Boys Keep Swinging

by Jake Shears

  We went to movies and restaurants every weekend, drove through the suburban sprawl, and listened to alternative music in her car. She got nervous sometimes about leaving her house and being made fun of. In shops, and at the mall, I could tell how uncomfortable she was in public. Everyone stared. Waitresses were rude. Retail clerks were dismissive of us—that is, if we weren’t downright ignored. I witnessed firsthand how horrible people could be, and I didn’t blame her for not wanting to leave the safety of her home.

  We began going to hangouts where people from the Edge would get together and meet in person, at a park or at Randy’s, the system operator’s house. Mary and I knew we were just as odd and mismatched as everybody else, but we marveled at the strange combinations of folks that the Edge attracted. There were vampy ladies, unhygienic introverts, square professionals, bored housewives, teenage queers, potheads, hookers, and musicians.

  Randy, who ran the whole operation from a spare bedroom, had some kind of day job and lived in downtown Phoenix. He was an attractive gay guy with an easygoing personality, and loved having his denizens hang out all night at his house. A slew of us often slept on the couch and the floor. I would lie to Jennifer and tell her that I was staying with a friend from school. She’d want to talk to my “friend’s” mom, so I convinced some lady who lived in Randy’s garage to call Jennifer and pretend to play the part. It always worked, but I was nervous about being found out. I stayed away from any booze or drugs, which would have made getting caught a lot more complicated.

  There was something paternal about Randy. Whenever I needed some extra attention, or guidance at the end of a bad day, he would always be available to talk. I felt safe around him, and he treated me like I wasn’t just fifteen but someone with formed opinions and ideas. He’d confide in me about a crush on some guy he was having or share gossip about drama from the Edge. A couple years later, when I tried to track him down to say hi, I found out he was in prison. Apparently he’d been busted for having sex with underage guys. I didn’t hear any details of the story, but it made me feel hurt and betrayed. He had genuinely seemed like a nice guy and was a good friend. The sour aftertaste was accompanied by relief. There were so many situations and nights when he could have potentially taken advantage of me.

  I eventually made it to Preston’s, the gay bar in Phoenix that Atticus had been raving about for months. It was hideous and delicious, a brass-and-glass affair with a chintzy dance floor to boot. Mary drove the two of us there, but sometimes she’d be too tired to go in and would just sleep in the car while I danced. Afterward, we’d hang out in the parking lot, listening to tweakers’ souped-up car stereos. I discovered tons of new music from the various party kids with their processed hair and elaborate shoes.

  It’s a miracle I never got into any trouble. Older guys came up to me, yanked on my bondage belts, and asked me, “What is this? What are you all about?” I’d brush strands of my long green bangs behind my ear and smile. Always polite, I’d manage to steer myself away to a safer spot. Some Sunday mornings, I’d open my eyes to see acquaintances smoking rocks out of glass pipes, trying to wake up enough to drive me home. I never tried those drugs, never got assaulted. But other than Mary, this was not a crowd any mother would want her teenage son to be hanging out with.

  I balanced my secretive Phoenix weekends with the Christian Young Life youth group that met on Wednesdays. The meetings took place in family living rooms, where we sang songs about Jesus while Desi, the head pastor, played guitar. I didn’t dress so flamboyantly at Young Life. It was a place where at least for a few hours I was happy to blend in. The meetings had about thirty kids from various high schools. Ironically, I felt comfortable and welcomed there. One night, I came out to one of the assistant youth pastors in a Taco Bell as we slurped on sodas. He seemed puzzled and didn’t say much. In the following months, the former warmth turned into distance, and we never really spoke about it again to each other, which hurt.

  I thought I had succeeded in keeping track of all the moving parts of my life. But it was sloppiness, primarily, that caused the threads to unravel. My mother came down for a weekend visit, and independence had made me cocky. I took her to Mill Avenue for a wander with Randy and a couple other people from the Edge: this teenage queer, Fro-baby; Randy’s creepy roommate who looked like Buffalo Bill; and this girl who kept saying she was feeling sick and thought she might be pregnant. When we got home, my mom was shell-shocked.

