by A J Walkley
What did I do? The only thing I could have done in the corner I was trapped in - I called Nick again.
“Hey, G-money! Doing any better?”
The sound of his voice, of unconditional love and everything else my best friend meant to me, broke my composure.
“So I take it we’re still in mourning?”
“I’m a mess, Nicky,” I managed. “I need you to tell me what to do.”
“Aw, dude, I can try. What’s up?”
I told him everything about Cameron and the choices I had.
“I would never say ‘I told you so,’ but -”
“NICK.”
“I know. There’s no easy answer, buddy. People are gonna be hurt: you, Cameron and me when you kick my ass for telling you this. Is that a giggle I hear?”
“I don’t giggle! Keep going.”
“You don’t have to tell him everything, Greer. But, don’t you think he deserves to know at least something? Even if it’s just that you don’t feel the same way about him that he feels about you?”
I winced, anticipating the confrontation that seemed inevitable.
“Yeah. You’re right. I’m just scared.”
“That I’m right? Puh-lease, girl, don’t you know by now that I am always right?”
“Ha! What a crock!” I was actually laughing at that point, a phenomenon only Nick could have gotten out of me when I was as low as I was then.
“There you are. I found you. Your depression hasn’t swallowed you yet.”
If only I could have bottled up the gratefulness brewing in the pit of my stomach, I would have sent it to him.
“I love you buddy,” I told him, each word pregnant with sincerity.
“I love you too, my queer Greer.”
***
I had cried too loudly and I had stayed in my room too long. Emily had tried to come in earlier and I had slammed the door in her face without a word. When she tried to come in again a few minutes later, I didn’t care enough to tell her to get out again.
I wonder if seeing me hysterically crying on the floor of my room, bloodshot eyes not because I was high, but because my heart was pulp in my chest, made my sister say what she said.
After sitting on my bed for a while, staring down at me, failing with her pleas for me to get up, she said something so on point I wouldn’t have expected it from someone her age.
“There are other people out there, Greer. Boys and girls.”
At least one person in my family understands, I thought, grabbing Em and pulling her into my arms.
“You have no idea how much that means to me, sis,” I said into her hair.
“I love you, Greer. I just wanted you to know.” She looked up at me, gave me another squeeze and turned to leave.
“You’re a great kid, you know that?” I asked her.
She smiled. “I have a really great role model.”
“When to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason to go with the drift of things … and bow and accept at the end of a love or a season.”
- Robert Frost
FEBRUARY
I had gotten to a point where I knew I had to talk to someone. The idea of therapy scared me. Crazy people went to see psychologists, and I wasn’t crazy. I was hurt and confused. My one confidant, no matter how supportive, could never understand where I was coming from; so that left one option in my little world: Jill.
While my mom’s best friend and I had never had any heart-to-hearts in the past, she had said to me before we left South Carolina, “If you ever need anything, I’m always here.” With those words and the simple fact that she had most likely experienced something akin to my own situation at one time of her life, I figured she would be my best bet.
“Greer MacManus! Well, isn’t this a surprise!” Jill exclaimed as soon as she picked up the phone.
I had climbed out onto my roof with my cell in hand. I looked down at our cacti as I began, watching the mail person make her way down the block.
“Hi, Jill. How are you?”
“Good, good. What do I owe this pleasure?”
I took a big breath. “I know this is going to seem random, but I was wondering if I could talk to you about some things.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked, instantly worried.
“No, I mean, yes, kind of. It’s just that there are some things going on that I can’t really discuss with my mom, you know?”
“Ahh, I see.”
“Are you busy?”
“Not for you, sweetie. I’m all ears.”
I relaxed a bit and leaned back on the shingles, looking up at the sky.
“Well, uh, I guess the first thing you should know is that I, uh, broke up with someone not too long ago.” I felt somewhat guilty that I was revealing this secret to Jill before my mom, but her reaction was much more predictable.
“Is that Cameron? That boy your mom told me about?”
I closed my eyes and said, “Yes, but, I guess I’m really talking about Becca.”
After a brief pause, Jill said, “Ohh, okay. And your mom doesn’t know about it at all?”
“I never told her about it. I have no idea what she would even say. But, that’s not the point. I just wanted to know if you’ve ever been, well, dumped I guess?” I sounded so naïve, even to myself. I didn’t really know what I wanted to ask, honestly. I just wanted her to tell me everything was okay, I think.
“Oh, honey,” she laughed, “Dozens of times!”
“Really? Dozens?”
“Well, no, but a good handful. They are never easy for any of us, Greer.”
“I know,” I sighed. “But this is different. Becca was my first.” First love. First girlfriend. First lover.
“Aw, baby, I know that feeling. I hate to say it, but time is really the only remedy.”
“Jill, can I ask you a personal question?” All of my thoughts from New Year’s Eve sprang into my head once more.
“Anything. Shoot.”
“When did you know that you were, you know…”
“Gay?” she laughed. “I knew pretty early. I think I’m pretty much as lesbian as you can get. I never liked boys, ever. I was always chasing the girls around the playground.”
