As badly as I wanted to spin around and flee, there was something about J.J. that drew me in, and almost against my own will, I found myself taking steps towards him. Our eyes were unblinkingly locked, and as I got closer, I realized that there was something odd about his skin. It looked different. He looked different. Then I realized what it was.
“Are you wearing makeup?” I asked.
J.J. let out a woeful sigh, dropping his chin to his chest and letting his head hang. “Kiki insisted. It’s just base. Or concealer? Or maybe both. I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“To hide the dark circles under my eyes.” He lifted his face, and I was surprised by the accusing look in his eyes. “I haven’t been sleeping.”
I tried for what I hoped was an equally accusing look when I said, “I was like that for a while. But now sleep is all I can seem to manage.” That’s when my attempt at a brave and resentful front betrayed me, and my eyes began to tear up.
Blinking repeatedly, J.J. looked down at his hands clasped in front of him. “I never wanted to hurt you, Chris. You have to know that.”
Trying to avoid a discussion that could quickly turn me into sobs, I attempted to change the subject. “So what is it we’re all here for? What’s this big announcement?” Then, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that the thing I’d been so desperately wanting to know for weeks, might be a knowledge I’d gladly put off for every last possible second. But it was too late; I’d asked.
J.J. shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m supposed to talk about having a healthy and happy heart or some other lie, I guess.” He tried to force a laugh, but it was so soaked with bitterness and regret that it came out sounding somewhere between haunted and just short of crazy.
As awful as the last few weeks had been, hearing the same pain and misery in J.J.’s voice made me feel even worse, because I felt utterly helpless to heal it. I tried my best and offered what I could by reaching out and placing my hand flat upon his chest. “I just want you to be happy,” I said. “Seriously. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
J.J. met my eyes, holding my gaze, finally saying, “Funny how everyone who says they love you, says that. But do they really mean it?”
“Isn’t that what love is? Someone else’s happiness being more important than your own?”
J.J. put his hand over the one I held to his chest, and as he took in a shuddering breath, his eyes, too, began to fill with tears. “Why can’t what makes one person happy ever be the same thing that makes everyone else happy?”
“For a while I thought it was,” I said.
No sooner were the words out of my mouth, than the clack-clack of high-heeled shoes warned us that our solitude was about to be invaded, and we stepped away from each other.
Kiki led the way in, followed closely by Kimberly, Jennifer, Jonas, Iris, and Buck. “So it’ll be just a few minutes, and Lizette from AHA will come lead us to the podium. She’s awesome, so everything should go off without a hitch.” Then, winking towards J.J. added, “Unless, of course, you want to surprise everyone with some good news. I mean, it is Valentine’s Day, after all.”
J.J. smiled mechanically, or maybe it only looked mechanical to me, because I was closest to him, so the uneven light was not able to hide from me the perspiration that began to form on his brow.
“I’m still trying to put together my thoughts,” he said. “Just ignore me for now.” With that he turned away from them, walking to a corner at the back of the improvised room. Almost immediately, everyone went back to whatever they’d been talking about. Except for me, who had been talking to him, and Jennifer, his mother, who watched him with a curious, then slightly troubled, expression.
She bit the inside of her cheek, before softly walking up behind him. I couldn’t hear what they said in their hushed tones, but I could see the genuine concern on her face as she spoke, and then listened, to him. They were still deep in conversation when the PR woman from the American Heart Association popped her head into the tent and said everything was ready.
CHAPTER 20
IMPERFECT
So, obviously, I’m almost up to the point about which most of you already know.
If you haven’t believed a word I’ve written so far because it didn’t fit into your own agenda, well, there’s nothing I can do about that, but I will say that the conspiracy theory that outing me in such a public forum was to garner votes is absolutely ridiculous. For starters, even if J.J. had planned the whole thing all along—which makes no sense at all, but conspiracy theorists seem to have their own form of logic—fine. But there’s no way the rest of us knew anything. Certainly no one in the Fontaine-Bellows camp, of that I would swear on a stack of Jane Austen’s original manuscripts.
As we gathered behind J. J, he approached the podium with a bouquet of television and radio microphones waiting to record his every word. At this point I was so distracted with replaying in my head what he and I had just been talking about that I wasn’t even aware enough of all the people watching us to be nervous, at least not about them. But I still managed to hear my name being hissed from the side, and when I looked over, Coco was waving a hand at me, while struggling to get past one of the PR assistants. Trying to not be too obvious, I signaled to the assistant that it was okay to let her join us, and reluctantly, he let her proceed. She blew him a kiss with one hand—more of triumph than gratitude—as she passed, burying her other hand in the flowing folds of her gown. I didn’t think much of it at the time, which I’m glad about now, because who knows what I might have done if I’d known what she was planning.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone,” J.J. said, leaning into the microphones, his voice carrying clearly throughout the broad space of the gallery.
