The Cross in the Closet (14 page)

Although my many stereotypes about gay culture have begun melting into the category of “fairytale,” one has consistently rung true: gay men
love
drag queens! The instantaneous effect of a drag queen is both fascinating and contagious. It is a tradition of sorts, and a passion for many. Drag queens are a staple of the community, and I have never been as entertained as I have been by my friends who regularly participate in drag shows. In church I was taught that drag queens represented the worst kind of homosexual perversion, and I believed that. I believed it until I learned the role of drag in gay culture. Drag shows are vaudevillian talent exhibitions populated by uniquely beautiful people. I have even met heterosexual men who dress in drag, which goes to show that my programmed aversion had more to do with the shock of seeing a man dressed in women’s clothes than understanding what drag represents.

I am standing behind the backstop of the main softball field, watching the first game of the season. It is a faux game of sorts among satirically dressed drag queens—many of whom, I am told, have never dressed in drag before. The weather is perfect, perhaps the nicest day of the year so far, and the park rented by the Metro Nashville Softball Association for the league games is packed. Vendors have set up tables and booths the entire length of the main field, and restaurants are selling food to the hundreds of families that have come out for opening day. Children are everywhere, and they look like they are having almost as much fun as I am, watching my friends play in this first game. I also cannot help but notice how well-adjusted and pure these children are, with moms or dads following not far behind. The children’s faces are painted and many hold cotton candy or animal balloons. Were any of these children from a prior marriage, I wonder idly, or were they adopted? Does it even matter? They are all so happy. As I people-watch I cannot help looking for signs of dysfunction. But everyone looks “normal.” Even though I wasn’t sure what to expect, watching them…but I didn’t think I’d see “family” like I see right now. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the “traditional family” exists in gay and lesbian households.

A friend of mine from my first softball practice walks to the plate, and I shout to him encouragingly. Roark looks over and waves. On the first pitch, he hits a ground ball to left field. The shortstop fumbles after the ball and my friend makes it to second base. I feel a deep love for him. The first time we met, Roark saved me from my own anger—and also from being arrested.

It was months earlier, on the first day of softball practice and my introduction into a world of sports I had no idea exists. After I stretched, I was paired with an attractive young guy wearing a pink dew rag and grey stretchy pants that looked like something one might find in the girls department at the Gap. His name was Roark, and he seemed cordial, extending a hand and asking my name before we warmed up and played catch. His voice was surprisingly deep, and I could tell by his build that he was extremely athletic. All around us, men and women warmed up. It was a sea of stretchy pants and sweatpants, as far as the eye could see. I didn’t fit in. I was wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt, and the cold weather made me wish I had dressed more appropriately.

“Is this your first year playing softball?” Roark asked as we tossed the ball back and forth.

“Yes, sir. I was recruited
by a guy at Tribe.” I tossed the ball back as nonchalantly as possible.

“Oh, that’s Rick. He must have liked you. He always seems to approach the guys he thinks are cute.” Roark threw the ball back to me, and it stung my hand through the glove. He smiled.

“Ouch! It’s called
warming up
for a reason!”

“You’ll live,” he yelled back.

I looked down the hill adjacent and saw a man walking two small pugs. He was older, wore slacks and a grey vinyl jacket, and looked as though he hadn’t shaved in a month. He glanced at the field, surveyed its inhabitants, and his gaze stopped on me.

Our eyes met, and he sneered.

“Humph,
faggots
,” he said, just loud enough for me to hear.

My world froze. Something deep inside me that I had not known existed boiled to the surface. “Excuse me?” I said, shocked.

The word hit my ears and I lost myself. I had never been called
faggot
by someone attempting to hurt me, and I did not know how to respond. One second I was tossing a softball with Roark, and the next I was contemplating violence. I felt a new kind of anger, an anger wrought by immediate feelings of violation. The man’s prejudice weaseled its way into my head and heart like a parasite, and heat flushed throughout my body. The heat numbed my judgment, and my instincts told me to fight. He had challenged me, that little man walking his equally little dogs. That
little
brain with its gigantic prejudice!

I wanted to beat him unconscious with the softball glove that was on my left hand. I looked down: the softball glove was on the ground and I was already moving down the embankment. I felt myself take those first steps towards the careless stranger who used a derogatory term to identify me. To identify all of us. My steps were deliberate and fueled by a white-hot hatred that gave me tunnel vision. And all because of a single word!

