Like Me

by Chely Wright

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a low, monotone reply.

  I could see the top third of my dad’s face in the rearview mirror, and after he’d dedicated his stare straight ahead to the asphalt and the dotted lines, he cut his glare up and over, and that stare reflected, then connected with mine. I saw the familiar “I wish you hadn’t gone and done that” in his eyes, and that look ricocheted a hundred times off metal, plastic, fabric, and glass on the inside of that car.

  Something was different inside of me though. I knew I wasn’t deserving of the title about to be assigned to me: The One Who Ruined a Nice Night Out. My dad didn’t say a word, my mom was silent, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t try to fix it. I don’t know how I knew, but I did, with full certainty, that it wasn’t mine to fix.

  The gravel crunched under the tires as we pulled into the driveway. My mother made a point of being the first out of the car (not an easy thing for her to do, considering polio had crippled her right leg), but in order to be the first to slam your door shut, you have to be the first one out. When we got inside, my mother went straight to my parents’ bedroom and locked the door behind her. My dad sat in his La-Z-Boy recliner that I’d bought for him the year before, the one he spent so much time in after we brought him home from the hospital to recover from his emergency triple-bypass surgery.

  With my mother locked in her bedroom and my father making his anger known only to the remote control, I went to the guest bedroom and put on my pajamas. I sat on the edge of the bed and honestly did consider knocking on her door, telling her that I wasn’t sure what had gotten into me and that I was sorry. No. I wouldn’t do it, I thought. I didn’t know exactly what to do because this territory was new to me, but I knew what I wouldn’t do. I would not shrink this time.

  I stayed in the guest room and was reading a book when I heard my dad’s voice through his famous clenched teeth saying to my mother, “Cheri, open up this door.” She opened the door, and I could hear both of their voices rising in pitch and volume at the exact same moments—ensuring that neither heard what the other was saying. This was a skill they’d refined over the years. My dad exited their bedroom, slamming the door for effect and went back to his chair. It was late, nearly midnight. I went to the living room to talk to him.

  “She won’t come out. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Chel. It’s getting worse. Since you kids left, she’s just mean as a snake, even more than before. I don’t know what to do,” my dad said with the look of a man who’d been pushing a fifty-car freight train up a hill.

  I felt confident and healthy when I said, “I don’t know what you should do either, Dad, but I know what I’m gonna do.”

  While my mom and dad had been in their bedroom arguing, I had been on the telephone changing my departure out of Kansas City from four days later to the next morning. When I told my dad that I was scheduled to fly out sooner than later and that I needed a ride to the airport, I thought he was going to cry, but he didn’t.

  His tense shoulders slumped in defeat when he said, “Please don’t go. Can’t you stay for me? Your visit home is all I’ve been looking forward to. Please don’t let her ruin it. Let me go talk to her again.”

  He came into the guest room a while later, and I was packing my things.

  “I told her you were going home,” he said.

  I knew before he went in there that she wasn’t going to be moved by the news.

  “What time do you have to be there in the morning”? he asked.

  Together, we figured out the travel time to KCI Airport, which was nearly two hours away, and then we said good night.

  I got up early and loaded my things into the trunk of the car. I went back inside the house to use the restroom, and although I knew that my mother wouldn’t approach me to say good-bye, I thought she might make herself visible in the kitchen or something to give me one last chance to tell her how sorry I was. She didn’t.

  My dad and I talked the entire ride up to the city. The only thing I remember specifically saying to him is, “Dad, I’m not married to her. I don’t have to stay. I’m just her daughter.”

  It would be more than a month before I would speak to my mother again. She simply had no intention of calling me, so I broke down. I called her and apologized. I felt happy to have fixed it and to have reopened the lines of communication with her, but I knew I shouldn’t have had to be the one to go groveling and begging her for forgiveness.

  Five years later, when I left that message on her answering machine, checking in on her to find out how she was doing, in light of my hearing through the grapevine that she and my dad were divorcing, I felt something familiar. Making the phone call stung. Here I was, again, initiating a phone call that I shouldn’t necessarily have had to put into motion. Isn’t it standard protocol that when the parents decide to get divorced, they call the kids and tenderly break the news to them and say things like, “This isn’t going to change a thing, honey. I love you and your dad still loves you. We’ll always be a family in one way or another”? Or “Kids, we still care about each other; we just aren’t in love anymore. Our splitting up should actually make things a little less difficult for all of us”? Isn’t that how it goes?

  I finally heard from my mother a couple of weeks after I returned from Japan. I was in a hotel room in Kansas City, and I was scheduled to play a show at an outdoor theater located on the property of an amusement park called Worlds of Fun that night. I was arranging my hair and makeup products and my wardrobe items in preparation, when the phone rang. Expecting it to be my tour manager or one of my band guys calling from another room, I answered in a silly voice, “Heeellllooooo.”

  “Ms. Wright?” inquired the person on the other end.

  I gave an embarrassed cough and replied, in normal fashion, “This is she.”

  “I have someone here in the lobby who would like to speak to you. I’ll put her on.” It was the front desk at the hotel.

