What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

by E. Lynn Harris

  But this dream of writing was becoming powerful and silent, like snow. It was one of the few times that I listened to myself without worrying about what others would think. I saw that just like snow, writing could provide me comfort, but I felt if I shared my dream with a lot of people they might bring on the rain, washing away this wonderful new vision of my life. I had to be careful who I shared my dream with.

  That evening I asked Carlton to drive me to the store and I bought a desktop computer. When I came home, Carlton allowed me to set it up in his office and then I went upstairs to my bedroom, got on my knees, and prayed. I asked God to guide and direct me on what to do. I prayed that if it was His will, He would give me the words and courage to write, to tell the story of people like Richard, Randy, Willa, Larry, and myself and make people realize that being gay wasn’t about just sex, but about love. I went back downstairs and turned on my computer and began to write the words I was hearing inside my heart and head.

  I ORIGINALLY SET OUT TO WRITE a story for me, because I realized I might be the only one who would read it. I wanted to write a story that would capture the pain and joy of being black and gay. I wanted it to be a love story, because the one problem I had with admitting that I was gay was that I had to give up having true love like in the movies.

  Every author, I think, takes a little bit from his or her life in their first novel. I started my book with something from my own life, at a time when I thought I was happy. This took me back to Fayetteville with Mason, but in my novel, it became a college town in Alabama. I didn’t want anyone confusing this as my life story, and I figured the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and the U of A had a lot in common.

  Since my dream of being a writer was coming in the form of images of snow, my first scene was a beautiful winter night when the main character, Raymond, and his lover, Kelvin, meet and frolic in the snow after Christmas break. In real life, a situation like this had happened with Mason and me after the fall semester. We had both returned to Fayetteville early so we could spend some time alone. There was a snowstorm, and when I had to pick him up, my car got stuck. We were so anxious to see each other that we both agreed to walk and ended up embracing and kissing on a snow-covered Fayetteville street. I had to be in love to take such chances in Fayetteville. If anybody had seen us, we would have spent our college days somewhere else. We ended the romantic night eating popcorn, drinking beer, and watching the movie Sparkle on cable. We spent the night sleeping in each other’s arms, listening over and over to LTD’s “Love Ballad.” For years I couldn’t hear that song without my thoughts going back to that night, recalling Mason’s scent and touch like it was yesterday.

  I wanted my story to be one where women, if they decided to read it, would think about the choices they made when it came to men. I wanted my heroine to be a beautiful black woman with a beauty pageant background and southern naïveté, and thus Nicole was created. I wanted the lead male character to be so handsome that whenever he walked into a room, both men (even hopelessly heterosexual ones) and women would take note. I named him Courtney but soon changed it because I thought Courtney sounded feminine, and I wanted a more powerful, black-sounding name, so Courtney became Raymond.

  After my first night at the computer, I found myself looking forward to the next day when I could return to my new friends. I was amazed at how these characters, which now included Sela, were coming to life in my head.

  When I had about thirty pages, I started to share them with Carlton, Lencola, and Tim, whom I kept in touch with and who had become like a little brother to me. They all loved what I read them, but they were close friends and were just happy to see me happy. I needed a second opinion.

  I had become friendly with Dellanor Young, a lady who owned a travel agency near Carlton’s house, when I had walked into her agency to buy a ticket to Washington, D.C., for a visit and update with Dr. Dove.

  I learned that Dellanor loved to read, and when I told her I was writing a love story with a twist, she offered to give me an honest opinion of my work. I told her all my friends loved it and she responded, “They’re your friends—what else are they going to tell you? You need to get somebody to be honest with you.” So even though I was nervous, I gave Dellanor the first two chapters of my novel and she promised me she would read my work that evening.

  The next day, I rushed over to see what Dellanor thought. She looked at me and shook her head, saying, “This needs some work.” I was disappointed and asked her what she meant. She had all these questions about Raymond and his motivations. Every question she asked me I knew the answer to, and she told me that was great but it wasn’t showing up on the page. When I asked her what I should do, Dellanor looked at me and said, “You have to become Raymond.” When I asked how, she said, “Just become him and tell his story.”

  I destroyed all the pages I had written in the third person and began my novel over. I became Raymond Winston Tyler Jr., and the words came like water from a river. It was easy to just flip the switch and give Raymond the life I had often dreamed for myself. I had heard that Mason had gotten married, and I wondered what would happen if I ever bumped into him and his new wife. I had heard countless stories of gay and bisexual men marrying and actually having former lovers in their wedding parties. I thought of some of these women and created Candance, who was smart and beautiful, but clueless when it came to men and the secrets they protected with their life.

  Over the next few months, I became obsessed with writing. I stopped looking for work, even though I was pretty close to being broke again. I was getting support from Carlton, Aunt Gee, and my mom. Dellanor was now serving as my unofficial editor, and I knew I was onto something, because she would call me early in the morning and ask for new pages to find out what was happening.

