by Jake Shears
“You can’t just drive a car, dummy. Trust me. You don’t even know how,” Courtney said. She was the oldest of us, pushing seventeen, and still didn’t have her license. She was too tweaked out most of the time to be driving, anyway. Preoccupied, always rearranging the contents of her lunch box, looking for God knows what, its insides smelling like rose oil. Courtney turned around and now stared at the stucco wall ferociously.
“But my dad’s cool,” Josh said. “He lets me do whatever I want.” The back window of the house looking into the kitchen was just clear enough that we could see the broad figure of his father puttering around. A few weeks before, we had gotten ripped from bong hits while watching Cat People. Josh told me under his breath that his father had molested him and his sister for years. I never asked what happened to his mom.
His dad stuck his head out of the kitchen door and made everyone jump: “Everything all right today, guys?” His voice was serene. We all nodded our heads in unison. He didn’t seem to mind us smoking pot and drinking beer. As he receded into the darkness of the house, I thought, What a fucking creep.
I walked home some days in the silent dry heat and passed tract houses, their gravel yards dotted with cactuses. No one down here really walked anywhere; it was too hot. I wondered if people noticed me out the front windows of their houses. I scratched at the fishnets on my arms and tugged at my mustard-plaid, pleated wool skirt. Sometimes Courtney walked back this way with me, but more often than not I left her behind in whoever’s backyard. Usually the next time I’d see her, she’d have been awake for a couple days, large black sunglasses hiding her Ping-Pong–ball eyes. A meth vampire. If she wasn’t in school, she was usually hiding from the daylight in her darkened, air-conditioned bedroom, posters and photos overlapping on top of each other. When I wasn’t with her, I imagined the blurry, secret things she did. The fun she was having that I was not. I didn’t judge people who did crystal; I just figured they were doing what they wanted. All the tweakers I knew seemed stable enough. Courtney could get overly dramatic and excited by something as tiny as a toothpick, but I just thought she was enthusiastic. She never offered me drugs. And I don’t think I would have taken them if she had. I was perfectly happy with the rush I got from my generic GPC Light cigarettes. They were only two bucks at 7-Eleven—that is, if you could find someone over eighteen to buy them for you. I carried them around in a repurposed old binocular case, adorned with a Sisters of Mercy sticker.
Jennifer would be home with her newborn daughter, Emily, perched on her bosom as she stirred pasta.
Our conversations were blank with denial:
“Hi—how was your day?” Her cheer was always genuine, and I was grateful for it.
“Fine,” I lied, feeling a small jet of fear.
“Dinner’ll be ready in ten. Your mom just called.”
“What’d she say?”
“Wants you to call her, we talked for a half hour. I told her your grades. Your math is terrible, but she says it’s fine if you want to go to the concert.” I had been begging to see Concrete Blonde at an all-ages club. “I can probably take you, but maybe we can get Courtney’s mom to pick you guys up—Mat and I have class.”
“Class” meant an Amway motivational seminar. Jennifer and Mat’s shelves were filled with hundreds of cassette tapes on salesmanship with titles like “Be a Comfortable Shoe” and “Jesus Wants you Rich.” The clipped pictures of sports cars and golf courses taped to the fridge were supposed exercises in manifestation. Often when she and Mat went to Amway meetings, I’d attend a Christian youth group called Young Life. It was something to do, and I found the familiar devotional songs relaxing, despite being at odds with their subject matter.
At the end of every school day I’d walk into my makeshift bedroom, drop my stained backpack on the floor, and begin to disassemble my look, starting first by unstrapping my heavy leather bondage belt, taking five pounds off my frame as it fell to the carpet. I wore fishnet stockings on my arms and cut holes in the feet for my fingers, my head placed through a rip in the crotch, but to get to them I’d first have to pull off the too-large Skinny Puppy or Ministry T-shirt, emblazoned with demonic-looking serpents or a blurred grimy angel, over my head. I was desperate to advertise the bands that I loved, and logos always took precedence over shirt size.
