by Chely Wright
When we got back to the house, Mom would have us pry ourselves out of our wet, frozen clothes and she’d serve us each a big bowl of her chili or her ham ’n beans. I don’t recall my folks ever saying a special “thank you” to us kids for our hard work, but there was a general sense of “way to go, guys … you did good” in the air. I lived for that feeling.
My parents taught us that if we were willing to work, we could make it anywhere.
I had a paper route in first grade, and six days a week I threw the Lawrence Daily Journal World. In addition to our paying jobs, we had household and farm chores for which we were fully responsible. We didn’t have a nice home, but it was spotless. We didn’t have flowers in the yard, but the grass was always freshly cut. We didn’t have nice clothes, but they were clean.
When I was six, I asked my mom if I could be baptized. “I think you might be too young, Squirrelly,” said my mom. She sat down at the kitchen table that my dad had made with leftover lumber, lit up a Viceroy, and told me to sit. She asked me to explain to her what it would mean to be baptized. We talked about as long as that cigarette lasted, then she smashed it out in a Kansas City Chiefs ashtray. She stood up, and as she headed to the utility room in the back of the house she said, “Well, you better go see Warren and see what he says.”
Warren Skiles was the preacher of the Wellsville Community Baptist Church, a congregation we stuck with for a few years. He lived three houses down with his wife, Connie. I took off running and found him in his side yard, tending to his honeybees. He could see I meant business, and he carefully latched the little white wooden box where he kept his hive, taking me up to his front porch to talk.
I spoke in a great breathless wave: “I want to be baptized but Mom said I might not be old enough because she says that you have to understand what it means to invite Jesus into your heart and that He will be your Lord and Savior, but I DO know what it means and even though I’m only six, I really DO think that I’m ready to be baptized but Mom says that I have to talk to you first because you’re the one who decides. What do you think, Warren?” Warren responded by taking me in his arms, laughing, and shouting “Hallelujah.” Then we sat a while on his front porch, sipping Connie’s iced tea, and talked about God and the world.
I was baptized the next Sunday.
My mother talked a lot about faith, and I really believe that she was genuine in hers. She read the Bible somewhat regularly and taught me to turn to the Bible for answers about any questions that I might have in life. She wasn’t one to quote scripture, but she seemed to have a clear understanding of the stories in the Bible and what they meant to her. I have always considered her to be what I call a blue-collar Christian. She’d told me that God was so powerful and great that if I ever did have a question or problem for God to help me with, I could turn to the Bible even if I didn’t know where to look. She showed me how to hold the Bible, say a prayer for enlightenment, and then randomly open the book and start to read. She told me that there was no way to go wrong, that God would always reveal the answer or some guidance in the pages. At times, I felt that this ritual helped me find answers and direction that I needed, but it could’ve been that I felt better simply because I allowed myself to be submissive to God. It’s not a big issue to me to know the root of why my relationship with God works …it just does. And for that I’m thankful.
I felt torn between the teachings of the handful of churches that I’d attended in my short life. Each church said things a little differently, but they all seemed to be reading from the same Bible. I wondered how that could be. This made me contemplate that one could interpret the exact same scripture different ways. I made note that even in my small town, people believed in different things—so much so that they went to a specific church. If they didn’t, and if God’s word was so clear and so easily understood, they’d all go to the same church. If little Wellsville, Kansas, could have so much religious diversity and conflict, the rest of the world was probably at religious odds too.
Me at age six. 1976.
Jeny and I had been regularly attending the Wellsville Assembly of God Church when we were around the ages of twelve and eleven, respectively. My mom had informed us months before that our family was no longer members of whatever church it was that we’d attended for a year or so. So Jeny and I sought out a new church. We didn’t have a long list of criteria that determined which one to try. We had just two, actually. It needed to be a church that we hadn’t already belonged to, of course, and the other criterion was that Jeny and I would have to be able to make the journey on our bikes. I knew the preacher and his wife of the Assembly of God church because I was their papergirl, and they invited me to come to see their church.
