Let me tell you a little about Annie. When we met, which seems like a lifetime ago, she was still in art school. She dabbled in everything—painting, photography, sculpture. She’s good at all of it, but best at singing. She has a killer voice. She’s fronted a few punk bands, and always quits after a couple of months, too annoyed or bored. I was surprised to find out she was a dyke—at the time, I didn’t know any lesbians and only a few gay men. Annie told me she felt like more of a gay man, anyway—I don’t believe in monogamy, she said.
I was the oddball in Annie’s group of friends. They all came from money, went to private schools. I didn’t even know anyone who’d been to college. When we met, Annie was delighted by what she called my country accent. I never even knew I spoke differently. I hear it now that I’m back—the way people drop “-ings,” or says things like, “The car needs washed,” or use “they” instead of “there.” Sometimes, I’d watch Annie throw down money for a cab or buy a forty-dollar meal, and feel torn up with guilt—how frivolous all this would seem to my people. But I also loved the waste, the freedom. No one was telling us how to live. We could do what we wanted.
Annie took me under her wing and showed me the city I’d been dreaming of—the queers, artists, weirdos. Her world ran hot, and I wanted to be as close as possible to the flames. You only get one life, she used to say, before all our friends started dying, so you better make it fucking count.
May 17, 1986
I’m coming to you live from the Jacksons’. It’s like I’ve got my own TV show. Except I’m the only audience. At least for now.
I’ve been here a couple of weeks. Things are going all right, I guess. My dad, he didn’t come home for dinner tonight. He’s avoiding me. I ate off my special plate, used my special silverware, drank out of my special red cup. My mother hasn’t said anything about it, but I know. She won’t even mix my laundry with theirs.
I haven’t told Annie this—sorry, Annie—because I know what she’ll say: They should know better. Actually, this is more her: They should fucking know better. I mean, true, it’s not 1983 when nobody knew anything about AIDS. It’s 1986. We know it’s caused by a virus, and we know how it’s transmitted. Sex. Shared needles. Blood transfusion. But nobody wants to listen to reason or facts. They’d rather just blame the queers. The media and politicians and preachers have whipped up a crazy storm of fear, and people are afraid they’ll get it if you so much as breathe on them.
Still, I’ve heard worse. Parents who refuse to touch their son, who make him eat in a separate room, who do not visit him on his death bed, who bleach whatever he touches, who do not claim his body from the morgue.
Could be worse.
Well, I’m still here. I survived Mamaw’s big party. Wasn’t so much a party, just a family get together. My parents were nervous for everyone to see me. To tell you the truth, I was too.
First of all, I spent a ridiculous amount of time getting ready, like I was going out on a date. Couldn’t decide if should butch it up or go full-force nelly. I went for something in-between, a casual going-to-the-movies look—rolled-up jeans and a button-down shirt, which around here I guess means gay. I primped in the mirror, worrying about my fucked up teeth. My mother doesn’t want to tell Dave Green about me, which I guess is understandable. Dentists all over America are refusing to treat us. We’re bad for business. Well, at least I’m in good company—half the population of Chester, Ohio, has fucked up teeth.
At first, everyone seemed happy to see me—even Uncle Wayne shook my hand. Mamaw set out a giant spread of food. I met my cousins’ kids and their spouses. I held Gus’s baby. She cried in my arms, and I handed her back. When we were kids, I’d recruit Gus to put on variety shows with me—we’d perform for our grandmother and our mothers, but not our fathers. Gus would get so nervous he’d practically break into tears. He was dopey and sweet, and he’d do anything I wanted.
Except for Gus, my cousins are older than me. Mamaw’s pet, they used to call me. I never quite fit in, especially when I was a kid. It wasn’t just about being gay, which wasn’t something I could admit to myself back then—even though maybe I stared for too long at my uncle’s furry chest or my cousins’ rock-hard arms. I just didn’t care about the right things, daydreamed too much. It wasn’t always bad. Sometimes my cousins let me tag along. We played football and baseball and smear the queer. But, whenever I could, I’d sneak into my cousin Lori’s room to steal her latest issue of Tiger Beat, mooning in secret over Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, Leif Garrett.
