Mama's Boy

by Dustin Lance Black

  —

  Without checking its fit, I loosened a snorkel’s rubbery black head strap. My head was abnormally large for my age and looked downright massive atop my skinny frame. I spit into the mask, used a finger to rub the spit around, pressed the mask against my face, and pulled the snorkel into position. A big breath, and I kicked my way under the water. My heart slowed, my body relaxed. Down here, the world could no longer see or hear me. I was on my own, safe.

  Colorful toys littered the bottom of the aboveground pool, the temporary type set up in the backyards of the slightly more fortunate when our summers got long and Texas-hot. To my left, a pair of thin, blinding-white legs on tiptoes met a pair of far-too-big trunks, then an outie belly button, a thousand ribs, and two hairless armpits. It was all reflection and distortion from there on up.

  With my snorkel mask perfectly fogless, everything under water was in sharp focus. So I examined this other human being, wondering if I was just as awkward, and knowing full well I was worse. Its inward-leaning knees began to bend, and its feet suddenly pushed off the bottom. I turned away so as not to get busted scrutinizing this other boy’s body.

  I heard a deep thump, splashing, bubbles. I turned back to find a mass of writhing curls trying to wrestle free from the boy’s mask. He went straight for the action figures on the pool floor. Action figure role-play wasn’t really my jam, but this boy was the only person on the planet willing to call me a friend, so…His name was Timothy. I called him Tim.

  From kindergarten to third grade, I had proven too skinny, too short, too big-headed, too often in the free lunch line, and far too quiet for the rest of the kids to be seen palling up with. Tim had a normal-sized head, but his mother had rendered him friendless by preemptively ironing patches on the outside of his trousers to protect them from wear and tear.

  But there were qualities I truly valued in Tim: he didn’t talk much, and he didn’t ask me too many questions, so we could simply “be” together. And whether I realized it then or not, I needed Tim—because it’s one thing to find a bit of safety in solitude, and quite another to be condemned to solitary confinement.

  On this afternoon, Tim seemed to have lost his usual appetite for action figure warfare. Something was weighing on him, but we knew better than to give voice to our “somethings,” so we retreated into our own thoughts, and I began plucking oak leaves off the water’s surface—a blessedly endless task. But on this day, Tim interrupted my work with these words: “My mom says I need to talk to you about something.”

  No! I thought. I had mountains of “somethings,” but I had long demonstrated the common Texan courtesy of keeping my mouth shut about them. Until now, Tim had shown similar good sense. My mind began looking for words to stop him, but all that came out was, “Oh, yeah?”

  Tim began carving a circle around the edge of the pool. I planted myself at the farthest point from him—the pool’s center. We both went silent for a time, but this afternoon would soon prove to be my very first “coming out” experience. No, not my own. This day was for Tim’s difference. My memory of it is as crisp now as the day it happened—mostly because of how royally I screwed it.

  Looking as far away from me as possible, Tim finally said: “My mom thinks I need to tell you that…she says I have to tell you that…that I’m Jewish.”

  My mind rummaged about, searching in vain for the meaning of this curious word I had never heard before. Was it a condition? Was a “Jewish” something he had done to someone, been accused of, found guilty of? Was he the only one or was it another tribe? And if it was a tribe, was it condemned to eternal separation from friends and family like my homo tribe? I was a very confused Texas boy. There just weren’t many Jews in this part of Texas at this time, not that I knew of. So despite the warmth of the water, I froze.

  “I’m getting cold,” I said, and I climbed out of the pool. Tim stayed in.

  My Southern upbringing had taught me better than to pry when things get uncomfortable, but as it tends to do, my curiosity got the best of me, and I began asking questions, piecing together what “Jewish” meant—that Jewish people believe in the Old Testament, but to Tim, the New Testament was like a bad game of telephone. Obviously this would have put him in an awkward position with our Baptist and Catholic classmates. But in a way, I could relate. Most everyone at school thought my church’s latest addition to the Bible, the Book of Mormon, was baloney.

