by Jeffery Self
“Christopher asked me to pick him up outside the last conversion therapy retreat his parents sent him to and take him to the train station so he could run away,” I go on. “And I agreed. Because, despite how overdramatic it all seemed, I had seen what his parents were putting him through and I knew that it wasn’t going to get better. Christopher and I once talked about how the idea of the ‘It Gets Better’ campaign didn’t work unless you made it better. If you took control of the ‘get’ part. Which is actually what he decided to do. I picked him up that night and we went to the water tower in my hometown for one last good-bye. And something stupid happened, and he fell off that water tower. He didn’t jump. He slipped and fell and ended his life the night it had finally begun.”
I look up at the projected image of Christopher’s face above me, his beautifully crooked smile and freckled skin in the sunlight. A perfect-looking day at a lake. I wanted to ask him what lake and what had made him look so happy, but I couldn’t.
“When the medics and the cops showed up, and the suicide note had been found, and everything was happening all at once, I just went along with it. Then, when his parents wouldn’t acknowledge me or who he actually was, when they tried to rewrite who their son actually was, I guess I snapped. I stopped listening to the whispers in my gut and let my emotions take over. I decided to make it get better, for him, even if it meant bending the truth.”
I can feel Audrey’s stare. I look over and see she’s arching an eyebrow.
“Okay, lying,” I add. “I tried to right a lie with another lie, and that’s how all of this started. With a lie. And if I’d told the truth, none of this would have happened. But, also, if I told the truth, none of this would have happened. So, I’m left with a personal dilemma: What is the better way of dealing with this tragedy? To let it disappear, to let the boy I knew vanish into the lie of a father who refused to understand his son? Or to lie to myself and all of you, to retool this story into another one with a lesson for an ending? They’re both built on lies, but at least one of them got us here tonight. Not to this award but here, celebrating Christopher’s life, for who he really was. And hopefully, shedding a light on just how dangerous it is not to accept your kids unconditionally.
“There is no other moral of the story here. And please—let me be clear—just because Christopher didn’t kill himself, it doesn’t mean there aren’t still hundreds of gay teenagers every year who commit or attempt suicide. That problem is very real, and very urgent, and needs to be addressed by everyone. By making this lie I didn’t mean to trivialize such an important topic but instead hoped to bring it the attention it deserves. I am not going to tie this speech up into a pretty bow and walk away with a lesson that makes all of us feel better about our own stupid decisions and mistakes. I’m just going to leave you with this: Christopher was a good guy. And he deserved better. And I guess I thought that’s what I was trying to give him. But it all got out of hand and it’s my fault and I’m sorry. But blame me, forget about me, but please … never forget about Christopher and all the other teens who face what he faced.”
There’s some awkward and scattered applause, but I don’t care. I walk offstage right into Audrey’s embrace.
THE HOTEL SUITE THE ORGANIZATION has so sweetly given me is beyond the nicest hotel room I’ve ever seen. It’s so nice that it almost frightens me.
“Sweet mother of Jackie O, this place is stunning,” Audrey says, her jaw dropping so much I’m worried she’ll get a rug burn.
We basically ran away from the party before Harrison or my parents could catch us. I’m sure they’re worried and that my phone is lighting up with multiple where are you? texts but for this moment I don’t care. I’m in a fancy New York City hotel suite with my best friend, and for the first time in weeks, an enormous weight has been lifted off my tired shoulders.
“Why do gay people have such good taste?” Audrey says, admiring a particularly glamorous floor lamp.
“They don’t always,” I tell her.
To which she looks at me and purses her heavily lined lips before spreading them into a smile.
“True. Your room is almost historically ugly.”
“All right,” I say, “let’s not get carried away.”
“It’s like, do you go out of your way to be tacky?” she continues.
“Hilarious!” I deadpan. She laughs.
“Darling! There’s a minibar!” Audrey dances across the room toward the fridge in the kitchenette. “We’re having champagne!”
Being underage aside, we have zero business having champagne.
“Isn’t the whole point of champagne to toast something?” I ask.
Audrey is already digging through the fridge and pulling out the bottle of expensive-looking champagne.
“We are toasting to something. We’re toasting to you!”
After the events of the past few months, this is simply ridiculous.
“Oh, come on,” I tell her, but she won’t hear it.
“You did something brave tonight,” Audrey says, unfolding the aluminum foil wrapped around the cork.
“After months of doing something really, really bad,” I correct her.
The faint sound of New York City traffic can be heard outside the window, reminding me just how far from home I am and what a strange journey I’ve made for myself.
“You did the speech, you apologized, you told the truth. Did you do a very, very bad thing? No. A stupid thing? Yes. An irrational thing? Probably. But you know what else you did? You got people listening and talking about something important. That’s what matters,” Audrey says, placing two champagne flutes on the coffee table in front of us. The skyline of New York City glitters behind the sheer curtain that can be operated by a remote control. “If I’ve learned anything from the hours upon hours I’ve spent watching old movies, it’s that sometimes we mess up, but what matters is you fought. You tried. And in some totally screwed-up way, you even succeeded.”