“Will you be my Valentine, J.J.?!” a woman’s voice called from somewhere in the crowd. She got a big laugh from the rest of the room. Even Kimberly laughed. (Iris, not so much.)
Smiling graciously, and probably blushing though it was hard to tell under the makeup Kiki had made him wear, J.J. continued. “In support of the great work that the American Heart Association does, they have asked me to say a few words to remind everyone of the little steps they can take to help make sure that we all do our best to take care of our own hearts. Which got me thinking. Always a dangerous proposition, right?” He winked, and the audience laughed.
As he warmed to his audience, and they warmed to him, I saw him transform from the suffering soul in the tent into the charismatic leader that he had been born to become. Some people blossom under the expectant gaze of an audience; they’re not intimidated by it, not weighed down by it, but instead they’re lifted up by it. I was not born to be that person, but J.J. was. And it was at this moment that something released inside me. It wasn’t so much that the pain of losing J.J.’s love went away, but I finally realized what a selfish thing I was guilty of in wanting him to ask less of his future by being with me. I finally understood the amazing things he might be capable of changing by making his personal sacrifice. People need leaders, and only a very few are drawn naturally to the calling. For J.J. it wasn’t about his own ego, or accomplishments, or playing the adult version of King of the Mountain. It was about the prospect of being able to do good and to better other people’s lives. And at that moment, I made a certain peace with the fact that if my own dreams were to be stifled by that sacrifice, that was something with which I could be okay. After all, hadn’t I just told him that loving someone was about wanting them to be happy, even if it didn’t make you happy? Even if that meant an entire country. I know that probably doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, but hopefully, at least the honor in it is clear.
Caught up in my own epiphany, I hadn’t really been listening to the content of what he was saying, but as he looked over his shoulder at Kimberly with the words, “in sickness and in health,” drawing a hardy round of applause from the audience, my stomach dropped. Maybe I wasn’t as okay with all of this as I’d just thought.
As those of you who have seen the footage of what happened know, it all went very quickly. But it didn’t feel that way up on the stage. Granted, I was very much caught up in my own head, and, honestly, while you see my head turn towards Buck and Coco, I wasn’t aware of what was going on with them.
Of course, you may not have even noticed that, because this was also the moment where J.J. seemed to freeze in front of the microphone, looking out at the audience with that inscrutable stare. For a while some political analysts tried to argue that he’d had a mini-stroke at that moment to explain what he was soon to do, but how a nineteen-year-old man having a stroke in front of cameras would be considered preferable to what actually happened, makes me think I had been stupid to think such a country deserved his or anyone else’s sacrifice.
J.J. later told me that he thinks he maybe had a little bit of a nervous breakdown right then. He said as he looked out over all of these people looking up at him with all of their expectations, he was suddenly filled with a violent loathing. He hated every single one of them with every fiber of his being. It was like an explosion of hatred inside himself.
Now whether you were watching J.J., or Buck and Coco, during J.J.’s awkward pause, this is the part where Buck lobs the Ferragamo shoe that lands smack dab in the middle of the podium with a thud. And J.J. just stares at it for a long moment, but not half as long as it seemed at the time, to any of us up there. And this was when J.J. told me he had his own epiphany. He realized that those people watching him weren’t the ones he hated—he was. He hated himself for not being what they wanted him to be. And that’s when he understood that he had a choice to make. A choice between hate and love.
While he was mid-epiphany, most of the rest of the people on the stage scrambled about. Iris yelled at Buck, who pointed at Coco, saying she’d told him J.J. was in on it (which he wasn’t, but how else was Coco going to get Buck to use all of that football throwing precision to give the shoe the best chance of hitting its mark?), Jennifer and Jonas tried to get everyone to save their squabbling for less public scrutiny, and Kimberly and I looked at each other, frozen, with plastic smiles on our faces—in a sense proving our possible mettle as future political spouses, I guess it could be argued.
Kiki and Lizette darted in from opposite sides to remove the shoe, but J.J. stopped them by holding out his arms to either side, sending them both away, then picked it up. Which was when I finally got a decent look at it and realized it was one with which I was very familiar. It was the Ferragamo I’d accidentally kicked at J.J.’s face the first time we met.
For some reason, this was the thing that shook me up the most. Having been so careful to keep J.J.’s secret, the idea that anyone knew made me feel like I had failed him completely. And that felt awful. I turned my head slightly to Coco, who was back beside me, and whispered, “How long have you known?”
She said, “Not long. I thought I’d finally put it all together a few days ago when Kimberly was saying J.J. sometimes felt like a stranger, but it wasn’t until I saw you and J.J. together in the tent that I finally knew for sure. Only two people in love can look at each other with that much pain.”
“You couldn’t have waited to say something in private?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I’m more political than we thought.”
