Five

The first time I kissed a girl I was in college. I was pretty naïve for even a freshman; there had been no openly gay kids in high school and, in the late 70’s, there were considerably fewer representations of the “gay lifestyle” in popular culture. I had thought, for the first 18 years of my life, that I was straight. I liked boys, I’d had plenty of crushes, had fallen in love in that particularly passionate way that teenagers do. The guy I loved in high school was a little older than me, smoked cigarettes, had long blond hair that he always had to brush out of his eyes. We got into most of the kinds of trouble that teenagers tend to get into. I had no inkling – not a spark, not a sign, not a clue – that my attraction to boys would morph into an attraction to girls.

But so it did, and even then I was slow to catch on. I thought it was just this one girl, this one summer, thought it was just a phase… But then there was a second girl. And a third. And to my surprise I eventually realized that I was a girl who liked girls.

I’ve been pretty lucky over the last 30 years. Nobody ever physically hurt me, nobody singled me out for bullying. Sure, once I was walking near Syracuse University, happily smitten and holding my girlfriend’s hand, and someone yelled out “faggot!” And there was a brief period of time where I’d get anonymous phone calls from someone who would hiss the word fag! and hang up. A woman I once considered a friend told me she didn’t mind that I was gay, but she probably wouldn’t let me babysit her kids. All of those were difficult experiences – upsetting, rattle-me-to-the-core experiences – but overall, I was spared the merciless taunting and harassment that so many kids and teenagers endure.

This contemporary version of harassment puzzles me a bit, in part because I teach in a college and I’ve witnessed attitudes change radically in the last decade or so. Students today are often very supportive of their gay and lesbian classmates. This is true in many high schools as well. Young people are, in general, more educated about homosexuality, more open, and more accepting.

At the same time, it’s almost impossible to walk down the halls of any middle school, high school or even college and not hear someone use the word “gay” in what is considered, often, a joking manner. “That’s so gay.” “You’re gay, dude.” “Quit it; that’s gay.”

If I asked anyone using the word in the above manner what they meant by it, here’s what they’d say: it has nothing to do with being gay. It’s just the way we talk. We’re just kidding around. Everybody says it.

I believe them.

I also believe that they should stop using the word in that way. Why?

Because it carries within it an insult. The insult might be subtle, it might be meant as a joke, it might even be said with affection, but gay – used in this way – equals less. Less cool, less important, less macho, less desirable, less accepted, less good, less normal. Less than everyone who’s not called gay. Just less.

And guess what? We hear you. We – all of us who are gay, whether happily so, or confusedly so, or newly so, or proudly so, or enduringly so – we hear you. We hear you mock us, laugh at us, trivialize us, intimidate us, bully us, demean us… we hear you. Even when you don’t know we’re listening. Even when you don’t know we’re gay. Even when you’d swear up and down that you didn’t mean anything by it. We hear you.

And, to be blunt, it hurts.

The words you think are funny – just stupid, meaningless jokes – are hurtful. We – your sisters and brothers, your cousins, your classmates, your neighbors and colleagues, your coworkers – get our feelings hurt just like you do and sometimes, for some of us, it’s hard to get over it.

When you’re a 13-year-old boy and teased relentlessly for being WHO YOU ARE, it’s hard to get over it.

When you’re a lonely 15-year-old girl who’s harassed relentlessly for being WHO YOU ARE, it’s hard to get over it.

When you’re an 18-year-old boy who’s videotaped and mocked for being WHO YOU ARE, it’s hard to get over it.

And so what, right? Everyone gets their feelings hurt, everyone has to learn to toughen up, everyone has to navigate a whole architecture of social constructs and social pressures and social cues and isn’t that what growing up is? Don’t we all have to deal with situations like this, where someone makes fun of us and we have to figure out how to get through it?

I guess so. Sure. Okay, yeah, lots of us go through it.

But for a significant number of gay and lesbian kids and teenagers and young adults, the difference is that they see no end to their struggle. They can’t imagine that it will get better. Plenty of adults, after all, are homophobic. It’s not uncommon to hear an adult mutter “faggot” or “homo” or to warn their kids that they better not turn out to be gay when they grow up. How can these kids imagine that it’ll get better, when grown-ups seem just as bad, or worse, than their peers? The adult world, in their eyes, doesn’t appear too promising.