My sister and I were instantly welcomed by the congregation, and since the town was so small, we already knew the faces and most of the names of the people who worshiped there. I remember one Sunday service at that church in particular, when a few people started shouting out words that I didn’t understand. I looked at Jeny to see if she was as confused as I was, and she was. An elder of the congregation came to the pew where I was seated and grabbed my hand. He pulled me out of the row and led me into the aisle. I resisted and tried to sit back down. He said a few things really loudly to me while putting his palm on the very top of my head. I recall that he pushed down so hard on my head that he pressed one of my hair barrettes into my scalp. He then said, in plain English words that I understood, that I should go ahead and do it. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I just shrugged my shoulders. He told me that I too had the gift of speaking in tongues and that I should go ahead and speak it …to show everyone the “blessed gift that God has given you.” I said nothing. I didn’t know what to do, and I certainly didn’t have any special words to say. I didn’t feel disappointed that God didn’t love me enough to give me “the gift,” but I did feel scared that the elder who had grabbed my hand had some kind of spooky power. That frightened me. I wondered if he had another special gift that could tell him that I got crushes on girls instead of boys. Jeny and I never returned to that church.
I have always felt lucky that my list of reasons for hiding my homosexuality most of my life didn’t include “God disapproves of gays.” Not one church or religion to which I was exposed had anything other than condemnation for homosexuality, but somehow I didn’t fully buy it. I did fear that God would disapprove of my feelings of homosexuality during my childhood, but fear of God never lingered in my heart for long. I felt that God’s love for me was powerful and unshakable. I know what I’ve heard religious people say about the Bible—that it specifically says homosexuality is wrong. I have read those parts of the Bible too, and by and large, the Bible is tricky to read, difficult to comprehend, and impossible to apply to modern times. I can tell you this much: even if the Bible were to read, “Chely Wright… if you’re reading this, be clear that it is a sin for you to love another female and for you to desire to partner with her for life,” I’d find it unsettling, but I would still know that this is who I am, exactly how God created me and that His love for me is infinite.
I did feel love in the years to come, from my family and from the close knit small town that nurtured my success as a singer. But most of the time I felt fear. I was afraid that people would discover I was different, so I made it my mission to be good at everything else. I was scared that I was a failure already, because I was gay. But I did everything I could to make up for that fundamental flaw.
When I was nine years old, on New Year’s Eve, the Old House burned to the ground. My whole family stood shivering in the twelve-degree weather in the dead of night, watching the volunteer fire department struggle to contain the blaze. They turned every hose they had on that white clapboard structure, but every time water hit wood, it bounced right off in little beads of ice. We never learned what caused the inferno that consumed the Old House, but all these years later I still dream of 710 South Main.
At the time, I had a good idea of what caused the fi
re; I thought it was because of me. The ninth year of my life was scary for me, and the last day of that year was a fitting punctuation mark. After the Old House was ashes, life got much harder.
Learning to Hide
When people ask me when I knew I was attracted to women, I can only say that on some level I’ve always known. Before my first crush, I sensed I was different. But when I felt that attraction, I knew the difference was my homosexuality. Everything started to add up and it didn’t look good.
A couple of weeks before the beginning of my third-grade year, Jeny and I sprinted down to the school, as we did every day in the final days of summer vacation that led up to the first day of classes. There were usually three teachers for each grade, and our mission was to find out which teacher we’d be assigned to. When the school administration had made its decisions, a copy of names and teachers would be taped on the inside of a window just off of the elementary school office.
My name was underneath a teacher’s name that I didn’t recognize. Miss Smilie. I thought it was interesting that she was not a Mrs. or even a Ms., but a Miss. This whole Miss business confused me.
Miss Smilie was newly out of college and enthusiastic about being our teacher. She had the prettiest, whitest teeth I’d ever seen and her skin was golden brown. She didn’t wear makeup, and she didn’t need any. She wore bib overalls to school every day and I sensed that it became a problem with Mr. Peterson, our grade school principal. After months and months of the overalls, she stopped wearing them and started coming to class in a skirt. I asked her as we were walking in from recess one day why she didn’t wear her overalls anymore, and she said she was told that teachers don’t wear bib overalls to school and she needed to find something different to wear.