  “Jason, who are those people?” She ran her hands through her blond hair, something she did when she was anxious. “How do you know them?”

  “They’re just friends that I met down here.”

  “They’re nice enough, but . . .” She winced. “Why are you hanging out with them? There’s something . . .” Gay was the word she couldn’t quite bring herself to say.

  “They’re nice people, Mom. I hang out with all kinds of them.”

  “All kinds is right.” She put her hand on her forehead. “Jennifer found a pack of cigarettes in your . . . purse.” She pronounced cigarettes spitting the consonants. She looked in her lap for a moment, then raised her finger and jabbed it in the air. “If you think for one second you’re going to get away with the same crap your sisters did, you’ve got another thing coming, buddy.” She could feel that I had slipped out of her reach.

  “You’re fifteen years old! And you’re my son. And you’re smoking?” She folded her arms and shook her head, looked at me like I was someone she didn’t recognize. It made me hate myself. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt my mom. Yes, I had started smoking, but had I done anything really wrong? As far as I was concerned, I’d been very responsible. She was quiet when she left for Washington the next day. I don’t blame her now for being worried. She should have been.

  Meanwhile, school got worse. My friend Courtney was caught with crystal meth in her lunch box and whisked away to rehab. Her bubbly personality had kept me afloat at school, and she had been one of my only friends there. Now, she’d left me alone with the wolves. Most of my teachers, knowing the danger I was in and the potential for violence, allowed me to finish all my exams early and skip the last two days of school. I screamed, “FUCK YOU!” to all the kids leaving for the day, leaning out a friend’s car window, both hands flipping the bird as I rode out of the parking lot the final time.

  The week after school ended, I went to a weeklong Young Life retreat that my youth group had been pushing us all year to attend. The camp was cheesy, full of peppy cheer and solemn talks about God. Desi, the youth pastor, oversaw my cabin and would lead discussions with our group every night. My sexuality was discussed heavily yet always between the lines. There was a lot of talk about “wanting to change.” Group leaders pulled me aside for small conversations, saying, “There is something you could do about it, if you really want to.” I was flattered by their regard. Everyone could see how miserable I had been and wanted to help. I still feel they were just being kind.

  I’d take walks by myself and contemplate how my sexuality had not only been a burden; it had made my life a fucking drag. Being gay had gotten me into this mess, not knowing where or who I was supposed to be. Exhaustion was permeating my bones. I was sick of defending myself, tired of fighting. I didn’t have much to lose. On the last day of camp, I prayed with Desi, asked Christ to save me from my sins, and pledged to walk in His footsteps.

  My time in Arizona ended at a river deep in the desert. I wore a white robe. Courtney, now sober, watched from the river’s edge in her cat-eye sunglasses. She witnessed the spectacle, looking a bit perplexed.

  “This is Jason Sellards,” Desi said to the air and our audience of one. “And he comes today to be baptized into Christ. Now repeat after me: I believe that Jesus is the Christ.”

  “I believe that Jesus is the Christ.”

  “The son of the Living God, and my Lord and Savior.”

  “The son of the Living God, and my Lord and Savior.”

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit.” Desi pushed me back into the water and immediately lifted my head out. “You are born again.” He laughed, delighted.

  MY SALVATION LASTED ABOUT FIVE minutes. Not that I really tried too hard. I waited a few days to start being attracted to women, but it never happened. I felt like a gullible kid again, thinking there was some magic solution to my issues, believing the claims of the commercials. It had sounded too good to be true, but the notice that I’d received from my youth pastor and camp counselors had been too tempting to pass up.

