What Happens After

by Dennis Abrams

  So I did.

  Ever since I did the interview at school, I had been thinking a lot about myself—not in a self-pitying way, or at least not any more self-pitying than anyone else who’d been wounded and seen his best friend killed in a mass shooting—but about how I wanted people to respond to me.

  Mostly, though, I was thinking about being gay and what exactly that means.

  It has always been something that was there, but as I’ve said, I didn’t much want to talk about it. I wasn’t ashamed or embarrassed or anything, but I didn’t and don’t want it to define me.

  But it occurred to me that me not talking about being gay or even acknowledging that I’m gay is not quite the same as a straight guy not talking about being straight.

  Being gay didn’t have to define me, but, I realized, it is a part, a big part, of what makes me, me. And after what happened at Pacific Coast and hearing the stories at the youth group, it came to me what I needed, what I wanted to write about.

  I was going to write about me. And what it’s like to be me.

  I wanted to make my voice heard. To represent.

  What I wasn’t going to write about was what happened that night. I know it would have been my golden ticket to admission to pretty much any college I wanted to go to. Who would turn down a gay kid nearly shot to death in a gay club, right?

  But I didn’t want to talk about that. And I didn’t want to use it as a way to get into school. Especially when Nate wouldn’t be going to college at all. It just felt wrong.

  So this is what I wrote.

  Growing Up Gay in Texas

  By Collin Williams

  I’ve spent my whole life in Texas. I’ve grown up here.

  I’ve also grown up gay here.

  It hasn’t been easy.

  I’ve known I’m gay for as long as I can remember. I didn’t always know what to call it, or how to define my desires, but I knew as certainly as I knew that I was a guy that I was sexually attracted to other guys.

  My first crush was on Tom Welling as Superboy.

  I couldn’t begin to tell you why him. And as I said, I couldn’t put a name to it at the time, but I remember when I was around six watching the show, and I just knew. He had a beautiful face and lips and body and I wanted more than anything to be the one he rescued. I wanted to be the one he saved. The one who got the looks that he gave to Lana Lang.

  And when he lost his powers and then lost his virginity to Lana Lang, that was when, years later and watching it on DVD, I knew for sure I was gay, I had the words to describe what I was feeling, and that’s when I wished it was me he was making love to, and not her.

  Silly I know, but that’s how it worked. When I was a kid, there weren’t any television shows that showed kids like me. Gay kids like me.

  It’s difficult when you don’t see characters like yourself on television. “Why aren’t I there?” you wonder. “Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with who I am? Why am I invisible?”

  It is, I have come to realize, more than that. If I don’t see myself on television, that means straight people, or at least some of them, aren’t seeing me either. Which tells them that I don’t matter, that I’m not part of society and their world, that I don’t really exist. And so when they see people like me in real life, they have no idea how to respond.

  For those people, I’m a chupacabra.

  I’m Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, gay teen edition.

  And when you’re young and gay in Texas, it’s sometimes difficult to accept the fact that you’re normal when so many people, bigots, religious zealots, closet cases, and all, think that you’re not, and never hesitate to let you know that you’re not.

  Believe me, I know all about that.

  I heard it at church, before my parents stopped going when I was ten. I didn’t understand why at the time, but now I think I know.

  I heard it at school, when anyone thought to be “gay” was mocked and teased and harassed and even worse by a small but noisy minority of students.

  I heard it from politicians in my own home state who fought and continue to fight against my right to love who I choose, to marry who I choose. Who do everything they can to hinder equal rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, and all others who don’t fall under the label “straight.”

  I heard it from churches and TV ministers in their expensive megachurches who tell their congregations that what I am and who I love is an affront to God. Who say that HIV is the Lord’s punishment for my sin. Who say that because of who I may choose to love I will be condemned to hell for all eternity.

  Which is why, until forced by circumstances entirely out of my control, I kept it a secret. I kept it to myself. I told just one other person, shared it with the one person who I trusted because I knew he was like me.

  But now he’s dead and I’m on crutches and will probably walk with a limp for the rest of my life.

  As I see it, I have two choices. I can retreat back into my closet and deny who I am to the world and even myself, or I can go out into the world and learn how to fight for my rights and for the rights of all those who need someone to stand up for them.

  That’s what I now choose to do.

  And that is why I’d like to attend _____________, so I can live in an environment where I can be myself, freely and fully, and learn how to help build a world where others can do the same.

  Writing this was an interesting experience for me. Very interesting, in fact. Eye-opening, even. I usually struggle when I write, but this time, the words came out almost without stopping; it just seemed to flow. And when I started, I honestly had no idea that I’d end up where I did.

  My only aim was to get noticed, to write about the kind of things that I thought would get me into college. The kind of essay that would earn me points for bravery and openness.

  But a strange thing happened as I wrote. What started out as writing what I thought they wanted to read turned out to be a way of figuring out what it is I want to be. What I’m meant to be.

  By the time I was done, I not only knew why I was going to college, but what I wanted to do when I got out.

  It felt really great.

