don’t
remember ever hearing anything about it. Anybody who
did would get a smack from me. I wasn’t afraid to
stick up for my mom. She’s my mom, and I love
her. I don’t care if she's got a girlfriend or
a boyfriend. She’s my mom; I love her.

Various Web sites and features promoting Batista
Unleashed describe it
as “scandalous.” In the book itself,
though, you mention your mother's being a lesbian
quite in passing. That is only a very small part of who my
mom is. It’s not like it was some dirty
secret I had to hide, and I think a lot of that comes from
my her. She was never secretive about it. She never made us
feel it was something to be ashamed of. I think the
most important message about my mom is not that
she’s a lesbian but that she’s a single mother
who struggled to keep her three kids safe and alive,
off the streets and out of prison, to keep food on the
table. Those are the messages I wanted to convey, not
who she was in a relationship with at the time.

For your grandfather, that your mother is lesbian
was far less troubling than the fact she’s a Democrat. My grandfather is actually a great guy, but
I’ve never talked politics with him.
[Laughs] Now he seems very easygoing, but back
then he might have been a little more uptight. My mom
is still kind of touchy about certain things around him.