By now J.J. was holding up the shoe for everyone to see with an intensely amused expression, which freed itself into a chuckle, then built into a laugh. And the crowd was more than happy to join in, eventually breaking into full-out applause. See how cool their future leader was in a crisis?
After the laughter and applause had quieted down, J.J. leaned forward to speak again. “We live in strange times. We say we want progress, but we also want to hold on to the good old ways that feel familiar and secure. We say we love freedom, but too much of it can seem scary. We say that individualism is the hallmark of what it means to be an American, but then many of us find that differences make us uncomfortable. I’m not a politician yet, but it has always been something I expected to be in my future. But there’s one big thing I struggle with more than anything else when I consider that future, and I’m going to take this Valentine’s event to get it off my chest. That should be good for my heart, right?”
He took a pause and looked carefully at the people who stood before him, waiting expectantly for whatever he was going to say next.
“That politicians lie is considered as much of a truth in our society as the notion that the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night. I don’t want to be that kind of politician.”
Applause broke out, interrupting him, but he held out his hands to suppress it.
“The problem is, people want their leaders to conform to one idea of what is perfect. Something that no living human being has yet managed in the history of the world. It’s almost as if we’re knowingly choosing which lie we’d rather believe, even though we know both options are lies. And that’s not okay with me. Because I’m not perfect. And I want each and every one of you to know it.”
Again applause started, and although he’d tried to quell it almost immediately, his audience ignored his wishes and cheered his humble admissions. He waited with uncomfortable patience until they’d had their say before continuing.
“Not too long ago someone described pride to me as accepting who you were born to be and not trying to hide or deny it, so today I am here to tell you that I am proud to be who I am, even if that isn’t everyone’s idea of perfect. And on this Valentine’s Day, I am proud to love someone else who might not be your idea of perfect.”
My eyes slid over to Kimberly, who looked confused and not entirely pleased, until she thought of an answer she could live with and muttered, “Oh, the fat lady comment,” to me. “Not my best moment.” Then she beamed a smile at J.J. when he looked over in our direction. And for the briefest moment, as he began to walk across the expanse between the podium and us, just because it seemed like the least dramatic of the options I could think of, I almost hoped that he would take her in his arms.
Almost. Because although part of me crumbled inside when he put a hand on her forearm and softly said, “I am so sorry, and I hope someday you will be able to forgive me,” the rest of me rode a wave of glorious hope that the imperfect person for whom he had just proclaimed his love was me.
Then in front of everyone in the room, and the world reachable via the cameras that recorded his every move, J.J. Kennerly took me in his arms, kissed me full on the mouth, and provoked the gasp heard around the world.
In the hysteria that immediately followed as Kiki rushed us like a linebacker, heading us off the platform and eventually through a series of hallways until we were spit out of the back entrance of The Met, yelling at us to grab a cab and get the hell away into hiding, while it’s mostly a blur, I do remember the following moments:
* Kimberly screaming, “This is all your fault!” But she wasn’t yelling at me. She was yelling at Iris.
* Buck giving me a stunned high five, and then as Iris looked at me with horror and loathing, he yelled into her ear, “Relax, Mom, J.J. can still marry into the family.” And then Iris body-chucking her way to the podium and shouting into the microphones, “I supported marriage equality before it was trendy!”
I thanked Coco as she struggled to keep up with our pace in her stiletto heels as we raced through the hallways. “You were our very own deus ex machina!” I said.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“It’s like the Greek version of a fairy godmother,” I said, explaining as best I could under duress.
“The Greeks knew about their man-on-man love, so I’m down with that,” she said, just as the heel on one of her shoes broke, and she stumbled. J.J. and I both threw out our arms to keep her from falling, but she told us to leave her alone—there was a cute security guard close by that she’d rather have help her. Then she slumped lavishly to the ground.
Getting into the first cab we could stop and being asked where we wanted to g
o, J.J. and I looked at each other, realizing that whatever answer we gave was the beginning of our public story as a real couple.
“Where should we go?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care, as long as I’m with you.” J.J. smiled, took my face in his hands, and kissed me.
From the front of the cab, the driver’s bored but good-humored voice said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re here, you’re queer, I’m used to it. The meter’s running, so where do you two lovebirds want to go?”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Since a proper list of all the people who deserve thanks might run longer than the book itself, I’m going to break the first rule of writing by not being specific. I thank my family and friends; my teachers and students; the writers and artists who have made me laugh and cry; my Loyola Marymount University and USC colleagues; Evan Corday, Claire Abramowitz, and everyone at The Cartel; Kylie Brien, who was the book’s first champion at Sky Pony and a fantastic editor to work with, Bethany Buck, Joshua Barnaby, Kat Enright, Cheryl Lew, Julie Matysik, and the entire Sky Pony team. To all those who have shared the journey of this book, and this life, I thank you.
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