  I showed it to my counselor, Mr. Blake, before I sent it out to the schools on my list. After he read it, he looked at me and asked me if I was sure this was what I wanted to say. I said yes.

  He smiled at me and told me he knew how much I had pushed myself on this essay, how well it was written, how well thought-out it was, and how much I had opened up and shared of myself in the process.

  “Normally,” he told me, “if it was any other student, I’d worry that you’d revealed too much, but, I think, given the… circumstances and all you’ve gone through, your honesty will be very much respected and appreciated.

  “You did well,” he said. “And you’ve done yourself proud.”

  I was kind of proud of myself as well. So proud, in fact, that I casually left a copy of my essay on the living room table before my nightly retreat up to my room so that my parents could read it. Not that I was going to hand it to them myself, or be there when they read it, but I was proud of it and I did want them to see it.

  When they came upstairs to go to bed, I could hear them pause outside my room before knocking and coming in.

  They just looked at me for a minute before Dad came over to my desk and told me he’d never been prouder of me. Mom gave me a big hug. And then they left. They knew me well enough to stop while they were ahead and not to push it any further.

  I was still smiling when I finished my homework and went to bed.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I WANT to point out that my life isn’t nearly as dramatic as maybe I make it sound. Most days are just like every other day for any other high school senior. School, youth center or Sonic with Ziggy, home, dinner, homework, bed.

  Things go on.

  Life goes on.

  As they do.

  As it does.

  Until
the holidays come around.

  At Thanksgiving, as usual, both sets of grandparents came to visit for the weekend.

  It’s always pretty chill. Dad and the granddads talk sports, Mom and the grandmoms talk about food and family and have their usual pie bake-off. This year, Mom’s mom won with her pecan pie in a startling upset over Dad’s mom’s pumpkin.

  What helped make things go okayish for me was that it was pretty clear my parents had talked to their parents, and except for a couple of sympathetic looks and an occasional shoulder squeeze, what had happened was not discussed.

  Although much to my surprise, during family lunch the day after Thanksgiving, as I was scarfing down my second turkey/cranberry/stuffing/gobs of mayo sandwich of the day—which is really the best part of the holiday if you ask me—my grandfather on Dad’s side, Granddad Everett, neatly dressed as always, peered at me through his glasses and said, “I know you’ve had a difficult few months, but there’s something I need to tell you. A story, something I’ve never told anyone. Not even your grandmother or your dad. It’s been my secret.

  “But I need to get it off my chest, and I think I need to tell it to you in particular, and I just hope… I really hope and pray that you will be able to forgive me after you hear what I have to say.”

  I froze, wondering what he needed to tell me and me in particular, and nodded.

  He looked off into the distance as though trying to collect both himself and his memories, and then began.

  “When I was in—sixth or seventh grade, I think—there was this kid in class, Ralph Boyer. Quiet kid, kept to himself pretty much, studied a lot, played some instrument in the band to keep him out of gym class… clarinet, I think? He was what we used to call the teacher’s pet. You know the type?

  “Anyway, all us boys hated his guts. Not for anything he’d ever done, but because we, well, we thought he was queer. That’s what we used to call people like you. I mean, him. Sorry.”

  Here I jumped in to tell him that “queer” was no longer necessarily a bad thing, that some gay people had taken the word back for ourselves, so it had lost its power to hurt.

  In the same way, I said, that some black people feel comfortable using the… N-word.

  Granddad looked at me in stunned amazement, as if he couldn’t imagine hearing such a thing.

  Or maybe that I knew such a thing.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “we all hated him. The girls didn’t, of course, and so he was usually with them, which gave us just one more reason to hate him. He was able to talk to girls and we weren’t.

  “One day at recess—it was January and very cold, I remember—we were out on the playground. All of us guys were together, talking with our hands jammed into our pockets, and Ralph was over with the girls. And in our eyes, acting exactly like one.

  “We were bored and cold and had had enough… of him being him, I guess. So after talking between ourselves, we strode over to the other group, grabbed Ralph, and dragged him away, telling the girls who were starting to make a fuss to shut up and mind their own business.

  “Ralph was struggling to get away but didn’t have a chance. We brought him all the way down to the far end of the playground. It was empty over there, with one bare tree that had lost all its leaves.

  “There were six of us dragging him along, and he was clearly terrified. The only sound that I can remember coming out of his mouth were these whimpering noises, muffled by the scarf he was wearing wrapped around his mouth and face to protect him from the cold.

  “I can still hear the whimpers. I can still see the look on his face as plainly as if it happened yesterday. I pulled the scarf off and told him to be quiet, then handed it to two of the other guys who used it, after using the snow on the ground to get it good and wet, to tie him to the tree tight, making it close to impossible for him to free himself.

  “All the while I was staring at him. When I see him now, all I feel is pity and disbelief that I was capable of such a thing, that I had this thing inside me, but then, at that moment, all I felt was contempt for the little queer boy who wasn’t like the rest of us and who I could do with whatever I wanted.