Before I could take another step, I felt a surprisingly powerful arm holding me back. It was Roark. I turned my head, met his eyes, and saw a look of severe empathy. He looked heartbroken. He rubbed my back and forced me to breathe. I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I was intrigued by Roark’s empathy, and the other I felt a deep sense of loss…a loss of innocence and self-esteem. One word. It only took one word to disrupt my equilibrium. The shock of hearing that word directed at me was worse than jumping into a frozen lake. It knocked the breath right out of me. Worse, it knocked the patience and grace out of me, too. I had been wounded and wanted to react out of that woundedness. But Roark wouldn’t let me. He restrained me with his strength, and also with his empathy.

“You just came out of the closet, didn’t you?” Roark’s question was rhetorical, but I nodded my head yes.

“January,” I said meekly.

“Hun, you have to get used to that kind of thing,” he said, “‘cause it sure as hell won’t be the last time someone calls you a fag.” I saw a tear in the corner of his eye. It moved slowly down the arc of his jaw line and he wiped it away quickly. He was speaking from experience.

He spoke with one hand on my back while his other arm restrained my movement. Roark had ushered me forward into a new reality that I had never known. It was a cruel reality, a reality where a single word could inflict untold damage, without so much so as a warning. I felt damaged.

“But
that’s not cool
!”

My words probably sounded like a child’s reaction to the injustices of life for the first time, and I was that child. It was amazing that one word could elicit such a wide range of emotions. I felt nauseated. I felt humiliated. Practice had not even officially begun and already I wanted to leave. I wanted to hide in my bedroom and scream into my pillow.

“Just breathe…” Roark said. He released me from his hold. “Besides, we’re the ones playing sports up here, and he’s walking two pugs! If anyone’s a faggot, it’s him!”

The dog walker kept moving but turned his head and frowned at Roark’s words.

That was the first time since coming out that I heard that word and understood what it actually meant. It means that you are a lesser, a second-class citizen, and an anathema. It means that your life is relegated to a single word, and the details of that life don’t matter. It means that your thoughts, experiences, loves, and struggles should be painted over because you aren’t an equal, that yours isn’t as valuable as other lives. It meant you are hated. Even though I am not actually gay, I felt that hate, and it still disrupted something sacred in me.
Faggot
denotes rejection and epitomizes unwelcome, and it was a vile epiphany that I came to. Without knowing anything about us, the man walking the pugs told all of us that we were not worthy to be in community with him.

Minutes passed before the adrenaline subsided. As I came back to my senses I realized that Roark had done me a huge favor. He brought me back into control of myself and saved me from making a terrible mistake. The man walking his dogs should send Roark a bottle of wine and thank God that someone cared enough to stop me.

I made it through practice and back to my car before I had an emotional break-down; while I rested my face against the steering wheel, I couldn’t help but cry. I wondered who’d taught that man that behaving that way was okay. I wondered if he had hurt anyone else with his words. I wondered who had hurt him with theirs. Kierkegaard once said, “Once you label me, you negate me.” And that, I believe, is why words can hurt us so powerfully. I think that was why I reacted so emotionally to the man calling me
faggot
. I hope I will never use words like that again, that I will never negate anyone with my words or attitude, no matter how much I disagree with them.

I am learning that words I always thought were harmless really do have power. I mean, they really can hurt people. I have use words flippantly, without much consideration of how they would be accepted. My aunt Michelle from Kansas City once tried to get me to go see the Broadway production of
Rent
with my cousins. I told her I did not want to go spend three hours watching a bunch of
fags
getting what they deserved. One of the first movies I watched after coming out of the closet was
Rent
, and I felt immensely ashamed. The line “Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care?” pushed me over the emotional ledge. How many times have I used my words to take away another person’s dignity? How many times have I shown just how little I care…all the while claiming to serve the God of caring?

When I was a kid, I taught myself how to play the harmonica. It was a long process, and I still owe my parents an apology for the racket. But the funniest thing happened as I learned: I started hearing the harmonica everywhere. I heard it in TV commercials, in songs that I had heard a thousand times on the radio but never realized included the tiny instrument, and I heard it walking down the street as a homeless man in my neighborhood played the blues. Once I began playing the harmonica, my ears opened up and I became aware of the harmonica in a way I had not before. I think the same thing has happened this year. I never used to flinch when derogatory terms were used by friends, or when I spoke them. It all melted in to the background of every day speech and conversation. After coming out, especially after having the dog-walking man call me
faggot
, I tuned in and I cringe as words are thrown around like careless projectiles. Our words, once spoken, live. They live and float around our lives like the stars above us on a clear night, watching us. They are markers of who we are and have been, indicators of our character or lack thereof. My night sky is filled with these living curses.

I watch the opening softball game, spitting sunflower seeds from the bleachers. Roark’s hit is good, and with two more batters, he reaches home plate with ease and walks over to me. He wraps his arms around me, tells me he loves me, and asks me how I have been. He actually gives a damn. I feel indebted to him.