  “Hey, Chel, it’s your mother. What room are you in? I’ll come up.”

  Hearing that my mother was on her way up was not bad news to me. In fact, I was sort of excited. My mom had come to see me, and doesn’t that always feel good to a kid? Within seconds, she knocked on the door. As I pulled it open toward me, I said a protracted, “Heeeey.”

  Standing next to my mother was a man I’d never seen. I said, “Uuuhhh, hi. Come in.” I’m sure I looked confused, because I was. I went quickly through the index of my mind as to who this fella might be. My parents knew a lot of people from their worlds of construction, music, coon hunting, and card playing, but I was coming up blank trying to figure out who this guy (not much older than my brother) was.

  As they walked in, my mom said, “This is Larry.”

  “Hey, Larry, nice to meet you,” I said and shook his hand. “Come on in and sit down, you guys. Let me go ahead and get my curling iron heated up.” I stepped into the bathroom, plugged it in, and walked back into the other room. They had chosen to sit on the bed, so I sat in one of the two chairs flanking a small table by the window that gave an expansive view of the Missouri River. We made small talk for a couple of minutes, and then what she was saying started to sound muffled. I must have fallen behind on my half of the conversation (half, not a third—Larry never said a word) because what I was seeing was actually starting to seep in.

  My mother and this man, whom I knew nothing about, were sitting next to each other. This man had his left arm behind her and she was leaning into that arm.

  I was trying to join the discussion about the Kansas City Chiefs’ last game, but the top of my throat started to contract, and I began to cry. Still, I tried to remain engaged.

  “Why are you crying?” my mother demanded.

  She turned to him and had a five-second, nonlinguistic I told you this was going to happen conversation. “Let’s go,” she said.

  She left and he followed behind.

  My mother called me a few days later to tel
l me that I had made an ass out of myself and that I embarrassed her in front of her friend.

  A few months later Larry became my stepfather.

  After that, she was busy, and I was hopeful that if she could find happiness maybe she wouldn’t be so difficult for everyone else to deal with. But it didn’t turn out that way. The new version of my mother became even more polarizing, especially to her three kids. She often went away for months, even years, at a time. When she and I did speak on the phone, the conversations were bizarre—it was as if she were a stranger. She’d tell stories about our family’s past, which I recalled but she changed the details. Jeny, Chris, and I would call one another on the phone and marvel at the staggering contrasts between our collective memory and hers. No matter what my mother and I were talking about, she would always ask me if I had spoken to my father. I would answer honestly. When I said, “Yes, I’ve talked to him,” the phone would go dead.

  She wanted me to expel my father from my life, and she wanted me to hate him. She’d tell me reasons and stories of why I should do both, most of which I didn’t believe. The stories I might believe or actually know to be true weren’t any of my business. If she could not govern, she was unable to be involved. I consistently tried to work things out. I’d write a long letter or make that phone call. After I’d eat enough crow, my mom, with an imperious pride and sense of having won some battle, would usually let me back in. Until I made her angry again. Which never took long.

  Her unwillingness or inability to be a part of my life corresponded with my hiding my homosexuality from her, which was convenient for me. On the other hand, my mother’s absence fell smack dab in the years when I probably needed her the most. I suppose I still had a fantasy of a selfless, kind-hearted mother.

  “You and Julia will work this out. You two love each other so much, and you’re so good together. I know you’re in a tough spot having to keep your relationship a secret, but your secret is safe with me. I just want you to be happy, hon. You go do your shows, and when you get back to Nashville, I’ll be at your house and I’ll stay for a couple of weeks. Everything’s going to be okay. Love wins out in the end, Squirrelly, and nothin’s more important than your happiness.”

  Love Is Love

  The day after Julia closed the door on me, and on our relationship, I climbed aboard the tour bus with a fake smile and a bleeding heart. At that time, my record was one of the most popular in the country, and the crowds at my concerts were large and excited to see me. I couldn’t be distraught in front of my band and crew over a broken relationship—a relationship that they had never known to exist. I gave up. On that trip, I did my best to let go of Julia.

  We ended that tour just a week or so before Christmas of 1999. I was scheduled for eight days off, with my next show slated to be the New Year’s Eve celebration in Salt Lake City to ring in the year 2000. I was looking forward to my holiday with my family. We were getting together at my brother’s house in Yuma, Arizona.

  I was an expert at telling my family about my life without actually telling them anything. No one knew my secret. Sometimes there is something so demoralizing about being the gay relative (in the closet or out of the closet) who travels to family functions. Because we often show up as a single person, without a mate, we are relegated to be the one to sleep on the floor or on the sofa or even with a niece or nephew in a twin Spider-Man or Strawberry Shortcake bed. I don’t know what that’s about, but it’s as if, since I never came home for the holidays with a husband and baby in tow, I was viewed as not yet being a grown-up. I did want to be there with my family, but more than anything I wanted to be able to let my false front crumble to the ground. It seemed that there was nowhere for me to be me.

  For months, I’d called home to my answering machine in Nashville from all over the world, hoping to get a message from Julia. That call never came, and I had stopped calling twenty times a day to check the machine.

