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I just wrote an impassioned sort of plea on the SDMB.
I wonder how he's doing these days.
I wonder if he knew how stricken I was by his question.
I'd known him for three and a half, four years at that point. We did lunches together, hung out, talked. He was a self-described "Nice Jewish boy with a nose ring."
He came out to me right after history class with Mr. Hines, late senior year, a class we both had seventh period -- it might have been one of our last days. Probably because it was less risky; he wouldn't have to see most of us ever again, if anything went wrong.
"Is that okay?"
Before he asked me that question, before he asked me that earnest, intense question, underlaid with obvious fear, it had never occurred to me that it wouldn't be. Never occurred to me that the question would be so intense, so personal, so terrifying, so necessary.
(Yes, I am that fucking oblivious. Please explain the customs of your planet to me.)
It never would have occurred to me that it wasn't okay -- but he still needed to ask me, he still needed me to give him the answer, because he didn't know that. He didn't know whether I was a sleeper homophobe, somewhere in the depths of my mind, one of the people who would turn away from him after four years of shared potato chips and commiseration.
Jerry, you wounded me to the heart and made me into an activist.
Wherever you are, I hope you're all right. And if you hoped to find someone to love in these past eight years, I hope he treats you as well as you deserve, and I hope that some tomorrow you will never have to ask anyone that awful question, that you never again have to suffer that sort of doubt for the sake of loving him.
I wonder how he's doing these days.
I wonder if he knew how stricken I was by his question.
I'd known him for three and a half, four years at that point. We did lunches together, hung out, talked. He was a self-described "Nice Jewish boy with a nose ring."
He came out to me right after history class with Mr. Hines, late senior year, a class we both had seventh period -- it might have been one of our last days. Probably because it was less risky; he wouldn't have to see most of us ever again, if anything went wrong.
"Is that okay?"
Before he asked me that question, before he asked me that earnest, intense question, underlaid with obvious fear, it had never occurred to me that it wouldn't be. Never occurred to me that the question would be so intense, so personal, so terrifying, so necessary.
(Yes, I am that fucking oblivious. Please explain the customs of your planet to me.)
It never would have occurred to me that it wasn't okay -- but he still needed to ask me, he still needed me to give him the answer, because he didn't know that. He didn't know whether I was a sleeper homophobe, somewhere in the depths of my mind, one of the people who would turn away from him after four years of shared potato chips and commiseration.
Jerry, you wounded me to the heart and made me into an activist.
Wherever you are, I hope you're all right. And if you hoped to find someone to love in these past eight years, I hope he treats you as well as you deserve, and I hope that some tomorrow you will never have to ask anyone that awful question, that you never again have to suffer that sort of doubt for the sake of loving him.
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Jerry may have said that because he'd already run into people, possibly including family, for whom it wasn't okay. When I came out to my parents, they sent me to a psychologist. (Mercifully, she was a professional--meaning she respected confidentiality, and let me talk about what I wanted for the hours I was there--but it was one more reason to be glad I was going away to college.)
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And then it Unfolded like some new facet of reality for the fellow in the Fortress books, and . . . ow.
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