At Mamaw’s, I had my camera with me, and nobody was pleased. Back in the city, my friends—I guess they’re all narcissists—loved the attention. Here, it’s different—people duck, hide their faces. The camera is the elephant I’m trotting into the room. Or, maybe I’m the elephant.
Nobody said much about me being gone for six years. My aunts asked a few questions. Wanted to know if I’d seen any movie stars in New York or been to any musicals? Had I ever been mugged?
No, I said, but I’ve had friends who were.
Mamaw covered her ears. Oh, Lord, don’t tell me such things!
Wayne had his ears perked, and I braced myself for whatever fucked up racist or homophobic thing he might say in response. He just stared at me. Arms flexed, sleeves rolled up. The same strong jawline and hooked nose as my father’s. I remember being a teenager gabbing about New York, where all the artists and musicians lived, and Wayne said, You mean the queers.
As I started to walk past him, he stood in the doorway, working a toothpick around in his mouth. Then he moved a few inches, just enough room for me to squeeze by.
You know, you got something in your ear there, Brian.
His mouth smiling, but not his eyes. Nervous laughter all around. Fuck this, I thought. I’m not scared of him, he’s scared of me.
It’s called an earring. You want to try it on, Wayne?
His face went bright red, and he looked like he wanted to grab me by the throat. I heard Jess cracking up. Others were laughing too. Shawn would be proud, I thought. As I walked away, I made sure to add a little swish to my step.
May 18, 1986
Tonight, I want to talk about Shawn. Sometimes, the ache comes out of nowhere, the tears. How much I miss him.
This is the picture I was looking for. This is my baby, before he was sick. Here he is, playing in the snow in Central Park. That smile. Shawn loved New York winters.
Here’s another one I took one morning after he just woke up. Sleepy eyes, fluffed bed-head, delicious chest hair. Shawn Crosby. The love of my life.
We met at a party. I knew by the way he was looking at me we’d sleep together, I just didn’t expect to fall for him, or him for me. Shawn was ten years older. His father was black, his mother white. He was an actor from California, but he’d been living in New York for a dozen years, and he carried the pulse of the city in him like his hot, quick breath. He spent the ’70s having a lot of sex and partying. When I met him, he was acting in plays and commercials, and for his day job, he worked part-time as a security guard at the Museum of Natural History.
Shawn had dark skin and curly hair and light green eyes. He was tall and muscular and lithe, with the body of a ballet dancer. He was out and proud. When he walked down the street, he sashayed. He preferred skimpy mesh shirts, backwards baseball hats, tight pants. He had a pair of gold pants that he especially loved to wear dancing. The beautiful children, he’d say, talking about the gays. He had a group of admirers, boys who latched onto him. Sometimes, I was jealous. I heard how country I sounded. How stupid, how uneducated. He called me Country Boy.
We weren’t monogamous. Nobody was. We had lovers and one-night stands, especially Shawn—it was easy for him. I was always a little shy. Shawn burst with energy whether he was performing on stage or dancing all night when we went out. But he also could be quiet and gentle and peaceful.
Like on Sunday mornings, after a late night, we’d sleep in, and he’d make us coffee and toast, or sometimes run
out for éclairs. He was a bear without caffeine, but after a few sips of coffee, he’d sink into the sheets and laugh and reach for me. We’d spend the morning in bed, fucking, reading, sleeping, watching TV if there was an old movie on, especially one starring a favorite diva. Shawn was mesmerized by Joan Crawford; I preferred Bette. Ohio was so far away then. Shawn would run his fingers down my spine, and I’d rest my head against his arm, breathe in the ripe, earthy scent of him. The softness and fullness of Sunday mornings brought out the best in us. We’d tie back those pink curtains and open the windows and the sounds of the city would spiral up and around us, holding us, keeping us safe.
