by Sarah Moon
The shape of your own life is coming into view. In a very short time, it will begin to emerge. And it’s better than a few palm trees and a guy on a beach. But, you must guard its promise.
The world is larger than it seems. I know you think you can imagine it — from books, TV — the Departures board at Cleveland Hopkins, where you can stare up and contemplate escaping to Chicago or New York. In fact, there are lakes in Switzerland clearer than any picture; mountains and fjords in Norway that will take your breath away; steaming-hot rivers with healing powers in Mexico; and hilltops in France where the sun sets and the moon rises at once. In London, you will wander down Shakespeare’s streets and read books in a library built like an enormous ship. In a few years, some good luck will come your way. All of this will come about, though, because of the way you are going to take hold of things right now, and begin to steer your own passage. Now, it’s only in books that you read about lives others are allowed to live, the places they can go. But soon, stories will weave in and out of life — a life that belongs to you and no one else. Love will come into it too — and it will be true love, even though at the moment, reassurance on this point is thin.
What? Oh, I get it — let’s get going! Let’s be there, already — there and not here. It’s all taking way too long and it’s miserable.
Well, I have to say something about that. As it’s going to be a dilemma for years to come, I’d love to save us both some trouble.
It’s about time. Time is not numbers on a clock, it is not a countdown to Christmas or summer vacation — or the months or years until you’re allowed to drink, drive, or get out. Now, time seems to take forever. Even later, you’re going to be hopping mad and impatient with many, many things. But, actually, time and the way it unfolds has better ideas for your life than you do. Life has its own plan, and time is the language it speaks. Right now it’s a foreign tongue, like French, only there are no classes in it. In your case (it works differently for everyone) time is more your friend than you know. It will show you how to trust your perceptions. The more you tune in to what you sense and feel, and test it over time, the more quickly things will change for the better.
For now, it’s absolutely fine not to like ice-blue eye shadow, the way nail polish suffocates your nails, and the guys at school. Don’t bother about finding a solution to the halter-top crisis. In fact, the gigantic fight about what your body should look like and what it should and shouldn’t do is going to get worked out very soon. Your true instincts — once all of the static and noise is banished — are the best guides.
As far as Mom and Dad go, they are pretty upset right now. They aren’t able to make very good use of their love for you, but it’s not that they don’t love and care for you. They can’t remember what it’s like to be fourteen, and they are in the throes of their own problems. They are going to have to pull themselves through, just as you need to pull yourself through yours. Just love them as much as you can, when you can, and keep focused on what you need to do: work hard, and learn.
The last thing I’d like to tell you, and I know this is hard, is to let your friend go without all the envy, blame, and hurt; without trying to turn back the clock. Let her slip away. She needs to go. She’s going to do a lot of things, and have a lot of things that you’re going to wish you had, for a while. But you are going to find your way, as well. Eventually, one day, she will reappear. She’s going to get in touch when you least expect it, and you’ll talk it over in detail, what happened between the two of you.
These lessons will take a while to sink in. But I thought I’d plant the seed. Meanwhile, no more baby-oil tanning, OK? Use sunscreen. I, your future self, will thank you.
Love,
Carole
Dear G,
Hey, put down the library book. (What is it, anyway? Oh, Grimm’s Fairy Tales? Again? Aren’t you a little old for that?)
Just kidding! It’s me. Yeah, you, but as me. Later. Hailing you from the Great Dim Distance of the Middle Ages — your Middle Ages. (The next century, can you believe it?) I’m writing to tell you one or two things I think you would want to know, back when you are a boy, roughly between the ages of losing your grade school milk money, on the one hand, and finding yourself a glass of very pink wine in a plastic cup with the college seal on it, on the other.
Here’s the thing that will surprise you. (Not may surprise you, but will, because I know that at thirteen and fifteen and seventeen you worry otherwise.)
The things you most enjoy about being a kid do not evaporate as you age.
True, other things happen to you, in time. Other anxieties heave onto the horizon. Other woes squat like a heat inversion over your life and refuse to budge. And other pleasures and satisfactions captivate (far more rewardingly than you can imagine). Certain capacities emerge, like a penchant for hard thinking, a talent that you lust for more than you lust for romance. (And at fifteen, as I remember, mostly you don’t lust for romance, yet. You don’t lurk for it and you hardly even look for it, because you aren’t really sure where to look yet.)
But the private boyishness that fits on you like a second skin — like your first skin — you don’t shed it as you grow up (no matter what today’s mirrors show).
You worry that if you turn out to be, um, gay — or gay-ish — you will have to change. Toughen up. Laugh cynically and blow smoke rings in the face of optimism and good cheer. Laugh with a smoker’s laugh, bitter at life. Don’t deny it, you worry. I know you do.
I remember you so well. I know you don’t practice the words for who you are or how you are, but you suspect you are … um. Different. Sensitif. Alert. Comic. Polite. Drawn to the mystery and rituals of faith and to the consolations of music and to the infinite purities of poetry. You’re adroit and sometimes almost clever. (You don’t yet know you are also brave, but come on: Being able to know all the above about yourself, as a boy, and not collapse or Go Over to the Jock Side — that means you’re brave.)