But despite the festive atmosphere of opening day, I feel an emptiness, and nagging questions from my past: What
if the people I went to church with actually gave a damn about me? What if I had given a damn about them? If we really cared about each other, would the church have a reputation for pious ruthlessness, if the religious could learn to love even the people who do not agree with them? If I had believed that the people I went to church with actually cared, I might not have chosen to walk the path I am on.

Roark wishes me good luck on my first two games and heads back to the dugout. Roark is proof that it really is that simple to love another person.

My performance on the opening day of softball is humiliating. I have never felt more feeble as an athlete or more inept at a sport. My team loses both games, but at least I have fun doing so, and that is what it is all about (I think). I get to lounge in the sun and talk to a couple that had just adopted their first child. I hold a little baby in my arms and see the looks of infinite love on her moms’ faces. I get to enjoy community again on a Sunday, and it is a new and fresh experience. Joining the softball league is one of the better choices I have made this year; it presents an opportunity to see a more normal life for the gays and lesbians of the community, a life apart from the atmosphere of the gayborhood. I am excited to become even more a part of this community.

Outside the café, on the window of the small community center next door, I see a banner. It advertises a prom—but how could an entire prom be held in such a small facility? I read the fine print of the announcement: an
all-inclusive prom
! I have never been to a prom, and I wonder how similar a gay prom and straight prom are. My ultra-conservative Christian high school was strict, and the administration had never allowed proms because they were
too worldly
and because dancing led to lust and lust led to teen sex. They opted instead to throw us a junior/senior banquet, where we had to dress formally just to eat dinner. I felt jealous of every kid in public school that night.

On the Friday of the all-inclusive prom, I see kids arriving next door as I smoke outside on the café’s deck. They are not the type of kids I ever hung out with. Some of the guys are extremely delicate and feminine and look weary; I wonder if their weariness is the result of merciless abuse and bullying at school. The girls…well, they look like younger versions of the women I have met this year, many with short cropped hair and piercings. But one fact becomes immediately apparent. All of them look thankful to have their own prom, a night where they can be themselves and celebrate the end of the school year among friends.

I walk out of the coffee shop and over to the community center with a tub of clean dishes and utensils for the party, and I am greeted by a couch full of bright-eyes teens. Their life is refreshing, and their exuberant smiles and energy are infectious. I feel protective of them, like a big brother or chaperone…but I also feel a pang of helplessness and guilt. I would have bullied these very same teens if I had gone to high school with them.

“Having fun?”

“Hell, yeah!” several voices speak in unison.

They seem so innocent. Having been taught being gay is such an abominable choice, I would have expected innocence to be my last impression, even from kids. But they
are
innocent. They are young and unique, pure somehow, not at all jaded the way I would have assumed. They are the way I always wished my classmates could have been in my Christian high school, so themselves, so confident in who they are as people.

“Anybody want a latte?” I ask. “It’s on the house.”

Three of the kids jumped up as soon as they hear the word
latte
. It is the same reaction I imagine I would get if I took a six pack into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and I smile at their energy.

All three follow me back to the café, and while I make the drinks, the kids tell me about themselves. They all have similar stories: all came out at thirteen or fourteen, and all faced tremendous fallout with family and friends, but all are happy to live what they feel is a much more “normal” existence. I am beginning to understand the
normal
thing. The closet is suffocating. Being in the closet is a constant source of negativity and mental oppression. It can be worse even than the rejection and abuse that come with being out of the closet—at least, I feel that way. I think about my friends. Most are still are not talking to me, just because they believe I am gay. I look into the eyes of these teenagers and know we share a bond. It is a bond formed by the pain of abandonment, and I know that what these young people have experienced is probably a thousand times as intense as anything I have, or will, during my short journey.

The last latte I make is for a young guy named Matt. He is thin and a bit lanky but seems solid. He has the build of a swimmer, and his tuxedo-print t-shirt tells me what kind of guy he is. He is the kind of kid who tries not to take life too seriously, and whether it is a defense mechanism or he is just being himself, there is something special about this kid. Matt stays after the others leave, and we talk. I am impressed by his eloquence. He is so intelligent that I have a hard time keeping up with him. More often than not I stand and nod my head, hoping he does not see how lost I am as we talk. Matt’s passion is philosophy.

“I just want to make all of this bullshit make sense.” He takes a sip of his drink and smiles. “This is really good!”

“Glad you like it,” I say while I wipe down the counter and clean up the coffee grounds from the counter. “So, why philosophy?”

“I guess I study philosophy because I need it. Philosophy has taught me how to forgive, and I have a lot in my life I need to forgive,” he says. “I don’t want to be one of those people that can’t enjoy life because I’m so bitter. You know?”

