by David Crabb
On graduation day, a hundred of us stood in the town square wearing our mustard-yellow gowns. We were arranged alphabetically before walking onstage, and I could barely see the members of the Freedom Club through the mass of seniors. After walking across the stage, I opened my rolled-up “degree” to see that it was, as we’d been told, just a blank piece of paper. I laughed to myself at how appropriate this seemed, but I wasn’t sure why.
Afterward, Molly bounced toward me through the crowd and threw her arms around my neck. She took my hand in hers and with a giant, sunny smile, asked, “Are you excited?!”
Just then I noticed that ridiculous pecan on its pedestal behind her. Much of its outer layer was gone now. It looked like a giant ball of chalk that someone had clumsily poured chocolate malt over. It was defeated and broken, a piece of sculptural trash that no one wanted. I felt bad for the big pecan, the way I’d felt bad for Charlie Brown’s sad Christmas tree as a kid. I wondered why saving it wasn’t a priority for anyone.
“David,” Molly said, rubbing my hands in hers, “I’m so glad you came here and we got to know each other.”
“Yeah. Me too,” I said as we hugged.
Over her shoulder I noticed something. There was a paper sign blowing in the breeze beneath Seguin’s famous giant pecan. It had been bright yellow once, but now it was a pale tan from exposure to sunlight and moisture. I squinted to make out the bleeding text under the thin laminate cover.
Restoration Coming Summer of 1993!
A week later, a new nut was unveiled. It was a ten-foot oblong balloon painted to look like a pecan. It wasn’t exactly a restoration. I had no earthly idea who’d thought this would solve the whole shooting problem, but it felt like good news. It sat in the scorching sun behind a chain-link fence in an ugly part of town.
“It’s not exactly charming, is it?” said my mother, making a face at it and wiping her brow with a tissue. “Good Lord, son. Let’s get your mother a cold Coke!”
When we got home from seeing the pecan, my acceptance letter to Southwest Texas State University was in the mail. It was a school about twenty minutes down the road in a big college town called San Marcos. My mother jumped around the kitchen like a maniac, calling all her friends while digging through her Tupperware crafting tub for a frame to mount the letter in. I felt strangely suspicious of it, thinking, Their automated mailing system must be on the fritz. This must be a mistake. What is wrong with this institution that they would have me attend it?
I shared these concerns with my mom as she hung laundry outside.
“David. Don’t question it! Just start class!”
“But I don’t even know what I want to study.”
“Honey, just soak up the experience! You’ll love college. There will be so many boys there. And a lot of them will be like you . . . homosexuals!”
“God, Mom. Please don’t—”
“No, David. Look at your mother. You’ve got to learn to own that word! Just think,” she said, holding a wet towel over her heart as tears welled in her eyes, “you can bring home a boyfriend to meet your mother!”
“But it’s not the end of the world if I don’t meet anyone.”
“Hush with that! You’re going to meet someone special! Maybe someone with an ‘athletic build.’ You like ‘jocks,’ right, honey? You call them ‘jocks’?”
“Why are we talking about this?” I said, trying to shield myself behind a hanging sheet.
“Open and honest,” she sighed, her warning cue for oversharing, “I didn’t hang up the phone the other day when you were on with Molly talking about your ‘type.’”
“Mom!”
“I just want you to be happy,” she said, taking my hand. “You can bring home anyone, and if you love him, so will we. He could be black or Asian or even . . . handicapped!” she shouted with glee. “Your stepfather will build a ramp into this house if that’s what it takes for you to have the love you deserve!” She dropped her laundry basket and threw her arms around my neck. “And he can be in family portraits with us! We’ll have professional photos done at Montgomery Ward by someone in this town who isn’t a bigot!” she railed. “Fight the power, honey! You’re here! You’re queer! I’m USED to it!”
The PFLAG brochures arrived a few days later.