  I went back to the island that summer to live with my parents, still gay and definitely not about to start back at the island high school. I would have rather dropped out, and I think my mom knew it. I had faith I could find a school that wasn’t on the island but was close enough to please my parents. I knew they had put money aside for my education, so I convinced my mom to let me attend the Northwest School, a college-prep school in Seattle. The venerable, well-kept old schoolhouse was perfect. I’d be living in their boardinghouse, and it didn’t hurt that it was located on Capitol Hill, Seattle’s gayest neighborhood—a fact that must have throbbed in my mom’s mind like a migraine. But she was so impressed with the rigorous classes and no-nonsense faculty that the benefits must have outweighed her reservations. Besides, I had never actually been in any real trouble, other than getting caught with a pack of cheap smokes. And on top of that, I reminded her when I needed to that I had “found” Jesus.

  It didn’t take long for me to acclimate. The students at Northwest were mature, laid-back coffee drinkers, creative and hip. My sexuality was a nonissue among teachers, who all went by their first names. I focused on the work. It was stringent and unsparing. Papers were due by the multitudes and subject to critique in conferences. My essays were picked apart until sometimes it felt like there was nothing left of substance. But I was learning to be a better writer.

  The city was thrumming with great local bands, writers’ talks at bookstores, a lively café culture. I was dumbfounded by my luck: Seattle was still enjoying its newfound heyday in 1995. I spent most of my time doing my schoolwork in Bauhaus, a cavernous gray coffee shop down the street from the dorm, smoking vanilla cigarettes and chugging bottles of Jolt cola, plowing through novels and bullshitting for hours with vampires, bleached-blond lesbians with candy-colored barrettes, ambiguous effete guys, and musicians. The curfew at the dorms was 8 p.m. on weekdays; I never stayed out late unless I had specific permission.

  I had a sampler keyboard, on loan from my sister Windi, that could play only four notes at once, but it made me happy to noodle on it. I could play music whenever I wanted. Not that I was particularly good, but I could construct melodies over bass notes or simple chords. I’d lose hours jotting down words in a notebook and singing them back to myself.

  And now as I plunked away on the keyboard in my room, unfocused, I was convinced that my luck had run out. I had stretched the freedom I had earned to a breaking point. Not only did my parents not know for sure I was gay, but I was spending time with Pete, a salty, thirty-three-year-old deadbeat guitar player. My brazen and loose lips were to blame for the dorm’s suspecting a questionable relationship. Ethically, they knew it would be problematic to “out” me to my parents. But if they gleaned any details of this non–parental approved “friend,” they would have no choice.

  “Jason, I’m really at a loss,” the head resident advisor had just said, sitting across from me calmly. “I don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s something inappropriate, your parents need to know. If you aren’t willing to tell them, don’t think for a second that I won’t. Can you see it from my perspective?”

  I stared out the window, dog-paddling for the right response. At least she wasn’t talking to me like a child. “Give me until next week,” I said. “I promise I’ll figure it out.”

  I slowly ascended the stairs to my room, then closed the door and took a deep breath of its smell—burnt paint from a radiator, acrid but comforting. I turned the radio on. It was 8 o’clock, and Dan Savage’s local advice show was starting. I listened to it every Thursday night. Savage’s filthy and funny sex column in the local weekly, The Stranger, was my bible. I began calling his show. Almost every week I explained my predicament live on the air. I was out at school, yet my parents were still in the dark. If they found out, they could pull me back home, extinguishing my independence.

  I made my way to the dorm pay phone and put a couple quarters in the slot. Busy. I tried again. “Savage Love Live,” the studio assistant answered.

  “Hey, it’s Jason.” After a couple minutes of listening to the show on hold, I was patched through, a disorienting moment as the show was on a ten-second delay.

  “We have Jason on Capitol Hill on the line. . . .” To Dan’s credit, he was never exasperated with my frequent calls. “Jason, how’s it going?”

  “Everything’s all right—well, not really. . . .” I paused to disentangle my jumbled thoughts.

  “What’s ‘not really’?”

  “I think I’m screwed.” My throat tightened. God, please don’t let me cry. “The school just told me I have to come out to my parents.”

  “I don’t think the school can do that, as far as I know.”

