A Body of Work

by David Hallberg

“I know,” he’d say, “I couldn’t concentrate all day.”

  Our friendship, we agreed, was the very best thing in our lives.

  On weekends we’d spend the entire night on the phone, from six p.m. until six a.m. He would play me dozens of songs and I would reciprocate. One of us would doze off holding the receiver and the other would wake him. Together we watched the sun rise, me at one end of Phoenix, Jack at the other.

  I finally mustered the courage to tell him that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I waited on the phone, holding my breath until he broke the silence and said the same thing.

  * * *

  AS MOST COUPLES did in middle school, we selected “our” song, making our connection official. The song was “Sometimes It Snows in April” by Prince, a ballad about someone whose best friend dies and is looking back on their intensely unique connection.

  We would play that song for each other, think about the lyrics, and cry.

  “You can never leave me,” I’d say.

  “I’ll never leave you and you’ll never leave me,” he’d reply.

  * * *

  WE FINALLY MADE a date for Jack to sleep over at my house. I was consumed with anticipation. I obsessed over what we could possibly do in those many private hours together. Would we go to sleep early or talk until the sun came up? Would we listen to music? Would we kiss? When he arrived I met him and his mother at the front door. After niceties were exchanged between our parents, we escaped into my bedroom.

  With the door locked behind us we stood face-to-face, uncertain of what to say or do next. Spontaneously, like two magnets, we wrapped our arms around each other and held on tightly for what seemed like minutes. It felt like an electrical surge to have his arms around me.

  “I couldn’t wait to see you,” I whispered.

  “I know, me too,” Jack said.

  We stayed up all night in a blissful stupor, listening to music, looking at magazines, talking, and cuddling.

  * * *

  FALLING FOR EACH other was never a choice. It felt so natural and unforced. Through this first sleepover and others to follow, we discovered what intimacy is like with someone you care about so deeply. I had fallen in love with Jack and he had fallen in love with me. We became obsessed with one another. Dance was our shared passion. But our mutual love—pure and honest—was the warmest sensation yet. Throughout the summer, we would fall asleep together in my twin bed, clinging to each other. My parents set up a second bed for him to sleep in, but we never used it. In the mornings, my mom would come in and say goodbye before she left for work and see us sleeping side by side in my tiny bed. She never said anything about it, so I could only guess what she was thinking. I didn’t care what it looked like to my parents, or to my brother, who caught us, on several occasions, holding hands or hugging. Someday, I assumed, I would have to let them know the truth. But, dreading their reaction, it was a lot easier to opt for silence instead.

  CHAPTER 5

  At school, the bullying continued unabated and unmonitored by the teachers. These days, I hear of antibullying campaigns at schools and of kids being suspended for taunting others. I wish that had been the case when I was struggling to fit in. Back then, bullying was not an issue to be taken seriously. The prevailing attitude was “kids will be kids.”

  Eventually the abuse I absorbed caused me to crack. The issue that was the ultimate breaking point wasn’t a kid tormenting me. I accidentally missed a rehearsal at my jazz studio. There was a policy that if you failed to show up for a rehearsal you were cut from the number for the upcoming competition. I wasn’t there, so I was out. I called the studio in a panic. Rehearsal had started. One missed rehearsal signified that the one place I knew I belonged had ousted me. In rehearsal I was happy, confident, assured. I couldn’t lose that.

  Suddenly all the pain I’d held in after being called a faggot for so long bubbled up and flooded out of me. The facade I had built up no longer worked. The armor no longer shielded me. I couldn’t allow myself to be pushed anymore. Or called a girl. Or have perfume poured on me. Or be singled out and mocked for just being myself. I sobbed uncontrollably. I called my mom in a panic. She was on her way home from work. I tried to tell her what had happened but was barely able to speak or breathe. She tried desperately to calm me down, but I was hysterical. It all came out in heaving sobs.

  I had never told my parents that I was the punching bag at school. I had kept it all a secret, knowing they would make a bigger deal out of it than I could stomach. I certainly didn’t want to be sent to see another psychiatrist. But now the words came pouring from me. I told my mom that I had no friends. That I was taunted daily. I was constantly called a girl and a faggot and everyone made me the butt of their jokes. I told her how miserable and depressed I was. There was silence on the other end as she listened in shock.

  When she finally arrived home I had stopped crying, embarrassed by my uncontrolled outburst. But the words had been spoken, the pain exposed. She drove me to rehearsal an hour late. My teacher graciously decided not to take me out of the piece, but I knew what was waiting for me when I returned home. My parents wanted to hear all about the bullying, the depression. How long had it been going on? Why hadn’t I said anything?

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING my parents insisted on meeting with my principal to ask him what the school’s responsibility was in regard to constant bullying. The principal’s attitude was that neither he nor the teachers could control every word students said. My parents looked at him, aghast and confused at this admission of impotence.

  They stormed out. That afternoon they assured me that I would not have to spend another year at Desert Shadows Middle School.

  The looming question was where to go. Surely every other school would be the same. The same jocks and cool crowd. The same girl friends of mine that would make the guys jealous. Where could I possibly seek refuge and start anew?