I get why my parents don’t want anyone to know. In Chester, people think we don’t deserve to live, but it’s not just Chester that thinks this way—it’s most of America. Even in New York you feel the disgust grinding you into the dirt. God is taking care of the homosexuals. On bad days, the worst days, you wonder if they’re right. The politicians, the pundits, the preachers.
Tattoo them, quarantine them, let them die in the streets.
In America, 15,000 people have died of AIDS, and there are almost twice as many infected. President Reagan still has not uttered the word. Queers, drug addicts, Haitians—we’re the expendable, the scourge. They want us gone. When we die, Christians and Republicans must go wild with applause—that’s what it feels like.
Sometimes I burn with anger, and I want to fight, to be seen. But most of the time, I’m just scared or tired. On my worst days, I feel the shame most of the world wants me to feel.
I understand why my parents don’t want people to know, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking hurt.
Jess
“Killer whales have their own language and culture. They speak in different dialects from each other,” I explain.
“Oh, yeah?”
“They’re smarter than humans. Their brains are bigger.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Brian says, and aims the remote at the VCR. A single black leather rope, thin as a twist tie, loops around his dainty wrist like a whip of licorice. With the earring and the hardened, moussed hair—a few curls as crunchy as Corn Pops—he looks like he could be the lead singer of a new wave group. He’s got that face, too, the sculpted but delicate features, and the right clothes: tight jeans and a T-shirt under a pale peach blazer.
“They’re more emotionally complicated than humans.”
“Huh,” he says. “Okay, here we go.”
On the screen, a close-up of my brother’s face. Then, strangers stream by. Gray skies. Buildings, shops. Signs written in Chinese. The screen turns black. When the video starts again, there is a close-up of silvery water that Brian says is the Hudson, then a flock of pigeons. The scene switches to Brian, behind the camera, going down steps, calling after his friend Annie. She turns, laughing, and flips him off. Hurry, she calls. Doors open to a train car laced with spray-painted gang symbols, and they get on. The doors close. Brian presses stop.
“What do you think?”
“It’s cool.”
I thought when Brian said he made movies, he meant real ones with famous actors. But all the ones he’s shown me look like this: pictures without any story, broken-up scenes of him and his friends. Men in skin-tight pants and boots and women in mini-skirts and off-the-shoulder shirts. Sometimes I catch him sitting up close to the TV, watching the life he used to live, wondering why he left.
“I’m interested in documenting but also in capturing how random things are, and you know, like, there’s not one way of being,” he says. “The camera is my other set of eyes.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I agree. Brian is the only person I know who talks like this. When I was little I thought he knew everything, that he understood the world and all its mysteries. He used to talk about dreams and outer space and the trippy world we lived in. He told me that one day I would swim with whales. I believed him.
He runs through the channels, bored. This is Brian’s space now—my father doesn’t come downstairs to watch TV anymore. Brian’s video camera sits next to him on the couch. Sometimes he records me—not doing anything special, just talking to him or listening to music. When he plays back the video, I squirm at the sight of my giant face looming like a balloon and the sound of my idiotic voice, but still, my heart races with a weird joy too: that’s me on the screen, talking and breathing and laughing.
Brian stops on the news. The president makes a joke, smiles in his gentle old man way. He wears a navy suit and red tie, and his slick hair shines like Mamaw’s, black as crow feathers. Cameras flash and click. He’s an old movie star. Next to me, Brian twitches, his body suddenly turning on, like a robot’s.
“What do you think of Reagan?” he asks. “You like him?”
The kindness has left his voice, and I can tell by his tight, challenging tone what I’m supposed to say. My parents voted for Reagan twice. Mamaw thinks he is good-looking and funny, and she especially loves Nancy. “She’s a nut,” she says. “A real kook.”
“He’s okay, I guess.”
“I hate that motherfucker.”