I don’t know if I could have withstood being mocked or harassed or teased or bullied. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have. I’m pretty sure I would have become withdrawn and depressed and maybe even suicidal. I know I wouldn’t have been able to talk to my parents about it. Whether I could have confided in a friend or not, I don’t know. I don’t remember everything about my 14-year- old self, or my 18-year-old self, or even my 25-year-old self. But I’m pretty sure I wasn’t resilient enough to endure what some kids endure these days.

It seems like it takes a tragedy to wake people up. We have to hit bottom before we can find ways to improve. Well, five teenagers are dead this fall, all suicides, all gay. That seems like the bottom to me.

I don’t think it’s enough to reassure a depressed or frightened kid that it will get better. I believe it will – I know it will – and I love the campaign that celebrities have begun to support gay youth by telling their own stories and affirming that it does, indeed, get better. We have to do more than that though. We have to change our ways.

So I wonder… How hard would it be to start changing on the level of language? Would it hurt anyone to stop using the word “gay” in a derogatory or joking manner? Would it hurt anyone to stop calling people fags or queer? Would anyone’s life be diminished by taking that one baby step?

I’d appreciate it, from the bottom of my heart, if you could try.

Late Bloomers & Caught Leaves

Nearly October, and butterflies flit around as though the autumn leaves were flowers. I’m sitting on rain-soaked wood, enjoying a balmy afternoon that feels like summer but looks like fall. Morning showers left the ground saturated with dampness and color. The rain knocked off hundreds of maple leaves, and as they dry the edges curl. Dragonflies dart through the air and perch on the hydrangeas, which retain some of their summer pinks and blues but sag under the metaphorical weight of the season and the literal weight of rain. The potted red impatiens has seen better days, too. It looks garish and weary, an odd splatter of red against the yellows and oranges. Here and there in the yard a flower blooms – the last of the year, stragglers By all rights the summer flowers should have ceded dominance to the chrysanthemums, but one purple clematis climbs the trunk of the sumac, one primrose shoots a flower six inches into the air, the myrtle lets off a single violet star and one last rose taunts us with its tight fist for a week – will it, won’t it? – before bursting into aromatic dimension. I’m in love with these late bloomers; I check on them every day and pray they linger. The rose is so delectable I want to eat it like a coral-colored lettuce, but I content myself by just sticking my nose into its soft center. As I do, a gust of wind brings leaves and raindrops down upon me, and I see a pair of white butterflies twin and swirl in an updraft like scraps of fabric caught in a local tornado.

Everywhere, leaves get caught. Cradled, impaled, stuck – impeded in a hundred ways on their course from tree to ground. I see one maple leaf crucified on a dried out lily stem, several plastered to the mailbox, one twisted in some cable wires, several hung like laundry on a resilient piece of spider web. Everywhere leaves catch other leaves. They collect on the roof as though waiting for a sign; the sign is the wind, which sweeps them to the deck. When I walk across that deck the leaves catch in my sandals, flapping like clown shoes until they dislodge. I’d like to keep them near me – paste them to my arms and legs, tattoo myself with them. I’d like to be an autumn leaf magnet, and as I walked they’d drift to me, cluster around my ankles in eddies like land crabs. I’d like to live in this liminal zone, the zone that is both summer and autumn, literal and metaphorical, early and late. I’d like to live in a world where I could fall… and be caught.

Fall

Summer is giving way to fall, and although autumn is my favorite season, it’s hard not to lament, just a little, the cliched lazy days of summer as they slip into the loose weave of memory. Today is a blend of seasons, as though time itself, weather itself, can’t decide on identity, is having trouble moving on. The air is warm, in the 80’s, and the sky clear. But in the yard already-dried leaves skip across the driveway, scratching at my feet while above the trees rustle in the balmy breeze. If I stayed outside long enough my skin would burn, but the morning will be chilly enough for a sweater.

I’m in love, today, with the various weeds and mosses that insist on growing where they’re not wanted. I love the dandelions that push up through fissures in concrete, the moss that continues to carpet a crucial stone step leading to our deck. Years ago I’d mow around tall and flowering weeds in the yard, leaving oases of overgrown grass to protect what had been, arbitrarily it seemed, designated pest when they could have just as easily been called flower. Who decided? I didn’t know, but on my own acre I could reclassify and shelter.