  * * *

  JACK HAD HEARD that the city’s first art school was opening the following year in downtown Phoenix. As soon as he told me the name—Arizona School for the Arts—I knew it was the answer for a lanky suburban boy obsessed with dancing.

  So I finished off my seventh-grade year in hell, surviving the name-calling until the bitter end. Then I emerged, making my pilgrimage to my new school, where I joined two hundred students in grades five through twelve from all around Phoenix. Dancers, singers, actors, musicians. And Jack.

  The entire student body at ASA immediately bonded over our distaste for “normal schools.” We dismissed things as “so public school”: sports teams, varsity jackets, proms, cliques, bullying. And while we all commiserated over our inability to fit in elsewhere, ASA offered us a haven where we could be ourselves. Jack and I could walk around the school holding hands. Kids could play the piano and sing during lunch break. No form of expression was taboo. No one made fun of anyone else for their taste in clothes, artistic inclination, or sexual orientation. I had found my daytime nirvana, to complement my equally gratifying evening utopia. At last my two worlds were one.

  * * *

  ON WEEKENDS, I would, at times, accompany my mom to the market. After one uneventful Sunday trip, just after I turned fifteen, we headed back home with a car full of groceries. It was a day like all the others until I called out, “Mom, you just missed the turn to our street!”

  “I know, honey,” she said dryly. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  What had I done? When had I lied? I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong. At least nothing from my own perspective.

  She slowed the car and pulled over. We were on a quiet street in the suburban complex we lived in, where every house looked identical. No cars or people in sight. We were all alone.

  She lowered the radio to a hum and turned to me.

  “Honey, I want you to know that anything you say, your father and I will support. Okay?”

  “Yes,” I answered with trepidation.

  “We want to
know if you have had any experiences with other boys.”

  I was frozen. Floored. Before this moment I had pictured how my parents might react to me telling them that I was gay. I imagined my father actually taking it quite well. But a vision burned in my mind of my mom not accepting it, and kicking me out of the house. I had heard of scenarios like this, of other gay boys living through that sort of nightmare. My overwhelming fear of their reaction meant I’d never even considered telling them the truth.

  “What do you mean ‘experiences’?” I asked as I sheepishly gazed at her from the passenger seat.

  “Well . . . have you had any experiences with other boys in a sexual way?”

  This was my fork in the road. I saw it clearly in front of me. I could continue to live my reality in secret and not tell her. Just say no. It would then be a question of her believing me or not.

  Or I could tell her exactly what had been happening for two years with Jack. The fact that I had fallen in love for the first time. A pure, innocent, honest love. And how that love happened to be shared mutually. I guessed she must have had more than an inkling.

  So I took the riskier path of the two and responded with one word.

  “Yes.”

  Her manner remained cool and calm. I searched deep in her eyes for any shred of disapproval, but she seemed unfazed.

  “Okay,” she said. “Since when?”

  “Since I met Jack.”

  “Well, honey, we both want you to know we will always support you and love you. No matter what happens. But most importantly,” she went on, “we want you to be safe.”

  I vaguely knew what she was talking about. In the wake of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, as I was discovering my sexuality in the 1990s, we were taught in school about the dangers of unprotected sex. It had been branded in my mind. With complete fear of the consequences.

  “We can’t see our son die of a disease he could have potentially prevented.”

  That one sentence hit the perfect chord for a fifteen-year-old. I imagined my parents reacting to my death: my mother sobbing at the kitchen table, my dad hovering over her, both of them bowed by the weight of a sorrow they would carry the rest of their lives. So I understood that, in their desire to protect me, they were also protecting themselves.

  She went on, “If you ever want to talk to me or to Dad about anything, just know that you can.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Okay,” I finally said.

  I remember looking around at the houses that replicated ours, hearing the low hum of a pop song from the radio in the awkward silence. Our conversation had lasted about thirty seconds yet changed everything. I didn’t have to sit them down and “confess,” as I had feared I would. I didn’t have to see my mom cry or contend with the drama I had assumed would ensue if I ever came out to them. It had happened in the simplest, easiest way: my mother asked me and I said yes.

  Then she shifted the car into drive and we rode home in silence, the not-so-secret “secret” revealed and a huge weight removed and set aside.

  * * *

  I DON’T KNOW what gave me the courage that day to be honest with my mom. I could have more easily denied my relationship with Jack despite the fact that I had given her plenty of reasons to assume its existence. But it was the right time. As the weeks marched on and we settled into a newfound truth, I saw a book on my parents’ bedside table titled Now That You Know: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding Their Gay and Lesbian Children. I didn’t believe that raising a gay child should be any different from parenting a son who is straight. Still, it was comforting to have this further proof that both my mother’s and father’s inclination was to be understanding rather than judgmental.