Also you’re so earnest that it’s embarrassing, even to yourself too, but you have made a promise, almost in infancy it seems, not to lie about yourself. Not to Give In. And saying things directly is important to you — maybe because that Irish-Catholic midcentury culture of your earliest years, however celebratory of storytelling it is, shies away from the immodest discussion of the deeper feelings.
None of these attributes of yours will change. The ninth-grade kid who stops at a curb and squats to root through his knapsack for a journal to write down something — I’m still you. The tenth-grade kid who, in a crowd, finds his Own Kind (and here I don’t mean gay, necessarily) by seeing whose faces light up when the subject of good books arises, and what good books suggest — that’s still you. I’m still you. The high school junior who secretly doesn’t wear undershirts because he likes how the worn teal-blue-with-cranberry-stripe plaid flannel shirt from the Army Navy shop pulls softly against the skin of his back and arms — I’m still you.
And — yes, as it happens — the boy who can be suffused with an interior sting of pleasure at the sight of a sweet male friend, that seltzery surge you thought was perhaps a complaint of the intestines or a deformity of character — that’s still you too. You don’t lose that. You don’t outgrow it. It’s not Just a Phase.
You worry that like those babies in Mary Poppins who in growing up couldn’t talk to the birds anymore, like Wendy in Peter Pan who became too old to fly, you will have to grow too old to be your natural, true self too. Stop being a Lost Boy, settle for being a dwarf pirate, maybe Smee.
But the tender sort of lostness of not yet being sure, a lostness that makes you alert and capable and even skilled at imagining yourself in other people’s skins to see what makes them tick — you get to keep that useful, vital lostness.
Yes, of course, you do grow and mature. You fall in love. You manage to seem even a little dignified. (Gravitas has to stand in for cute, after a while. It’s a bummer.) But the boy in the plaid flannel shirt still lives in your skin when yo
u go to bed and when you get up, when you stand at a podium to make a speech or console your kids or kiss your beloved husband or return to your house in France or sing at church or read poetry with your dearest old friends or autograph your books at a festival.
(Oh, sorry. I wasn’t going to tell you about any of that. YES! You actually get to be PUBLISHED! And you get to be friends with some of your HEROES! Like oh not to name names but like MAURICE SENDAK! I know! I KNOW! SCREAMMM! And that’s just the start of it! But I promised I wouldn’t give away the plot.)
You have a better handle on the program than you think, though you consider yourself … well, not so much faggy, because you don’t really get what that means yet (I won’t be cruel and tell you how long you’ll have to wait). You just think of yourself as sort of … loose. Open. Apprehensive, in the way that means “trying to apprehend, to unriddle some of this.” Somewhat sui generis (“all in your own category”). You use your journal to do it (and I still keep them. I’m on Volume 57). You’re telling me who I’m going to be, and I’m still listening.
Just one thing, though.
Feeling a little different, even unique, you too glibly assume that your task of being true to yourself is unprecedented in human history. It’s easy (and sometimes fun) to wallow in the sadness of being separate because it makes you seem that much more richly individual.
If you can, try not to succumb to the narcissism of loneliness too much. Mind you take care of someone else while you’re taking care of yourself. We all are struggling to release our souls from stone, like those sculptures of Michelangelo you will come to love. Each person doesn’t turn out the same, of course, but we are all equally different. Go back and reread Harriet the Spy and concentrate on how Harriet finally apprehends — unriddles — Sport and Janie at the end. And how that apprehension finishes the job of making her a real writer.
(And YES! I still love Harriet the Spy! I read it EVERY YEAR! SCREAMMM! There’s still NOTHING BETTER! I know, I KNOW!!!)
As ever,
G
Dear Christopher,
People will tell you to take yourself less seriously. You will think they’re trying to dismiss you, that they are no different from the teachers who admonished you for being too sensitive, too eccentric, too unlike the other kids. But that’s not the case. They’re asking you to judge yourself by what you do, and not by what you think and feel. Because what you think and feel is always going to be a little bit off. That’s just who you are. You think every birthmark might be cancerous, you fear every relationship will end with some soap operatic betrayal. Don’t worry so much. Bad things will happen, but not the ones you’ve chosen to worry about in advance.
Your way in the world will be determined by how you respond to what happens to you, not by what happens to you, or your thoughts or feelings about it. This is the measure of a human being, and this will build self-esteem, enough self-esteem to overcome all the moments when jocks coughed the word faggot into their fists as you walked past, just because you loved theater and you turned in English assignments on bright red printer paper.
Good for you for coming out when you did. (Although, to be honest, eighteen doesn’t seem so young anymore.) But I’d like to save you the time you’re going to waste trying to become a more acceptable homosexual, by landing a partner you’re sure will impress your straight friends and family members, by remaking yourself into a fashion plate or a bitter sophisticate or a pretend jock or a carefree party boy. And I wish I could keep you away from the endless party that is gay nightlife, that always moving train of music, dancing, and drugs that will promise you everything and deliver nothing. For some of us, especially someone with your emotional sensitivity, someone who has a dozen critical voices running in his head at all times, this world of instant gratification can become self-destructive to the point of being deadly. I pray that you make it through this part alive, with nothing more terminal than a few scars you learn from. The best way to do this? Treat others as you would like to be treated. Don’t wear your feelings on your sleeve because you want someone to fix them for you. Hold the door open for the lady behind you at Starbucks. Be the polite stranger you would like to run into on the street. The ripple effects of these seemingly mundane actions will be vast, I promise you.