Miss Smilie’s third-grade class. I’m front-row center. 1979.
My brother, sister, and I loved school. Even if we were feeling sick, we would go to class. I’d arrive early when I could, just so I didn’t miss anything. That year, I began dreading Fridays. I didn’t like being away from school for the weekend. I realized that it wasn’t so much the other students, the recess, the tasty lunch served every day, or the gratification of the learning process that I was longing for on the weekends. I was missing my teacher.
I would wonder throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday what she might be doing. I wondered who her friends were. I didn’t think of her in terms of kissing and other kinds of physical contact, I just thought of her as someone that I wanted to be near. I believe that heterosexual third graders who might have a crush on someone of the opposite sex probably felt the same way I did. I doubt that a straight third-grade girl has fantasies about having sexual contact with a boy, but rather imagines simply being near him and getting his affection.
I paid close attention to the other little girls in my class, trying to determine if they felt like I did about Miss Smilie. I hoped that I would identify it in other girls. I prayed that it was perfectly normal to fall for my teacher, who was very much a woman. I saw no such signs in my female classmates. My stomach would feel uneasy and sick every time I thought about it. I knew that I was in a bad situation, and I was painfully aware that I had no one to talk to and nowhere to turn.
I don’t even think I’d heard the word “homosexual” before or understood what it meant, but I’d certainly heard jokes that adults and high school kids would tell that included the words “faggot,” “fairy,” “dyke,” and “queer” in them. When I heard people talking about faggots, dykes, fairies, and queers, I wondered what one looked like. We didn’t have them in Wellsville, as far as I knew. I’d also heard some things in church that led me to know that certain words and activities were negative. I had heard the words “whore,” “criminal,” “drunk,” “homosexual,” “pervert,” “liar,” and “non-believer” all strung together so many times that I understood that those were the building blocks of sin and evildoing.
Friday nights were a pretty big deal when I was young because my parents allowed us to stay up as late as we wanted. After the ten o’clock news there was a program called Friday Fright Night, and we could usually count on two very scary movies to be aired back to back. Most nights, we’d fall asleep shortly after the second one began, but we loved our ceremony of popcorn, Pepsi, and scary movies.
One particular Friday night would cause me years of worry and unbelievable fear. My dad happened to decide to stay up with us to watch the double feature. Chris got tired during the first one and went to bed. Jeny fell asleep on the floor wrapped snugly in a quilt that my great-grandmother had sewn, probably years before any of us were born. That left my dad and me to watch the second movie alone. I’m sure I was tired, but I was bound and determined to show my dad how long I could stay awake.
The movie began to play. We watched the entire thing from start to finish, and I was petrified. Even though I needed to go to the bathroom halfway through the movie, I stayed snuggled on the couch next to my dad. The scenes of that movie, the story, and the sounds that came out of our console television on that night would stay with me and haunt me for days, weeks, months, and years to come.
I was convinced, after seeing it, that I was in danger of being possessed by the devil. The main character of the movie was an all-American little girl around my age whose body was inexplicably overtaken by Satan himself. I questioned my mom about it in the following days, and once she got over the complete shock that my father had allowed her youngest child at nine years old to watch The Exorcist, she explained her position on the devil and how unlikely it was that I’d be possessed by an evil spirit. She tried to convince me that I was a good kid, even if I sometimes got in trouble. She told me I was a normal kid like everyone else and that the devil didn’t go after normal kids to do his dirty work. Well, that’s all she needed to say for me to know that I was in deep spiritual trouble. I was not normal. I was the opposite of normal. Everything around me, whether it was overt language, subtle suggestion, or non-spoken actions, told me that there was something unacceptable about me.