  In Yuma, we drank pots of coffee and took our time preparing a meal that would be served at around three o’clock.

  After I’d set the table with all of the best dishes, napkins, and candles that we had, I called my answering machine to pick up messages from friends and family who would have checked in on Christmas Day. Six messages in was a message from Julia.

  She told me that she missed me and that being away from me was killing her and to please call her back. I went outside and called her on my cell phone.

  She was prepared to do anything and everything to be together. She asked me if I’d consider taking her back and trying to make it work. My answer was yes.

  I returned to Nashville and we spent what days I had left of my holiday together. We talked, we cried, we apologized, we forgave, and we started making plans to live our lives together. A few days after I returned from my Salt Lake City show, I put a down payment on our brand-new home, which would be built in West Nashville. It would take six months to build.

  In My Own Home

  The duality of my life became more pronounced, and I became even more expert in the betrayal of myself as an artist and as a woman. Work dinners, awards shows, receptions—I went alone. I would go do my appearance, satisfy my obligations, then go home to her. Once I did get home, there was never a question as to how my night had been. She did not want to hear a thing about it. It was hard for her to see me do all of that and for her not to be acknowledged as my partner. I wanted her to be happy for my successes, but because she was so excluded she hated my success. I had been conditioned over the years not to discuss my career with her.

  If I had a new photo shoot to study and review for an upcoming album, I had to be careful. While she was gone to her job on Music Row, I’d spread the photos out on the dining room table and make my notes as to which ones were my picks for the album cover, for the publicity department, and so on and so forth. She came home every night at about six o’clock, so I knew that by five forty-five I needed to have it all put away and out of sight. If I had had a good week with radio airplay or a bad week, I said nothing. I wish I’d had the courage at that time to come out of the closet and that I’d had enough love for myself not to allow my partner to deny me her full support in all areas of my life.

  I had a private life and a very public life. Part of being a public person is attending special events and award shows. This photo of me with Lance Bass was taken backstage at the Country Music Association Awards in Nashville in 2000. ’N Sync performed on the show that night too.

  Julia wasn’t out either and didn’t want to be. Her mother lived down the street from us, and they enjoyed a very close relationship. She is an eighty-five-year-old, old-fashioned Catholic who attended Mass every single day. I was close to her mother as well. I was, as her mother called me, her surrogate daughter. I spoke to her doctors, got her prescriptions at times, did chores for her at her house, took her car-shopping for her green Volkswagen Bug that she’d wanted so badly, took her on our vacations with us—she was family to me. Julia had never told her that we were together, although I don’t know how she didn’t figure it out.

  I wasn’t pushing my partner to come out, but she pushed me. Rather than my coming out completely, she wanted me to confide my situation to some of my circle of friends. She said that it would make her feel more acknowledged. I have to tell you that for all intents and purposes, they knew—I just wasn’t about to confirm it for them. My friends and employees treated her with respect and tried to include her in everything, but she pushed it all away. I’d explain to her that there was no need for me to confirm with them that I was gay and that she was my partner. My biggest concern in doing that was that the minute I told them, I was putting them in a position to have to lie for me. My friends were continually questioned: “Is Chely gay?” As long as I didn’t confirm it with them, they could honestly say, “If she is, she’s never told me.” It was, to my way of thinking, best to keep it that way.

  Our reclusive ways were fine with us in most other ways because we simply enjoyed each other so m
uch. We had a beautiful home, gorgeous gardens, adorable pets (dogs and fish), hiking, biking, vacations, holidays, cooking, cleaning, movies, Scrabble, jokes, talking—we never ran out of things to talk about. We had a life. We had a good life. Everyone struggles in intimate relationships, but I believe that the hiding and the secret of our being gay caused irreparable damage.

  Rumors

  Every day is a battle when you hide. On a regular basis, the tabloids and other useless media try to reveal that certain people are gay. When this happens to a public person—when the speculation makes it to print—I get sick to my stomach. I just imagine what the targeted celebrity is going through. In small ways, I know what he or she is experiencing. Although I have never been publicly written about in the tabloids regarding my sexuality, it’s been a rumor about me for years in Nashville. I’m not sure how it started, but it did. Let me be clear: I am and always have been gay, but the rumor that circulated so wildly early on in my career had not even one grain of truth to it. Really ironic, I suppose.

  The first I ever heard of it was in 1994. I was a songwriter at PolyGram on Music Row, and one of my publishers, Daniel Hill, called me on the phone. He and I were casually dating at the time, but I was in love with Julia, so dating Daniel was a desperate attempt to distract myself. He called me and said, “I have to tell you something.” I said, “Okay.” He proceeded to tell me a story that was circulating about me.

  The story was that a bus driver of mine had allegedly walked in on me having sex with a woman in the back lounge of my bus. I have heard that that fiction has been out there, and it has been told and retold for nearly fifteen years now. I think I know which disgruntled ex-employee of mine made it up.

  Let me address this stupid rumor that my employee caught me having sex in the back of the bus. It never happened. I have had sex only once in the back of my tour bus, and it was with Brad Paisley. As exciting and scandalous as that old tale was, it never happened.