  “He was trying not to cry, I could see that, and so I taunted him, getting as close to him as I could. ‘You going to cry like a little girl, Ralph? Hun, are you?’ He still didn’t, he refused to, although even then I could sense how hard he was trying not to. And so, and I swear to you, Collin, that there’s not a day of my adult life that I haven’t regretted this and I would do anything to take it back, I smacked him across the face as hard as I could.

  “First there was a look of shock, his eyes widened, and then finally came the tears I wanted from him. ‘I knew you were just like a girl,’ I said. At which point I spat at him. Yes, Collin, I spat right in his face, told my buddies we were done, and left him there, still tied to the tree in the freezing cold. His face covered with his tears and my spit.”

  Everyone in the dining room was silent. Shocked.

  It was up to me to break the silence. “What happened after that?”

  “After about an hour, the teacher noticed that Ralph hadn’t come back from recess. One of the other guys ran out and untied him.”

  “And then?”

  “His mom came and got him and brought him home. We all got called into the principal’s office, but nobody said anything. And Ralph? He never said anything either. He never told anyone who did it. Ever.

  “Around a month later, his dad got transferred to some other town for work, and we never saw Ralph again.”

  Again, silence. Just overwhelming silence. Mom looked at Dad, Dad looked at Granddad Everett, Mom looked at Granddad Everett, Grandmom Ruth looked at Granddad Everett.

  Then everybody looked at me.

  And Granddad continued.

  “Collin, I can’t… I can’t even begin to tell you how bad I feel about what I did, and how sorry I am. I know I was wrong, and I’ve had to live with what I did for a very long time, and even more so since I learned you were… that you’re my gay grandson.

  “I’ve tried to find Ralph online to reach out, I have, to tell him how sorry I am, to beg him for his forgiveness, but he’s nowhere to be found.

  “So all I can do is this to maybe make things right. Collin… can you find it in your heart to forgive me? I understand if you can’t—I’m not sure if I was in your position that I could. But….

  “Please?”

  My breath stopped. My heart stopped. It seemed as though everything in me and around me stopped, and I paused to give my answer.

  I took a deep breath. “Yes, Granddad. I forgive you.”

  Tears started streaking down his face as he walked over to me. “Thank you, Collin. I’ve needed to hear that for a very long time.”

  He hugged me and cried.

  And I cried right along with him. How could I not?

  Mom and the grandmoms cleared the table. Dad and the granddads turned on the TV to watch more football.

  I went up to my room and thought about everything that had happened.

  The Granddad Everett I’d known was always so gentle and affectionate and simply kind. It was hard for me to imagine him dragging that poor kid out to that tree, tying him up, slapping him, and spitting in his face just because he thought he was queer.

  And then with a shudder I could imagine all too easily the same thing happening to me when I was poor Ralph’s age. And someone like Granddad, as the ringleader.

  It was all too easy to imagine.

  I saw myself as Ralph. How scared he must have been. I could hear him pleading with Granddad to stop. My granddad. I could see his tears after Granddad slapped him. I could hear the sobs he’d held back as long as he could. And I could imagine how cold and alone he must have felt after they all left him out there on that winter afternoon, tied to that tree, unable to free himself. Cold and scared and hating himself and glad they had gone and the worst was over.

  But at the same time, I also felt sorry for Granddad. I k
new he meant it when he said he’d regretted what he’d done for a very long time, and I knew how much worse he must feel now, knowing he has me for a grandson, and then when he learned what happened to me that night… his pain and guilt must have been too much to take.

  So I forgave him. I do forgive him. Totally and completely.

  What else could I do?

  Chapter Eighteen

  I WAS still thinking about Grandpa and everything I had learned, when there was a knock on the door.

  “Collin… it’s me. Grandmom Ruth. May I come in?”

  There was no way I could say no.

  She looked around at the general state of havoc that is my room, and although I knew she wanted to, said nothing about it.

  “You know that your grandfather and I love you very much. And if you ever want to talk about anything at all… we’re here for you. I understand that you don’t want to talk about that night, and… that’s fine.

  “I do want to tell you this about your grandfather, though.

  “We’ve been married a long time now, and you’d think after raising a family with him and spending my whole life with him, that there would be nothing left for me to learn about him. But I was wrong. When he told us that story about that poor boy, you could have knocked me over with a feather. It seemed so far away from the man I thought I knew so well, so far beyond what he seemed capable of doing.

  “He’s always, I mean always, been a loving husband and father who never once raised his hand to me or to your father. I don’t even remember an occasion when he raised his voice, for that matter.

  “But you know—” Here she paused. “—I can’t help but wonder if, knowing that he had at one time been capable of doing such a horrible thing, knowing what he had inside him, that he made a determined effort not to give in to his worst impulses.

  “And you should know, that when… well, when you got shot, I think that’s what brought back the memories of Ralph. I’d wake up and find him on his computer, and when I asked him what he was doing up so late, he’d say something about trying to find an old friend from school, and then quickly log off before coming back to bed.