“Wow, really? What did your parents do?” What I was really asking was, ‘What will my parents do?’
“Well, I come from a Mormon family, I don’t know if you knew that. They sent me to Evergreen International when I told them I was gay, my sophomore year of high school. Ever hear of it?”
I told her I hadn’t.
“Basically, it’s this group that tries to rid you of same-sex attraction. They try to make you ex-gay, as if that were even possible,” she laughed, trying to make light of it. “It was awful, though. They basically drill heterosexuality into your head by making homosexuality out to be some disorder that you must overcome. There’s a fair dose of talk about going to Hell and all that as well.”
“That sounds awful. How long did you have to go there?”
“Not long. I went for my parents’ sakes for about six months before I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I came home from a session and told them that if they couldn’t accept the fact that their daughter was a lesbian, then I couldn’t be their daughter.”
“No way! Just like that?” I couldn’t imagine saying anything like that to my parents, even if they were the most homophobic people on earth.
“I was in a particularly rebellious stage of my teen years then, so that added to the drama. But I can’t really fully express how awful those Evergreen ‘support groups’ were,” she said sarcastically. “I was becoming depressed from it. I knew that if I stayed much longer, something bad would end up happening.”
“Bad? Like what?” I pushed.
“I don’t know, I guess a lot of things. I have a lot of gay friends who have tried killing themselves, for instance. Almost all of them hurt themselves by different means at one point or another, too.” She stopped suddenly and then, “Greer, you’re
not thinking anything like this are you?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” I assured. “But, maybe the depression part.”
And I began to go into the saga of Becca, feeling more and more comfortable releasing myself to Jill as I did.
“Now, I just don’t know what to do with myself,” I admitted. “I quit the swim team today.”
Jill had come to a few of my meets in Charleston when my mom still cared about that aspect of my life.
“Greer, why? You’re a terrific swimmer!”
I’m not sure the reason, but her compliment made my eyes start to tear.
“She’s the captain. I can’t be around her anymore. I didn’t have a choice.” Plus, I’d have to see her in a bathing suit multiple times a week.
“I understand. Woo, that’s tough, sweetie. I’m so sorry,” Jill said.
“I have one more question?”
“Of course,” she urged me on.
“Did you lose friends when you came out? Like, what do you do if everyone you know doesn’t want to know you anymore?” I picked at my cuticles to distract me from what we were discussing, biting my lip to keep from crying.
“I did. I lost family and friends. But you know what? I ended up gaining better friends, many of whom I consider family, in the process.”
I thought about that for a few seconds. “How long did that take?” I asked, not actually looking for a serious answer.
“It took time, I’m not going to lie.”
“Great,” I replied, noticing my mom turning onto our street in the distance. I expertly turned around and leapt back through the window, settling on my bed.
“Think of it this way – why would you want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t love you for who you are?”
I let out a chuckle in spite of myself. “Isn’t that a little cliché?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely! But it doesn’t make it any less true.”
I wondered why I hadn’t talked to Jill sooner.
“Greer, honey. You just go back to school and find the people there who won’t judge you. I promise you, they’re there. You just haven’t looked hard enough.”
I hoped she was right. “Thanks Jill,” I said. “You don’t know how much this has helped.”
“Anytime, sweetie. Let me know how it goes.”
She made it sound relatively easy, but high school from the inside seemed anything but.
After all, where does the sexually confused teen fit in when she’s grieving a lesbian lover and the heterosexual dream at the same time?
***
The candles were lit. I sat on my bed, leaning over a file folder on which I had been picking apart my pot. The all-natural hemp rolling paper was filled with it, and I took it between the thumb and forefinger of both hands to roll it into the joint it was to become.
Another masterpiece.
I had gotten great at rolling since Cameron had taught me. I ripped off a thin piece of a magazine insert and formed it into a filter, slipping it into the end of my cigarette before shaking down the weed, making it compact. I put on some music.
Jack Johnson will do the trick.
I leaned back on my pillows, ashtray on my stomach, and I sparked the baby.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Oh yeah. I can’t explain it fully, but there is just something about that action, that breathing in and out, seeing the smoke leaving you, that just holds me in its grasp. It’s the passing between friends, the connection in the hand-off. It’s the look of recognition in a fellow stoner. I. Just. Love. Marijuana.
So much so, in fact, that I was there then. Smoking alone. There was no hand-off, just me. A great way to not only fend off loneliness, but get extremely high at the same time. The joint is your friend and your distraction if you let it be. It’s not too pricey; you might even say affordable. It’s not even a drug, but more of an herbal remedy. It should definitely be legalized. If I lived in California, I would get a psychiatrist who would probably prescribe it to me without a second thought.
Maybe that’s where I should go to school next year.
Cameron wasn’t talking to me. Rebecca was off gallivanting with her ex-girlfriend who was no longer an ex.
Too immature for you, Becs?