Music was a primary way to identify myself, and going to concerts felt like permanently searing a band in my own history, like a tattoo. My favorite moment of a show was the anticipation of the headliner coming to the stage, the crowd slowly swelling, each minute feeling like an eternity. Since I’d been back in Arizona, I’d already seen Nine Inch Nails twice on their tour for Downward Spiral, as well as KMFDM and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult.
I was a vile vision: Spindly and spotty, my features roamed as if they were still trying to find a home on my face. My blue eyes were too big, and my long brown mop of hair was sprayed to look like a tumbleweed. Angry, cyst-like nodules covered my skin. Braces with purple rubber bands were glued to my teeth and made my gums puffy, cranking my whole face to an elevated degree of busted. The braces were to be taken off soon, and I dreamed of what it would feel like running my tongue over smooth teeth. If I thought of this in front of the mirror, I could see a glimmer of another, more handsome boy blooming underneath this one. But my acne had been so explosive, I’d convinced Jennifer to let me start taking Accutane. We found some sketchy doctor in a dilapidated office to give me a prescription. Every day I took an orange pill from a blister pack decorated with a logo of a pregnant woman with a red slash through her: Apparently it would deform your baby if you got pregnant while taking it. Later it was found to have a pretty big side effect: teenage depression and, therefore, suicide. I often wonder if those pills had anything to do with the fact that I made myself a walking bull’s-eye wherever I went, subconsciously putting myself in harm’s way.
Once the stockings were off my torso, they left red crosshatched indentations on my skin. Now, there was just a plaid skirt or overly baggy black shorts and boots. My skirt was too small for me, so I had to button it above my hips. It was constricting, but it was the only skirt I had.
I had bought some rainbow-colored metallic “freedom rings” that I wore on a chain around my neck. They were supposed to be an outward symbol of your own gay pride. A way to be visible and out in your everyday life, kind of like a bumper sticker. It was exhilarating to wear them at first. They were my refusal to apologize. But I soon had an allergic reaction to the cheap metal chain and developed a rash. I kept wearing them, though the rash persisted. They started eating into my neck, making it a gooey, raw mess of exposed flesh. It figures, I thought, finally deciding to just hang them off my backpack. But those freedom rings really did a number on me: The scabs were gross and took a long time to heal.
It was freedom I had been looking for that year, away from my parents, and to a degree, I’d found it. Jennifer didn’t put up too much of a fuss regarding what I wore, and she didn’t ask too many questions. But that autonomy had opened up a whole other brand of trouble. I wasn’t actually ready to come out to her and Mat, or to my parents. But I was ready to start telling somebody. And I realized the weirder I dressed, the more attention I got. Even if it was mostly negative, it was still attention. When I clomped through the school quad in my creepers and chains, everyone stared. Then soon they started to yell. Eventually they started getting in my face and chasing me. I felt like a fucked-up rock star. But at least everyone knew who I was.
The first person I came out to was a girl at school named Liz. She had a dry sense of humor and wore flowing dresses with embroidered flowers on them. She was one of the few people at school who made an attempt to get to know me. We’d eat Taco Bell burritos in the courtyard at lunchtime, make wry observations about the popular kids, and discuss our love of Bowie.
Despite my new friend, an unbearable loneliness crept its way through my excitement of being in a new environment. One night I listened to the radio in my room, anxiet
y chewing through my center, feeling homesick for my folks. Was this larger alienation worth trading in the beauty of the rocky beaches and bluffs, the peaceful harbor and the deep whistle of the ferry horn? My mom and dad?
I called Liz, and after a few minutes of stammering, I told her as my tear ducts turned to floodgates: “I think I’m gay,” I said. “Actually no, I know I’m gay.” The grief I felt in that moment was awful; it was like someone had died. Even though the words were uttered into the phone, hearing them out of my own mouth finally made it real, defined me as something new. Overwhelmed and sobbing, I felt trapped by my age, exhausted by my desires.