  “They found out I’m hanging with this guy. They think he’s too old for me.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Okay—first of all, that’s insane. What the hell is he doing with you? You just turned sixteen.”

  “But he’s really sweet. It’s no big deal. He’s taught me how to play the guitar.”

  “I don’t care if he’s taught you Mandarin. He has no business hanging out with a sixteen-year-old.” I could hear Dan was frustrated. “My main concern is that your folks could find out about everything, including this asshole you’re seeing—which has got to stop—and throw you into shock therapy.”

  “They’d probably just bring me back home with them.”

  “And how could you blame them seeing that you’re dating a thirty-three-year-old? Listen, I think your parents already know you’re gay, first of all. If you don’t think they’re going to put you in the gay-teen slammer, I don’t see why you shouldn’t just say something at this point. But get rid of this creep first.” I clinked the receiver into the cradle and rested my head on the edge of the phone. There was homework waiting for me in my room, but I knew it would be hard to concentrate.

  Being in an accepting environment had made me more comfortable with my eccentricities. The weird clothes I insisted on wearing were now colorful and expressive, rather than worn as a defense. I bleached my hair and decorated it with barrettes like my girlfriends at school. I would assemble looks that I would feature only once, and I received compliments on them now rather than threats. I could walk between classes and take in my surroundings, socializing with whomever I wanted. I stopped looking over my shoulder.

  The more adjusted I felt, the more I realized I needed to find more queer people to hang out with. It was rare to meet anybody my own age who was out. There was a teen social outreach group I joined. They threw dance parties for young queer people, using the platform to promote condoms and safer sex. In 1995, we didn’t know that the AIDS drug cocktails were about to change the landscape. So many people were still dying. One guy my own age I was acquainted with suddenly disappeared. It turned out he had been hospitalized and passed away.

  I might have accepted my sexuality, but I was terrified of sex, all too aware of what the consequences could be if I slipped up. I’d met a handful of people who were HIV positive: people my age from the outreach program, as well as Robert, an adult volunteer. Sometimes I’d walk down the street and see gay men who were visibly sick. Though I was incredibly safe and I wasn’t having full-on intercourse, I began the ritual of getting tested every three months. Even if I’d done nothing but jerk off to the porn mags my café buddies would buy me on the sly, I would still get tested. It was about a two-mile walk to the free clinic, thirty m
inutes of sadness and stomach butterflies. The full week it took before the results came back were distraction at its worst. I’d manage to convince myself that some freak accident had happened, and I would test positive. Maybe I had gotten it from jerking a guy off, or a blow job, or maybe I’d be the first to have an Immaculate Seroconversion. I’d sob in the school bathrooms in front of my girlfriends, convinced I had HIV.

  The queer youth dance parties I helped throw were an exciting way I could meet other young people. But unfortunately the criteria weren’t strict enough at the door, because that’s where I had met Pete, who, being thirty-three, shouldn’t have been there. He was handsome, charming, didn’t seem to have a job, but had been in a few bands. We’d sit cross-legged in his apartment on rainy weekend afternoons. “Can you show me how to play guitar?” I asked. He taught me five chords and let me borrow an acoustic, which I spent hours practicing on every day.

  Pete’s apartment was piled high with dog-eared books by the Beat poets, photos of Bowie and Chet Baker. The place was the size of a bunny hutch and grimy in the corners. The bedsheets were usually a couple days past their expiration date, and his hand-rolled cigarette butts were piled high in the ashtray, a trail of smoke always flowing out of his right hand, which was connected to an arm covered in homemade Germs tattoos and track marks. He kept an address book on the side of his couch that I would occasionally flip through and see names of the likes of Iggy Pop, Duff McKagan, and Joan Jett, all people he was acquainted or had played guitar with over the years. He introduced me to records by Lou Reed, the Birthday Party, and the Flaming Lips. Then there was Wayne County, a ferocious punk staple from someplace called Max’s Kansas City in New York. Apparently Wayne had transitioned to a female and was now called Jayne County.

  I ate it all up.