  Luckily, I’d been armed with a secret weapon for this kind of religious debate: as different as Mormons are, we were still Christians. The elders at church had long “encouraged” us to remind our Baptist pals of that whenever they attacked us as cult members. This had proven to be valuable advice in the schoolyard. Now I just needed to arm Tim with this advice and we could put this “something” out of mind: “But you’re a Christian.”

  With a glance up toward the sliding glass door of his house, Tim let out a quiet “No” before disappearing under the water. I looked back and caught his mom watching us.

  When Tim finally surfaced, I got up the nerve to ask, “But what about Jesus?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know who Jesus is?” Bingo. I got this.

  “I’ve heard of him, but…” And he shook his head.

  Now I was truly worried for my one friend. I’d been preached to time and again that I needed to be baptized in the Mormon Church and have a temple wedding in order to get to heaven. I was going to have trouble enough with the marrying a woman bit, but Tim was many more miles away if he didn’t even tick the “believe in Jesus” box.

  It was time for me to go full missionary.

  A proper Mormon childhood is spent saving nickels, dimes, and quarters for the mission we pray to be called on when we turn eighteen. As missionaries, we might don the crisp white shirts and black slacks, receive name badges that called us “elder” despite our baby faces, and get shipped somewhere around the globe to convert more tithe payers. As a people who frequently believe themselves to be members of the only true church on the planet, we had a responsibility to spread the word of our young faith far and wide, so that no one would be inadvertently left out of heaven. I still had a decade before my turn came, but this mission before me couldn’t wait.

  “I know, Christ can be confusing,” I said. “Like…why do you only get to go to heaven if you say Jesus is real if he only ever talked to people in one part of the world? What about the Indians? Do they all go to hell because Jesus never flew here or to Mexico?”

  Tim looked baffled.

  “Well, that’s the thing about the Book of Mormon. It has the answers,” I said. “A long time ago, a boy named Joseph Smith walked into the woods in New York, and a light came down, and he looked up, and there was God and Jesus.” I paused for the first time, realizing that this story sounded a bit silly when said aloud to a non-Mormon, but Tim didn’t seem to mind, so I carried on. “And Jesus and God told Joseph that they’d already answered all of Christianity’s big questions. It’s just that nobody knew how yet, but they would send another angel later on to tell Joseph how they’d done it.”

  “In New York City?” Tim asked, incredulous.

  “The state, I think. But a long time ago.” As if that somehow helped. “And one night, an angel named Moroni came to Joseph. He’s the gold statue on top of our temples. And he told Joseph to dig up some buried gold plates that were in the woods. And he did. And he decoded them with a hat and special rocks so that everybody could understand what the plates said.” I decided then and there that it was best to leave out the hat and rocks details the next time I told this story. “Do you know what was on those golden plates?”

  “No,” Tim said.

  “The story of two tribes who lived here, from America on down. Good guys with light skin, called Israelites, and bad guys with dark skin, called Lamanites. And they had muscles
and wore gold wristbands and had spears and fought each other and killed each other, and do you know what happened next?” Too many details, too many details, Lance.

  “This is real?” Tim asked.

  “There’s proof.” I was making that bit up, but I was so certain these stories were true that I felt sure there must have been proof. But unarmed with facts, I tried distracting Tim from his questions by amplifying the horror vibe. “See, after getting nailed to the cross, blood coming out of his hands, head, and side, Jesus rose from the dead like a zombie and came here!” I waited for Tim’s reaction to this wonderful news, but there was none, so I put it together for him. “He came to America. That means the Indians knew about Jesus too. Everybody in the world got a chance to hear about him, and believe in him. They all got their chance. Get it?”

  Tim didn’t react to this good news the way I’d hoped he would. All I could hear now was the chorus of Texas cicadas growing louder as the sun got low. Tim finally cut to the chase: “Do you think I’m going to hell?”