  Getting used to the truth turned out to be a little more difficult for my older brother. We never got along, back then, at the best of times. He was the physically stronger of us two, stockier in build and more masculine. We had completely different tastes in everything. He listened to Metallica. I listened to Prince. He played drums. I danced. That, mixed with adolescent angst, didn’t produce a harmonious brotherly love. When Jack and I started to discover our mutual affection, Brian was at times in his bedroom, next to mine. Sometimes Jack and I forgot to lock my bedroom door and Brian would walk in on us. He saw us lying together, holding each other, and I tried to pass it off as “we just fell asleep like that.” Brian didn’t believe a word I said. At first, Jack and I were panicked about being caught but after a few times we didn’t really care. And once it was all out in the open, Brian settled into the idea that his younger brother was gay. In time, he not only accepted it; he made it clear that he loved me for who I was.

  * * *

  IF MY SEXUALITY ever discomfited my parents, they kept it to themselves. In time, they became fervent supporters of the gay community, donating time and money to local and national equality groups. When people ask how I came out to my parents and what their reaction was, I’m proud to be able to say that they wholeheartedly accepted me from the beginning.

  To this day I jokingly say that, thanks to their continued advocacy in support of LGBTQ rights, at times they’re gayer than I am.

  * * *

  AT HOME AND at school I had, at last, stepped fully and permanently into my own skin. I was regarded with respect and given encouragement to be the dancer I dreamed of being, and above all, to be my honest self. Though I finally met friends who understood and accepted me, Jack remained my closest ally, at least for a time. Ultimately, we drifted apart, and went from being lovers to mere acquaintances. I mourned the fact that the most solid relationship in my life was gone. We could never again experience what we knew as kids. It was hard to accept that the love we shared, for all its power, was a first love but not the last.

  Still, Jack remained paramount in my adolescent development. Our relationship established my sense of how anyone should love and be loved.

  CHAPTER 6

  At Arizona School for the Arts, the entire student body had four hours of academics every morning. After lunch we flocked to our elected arts programs; the dancers were bused to the School of Ballet Arizona. With no proper dance studios on school grounds, we made our way to the best ballet school in the state.

  The dance program offered just one option: we would all take ballet from the school’s director, Kee Juan Han. I didn’t like the prospect of taking only ballet. Though I had been enchanted by the performances of The Nutcracker that I watched from backstage, I had decided that I was not interested in studying ballet. Too strict. Too formal. I was fully immersed in the jazz and competition worlds and couldn’t imagine having to wear black tights and a tight white T-shirt, the prescribed uniform in the ballet studio. On the daily bus to the ballet school, my stress level would build. As the girls put the last touches on their buns and gabbed away, I would look out the window, immersed in anxiety about the class to come. I was in over my head. I barely knew the steps let alone the combinations. On top of that, I had never been more petrified of a teacher than I was of Mr. Han.

  Kee Juan Han was a young-looking man in his midthirties who easily commanded respect from his students. As the school’s director he was clearly our superior, and we always called him Mr. Han. Never by his first name. This set the tone immediately. He was preternaturally focused and demanded the same from us. He’d had a very strict upbringing in Singapore, sharing a small one-bedroom apartment with his parents and six siblings. He left home at a young age to study on a much-needed scholarship at the Australian Ballet School. He joined the Sydney Dance Company and later danced with Indianapolis Ballet Theatre and Boston Ballet. He learned early on what it means to work hard, make the most of what you have, and not make excuses for yourself. He brought that intense mind-set into the studio, where, at times, it was too much for certain kids who wanted to take ballet “because it’s pretty.” Mr. Han had no patience for that mentality.

  He would hush the studio with his arrival, call roll, and gaze intently around the quiet room. We all stood at attention by t
he barres lining the perimeter of the studio, in our uniforms, waiting. He would tell one student that his uniform wasn’t quite right, ask another if she was ready to work harder today than she had the day before. He was aware of everything and we got away with nothing.

  At the beginning, my relationship with Mr. Han was distant. He didn’t attempt to stop me from competing in jazz competitions or push me into ballet. But I did my best in class and observed him for a while. Clad in crisp white socks and ballet shoes, he would demonstrate each step to show us exactly what he wanted. He moved with precision and fluidity, a lasting effect of his distinguished career as a dancer. He gave every step and position absolute importance. Each lengthening of the foot, every stretch of the leg was done meticulously.

  “Peel your toes off the floor before the tendu.”

  “Use the head in complete unison with your arms.”

  His constant corrections and dry sense of humor would hit their mark when he threw them your way. He would walk up to someone and poke the soft spot under their butt, asking, “What flavor Jell-O are you today? Raspberry?”

  Or when a boy dripped sweat profusely into little puddles on the floor, Mr. Han would look at him and say, “Oh . . . are you singing in the rain?”

  Although he was strict and demanding, he took every student at face value. He never discriminated based on body type or whether someone was a serious ballet student or not. He worked everyone with the same intensity. There were no favorites; approval was conferred on those who were the most focused and worked hardest.

  Mr. Han made it clear that he would not tolerate anyone who thought they were better than others or had an air that demanded premature respect. The only respect given in the classroom was to be given to the teacher and the work.

  All of his students regarded him with a mixture of fear and reverence that propelled us to push harder in each class. On those occasions when we weren’t working hard enough to pick up the combinations or were blankly staring at him when he was demonstrating a step, he would simply walk out. As he was leaving the studio, he would say, “Come to me when you are focused and can remember what I am showing you. When you are ready to work.”