All I had were my candles, my herb and the vibrator I had picked up at Intimate Imaginings that afternoon. I was doing my best to forget that it happened to be February 14th, Valentine’s Day.
Being single wasn’t that bad, I tried to convince myself. You don’t have anyone to explain yourself to, or waste money on. You can go out with friends any day of the week – if you have friends. You can get the whole bed to yourself. The whole, cold, empty bed. You have no one to kiss. No one to say I love you to. No one to go home to at the end of the day.
Fuck.
I took my small, purple, quivering friend out of my nightstand. A turn of the wrist and it was shaking full force in my hand. I tucked it beneath the waistband of my track shorts, under my cotton panties. I thought of Becca, naked in front of me, laughing and dancing to The Stones in that very room.
“Ohhh.”
Becca was straddling me, teasing me with her hair playing across my nipples.
“Yeeeah.”
Her fingers were pressed against my clit, slick with my arousal for her. They were vibrating.
“Oh God, yayayayayayayayaya! Beccaaaaaaaaaa!”
I just lay there for a few minutes, the vibrator still trembling in my palm.
“I miss you.” I started to cry and, before I knew it, I was frantic. I had no one to turn to. Literally. What was I supposed to do? Did I need therapy? Did I need medicine? Fuck that. That stuff screwed you up and made you someone you weren’t, I was sure of it.
I sat on my carpet, leaning against my bed. I wasn’t doing anything, but my breathing was becoming labored. All of these thoughts of Cameron, Rebecca, of my parents not knowing about any of this, made me start to hyperventilate. I stood up and began to pace.
“What can I do? What can I do?” I asked the room. I turned up my CD player, blasting the music. Dad was away on business, Mom was working late and Emmy was at a friend’s house. There was nobody at home to talk to, and even if there were, I probably wouldn’t want to talk to any of them. My breathing grew heavier.
I wished I could crawl into a song, like “Let It Be” by The Beatles. It would be warm and soothing all around me. That’s what I needed. To be wrapped up in ultimate comfort. I wondered how I had gotten to this place, where I found that I really had nobody to turn to.
With a moment of inspiration, I left my room and took the stairs two at a time down to the kitchen. I opened the drawer closest to the phone and started to rummage.
Expired coupons.
A pair of scissors.
A tape dispenser.
“There,” I said aloud when I reached them. I had known they were there. At the back I found a small box of straight razors. Dad kept them here for opening the occasional package that came in the mail; usually a small token of appreciation from one of his clients. I took one, closed the drawer and returned to my room.
I really can’t say where the idea came from. I don’t remember ever seeing anyone do it before, not even on television. I don’t think I ever read about it either. Jill had mentioned having friends who hurt themselves, though. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I couldn’t breathe, there was something stuck inside me that needed to be released. So, I lay down on my bed after shoving all of my pillows off, and I pressed the razor to my forearm.
“Not there, stupid,” I said to myself again. I looked down at myself. I pulled my jeans off and eased my panties down. Nobody would be looking there for a while, I reasoned.
The point of the blade entered my skin first. I flinched, but continued adding pressure until a thin red line was left behind. I stared at it, then smudged the beaded blood with my finger. I made another line paralleling the first; then a third and a fourth. None of them were too deep, b
ut deep enough to bleed, which is what I wanted; a desire I didn’t realize I had until I had cut myself ten different times.
They were all perfect. They glistened in the afternoon light coming through my window, as did the blade, slowly becoming encrusted with dried blood.
I don’t know why, but I felt better. Later I would look it up online and see that doctors and psychiatrists called it “self mutilation.” That made it sound a heck of a lot scarier and a much bigger problem than it seemed to me.
After staring at my newfound therapy for what seemed like hours, I went to the bathroom, panties hanging low, and I got a washcloth. I cleaned myself off. Even though the blood was gone, I could still see the lines I had made. They still throbbed in their rawness. I splayed my palm over them, caressing them. Flawless.
The only one I had was myself, and I was the one with the knife, literally.
***
Emmy was home sick so I was, too. Mom had to go to work and Dad was in Mexico.
I didn’t mind staying home from school. Watching Nick Jr. with my little sister was a hell of a lot better than facing You-Know-Who in the halls. I had done my best to avoid my usual routes to my classes for the last few weeks. Sure, it was inevitable, but I was happy to put off seeing her as long as I could. Maybe when I returned, she would be home sick and I could put off the eventual rendezvous even longer.
No such luck.
As soon as I walked into the school lobby that Tuesday, Rebecca Wilder was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and giving me a stare that said, ‘Where the hell have you been?’
“Where the hell have you been?” Bingo.
I glanced at her, and kept walking.
Destination - Locker.
“Hello? Greer!” She walked fast and caught up to me.
“Hey. What’s up?” I tried to play it cool.
“So this is how it’s going to be?” I turned to face her, staring her right in the eye.
“What did you expect, Becca? You wanna be best friends now or something?” She looked down, sheepish. But, honestly, what did she expect?