  Hearing that question from my one and only friend sent a shiver through me. I answered to the best of my eight-year-old LDS ability. “If you die right now…yes.” Then I added, “Because only people baptized as Mormons go to the highest level of heaven…and I really want you on my level,” I said. And I truly, deeply meant that.

  I felt I had just been a great missionary. Tim’s salvation was now up to him, but I couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t jump right in and be by my side in heaven. Instead, I saw a flash of anger in him. Then a pang of guilt broadsided me. I didn’t know what I’d just done, but I knew it was bad.

  “It’s dinnertime,” he said.

  If there was any question as to whether my proselytization had taken root, the way he climbed from the pool, wrapped himself in his towel up to his armpits, and shuffled back into his home made it clear that the seed I’d just tried to plant was dead on arrival. I’ll never forget the proud, protective glare his mother aimed my way as her son vanished into their home. It was the same look I’d given all the gawkers at the San Antonio mall who’d dared judge my mother for her walk and spine.

  That was the last time I ever heard from Tim, and for many years after, I would have a grand total of zero friends.

  I wouldn’t really understand what had happened that day for many years, when a week’s worth of history lessons at North Salinas High School focused in on World War II, and Hitler’s concentration camps. In our textbook was a picture of a handful of patches the Nazis had used to classify people’s differences. Among them was a yellow Star of David and an upside-down pink triangle. Our teacher shared some of the atrocities that were committed against the Jewish people who were made to wear that star. And on that day, I asked questions and listened, finally learning something about Tim’s heritage.

  Having learned from my childhood church and state that many, if not most, human differences are best kept hidden, I had done to Tim what I’d been told would happen to me if anyone discovered my own secret difference—I’d found him guilty of being too unusual, and thus unworthy of respect. Now I couldn’t shake the memory of his mother’s proud, protective look. It turns out hers was the quiet lesson, taught by example, a seed pushed deep into the ground that would eventually grow to whisper in my ear that there was something about being an outsider that was worthy of love and worth fighting for. Tim and his mom had been the true missionaries that day.

  But it would take many more years before I fully grasped their lessons, as there was at least one piece of information my history teacher left out of his World War II history. He never shared the story of the upside-down pink triangle that sat next to the yellow star. I couldn’t know that it had been designed by those same Nazis to brand my tribe of homosexuals. Tim’s people and mine had been tortured, murdered, and worked to death together in Hitler’s concentration camps. Perhaps if I had known I had a people, a history, and a brotherhood with Tim’s people—if I’d known enough to give Tim the embrace he deserved for his courage in sharing his difference, or if I’d had the courage to be equally honest about mine—then I might not have ended that hot spring day riding home on my cruddy bike, confused, tears streaming down my face, with new shame stacked on top of old. Perhaps I might have ended that day with a sturdier friendship and a new ally. But I didn’t know. I had yet to learn our rich histories and the incalculable value of difference.

  III

  More than a decade later, in the summer of 1994, I would finally have a second chance at getting a coming-out right—this time with Ryan.

  It was the June before I started UCLA’s film school, and the night before I left Ryan behind in California, my sights set on my mom’s new home in northern Virginia for the summer break. I had unilaterally decided it was time to take Ryan’s deteriorating health situation by the horns. I couldn’t ask him to dedicate two more years to this L.A. life if it would cost him his physical well-being. I hoped that by setting the stage for him (and perhaps even for me) to come clean about our shared secret, it might unburden him, perhaps even liberate him the way I had begun hearing some gays and lesbians felt when coming out. And if it went well for Ryan, then perhaps I might follow.

  So with both of us perched atop his futon, I slowly but surely ventured into unfamiliar, forbidden territory. First I asked him about love in general, then about loneliness, about what or who he was attracted to, and why he never once brought a girl around. Ryan proved expert at avoiding my prodding, but I was equally determined.

  Aiding my pursuit was the fact that Ryan and I were like brothers now. We were going to miss the hell out of each other that summer, and so we both wanted to stay up all night to milk every last moment together. As the clock neared 5:00 a.m., the lack of sleep took its toll, and left us both feeling a bit drunk. Defenses began to soften. And with the sun threatening, Ryan looked to a faraway wall. “It’s what you think.”