None of this will be easy, admitting that even after coming out, you’re still hamstrung by an old, persistent desire to be accepted by those who don’t (and may not ever) accept you. On some days, self-awareness can feel like guzzling sand. But it only feels that way, and those painful moments are often followed by great freedom. It’s distracting and exhausting, keeping track of all the different masks you use to fit yourself into social situations that don’t nurture who you are. Once you put them aside, you’ll discover you care more about geeky airplane trivia than high fashion, that books make for better companions than pills. You’ll begin to build a life that feeds your soul instead of attacking it. I wish such a life for you. You deserve one. We all do.
I know it’s a lot to keep track of. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to tell you this all in one big burst. And you can’t learn it all at once. (I’m still learning it.) It won’t be what you expect and it may not always be what you want, but it will always be worth living for.
I Love You,
Christopher
Hi,
I know ten-year-olds hate when adults tell them, “It will all be fine!” But I was just looking at that picture of you at your tap-dancing recital and had to say a couple of things. In the picture you’re wearing that cute little short costume. It was red, white, and blue and you’re saluting the camera. Despite the military overtones of the costume I love that photograph of you.
But, I finally figured out why you never liked it — you think you look fat. You are so wrong! I know what it’s like being stuffed into some outfit, and they never make things the right size. But that’s them being wrong, not you.
Don’t let anyone — movie stars, TV, advertisers, whatever — short-circuit your sense of your own beauty! Why is only size 0 a good thing? And, anyway, looking like everybody else makes it impossible to be picked out of a crowd. Who needs that?
Just between us, I’ll tell you a secret … about thirty years from now you’ll marry the girl of your dreams (butch with red hair), honest, but I won’t give away her name. One day she and a friend will have a moment of silence in honor of the beauty of your thighs, I swear!
And about hair. There’s no such thing as good hair or bad hair. There’s only hair and no hair. So let that hang-up go too.
You probably don’t get it yet, but you are a lesbian feminist femme, which is a lot of fun. You’ll be deeply involved with politics and people and makeup. Most of the time you won’t feel lonely like you do now because there’s always a potluck supper, a poetry reading, or a meeting to go to. (Just kidding about the potluck.)
A few more things: Sex is good, which is another thing the faceless mob would like to convince you is not true. You get to decide about your sex life and you can have it any way you like it. You’ll know what I’m talking about later, just remember the idea of Howard Johnson’s 28 flavors when the sex debate comes up.
I know that the Civil Rights Movement has really heightened your awareness of the politics of being who you are, even as a kid. It feels exciting, like the world is on the brink of change. Well, yes and no. There is no brink of change. Change is not a cliff you jump off of or a doorway you pass through. There’s a stream of change and we’re always in it whether we notice or not. Being a lesbian feminist means you’ll get to help steer through and shape the change like those people you see marching on TV on the six o’clock news. So jump in, the water’s tumultuous and always will be.
Finally, you’re a colored, lesbian, feminist writer — sorry, nothing to be done about that. This may be a lot for a ten-year-old to take in, so just breathe. First, the bad news: The mainstream publishing world will always marginalize you because it thinks no one cares what women of color have to s
ay.
Now, the good news: If you care passionately about what we have to say, you’ll love to write no matter how marginalized you might be, and you won’t be alone out there on the margins.
There’s something compelling about that photo; you put on a public smile like the photographer told you to, even though you hated being so exposed. That bravura will serve you well and that picture is actually you saluting yourself.
Maybe you should think about writing vampire stories, they might come back into fashion someday.
Love,
Jewelle
Dear Billy,
A re you twelve? Thirteen? Or younger — eight? Nine? I can’t remember when it was that you first thought dying was the answer. The more I think about it, the more I remember, I think, actually, you were six or seven. Oh, Billy. I wish I were nearby to slap your back and tell you you’re a good kid, that the bus won’t flip like you pray it will, the plane won’t crash, and the bolt of lightning won’t come and deliver you from all those fearful hours. You’ll find other things to deliver you from the feelings you fear, and as much as I wish you wouldn’t, I know you have to. But the most important thing is that you’ll live. So much longer than you ever imagined. Don’t panic about that part; it turns out okay. I know you won’t believe this, but it does all turn out okay. Better than okay. I won’t spoil anything — you’ll have to go through it all, every last minute of it, because as a friend of yours will tell you gently one particularly difficult day — we can only learn at the speed of pain. What I can say is that there will be some magnificent moments and there will also be some that don’t seem survivable. But don’t spend so much time thinking about the future. It’s going to happen no matter how much you worry about it. And it won’t be anything like you imagine. It will be harder, easier, more bewildering, and a million times more joyful than you expect. And, eventually, beyond your wildest dreams.