“You can’t have a world record if you’re two guys. That’s not a world record.”
Avery knows he should put on the music, blot out these voices. But none of us can stop listening. Because what is more transfixing than the sound of people hating you?
In the darkest part of our hearts, we used to think that maybe they were right.
We don’t think that anymore.
Cooper is driving, too, but the radio is off. He was woken by a hard pounding on his windshield—someone telling him he needed to clear out of the parking lot.
Cooper’s mind is slowly working up to something. The chemicals are gathering, some of them in the wrong places. He should be thinking about clothes, about a shower, about getting home. He should be realizing that his parents are probably going to church this morning, giving him an opportunity to sneak in and get more things. He should be figuring out a next step. He should care.
But Cooper feels at too much of a distance to truly care. It’s like he’s sitting in an empty movie theater, looking at a blank screen. His parents aren’t going to change. The world isn’t going to change. He isn’t going to change. So why try? He’s too tired to fight it, too tired to sneak into his own house, too tired to call some hotline or ask some contact to pretend to be his friend for an hour or two.
We know: An almost certain way to die is to believe you are already dead. Some of us never stopped fighting, never gave up. But others of us did. Others of us felt the pain had become too much, and that there was nothing left to life but the struggle for life, which was not enough reason to stay. So we signed out. We caved. But our reasons are not anything Cooper knows. If he could step out of his life for a moment, if he could see it as we see it, he would know that even though he feels it’s as good as over, there are still thousands of ways it could go.
His parents call again, before they leave for church.
He turns off the phone. But he can’t bring himself to throw it away.
“I hope they’re giving each other AIDS,” the caller tells the radio host. “I hope that when they’re dying of AIDS, they show that on the Internet, too, so children will know what happens if you kiss like that.”
The host chuckles, asks for the next caller.
“Turn that off.”
Neil has come into the kitchen, and he can’t believe what his parents are listening to, with his sister right there.
“What?” his father asks, blinking up from the Sunday paper.
Neil goes over and turns off the radio. “How can you listen to that? How?”
“We weren’t really listening,” his mother says. “It was just on.”
“The woman said she wants people to die of AIDS,” Miranda, age eleven, reports.
Neil’s father gives her a shushing glance. Neil’s mother sighs.
“We weren’t really listening,” she repeats.
Neil knows he should let it go. This household operates through a series of unspoken truces, negotiated by instinct more than by actual conversation. Neil has always considered his g*yness to be an open secret with his parents. They’ve met Peter, they know what the story is, but the story is never said out loud. Neil can lead his version of his life, and his parents can believe in their version of their good son.
But open secret is a lie we like to tell ourselves. It’s a lie we often told ourselves, in both sickness and in health. It doesn’t work, because if you feel you still have a secret, there is no way to be truly open. In the interest of self-preservation, it is sometimes best to keep something back, to keep something hidden. But there usually comes a moment—and Neil is hitting his now—when you don’t want self-preservation to define who you are, or who your family is. Truces may stop the battles, but part of you will always feel like you’re at war.
Neil should let it go, but he doesn’t. He thinks of Craig and Harry kissing, even though he can’t remember their names. He thinks of Peter, and of how Peter’s parents take Neil in, extend their family so that he’s like a member. He thinks of his sister listening to the trash talk on the radio and his parents letting it go unanswered.
“How can you not hear that?” he asks his mother. “When something like that is being said, how can you just sit there?”
Neil never talks to his mother like this. Not since he was little, not since it was forced out of him by punishment after punishment.
His father steps in, conciliatory. He is always the good cop. Neil is tired of his parents being cops at all.
“We really didn’t hear it. If we had, we would have turned it off. We were listening to the news at the top of the hour and left it on.”
“When someone talks like that, you should hear it!” Neil says, his voice rising.
His mother looks at him like he’s an incompetent employee. “Why should we hear it?”
“Because you have a g*y son.”
Miranda’s jaw drops theatrically. This is, to her, the most interesting family conversation to ever, ever happen. Neil couldn’t have shocked them more if he’d used a dirty word.
He’s broken the truce.
“Neil …,” his dad begins, his tone half warning, half sympathy.
“No. If some ass**le on the radio was saying that all immigrants should go back to the countries they’re from, you’d pay attention. Even if you weren’t listening, you’d hear it. If they were saying they hope that all Koreans die of AIDS, your blood would boil higher with every single word. But when it’s g*ys they’re talking about, you let it slide. You don’t bother to hear it. It’s acceptable to you. Even if you don’t agree with it—and I am not saying you want me to get AIDS from kissing Peter—you accept it when someone else says it. You let it happen.”
We tried to tell them what was happening. We tried to tell them the disease was spreading. We needed doctors. We needed scientists. Most of all, we needed money, and to get money, we needed attention. We put our lives in other people’s hands, and for the most part, they looked at us blankly and said, What lives? What hands?
