KNOT WHAT YOU BELIEVE

Had you even turned 20, Andrew, before you took to heart your church’s teachings on same-sex attraction? Before you took the rope in hand, snaked it up and over the beam, slipped the knotted noose around your neck? What could you know of death, of life? 

Researchers say that for many people, five minutes or less pass between their making the decision to end it all and making the attempt. Was yours a snap decision, made when you learned your mother had discovered your secret? Or had you been toying with the idea of suicide all along? I can imagine you worrying it like a loose tooth, pushing it back and forth in your mind as I did, weighing its merits as a way of reconciling your being gay with your strongly held religious beliefs.

Seductive, the idea that death would end the pain and torment, free you from never being good enough, from knowing that who you were at the very deepest level was flawed, dirty, sick, beyond redemption. Not that you didn’t try. Not that you didn’t pray. Not that you didn’t fast and flagellate yourself and exercise all you knew of faith. But God did not answer your prayers, relieve your suffering or take away your persistent attractions. And you got the message in countless ways from parents and peers, church and society, that same-sex desire is wrong, shameful, depraved. 

You learned to make the hangman’s noose in Royal Ambassadors, the Southern Baptist knock-off of the Boy Scouts. Did you approach knot-tying with the same fervor you brought to religion? Did you do it well enough that yours was a quick death? From what I read, it’s easy to bungle hanging oneself. The resultant death by strangulation can be excruciating. Three months ago in Oregon an openly gay 15-year-old who'd complained of being bullied hung himself on the school playground. He died two weeks later, after being taken off life support. I can’t imagine his parents’ pain. Nor his. Nor yours.

I remember mine. Morning of my 35th birthday I wrote a suicide note to my wife and young sons. I had a plan. Had tested it. Knew it would work. I’d had all I could take. Believed my death would be best for my wife and children. Soon as they left for town, I was going to take my leave, as well. Like you, I could in no way reconcile my religious beliefs with who I had discovered myself to be.

You directed your last prayer heavenward. “What did I do that was so wrong?” you cried in anguish, tears wetting your face. “Why can’t you love me?” Then you turned and took up the long white rope.

Although I didn't see you die, I did hear your mother's scream when she found your body. The entire theatre audience did. Many of us sat there in silence, stunned. Some of us wiped our eyes. We grieved your death—you who only ever lived in our imaginations. 

You’re a fictional character, Andrew. In a play. You die every time Dell Shore’s Southern Baptist Sissies is presented. Though you’re a work of fiction, you’re an all too real stand-in for LGBTQ youth across this country, across this world, who every day face disparaging messages from friends, family, religious systems and societal institutions.

Suicide isn’t the answer. Killing yourself resolves nothing. If it’s death we need, it’s the death of small thinking, entrenched prejudice, bigotry and hatred. And it’s happening all around us, due to quite natural causes. Even conservative pundit George Will sees it. “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying,” he told ABC television’s “This Week.” “It’s old people.” 

Younger people support gay and lesbian equality in far greater numbers than do their elders. Change is coming, Andrew. A new wind is blowing. I wish you were here to experience it.


This essay appeared in the April issue of The Community Letter

DEAR BULLY

Here's a question for you: what is it that ultimately defines us, says who and what we are? Is it how we look? Act? What we say? Think? What we believe in? Value? 

And who does the defining anyway? We ourselves? Are we whoever and whatever we say we are? (I can't altogether think so. When I was a child, I declared I was a kitten and when I grew up I was going to be a cat. This pronouncement no more made me feline than my fervent belief I was heterosexual male made for a happy marriage to a woman.)

What then, do others get to define us? They try, certainly. Every social group sets rules and expectations for its members' behavior—and consequences for failure to measure up. Yet to be human is to be a walking set of contradictions and mystery. We each have a hard enough time getting a handle on who we are as individuals. How can we pretend to define who and what another person is? But others do hold the power to define us, don't they—in the end, we become whatever memories they carry of us after we're dead and gone. 

So I ask you, Kurt, what or who is it that determines what we are? I was 14 when you started in on me. "Jeezo," you labeled me. "Fag," "pud," "queer." I didn't know what those words meant. I didn't want to know. I knew you didn't intend them kindly. Whatever they meant, they didn't jive with my Sunday School award for perfect attendance. Didn't jive with how I wanted to define myself: good church boy, obedient Christian, godly teen.

I prayed for you, of course. Prayed you'd go directly to hell. Prayed your arm would snap next time you pressed me against the wall, next time you thrust your hand under my chin, pushed my head back so I could see only the ceiling, had to look heavenward from whence came no help.

Every school day you tormented me. I can still feel the jibes of your tagalong henchmen, hear the snickers of my classmates. I often felt helpless, hapless, humiliated at your hands.