  The only thing I was doing besides writing was spending time with Daniel and praying. When I had access to a car, I found myself spending hours in bookstores looking at novels and reading books about publishing. I finally saved enough money for a book that listed all of the New York publishers and agents and what was needed to get a novel published. I was almost finished with the first draft of my novel, and I was letting women whom I didn’t know read it, and their responses were encouraging. During these days my depression was a storm that now seemed far away.

  June came and as I edited my novel, Deborah Crable from Chicago asked me to help out with a program she had started called the Ovation Arts Council. The two-week program held at Georgia Tech University was Deborah’s brainchild. She took disadvantaged minority students with C averages and encouraged them to reach a little higher. Deborah asked me to come in as head counselor for the forty teenagers from hell, as she and I affectionately called them.

  I was glad Deborah asked me to help out, because I learned that when you spend time worrying about the well-being of others, you are left with very little time to fret about your own problems. During the camp, Deborah had a chance to appear in a movie back in Chicago, and the day-to-day operation of the enrichment camp fell to me. Suddenly my major concern was keeping sex-starved teenagers separated at night, but as I sat guarding the dorm floors I would think and edit my characters in the early hours of the morning. I was burning the candle at both ends, but had never felt so energized. After the camp was over, I returned to my novel feeling better about myself and my future.

  At the end of July, I had completed the second draft about a young black man from the South who during the course of the novel falls in love with two women and two men. I was now spending my days and nights at Kinko’s, making copies and sending my novel, Invisible Life, to New York publishers. I also sent a copy to Janis Lunon, a friend from college who owned the only black newspaper in Arkansas, The State Press.

  Weeks later, I got the manuscript back from Janis with an encouraging cover letter, but when I opened the manuscript I saw red everywhere. Janis had circled the errors and scrawled down questions she had. I became angry when I realized that I had sent this error-filled novel
to so many New York publishers. But the errors and Janis’s questions were important.

  I spent the next week correcting the errors and answering the questions, and sent the manuscript back to Janis and to my good friend from my New York days, Tracey Nash-Huntley, who was now married and living in Dallas. She had called to see what I was up to, and when I told her about the novel she offered to read it. I had forgotten when I sent the novel to Tracey that I had never been honest with her regarding my life; I assumed she still thought I was straight.

  When she called me back a week later, I could hear the shock in her voice. Tracey kept repeating, “Lynn, I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” I told Tracey this wasn’t my life story, but the manuscript did give me the chance to tell Tracey the truth. I realized she was one of those people in my life whom I really loved, but I had told her nothing but lies about my life. Tracey assumed not only that I was straight but that I had come from a middle-class family; thus, it was very easy for her to believe that I was Raymond. My main character’s background was another decision I had made early on. I didn’t think anyone wanted to read about someone who was poor, black, and gay.

  During my conversation with Tracey about my book, I shared some things I hadn’t even admitted to myself. I still wanted to be straight. I told her that at her wedding in 1988, I had been in tears for reasons other than her happiness.

  Tracey and her husband, David, had one of the most beautiful weddings I had ever attended. It was in the middle of the summer at a stately old church in St. Louis, Missouri. I was fine when I arrived for the wedding weekend, because I had the chance to see a lot of people I’d known in New York. When I saw Tracey walking down the aisle as a beautiful bride, I started crying dime-sized tears. At that moment I realized that I would never experience what David and Tracey were sharing, and it made me terribly sad. I also admitted to Tracey how I never understood why she wanted me as a friend.

  I confessed that I envied her for being the daughter of well-respected parents in St. Louis. I felt that if she really knew who I was, she and David would not have wanted me at their wedding, let alone counted me among their close friends. Tracey was very sympathetic about my feelings and told me she wished I had shared them with her sooner. She told me she and David loved me for me, because I was a kind and gentle person, not because of my sexuality and family background. Conversations like this helped me on my road to accepting myself and gave me encouragement to write with honesty. It eased the letting go of my rain dreams, like getting married and being totally straight, and allowed me to see that if I wanted love in my life I had better listen more carefully to what I called my silent, more truthful snow dreams.

  WRITING AND GETTING MY NOVEL published became my new therapy. My characters became my new friends. I was taking my medication and praying daily, and I remained sober and celibate. The few times I went to gay bars in Atlanta, it was okay for me to come home alone, because I had my novel. When people asked me what I did for a living, I said I was a writer. When they asked me what I had written, I told them I was finishing up my first novel and very soon they would hear more about me. I had never felt so self-confident about my future.

  The confidence didn’t disappear by late September, when I had a stack of rejection letters almost as big as my novel. I had been rejected by a slew of literary agents, and a lawyer friend who had agreed to help me find a publisher was no longer returning my calls.