My brother missed the turning of spring to summer; he missed the summer; he missed major time markers in the lives of his wife and kids. Christopher held his first summer job, working with animals in a no-kill shelter. Jordan entered high school and made the soccer team. Jess seemed to grow a full inch taller and read so many books she can’t recall them all. Cassie learned to horseback ride, and my brother’s wife, Lori, figured out how to get the kids, week after week, month after month, where they needed to be, figuratively and literally. Every night the whole family sat in front of the big computer screen and talked via Skype. It wasn’t much, but it was something, a way of keeping in touch, a way of saying everything’s okay even though everything’s different.

My brother missed a lot, and his family missed a lot but they – we – are lucky. The kids’ father, Lori’s husband, my brother, my mother’s son… he’s coming home. He’s out of Iraq and, I think, on a brief layover in Europe.* In 48 hours he’ll be in the U.S. Lori will pick him up at the airport and take him home. The kids think he has another week in Baghdad; they each arrive home from school at slightly different times, so they’ll be surprised sequentially. Part of me wishes I could be there, just hop on a plane and miss a few days of work, witness the reactions of the kids as their father’s presence registers. But another part believes they deserve their privacy, deserve to freely respond with tears or laughter or disbelief or who-knows-what. Military families contend with absence all the time, contend with hardships most non-military families don’t. My brother and I disagree on almost every political issue, but we agree on this: his work is important and he does it well. He’s proud of what he does and I’m proud of him.

So here’s a little thank you for that which persists. Here’s a little thank you for the oasis of family, to naming that which is cherished, to the quiet shifts of season that tell us time is passing and we should pay attention. Here’s to Rob and Lori and their kids…

Although I know it won’t happen, can’t happen, hasn’t happened, I wish – I deeply wish – that all families with loved ones far away could say, sooner rather than later, welcome home.

*This was written a few days ago but couldn't be posted because of the planned surprise. Major Robert Scott is at home with his wife Lori and their children.

On a Tuesday in September

Far as I’m concerned, America is home to Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Confucianist, atheist, agnostic, short, tall, thin, fat, brown, black, white, red, gay, straight, transgender, bi-sexual, the uncoordinated and the athletic, the fashion-challenged and the super model, nature-lovers, city-dwellers, southerners and northerners, those who hug the coasts and those who love the plains and prairies and deserts, the tired, the hungry and the poor, the wealthy and the middle-class, the employed and unemployed, the homeowner, the renter, the homeless, the student and the teacher, the uneducated and the self-taught, the Mexican, the Arab, those with documentation and without, the male and the female, the young and old, the Springsteen fans, the hip-hop fans, the classical music lovers, the jazz aficionados, those who drive SUVs and motorcycles and foreign imports, the pick-up driver and the Prius owner and the walker, the couch potatoes and the health nuts, the vegetarians and carnivores, dog people and cat people, those who prefer Pepsi and those who prefer Coke, the potheads and the addicts, the alcoholics and gamblers and risk-takers of all stripes, the cautious and the timid, the bold and the beautiful, the agoraphobe and the horder and the aesthete, the poets and the artists and the scientists and the mathematicians and the secretaries and the chimney sweeps and the construction workers and the lawyers and those with children and those without, those who love the real Jersey shore and those who are left-handed and the right-brained, the Democrats and Republicans, the insomniacs and those-who-have-yet-to-awaken. Come on, people. Walk the walk. Get out and vote. Say hello. Open the door. Grow up.

The Beauty of the Bowed Head

My cat, Fargo, has a ritual that charms me. Every morning she will jump onto my desk chair and then onto my desk. She positions herself next to the lamp and waits for me to come upstairs from the kitchen, where I’ve fetched my tea. I check email and read the Times online while having breakfast, all of which I must accomplish one-handed (alternating between mouse, teacup, keyboard, cereal spoon), because my other arm is claimed by the cat. She curls herself into its curve and tucks her head into my elbow, where she purrs for 30 minutes or so before leaving me to the rest of my morning.