Liz must not have known what to say and handed the phone to her stepdad. He listened to me cry and consoled me for what seemed like an hour. Though he sounded like he was probably not well versed in the gay experience, his voice was strong and deep as he did his best, telling me that everything would be all right. I could even have kids if I wanted to someday, he said. It was perfectly fine if I was a gay person. Her stepdad, whom I’d never met or spoken to, was a momentary angel; I needed to hear those things from anybody, especially a man.
Soon after, Liz stopped meeting me in the courtyard at lunch. She called one evening and told me she was pregnant and was leaving school altogether. I’ve never seen her since.
From then on, when asked if I was a fag at school, I would just stare straight ahead and not answer, or mutter a Yeah? So fuckin’ what, which transformed my outlandish looks into provocations, which in turn gave me tunnel vision, which in itself became a strategy. I learned to see my surroundings in the periphery.
Every day when I got home, I took off the thrift-store armor, never saying a word to Jennifer or my mom about what was really happening at school: the disgusted looks from classmates, the menacing stares, passing laughter escalating into shouts. Aggressive, ugly boys swarmed around me like wasps. Objects were tossed at my head when a teacher’s back was turned. I was scared to walk across the sprawling campus, never knowing who could be standing around the corner. I learned not to use my locker; they were housed in cage-like structures, perfect for getting cornered in. At lunchtime, I walked all the way across the empty playing field to stand behind a fence, puffing away on a cigarette until the school bell rang.
The classrooms were a cold hell. Air-conditioned and windowless, they lay deep within hulking stucco walls. Before one lunch period, Mrs. Connelly, my biology teacher, found my hiding spot—between two filing cabinets in a back office.
“What are you doing here?” She was small-framed and composed. I was fond of her because she was friendly with me. I did well in her class.
“I’m waiting until the halls clear out,” I said.
“Why are you doing that?”
“These guys wait outside. I don’t even know who they are.”
“For what?”
They followed and yelled at me in the hall, like they wanted to kill me. It scared the shit out of me when they got in my face. You fucking fudge-packing faggot.
“Oh, for crying out loud.” She shook her head. “This is nonsense.” Mrs. Connelly reached her hand out and pulled me from my foxhole, led me back through the classroom, and walked me to the door. I was scared to even look to see if they were out there. “Listen, I’m going to stand out here and keep an eye out. Every day. It’s not right.” She kept her promise. Similarly, I found allies in a couple of my teachers.
I had a literature teacher who looked like Robert Altman. He read us Langston Hughes and encouraged me to write. One day after passing back an assignment, he told me I was the only one in class who could properly write a story. Sometimes he looked at me funny, like he was seeing something that surprised him. At the end of the year, I was the last to leave the room and he called after me to stay for a minute. “Special burdens are given to special people,” he said. I bristled as I walked out of that class for the final time. I didn’t have a burden, I was just gay. But I now understand it as one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me.
But sometimes the teachers were traitors. They could seem benevolent, like they wanted to help, but would lead me by the hand straight back into the mouth of the beast: the principal’s office. My algebra teacher, with his huge, brushy mustache, pretended that he couldn’t see when a boy started throwing pencils at me or knocking chairs into my desk. It was almost as if the teacher was scared of appearing weak by acknowledging the abuse. The day I finally turned around and told my torturer to “fucking stop,” the kid got out of his chair and heaved his whole desk at me. We were both sent to the principal’s office.
The cocky shit sat with a creepy grin on his face, staring at me as the principal trotted out his warmed-over wise-man act. “Now, uh, Jason, is it?” He looked like Dr. Phil. “Why do you think this is happening? I understand it’s developed into a problem?”
I said that obviously this kid didn’t like the fact that I was gay.
“How would he know this?” he said. Why was I being grilled, as this asshole just sat there, smiling at me? The principal sighed. “We all have our differences, other viewpoints, et cetera.” Blah blah blah. “There’s all kinds of people in the world. But just stop for a minute and think—would this be happening if you could just leave that stuff at home?” He eyed my clothes. “If you kept your private life to yourself, would these incidents be happening?”
“I see guys and girls here holding hands all day long. What about that?” I had a lump in my throat. “Is that their private life?”