  No. I wanted him to say those forbidden words plainly. So I played dumb. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The guy with the goatee,” he said. “You know…we did some things.”

  I knew who he meant. As he had with me for years, he’d taken a handsome young Latin man up into the mountains for a photo shoot. Ryan had been careful not to let our paths cross. I’d only ever seen this young man in negatives in the darkroom Ryan had set up in our small bathroom. Again, I played dumb: “What do you mean?”

  An endless pause. No breaths taken. Then finally: “I’m a…I’m gay,” he confessed.

  A lifetime of silence had just given voice to the unspeakable.

  His words hung in the air, and I let them hang as I searched for courage of my own. But as I did, I watched his brow lower, his eyes move to the floor, his hands clasp for safety, as if in prayer, and he shook as if he were ill. And in that dreadful silence, my hope turned to concern. His big reveal hadn’t brought the relief I’d hoped for or read about. Instead, his words seemed like a poison fog, now eating him alive. This long-delayed acknowledgment was not the antidote I’d wished for him and, deep down, for myself. That frightened me. And so I didn’t find the strength to follow his lead. Instead, I failed Ryan like I had Tim, and arguably worse.

  With Tim, I’d been ignorant; with Ryan, I knowingly lied. “Well, I’m not sure I understand your choices. And it might take me a while to…” I went silent.

  “To what?” he asked.

  “I don’t hate you or anything, but I’m just not sure if we can be friends in the same way when I get back.” I hadn’t damned Ryan to hell like I had Tim, but I’d offered him no acceptance, no love—only a hurtful lie told in the feeble, self-righteous hue called tolerance.

  “I understand,” he said, accepting the rejection he’d long anticipated.

  I knew that the words I was employing were lies, delivered in exacting fashion, the way I feared straight people might use words against me if I ever came o
ut. I was putting on my best “straight” act to ensure that my closet door stayed shut.

  To put this into perspective, Ellen DeGeneres wouldn’t come out for three years, Will & Grace for four. Pedro Zamora would come out later in 1994 on MTV’s The Real World, but he would die of AIDS by November, just like so many of our brothers who were dying day after day. Ryan had been very brave to come out that night. I was a coward. And this night’s denial would call for a web of new lies.

  With both of us wobbly from lack of sleep, Ryan dropped me off at LAX the next morning, giving me a quick hug before he drove back home to Salinas for the summer. As I flew east toward Virginia, to where my mom, Jeff, and Todd were now living outside the nation’s capital, I worried that I’d just seen my best friend for the last time. I worried what my pathetic charade might drive him to do now. And without Ryan in my life, what chance did I have of finding the courage and strength I knew my heart, my home, and my creative endeavors all needed to ever grow true and full?

  IV

  My mom and Jeff had both found civil service jobs at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and this time they both had to take pay cuts. The upside was that Walter Reed was a highly esteemed hospital, “where the president sometimes goes for care,” my mom often said with a twinkle of pride in her eye.

  Todd started at a new high school, where he followed in my footsteps and joined the swim team. Increasingly lost in drugs and alcohol, Marcus had chosen to stay behind in Salinas with his equally high girlfriend in a house that reeked of weed, beer, and wet dogs, working his knuckles until they bled at the local Sears auto garage. We all missed “our Marco,” and now in more ways than one. My mom’s heart broke. We had been her impossible dreams, and with her return to the South, she was down to only one son in the same time zone.

  When I landed at Dulles Airport after my strained farewell with Ryan, Jeff picked me up in his truck and drove me through the lush green woods of northern Virginia. We hung a right into a brand-new housing development atop the land where the bloody Civil War Battle of Bull Run was waged, and there it was, their new house. It felt like home the very first time I saw it. It was yellow and had a long porch we could sit out on all night and watch thunderstorms roll in and fireflies glow. Turns out it was a lot cheaper to live in northern Virginia than in California, particularly an hour’s commute from D.C.