“I am g*y. I have always been g*y. I will always be g*y. You have to understand that, and you have to understand that we are not really a family until you understand that.”
Neil’s father shakes his head. “Of course we’re a family! How can you say we’re not a family?”
“What has gotten into you?” his mother asks. “Your sister is right here. This isn’t appropriate conversation for your sister.”
Appropriate. The word is a well-dressed cage, used to capture the truth and hang it in a room that no one ventures into.
“She needs to hear this,” Neil says. “Why shouldn’t she hear this? You know I’m g*y, don’t you, Miranda?”
“Totally,” Miranda answers.
“So there are no big revelations here. You all know I’m g*y. You all know I have a boyfriend.”
But he’s never used that word before. It’s always been I’m going over to Peter’s house. Or I’m going to the movies with Peter. His mother once saw them holding hands as they watched a movie. That’s the only reason he’s sure they know.
“Yes, Neil,” Mrs. Kim says, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice. She picks the paper back up. “Now if we can get back to our Sunday morning …”
Neil feels he should be pleased by this brief acknowledgment, should take the truce that’s being offered once more. The conversation is clearly at its end. His mother has started reading the paper again, and his father is telling him to have some breakfast. We figure this is it, this is all—most of us found acceptance through small steps such as these. Our families were rarely willing to make leaps, at least not until the end.
But it’s not enough for Neil. He feels if he accepts the truce now, it will be months, maybe years, before he gets to this point again.
“I need you to say it,” he tells them. “I need to hear you say it.”
Mrs. Kim throws down the paper and hits the table. “What? That we’re sorry? For not turning off the radio when some idiot said something idiotic? You’re acting like a baby.”
“No.” Neil tries to keep control of his voice. “I don’t need you to say you’re sorry. I need you to say that I’m g*y.”
Neil’s mother grunts and looks at his father. You deal with this.
“Neil,” he says, “is everything okay? Why are you acting this way?”
“Just say it. Please. Just say it.”
It’s Miranda who speaks up. “You’re g*y,” she says, with complete seriousness. “And I love you.”
Tears spring to Neil’s eyes. “Thank you, Miranda,” he says. Then he looks to his parents.
“Neil …,” his father says.
“Please.”
“Why is this so important to you?” his mother asks. “Why are you doing this?”
“I just want you to say it. That’s all.”
“I don’t have to tell you that you have black hair, do I? I don’t have to tell you that you’re a boy. Why should I have to tell you this? We know, Neil. Is that what you want to hear? We know.”
“But you don’t mind about the other things—that I have dark hair, that I’m a boy. You mind that I’m g*y. Which is why I need you to say it.”
“Just say it,” Miranda chimes in.
Just say it, we implore.
Miranda’s words make their mother angrier. “Do you see what you’re doing to your sister?” She picks up the paper and pushes back her chair.
Please.
When Neil’s mother caught him and Peter holding hands, he was relieved. Relieved that it was undeniable proof. Relieved that he hadn’t had to say a word.
But then she didn’t say a word. If Peter hadn’t been in the room, he would have thought he’d made the whole thing up.
“You’re g*y,” his father says now.
“And Peter is my boyfriend,” he says.
“And Peter is your boyfriend.”
Miranda reaches out and holds her father’s hand. They all look to Mrs. Kim. We all look to Mrs. Kim.
“Why does this mean so much to you?” she asks.
“Because you’re my mother.”
So many of us had to make our own families. So many of us had to pretend when we were home. So many of us had to leave. But every single one of us wishes we hadn’t had to. Every single one of us wishes our family had acted like our family, that even when we found a new family, we hadn’t had to leave the other one behind. Every single one of us would have loved to have been loved unconditionally by our parents.
Don’t make him leave you, we want to tell Mrs. Kim. He doesn’t want to leave you.
She genuinely doesn’t understand what it means to hear the words out loud. She genuinely doesn’t fathom why it’s such a big deal for Neil to hear his parents say that he’s g*y, to say it like a fact, to grant it the articulation of her voice.
Mrs. Kim stands there, newspaper in her hand. She stands there and looks at her son. Both mother and son are coiled and lost in their own defensiveness. There is something plaintive in Neil’s argument, a vulnerability that can easily be overlooked in the heat of battle. He wants a truce, desperately wants a truce, but this time he wants a truce on his terms, not theirs. Mrs. Kim recognizes this. Even if the memory doesn’t actually play for her, she feels the echoes of the moment she told her mother she was going to start a new life, thousands of miles away. That her mind was made up and there was nothing her mother could do to stop her. How much had she wanted her mother to say, I understand? How much had she wanted her mother to be on her side?
In fairy tales, the mother often needs to be dead. In mythology, the father must die for a prince to become a king.