I continued to love Miss Smilie, even though I didn’t want to. I put myself through little emotional and behavioral obstacle courses, willing myself to resist the urge to like her. I’d try to go the whole day in class without looking at her. My feelings for her were sinful, I believed, so I did my best to avoid my feelings. My stomach continued to hurt, and I was so hopeful after third grade passed that being away from Miss Smilie would fix me.
The next year I developed a new crush. My mom’s cousin Sam Finnell and his family lived in Leavenworth, Kansas, just a couple of hours by car from Wellsville. Sam and MaryAnn Finnell had three daughters. Marcia was two years older than my brother, Tracey was my sister’s age, and Sammie Sue just a few months younger than me. Mom’s cousin Sam was an amazing piano player and I idolized him for that. Sam and his family were good, kind, and funny people. We played music, played cards, battled at board games, went camping with them and their beloved dachshund, and shared a million laughs. They were the fun relatives that we didn’t get to see that often, but when we did, we had a ball.
Since Sammie Sue and I were close in age, I usually spent my time with her when our families got together. She was obsessed with Rod Stewart and was convinced that she was his long-lost love child. She had her hair cut like his and dressed like him.
I loved playing with Sammie Sue, but I found myself inventing reasons to go upstairs where Marcia’s room was to have the chance to walk past her door and try to peek in. She was nice to me, and the Finnell sisters actually got along well with one another. So when I’d suggest to Sammie Sue or Tracey and Jeny that we go up to Marcia’s room and ask her if she wanted to play Monopoly, they were always agreeable. Most of the time Marcia would stop what she was doing, which was usually talking on the phone to her boyfriend, and play with us. All of Sam and Mary-Ann’s daughters were beautiful, and Marcia was no exception.
A short time after one of our weekend visits up to the Finnells’ home, my mom received a piece of ma
il from MaryAnn. I brought it in from the mailbox that sat atop a post poked in the ground at the end of our gravel driveway and announced excitedly to my mom that we got something from the Finnells. She opened it, read the little handwritten note, and pulled three wallet-sized school pictures of the Finnell girls from the white envelope. My mom got up from the kitchen table, walked over to the refrigerator, and secured each little photo to the freezer door with three separate magnets, each slightly resembling a different type of colorful fruit. I walked over and studied the pictures. Sammie Sue had her blond hair spiked way up high just like her fantasy father, Rod Stewart. Tracey looked pretty, and it occurred to me then how much I thought she and my sister looked alike. Then I took a long look at Marcia’s picture. She was the prettiest of them all, I thought. I felt blood rushing to my cheeks and to my arms and legs. My tummy did a flip with a double twist. That was the first time that my body felt any kind of sexual excitement that I could remember.
For a few days, that fridge was like a drug. I couldn’t resist the force that made me want to go near it. I’d find a reason to go into the kitchen and I’d casually walk by her picture, most of the time not daring to stop and stare, but just slowing my steps ever so slightly. I’d pause just enough to focus on her, tipping my chin to the floor to throw off anyone who might see me but cutting my eyes upward to look at beautiful Marcia Finnell. After a few days of doing this, I was so scared of getting caught that I decided it was time to move to Plan B: I stole the picture.
In a purposeful and planned tactical maneuver, I walked right by our almond-colored Kenmore and swiped the two-by-three-inch photo. I went directly to the bathroom in the hallway. It was the only safe place to be, because I could lock the door once I got in there. I locked the door, slid down the paneled wall onto the floor, and looked at that picture for what seemed to be an eternity. It was time for me to hide Marcia’s picture in that bathroom. Underneath the sink was a cabinet where my mom would put Comet, Pine-Sol, a box of hair curlers, and stacks of toilet paper. Inside that cabinet, on the underneath side of the countertop, there were a couple of support boards that held the sink up flush with the counter. That’s where I hid the picture. No one would ever reach up there for any reason. I gave the picture one more look, kissed it, and put it in its safe hiding place. Marcia Finnell was my crush in fourth grade and as much as I loved her, I was learning to hate myself.