“That’s the world we live in, Jacob,” he said, patting my back and standing up. The discussion was over. I’d made a huge mistake in outing myself. It was a brazen miscalculation in a bid for freedom and attention, an irrevocable move. I had been careless, strolling out of the closet just to turn around to see that the door had disappeared. There was no way now to hide in plain sight.
THE EDGE WAS A PHONE line for lonely and bored people all over Phoenix, and the number was passed to me by Atticus, who apparently went to my school, though I never saw him there. Atticus claimed to be bisexual and I didn’t know him very well, but he and Josh and I had a clumsy three-way late one night in Josh’s basement that was kind of sweet and lackadaisical. Atticus was always talking about the Edge. “I think you’ll be into it,” he said, scribbling down the memorized number onto a scrap of paper.
It was kind of a prehistoric chat room, where all kinds of folks left strings of messages for one another. The main menu option was a general discussion zone where you could ask people’s opinions, have arguments, talk smack about other callers, or just ramble. Every day you listened to the compiled messages from the day before, then had the option to leave a response to what you’d just heard, or to start a new discussion.
Often the messages would sound something like this:
Hey, this is Mama Ho. And I just want to give a shout-out to all my hos tonight. Especially Dr. Lou, who wanted to know why men had nipples. Well, I’m not a man, but—have you not had your nipples licked?
—BEEP—
What’s up, guys, this is Pay Phone Goddess and I just want to say to Shy Girl, you shut your fucking mouth. What the fuck you have to say, bitch? Got shit with me, you come and say it to my face. Otherwise, shut your fucking hole, you stupid whore.
—BEEP—
Hey, this is Deja. I’m just kicking back after a long day, watching some Sally Jessy Raphael. Uh, I need to talk about the hair. Just for a minute? Has anyone noticed it hasn’t moved since 1985? Also, is it just me, or is Jenny Jones suddenly trying to look like Björk? Anyone?
My name on the Edge was Barbie’s Nightmare, and upon signing up, I obtained my own voice-mail box where I could receive private messages from other callers. I waited impatiently for the update every afternoon, before which the system was offline. Usually I had to redial repeatedly to get through, as there could only be three people using the line at one time. Every night I listened to people’s squabbles, sex fantasies, and pontifications.
Eve
ryone on the Edge had their own distinct timbre and syntax; I imagined what they looked like from how they sounded. Kaskha I envisioned to be a swinging office lady from the ’70s with feathered hair and a polyester pantsuit. Nightshade orated soft-core sex fantasies and had a very deep, intoxicating voice. Later I found out he was quadriplegic. Someone who went by the name of Deja (see above) caught my attention. She wasn’t as negative as some of the others could be, and made me laugh. I left her a poem in her voice-mail box one day. “If only I could just shrink you down and put you on a shelf in my bedroom,” she said in her response. We exchanged numbers and began speaking on the phone. Her real name was Mary Hanlon.
Mary and I began talking every day. I’d tell her what was going on at school, and she’d regale me with lukewarm adventures about her high school friends, with whom she still hung out. Her stories could be mundane, but were told with a dry and laconic sense of humor. She was twenty-one and had skipped college, but worked a nine-to-five job and for the most part seemed to keep to herself. After a few weeks of talking, we decided to meet in person. She lived about an hour away, but we orchestrated a date to an Italian restaurant called Fuzi.
“There’s something I haven’t told you about me,” she said the day before we were to meet up. She sounded nervous. “And seriously, if you don’t want to hang out, I totally understand.”
“Did you just get out of prison?” I couldn’t possibly imagine what she was talking about.
“No.” She paused. “I’m really, really big. Like—obese big. I didn’t say anything because I had no idea we would be talking so much, or that we’d end up actually meeting each other. But yeah.” Her laugh was brimming with pain. “I’m a biggie.”
It bummed me out that she thought I would care. The age gap between us was so wide, I was just flattered to be chatting. She was a smart, adult woman who wanted to hang out with me. My favorite.