“I did, didn’t I?” I say, sheepishly ashamed of my own self-praise. “I did it oh so stupidly. But I did something. I didn’t just sit there like I’ve done my entire life. I stood up.”
She pops open the bottle, the sound fierce as a bullet, the foamy booze spilling onto her skirt.
“Thank God this isn’t red,” Audrey says into the wet mark across her vintage skirt before pouring the wine into our two glasses. The carbonated bubbles rise farther and farther to the top before disappearing.
“To making mistakes but doing what you can to fix them,” Audrey says, her glass raised.
“To fighting for what’s right,” I say, raising my glass, joining her. “And to Christopher, and trying to do what I think he’d want.”
I feel my voice choke. It’s been a long day of thinking about Christopher. I’ve thought about him so much it’s almost as if he’s been there the whole time. And by admitting this lie to the world, I am letting go of my own part of him. The part I’ve been holding on to this entire time. Standing there, for the first time, I actually accept just how gone he really is.
“To Christopher,” Audrey toasts, holding my hand. “And to you. For doing what you could to honor his memory.” She arches her eyebrows. “Even though it was freaking insane.”
I slap her knee, wet from the champagne.
“KIDDING!” she shouts. “To you.”
I smile. “To you.”
We clink our glasses and take a long drink, the acidic bubbles burning down my throat.
“You know, by the time we leave here, every gay person in the world might hate me,” I say, weighing the future for the first time.
“They very well might,” Audrey agrees with a shrug, which isn’t exactly what I was aiming for. “But you know what? One day they’re going to realize you did what you thought was best.”
I nod in agreement but am still unconvinced.
“Or they won’t, and you’ll spend the rest of your life as the kid who lied about a suicide,” she adds. She wanders over to t
he balcony doors. “Wait, there’s a balcony? What the hell are we doing inside?” Audrey shouts, unlatching the sliding door and pulling it open, the whirling sounds of New York City pouring in, rattling the calm room awake.
“What floor is this?” I ask. I haven’t been paying attention.
“Twenty, I think?” she says, staring down at the lit-up city below. “Wow. Look at that. THAT is what I call determination.”
She’s staring down a few feet, on the wall beside our balcony. I crane my head to see, unsuccessfully.
“What?”
“That ladybug,” she says. “I mean, the thing must have climbed all the way up here, right?”
I look, and she’s right.
Who doesn’t like a ladybug? Christopher asked, once upon a time. Over frozen yogurt. With the entire world ahead of us. With the promise of making it better for each other. The future. And it’s stupid, and you should absolutely roll your eyes and tweet something snarky about it, because I probably will, but this is the moment I know that I’ll never be able to forgive myself if I don’t apologize to one more person.
REVEREND ANDERSON IS SET TO speak at the annual Christmas Eve concert organized by all the local churches in Winston-Salem. This is, needless to say, not the type of event my mom or I would normally be a part of, but after everything that’s happened in New York I know this will be the best way to speak face-to-face with Christopher’s mom.
We wait outside the church as the crowds gather and file into the city auditorium. I start sweating with nerves underneath my wool cardigan as families full of holiday cheer pass all around us. I’ve never been much of a Christmas person, but the energy and good spirits are palpable and impossible to ignore.
“Are you all right?” Mom asks, seeing my stressed expression. I nod, looking around, hoping to spot Angela without the reverend, who I assume will already be backstage preparing his lecture on how Santa Claus is actually the devil.
“There she is,” Mom says quietly.
Christopher’s mom is standing alone, looking timid, the past few heartbreaking months written across her face and frail body. What, I wonder, is going through her head? As she gets closer I wonder how odd it must be to begin your first Christmas without your only child. Had she already purchased him Christmas presents and hidden them under the bed for December? Will she hang his stocking? Will they put the Christmas ornaments every kid makes at school on their tree?
“Hello,” Mom says, like someone defusing a bomb, as Christopher’s mom passes by us before stopping in her tracks.
Christopher’s mom nods, her mouth too clenched to speak.
“How are you?” I ask, the simplicity of the question seeming so out of place for what we’re feeling.
The crowd around us laughs and gossips and hugs and exudes all the cheerfulness unique to the holidays.
Christopher’s mom exhales a long breath I hadn’t seen her take in, staring down at her black shoes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words popping out. “I’m so sorry.”
Christopher’s mom steps closer to me and looks me directly in the eye. I wonder what she’ll say. Will she slap me? Forgive me? Say something cruel? I deserve any and/or all of it.
But instead she wraps her arms around me, pulling me into her. I am struck, at first, by how she smells a bit like Christopher. The same detergent. Or shampoo. Or genetics. Or maybe a combination of the three.
She stays, holding me, for a while. I look up at my mother and wish Christopher were here to see this strange scene unfolding.
“Thank you for loving my son,” she says into my shoulder, her breath hot and a little stale from nerves and coffee. “Thank you for doing what we couldn’t do.”
She pulls away and looks at me, squeezing my arms, her eyes red and puffy.
“I don’t know why I went along with it all for so long. Why I allowed Jim to treat him so horribly. Why? Why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t I fight for him like you?” With every word she speaks, her voice gets more and more frantic.