  Amid all the rejections, there was some encouragement. I sent my manuscript to an agent at the William Morris Agency. I got the agent’s name after reading the acknowledgments in Tina McElroy Ansa’s first novel, Baby of the Family. I figured any agent who received mention in an author’s acknowledgment had to be good. About a month after sending my novel to the agent, I received another rejection letter stating that she wasn’t taking on any additional clients but she had been impressed with my novel. I picked up my phone and called the agent to see if she really thought my story had potential. Of course, she wasn’t taking calls, but when her secretary asked me what I wanted, I told her about the letter I had received. She asked my name, and when I told her, the secretary said, “Oh, I remember you. I read your manuscript, and I think it’s really good.”

  “You do?” I asked eagerly.

  “Yes. Don’t give up. You’ll find someone to represent you soon.”

  I hung up the phone excited about what the secretary had said. I was getting emotional and financial support from family and friends. The mere fact that they didn’t look at me like I was crazy when I said I was writing a book about gay and bisexual men was support enough. My mother came to my rescue again, by adding me to her Visa account so I could rent cars when I needed to. My Aunt Gee started putting checks and money in my hand when I would hug her good-bye after my weekly visits, just like my grandmother used to do when I was a little boy. Carlton told me not to worry about rent or helping with the food. He hadn’t read any of the novel since those first destroyed pages. He simply said that if writing was making me happy, then he wanted to do anything he could to help. So many family and friends protected my snow dream.

  One day, while waiting in line at Kinko’s after printing copies of the third revised draft of my manuscript, I noticed a book titled How to Self-Publish. I picked up the book and began reading it. When it came time for me to pay for my copies, a young black lady with whom I had become friendly was working the cash register and asked if I was purchasing the book. I looked at the price and realized I didn’t have enough. She looked at me, winked, and smiled as she slid the book in with my copies. There it was—another dream protector, another sign.

  I spent the following days reading up on how to publish your own book. After finishing the book, I decided that if the New York publishers, who were still rejecting the revised drafts, didn’t think my book was good enough to publish, then I would do it myself. From my marketing background I knew that sales got people’s attention and remembered something a manager had once told me: “Nothing happens until something is sold.”

  I was still getting positive feedback from regular, everyday people who loved to read, and I felt I had to get my novel to the public and let them decide. In the back of my head I knew that if I took the multitudes of nos as a final answer, the shadows of my depression might appear. For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself about not having love in my life, and I had something to look forward to every day. I was working harder than I had ever worked in my life. I knew I had to keep moving and stay focused on my dream.

  CHAPTER 15

  With my novel revised and completed, I became a one-man publishing company at the end of October 1991. I didn’t like rejection as a salesman, and I didn’t like it as a writer. I was warned that the publishing industry didn’t look kindly upon self-published authors, but I couldn’t wait until some editor in New York discovered my novel. I would have to take a chance.

  I was beginning to believe that the novel would have an impact not only on my life but on my family and other families like mine. One night while talking to my Aunt Gee, I mentioned that I was becoming comfortable with spending my life alone since I was gay. As I have said before, my aunt has always been supportive of me, no matter what. But during this talk, she said something that hurt me deeply.

  “Baby, if I had raised you, I don’t think you would have been gay.”

  A chill went through my body, and after a few moments of silence I said, “No, Aunt Gee, you’re wrong. I might have learned to love myself sooner, but I still would have been gay.”

  I knew she didn’t mean any harm, nor did she understand that she was implying that my being gay was a product of my environment. This is a very common misconception, even today. My mother didn’t raise me to be gay. Nothing she ever did, including divorcing Ben and never remarrying, had anything to do with my sexuality. In fact, my mother went out of her way to make sure I had positive male role models like my uncles, and even though she would have loved for me to be home over the h
olidays, she always let me spend Christmas with Aunt Gee and Uncle Charles and my male cousins. I was lucky to live in a family where I was never molested by uncles or male cousins who were older and bigger. I told my aunt that she didn’t understand what being gay was about and that I couldn’t wait until my novel was published so it could help people understand that being gay was as much about being attracted to the same sex as it was about my spirit and soul.

  “Maybe I should read your novel now,” my aunt said as we prepared to say good night.

  It was the first time since I had begun writing the novel that it dawned on me what the book might mean to my family. Would they be humiliated, or would they be embarrassed? Aunt Gee was really the only one who knew what the novel was about. I suddenly considered the advice of a closeted media friend who had advised that I write under a pen name. Initially I laughed at his recommendation, but suddenly make-believe names floated through my head. When I got into bed, and despite my medication, I endured a restless night. I had visions of faceless people laughing and pointing at me while they chanted, “Silly, nigger faggot.” A thin film of sweat formed around my neck, and I felt both angry and afraid.

  The next day, I delivered a copy of my novel to my aunt. A couple of days later, just before midnight, I got a call from her. This was very strange, because for as long as I could remember my aunt was always in bed by ten, unless you count the holidays when she was up late preparing meals.