Sometimes she’ll sit and face me before heading off to her other endeavors. This is my cue to stop staring at the computer screen and pay attention to Fargo. I’ll put down my cup and place both hands on her sides, scratching or petting behind her ears. “You’re the best cat in the world,” I’ll whisper, finding the sweet spot on her neck. “The best cat in the galaxy,” I’ll say, as she leans into my hand. We’re usually just an inch apart, eye to eye, and her fur has been warmed by the lamp and my arm. It’s just about perfect happiness, but it gets better. On certain mornings, if I’m really lucky, she’ll bow her head in the midst of this ritual. She'll sit directly in front of me, still and silent on the desk, head bowed as if waiting to be knighted. I'll lean in and bow my head, too, so that my forehead is touching the crown of her head. Then we just stay like that, Fargo turning up the purr, me wishing I could purr, until the world shifts and the moment ends.

Maybe it’s a remnant of a mildly Catholic childhood, but there’s something about that posture -- shoulders still, breath steady, head bowed -- that I adore. It’s the posture of prayer, of deep thought, the posture of sorrow and of nodding off to sleep. When one is writing, the head is bowed – and here I realize I must clarify, because it is true only when writing with a pen and not when composing on a keyboard and screen. It is that position – pen or pencil in hand, head bowed, concentration utter – that combines all of the above. We are praying, we are thinking, we are in some reverent half-sleep half-dream half-wide-oh-so-wide-awake state. We are writing, and sometimes, if we’re really lucky, it feels like we are touching, in both solitude and total communion, the perfect reader, the perfect other.

July, Rain

When it rains all day I feel like my senses need to be reset. Usually when I’m working at my desk, the window to my left is wide open and I hear, dozens of times an hour, the wings of hummingbirds coming to sip from the feeder. If the day’s breezy, leaves from the maple and locust and cherry trees rustle, and in the background I’ll note the irregular punctuation of bird song and an occasional car. Most of that is blocked out with steady rain. All I’ve heard for the last few hours is rain hitting various surfaces – the sturdy leaves of the hosta below my window; the stones of the rockwalls in the yard; the wooden slats of the deck; the rooftop shingles. Every once in a while I catch the buzz of the hummers’ wings… but most of the customary sounds are gone, replaced by thousands of drops meeting dozens of obstacles. The raindrops that hit grass in the yard or the fresh dirt of the new flower garden are soundless from indoors. But they make everything shine. As the leaves and flowers become saturated, their colors appear more vibrant.

I look up from the keyboard after that last line and see that I have to adjust my perception. The clouds have grown so gray that any brightening highlights on the ground are diminished. It looks more like 8 in the evening than 10 in the morning. The world is dark and wet and cold, and although it puts a literal damper on any outdoor activities for us humans, the steady rhythm of rain is a joy.

Vast Embrace

i. Bird nests in the brambles cup chalices of snow. A scrap of blue scarf caught. (The tenderness of the scrap.)

ii. When I was a kid, I thought it would be fun to walk the plank of a pirate ship. I could swim. Danger was a foreign concept. Figured I’d bob in the water until the ship was out of sight, then head for shore. I’d show those pirates.

iii. Letter from my brother, age 10: Dear Donna, How are you? I’m doing very good. It’s only 11 days till you get here, and I’m still counting. Ever since Momy said I could type on your old typewriter I have been on a craze for typing. The office had a new typewriter. IT was great typing on it. It could type any way you wanted, because you can change this little ball-like object with different types of lettering. When I first started yesterday I was using one finger, and now I almost now the key-board by hart, and am using two hands, pinkies and all….. PLEASE WRITE (type) back soon. (if possible in my name) LOVE ROBERT

iv. Envelope saved from my brother, age 23. Scrawled on the outside, to the postman: PLEASE DO NOT BEND THESE BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS OF OUR NEW SON. HE WAS BORN ON NOV 9^TH. WE LOVE HIM A LOT!!

v. My brother is deployed to Iraq. We write messages in ink on the insides of orange rinds, leave them in each other’s pockets. When I find one in the future it reads: I will always meet you someplace else.

vi. “What are the two most important parts of an essay?” I ask. In unison, the class responds: “Openings and conclusions.” “Is it okay to bend the truth, twist the truth, leave out details or add details to the truth?” I ask. They fidget.

vii. His boy is 16. He thumb-texts. On my answering machine, saved messages cover his whole life. Hear his voice crack. Hear his voice change. I made the team, he says. Would you read this poem I wrote, he says. Call me back, he says.

viii. Nabokov, in the story with the funeral: “And I want to rise up, throw my arms open for a vast embrace, address an ample, luminous discourse to the invisible crowds. I would start like this:

ix.

x. (The tenderness of the scrap.)