“I do, actually. I’m pretty bitter…but not as much as others, I guess. So what’s your story?” I ask, steaming the milk for another latte I promised to take to another one of the teens.

“I’ll give you the abridged version,” he says confidently. “I came out to my family when I was in the eighth grade, and they didn’t take it so well.” He looks down, reliving the moment, I think.

“What happened?”

“Well, right now I’m living at my best friend’s house. Her family took me in after I was kicked out.”

“Are you
kidding
me?” The words
kicked out
sting my heart. This kid has been through a hell that I can never understand.

“No…Why would I joke about that?”

“I meant that rhetorically.”

He looks at me and I see the child inside of him, the being that is not supposed to face this kind of pain so soon. He is the victim of the kind of life that no kid should ever know about. It is the position that insists he isn’t good enough or worthy of love and support. The innocence of a child typically includes a much smaller reality, a sheltered reality. But Matt hasn’t ever been sheltered. This is a tangible reality that a large percentage of LGBTQ youth in this country understand, but not me. I will never understand.

“I still get to see them at church on Sundays, but they don’t know how to treat me. My mom hasn’t looked me in the eyes for several years.”

“That’s a tough thing, hun. I honestly can’t imagine.” I am dumbfounded. I cannot imagine having to seek refuge with a family that is not my own. The milk for the last latte is ready. I can tell because the steam hisses through thickened white, silky 2 percent. I gently settle the milk by tapping the frothing pitcher on the counter, and I clean the steaming nozzle with a wet rag before pouring the espresso shots into the white paper cup. Matt looks on interestedly.

“Yeah, it sucks pretty bad, but I’ll be okay,” he says, looking curiously at the merman sitting on the couch.

“So you still go to church?” I ask.

“I love church! I sing in the choir, and no one there really treats me differently. They stopped bringing everything up after they saw that I wasn’t going anywhere.”

It makes me happy to know that he is not making the church an enemy because of his family, but it is sad because I know what is probably being said about him behind his back. They have not accepted Matt as a young gay man. No one in his church probably thinks they are or could hurt him. His family doesn’t either. No one is the villain of his own narrative and no one understands the role he plays in the narrative of others. Matt’s family probably thinks they are taking a stand
for him
. I doubt they understand that they are creating a barrier of hurt and pain between them that might never be overcome.

“So what do you miss most about your family?” I ask.

“I miss the hugs. I miss feeling my mom and dad hugging me.” Matt looks down at the latte he is supposed to deliver to his friend. He sees the heart I drew with the steamed milk, and his face lights up.

A lot of my gay friends still go to church. They talk about wanting to have a relationship with Jesus, and they never fail to mention how important their faith is in their lives. It is always eye-opening when I hear their stories; but in this case, from a junior in high school, I am beyond surprised.

Matt picks up his latte and thanks me. “You should stop by the prom later. And if you can, you should bring the merman. He’d be perfect there!”

“Marco is pretty heavy, but
I’ll
make an appearance.”

“Thanks, Tim.”

Before he walks out the door I give him a big hug and hold him tight. “Matt, I know you may doubt this, but your parents do love you. They are captive to a belief that says they can’t be in relationship with you, and it’s hard to overcome that teaching, sometimes…but never for a second doubt that they love you.”

“Thank you. I’ll try to remember.”

As he walks out of the café, I walk over to the couch and collapse. Marco’s body feels heavy next to me, his outfit scratching the exposed skin of my arms and neck, but I don’t care.

How a parent could ever disown her child to such a degree scares me. It is a crime. I feel angry and sad at the same time. I think Matt goes to church because he wants to see his family, and I think he likes singing in the choir so he can see them without looking as though he is staring. That is what I would do, if I were him.

A few hours later I take my break and walk next door to the prom. Some of the kids from earlier pull me out on the dance floor and we laugh the whole time, trying to top one embarrassing maneuver with another. It may be odd for me as an ex-homophobe or a recovering Pharisee, but it is a highlight of my year.

Matt makes his way towards me through the crowd.

“Having fun?” he asks.

“I’ve never been to a prom before.”

“Well, you’re at one now!”

He is right! This is my first prom, and it is a gay prom with gay pirates as the theme. I feel a hole in my upbringing being filled, and it is a moment I will never forget. Even though this is so radically different than what I am used to, it is normal—and I feel normal.

I wonder what the world would be like if we taught our kids and each other that we should never be afraid of someone just because they are different. I wonder what would happen if we taught our kids more about the similarities in people than hyper-fixating on the differences. In that perfect world, Matt would not be living with his friend’s family; his parents would know that he is still the baby whose diapers they changed, the same little kid they took trick-or-treating. At what point did Matt stop being their little boy?

All I know is that I would be proud to have Matt as a son.