I’ve never heard anyone say they hate the president. It’s like saying you hate God. Brian looks over, his upper lip curled. He’s waiting for me to say something, maybe to disagree. I’m not even old enough to vote. There are purple rings under his eyes. He always looks tired, but not the way my father looks after he’s been working. My brother just looks wrong, too delicate. He wears out easily. My dad told me not to drink after him because he’s been sick. With what? I asked. He’s getting over something, he said. Brian hasn’t said anything about it. I’m not supposed to ask questions.
“You know, you should be more informed about what’s going on in the world,” he says.
My face blazes—I’m just a kid, he’s telling me, I’m stupid. Something is wrong with him and no one will tell me what it is. Probably drugs. We learned all the signs in school, and Brian fits the profile: he’s moody, unpredictable, and hardly eats. He’s tired all the time. Heroin, probably—he has those sad, haunted eyes I’ve seen in pictures.
He switches to MTV, and Tina Turner, wearing snaky black leather pants and high-heeled boots, prances on stage.
“Those legs,” Brian says. He sings along, then looks over at me. We used to watch American Bandstand and Soul Train together. “Get your groove on,” Brian would say, shaking his shoulders, shimmying his narrow hips. I keep my eyes on Tina bopping her head, her giant hair like a shaggy crown.
“Hey, I’m sorry, sis.”
He sighs deeply, like an old man. Maybe it’s not drugs. Maybe it’s cancer. That’s what my mother’s mother died from, and Mamaw always seems to know somebody who’s got it. I’ve watched Brian stop to catch his breath, winded from just walking across the backyard.
“I’m just in a mood.” He squeezes my knee with his spidery hand. “You mad?”
I look over and he’s smiling. It’s impossible not to smile back. I shake my head.
“I’m not mad.”
Now that school is out, softball is over too, thank God. My mother doesn’t want me laying around the house. At her urging, I’ve joined the youth group at church. Reverend Clay’s son, Josh Clay, who recently moved back to Chester, is our leader. He has a pretty wife named Jennifer and a baby named Bo. Next fall, he will be the guidance counselor at my high school. He told us to call him Josh, unless we see him at school. “Then it’s Mr. Clay,” he said.
Josh says it’s important for us to have a teen-friendly space where we can hang out. “I remember what it’s like being a teenager,” he says. “Nobody understands how hard it is, not your teachers or your parents.”
We meet in one of the Sunday school rooms, where pictures of blond, blue-eyed Jesuses, drawn by the first and second-graders, hang from the beige walls. I take a seat next to Josh.
“Hey, Jessie.” Josh calls me Jessie instead of Jess. I don’t correct him because coming from him, my name sounds special. “How
’s your brother?”
Everyone looks at me. They probably don’t even know that I even have a brother.
“Fine,” I say.
“Didn’t he move to, oh—where was it, some place crazy, like New York or California or something?” he asks, followed by a big, loose smile. Josh’s two front teeth are as square as Chiclets—he’s not quite buck-toothed but almost. He’s tall and muscular. His light brown hair is spiked, and he wears a navy shirt tucked into tan shorts with a braided belt. He’s a prep.
“New York,” I say, my cheeks burning. Brian and Josh were in school together, and both played baseball. After he graduated, Josh left Chester, too—he went to a Christian college in northern Ohio.
“Brian Jackson, big league baseball star,” he says, and tilts back in his chair. “What was he doing in New York City?”
I shrug.
“He get married? Does he have kids?”
I shake my head, stifling the laughter—Brian with kids?
“Well, tell him I said hi.”
Josh pulls up his bent leg to rest one foot on his opposite knee—he wears brown boat shoes with no socks—and says he wants to talk about temptations. Sex. Drugs. As he walks around the room, he occasionally pats a girl on the shoulders, like a grownup version of Duck Duck Goose. Of the fourteen of us, eleven are girls. Each week, more show up. I’m waiting for him to touch me.
“Guys are going to try to convince you to do things. You’ve got to stay pure. One day, you’re going to meet the right man. You’ll be a wife, and a mother.”
He turns to the three guys in the room and asks if they have girlfriends. “Treat them right. Be gentlemen. Protect them.” He grins slyly. “And stay away from the homos.”
The Prettiest Star Page 7