I wonder which affected my sense of self more, your actions or my inaction? To what extent did I participate in my own abuse by allowing you to treat me as you did? Was I so helpless as I imagined? Under your tutelage, I came to see myself as a spineless loser, stupid sap, human push-around. What recourse did I have? Over and again I appealed to God without effect. I tried to tell my parents what was going on. How to explain, "Mom, Dad, your oldest son is the laughingstock of the school, the scum at the bottom of the barrel"?

I let myself be defined by your words and actions. 

What about you? I suspect you were defined in part by how you looked. You were the one dark face in a sea of lily-white. How was that for you? I never asked.

Were you unleashing on me pent-up anger you couldn't blast at your friends? You had friends, right? You lettered in golf—didn't that put you in the rich kids' club? Maybe not. Maybe doors were closed to you; maybe in a thousand prickly ways you were told you didn't belong. Was that it? Or were you lashing out at something in me you didn't like in yourself?

I'll never know. You peddling your bicycle, a couple years after graduation. A sudden roar. You never stood a chance against that Mack truck.

All that's left of you now are memories. Those, and the way I still shudder to think of you, the sour taste that rises in my mouth when I do. Some legacy, eh? I'm left to define you, Kurt, to shape you—not in the way you shaped me, but still. 

I wish I felt more kind.

This essay appeared in the February, 2012 issue of The Community Letter

RE-RIGHTING OUR LIVES

Ever wish you could rewrite the past? At a friend’s urging I tried this re-righting exercise: “Recall a painful life episode and retell it with an alternate, positive outcome. Include the presence of a supportive, powerful character.” I chose to examine my real-life memories of a high school bully I’ll call Mack.

* * *

I riffle through the tumble of books, notes and papers and pull out what I need for the next three classes: advanced biology, college math and English. Almost there now, almost there. I’ll breathe easy once I reach Mrs. Bush’s classroom. I swing the locker door shut. A hand lands on my shoulder, a piece of lead in my gut.

Mack shoves me against the beige lockers. A silver handle stabs at my back. “Where you going in such a hurry.”

It is not a question.

He jabs a hand under my chin, jerks my head up and back against cold steel.

Mack is not the biggest boy in our class, nor the meanest. But for four years he has loomed large in my school life; for nine months out of every twelve I have let him make my weekdays hell. He seeks me out, baits me, calls me names, teases me, pushes me around, gets in my face. And I let him. I play the good boy, turn the other cheek, pray for his soul to burn in hell.

What does Mack see in my countenance that gives him license to treat me with such disdain? What do I see in his that stops me from standing up for myself? These are questions I won’t ask until years later.

“Where do you get your clothes.” Again, it is not a question. “Fetla’s.” Mack spits out the name of the discount surplus store in Valparaiso, our county seat. “I bet your mom bought that shirt at Fetla’s.” He fingers my shirt collar. “Why do you wear clothes like that anyway. If I had clothes like that, I wouldn’t wear them to school.”

I keep my mouth shut. Long ago I learned there’s no reasoning with him. He steps in close, pushes my chin up again, my head back, presses his chest to mine. “I asked you a question, pud.”

“Mack, please. I have to get to class.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Anything is the wrong thing to say. His chest swells. “Didn’t you hear me, faggot? I asked you a question. You’re not smart enough to—”

“Oh, no you don’t!”

Everything happens at once. One second Mack is on me, over me, the next he’s not even touching me. A loud shout. An “oof.” His body slams into the lockers to my right.

“I’ve had enough of you, Mack.”

It’s Frank Stassek who last year, even as a sophomore, played varsity basketball. Next year he’ll help our school capture the conference triple crown and whup big city Valparaiso—a first-ever feat. In this corner of basketball-crazed Indiana, in this small school where grades K through 12 gather under one roof, jocks are gods.

Blinking, Mack looks up into the face of an angry god.

“You leave this guy alone, hear me? Keep your paws to yourself. I don’t want to see you touching him again.”

Curly ringlets of dark hair frame Frank’s deep brown eyes and gorgeous face. Although I hate sports, I attend every home basketball game I can to watch Frank’s thighs pound the length of the court, his muscled arms pull down yet another rebound, his chest heave under the blue and white jersey marked with a large number 20.

It’s my chest that’s heaving at the moment. Frank takes my arm, pulls me forward. He slips an arm around my shoulder. “C’mon. Mrs. Bush will be looking for us. You don’t want to be late for class, do you?”

It is not a question. It is an answer to prayer.

* * *

In “real life,” neither Frank nor I ever came to my rescue. But in retelling this story, I catch a glimpse of the Frank who lives inside me. Maybe I will call on his power next time I need his protection.

This essay appeared in the November issue of The Letter.