“It’s okay,” I say out of habit … but is it? Should someone be forgiven for making their child’s life miserable?
“After I saw that photo of you two, at that dance, I couldn’t take it. He looked so happy. I was his mother and I had never seen him smile like that. Isn’t that awful? I’d never seen him smile so happily.” She shakes her head. “And I said, ‘Jim, what are we doing?’ And he said we’re standing up for God. I said, ‘But what about standing up for our son?’ He didn’t have an answer. All that fighting and never once for our boy.”
“We make mistakes, Angela,” Mom says, stepping forward and taking her hand.
Christopher’s mom nods, with a spirit not just broken but shattered. I am proud of her. Proud of Christopher. And proud of myself. For someone who has never done anything with his life, I feel like I have finally actually done something. Maybe it’s selfish, but this moment alone tells me my lie has all been worth it. I fought for something, for someone I loved, and there aren’t many things one can do that are as important as that. Sometimes the fight becomes so loud, and you forget what you’re fighting for. But like Audrey said, you have to fight fair, or what’s the point of fighting at all? I fought for Christopher in my own screwed-up way. But I did something. For the first time in my life, I didn’t just sit there. And despite breaking the rules, I made my point, and for the first time ever, maybe in my entire lifetime, I feel borderline accomplished.
Staring up at the cold night sky, I say a quiet good-bye to Christopher, and us, and our future, and promise to try to make it get better. The world doesn’t change just by complaining about it online. You have to fight. And I’m going to keep doing so. For him and all the other people out there like him whose voices are sometimes never heard. And I hope you will too.
This book wouldn’t exist without my remarkable and lovely editor, David Levithan. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to my awesome team: Brandi Bowles, Kara Baker, and Cullen Conly. Same goes to my parents, Scott and Nancy. I am really lucky to be surrounded by supportive and innovative queer voices who remind me to keep going, even when the clouds seem too dark, so thank you to all those folks who know who they are. And lastly, to Augie Prew, my boyfriend and best friend and my absolute favorite person to watch TV with.
Jeffery Self is a writer, actor, and vlogger. If his face is familiar, it may be because he’s appeared in numerous films and television shows, including 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, and Search Party. Or you’re one of the millions of people who’ve viewed him on YouTube. Or you read Drag Teen, his first YA novel, which was an ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults recipient.
For more about Jeffery, check him out on Twitter at @JefferySelf and online at jefferyself.tumblr.com and www.youtube.com/user /JefferySelf.
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THIS ISN’T ONE OF THOSE stories about a heartwarming journey toward accepting my cursed homosexual identity. No. First of all, being gay is far from a curse. It’s more like an extra order of fries at Wendy’s because the lady in the window isn’t paying attention while she fills your bag. It’s awesome.
If there’s one thing I’ve struggled to accept about myself, it’s my body. (And that might change, if I stopped eating at Wendy’s so much.) Being gay is, in fact, one of the only things I actually like about myself. I’ve been gay since birth. I’ve never contemplated the alternative. Literally can’t. I have an enormous imagination. But, still, there are limits.
Specifically there are limits if you live in Clearwater, Florida, like I do. Ever been to Clearwater? Spoiler alert: The water isn’t that clear. And the town itself? Even murkier.
When my drag teen story started in earnest, I’d been stuck in Clearwater for all seventeen years of my life. But I had big dreams—to maybe someday become a writer or something. I also liked to sing … but you can’t really say “I dream of growing up to be a singer” without looking like a total lunatic giving a reality show confessional,
despite there being zero cameras in sight.
Honestly, though, my dreams never really went much further than the simple hope of getting out of Florida, away from my family, and to somewhere where I could be myself without a single second thought.
This, of course, would require me to figure out who “myself” actually was.
Nobody in my family had ever left Clearwater; none of them had even gone to college. Both my parents grew up in Florida, and their parents grew up in Florida, and their parents, and so on. My great-great-granddad owned some orange groves and had the choice to sell them either to somebody who wanted to open a drive-in movie theater or to some weird guy named Walt Disney. He went with the first option. Which meant that by the time my dad was born, the only money my family had was what they made at the gas station they ran in the middle of town. My granddad passed away when I was really young and left the business to Dad, so I grew up right there pumping gas and cleaning windshields. Up until I was fifteen and discovered cologne, I smelled like gasoline on a daily basis. Now I smelled like whatever scent was on sale at CVS.
I was 100 percent certain that in order for me to get out of Florida and stay out of Florida, I’d need to go off to college. The only problem was that no one in my family had any intention of helping me do such a thing.
Luckily I had another support system that actually believed in the merits of being supportive: Heather, my best friend since first grade. Unlike me, Heather was the kind of loud and opinionated person who would either end up hosting a daytime talk show or being someone’s wacky aunt. Still, despite her outward personality and parental advantage, Heather was just as much of a mess as me. Which is why our friendship worked so well. We were the kind of outcasts they don’t make teen movies about. Heather was funny, biting, sarcastic, and had a variety of beautiful features, but none of them really went together, and her weight problems were even worse than mine, which meant she turned to her big personality to distract the judgmental eyes of our peers.