My dad and I were still dancing around what he called my issue, but he was proud of me for getting into college. I think he was also simply happy I was alive. During a brief senior-year spell of family therapy with a woman named Barbara Battle, I had admitted almost every infraction: the lies, the sneaking around, and the drug use. Spending an hour in a small room with an older woman while his queer son explained how LSD made him feel was a lot for my dad. He’d leave the sessions pale and tired. Afterward, at dinner, he’d be listless, staring blankly at his plate of enchiladas. Three weeks into our sessions I went on a very long tangent, explaining the time I wore a corset and heels to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
“How did that make you feel?” asked Barbara.
“Alive!” I responded. “And everyone told me I looked great!”
That was our last session. Thank God I never brought up the pickles.
At least he stopped asking me in his clinical way about being a “homosexual.” As many hurdles as we’d jumped, it was still awkward when anything remotely gay came up in his presence. When we were on our way to buy textbooks a week before my freshman year of college started, a story came on the car radio about how Greg Louganis, the famous Olympic diver, had just come out of the closet. The word gay kept repeating through the speakers.
“Gay—blah blah blah—homosexual tendencies—blah blah blah—queer identity—blah blah blah . . . sex with other men . . .”
It was like that horrible moment when you’re watching a movie with your family and you realize too late that it’s full of explicit language and graphic sex. The next thing you know, you’re in full rigor mortis beside your ninety-eight-year-old aunt Ruby, thinking, Dear God. When will this rape scene in real time be OVER?
At the end of the segment they played a clip of Greg Louganis being interviewed about his sexuality and HIV-positive status. At first I was embarrassed for him, saying these things out loud. The feelings he was expressing belonged hidden in notebooks and behind the locked doors of therapists’ offices, not on National Public Radio. Shouldn’t he be ashamed? And shouldn’t I be ashamed? As he spoke, his voice began to crack and wane. In the silences between his words I could hear the sound of a man trying to compose himself, trying his best to focus on the message at hand and not his feelings. As the segment came to an end, he talked about the rejection he felt from his friends and family, especially his father. His emotions overcame him, and the silence between his words was suddenly filled with quiet weeping.
“What an asshole,” I said, not meaning to express what I felt out loud, something I usually excelled at in my father’s presence.
It was quiet for a moment. And then my dad smiled at me.
“I don’t understand why parents would love their kids less because of that,” he said, his lip trembling a bit. “Seems to me like it’s the reason you have to love ’em even more.”
As we turned into the bookstore parking lot, I wished I hadn’t made fatherhood so hard for my dad. I wished I hadn’t tried to keep so many parts of myself a secret from him. And I wished I hadn’t thrown out that greeting card.
That night, I walked into a house party in Seguin and immediately heard him.
“DUDE!”
Max stood at the opposite side of the apartment through a crowd of forty people. He rushed toward me and picked me up off the ground, hugging me for so long I had to say, “Max, you’re hurting me.”
“David! Oh man, I’ve missed you,” he said, flashing his dimples and rubbing the top of my head. “My little Sequined Matador!”
His hair had grown in, and he was a bit stockier. He was still wearing his big black boots, but the tiny suspenders were gone. He introduced me to a petite, demure girl w
ith pink bangs and oxblood boots.
“Max has told me so much about you,” she said, shaking my hand with the strength of a light breeze.
“This is Lori,” he beamed, handing me a rum and Coke. “She’s my girlfriend.”
Max grabbed a six-pack of beer, and the three of us sat on the grass in the front yard. Max told me how his mom was doing and what his senior year had been like. He caught me up on his sisters and told me about the part-time job he’d gotten at a video store.
“How shitty has Seguin been?” he asked.
“Actually, it turned out okay,” I said, passing him another beer. “Once I found the right people it was nice, actually.”
“The right people make everything okay,” said Lori, grabbing Max’s hand and looking at him intently, clearly in love, like she couldn’t see past him. For a moment I thought I saw him blush, which I’d never seen before.
“How’s New Braunfels?” I asked him.
“It’s kind of lame there now. But I’m starting college in San Marcos soon.”
“Wait,” I said, “I’m starting college there too!”
“Oh, dude! We can party together!” yelled Max, toasting me with his can of Foster’s and downing it in one giant slurp.
We caught up on music we loved, ranted about social injustices, laughed about our weird-ass parents, and complained about politicians and small towns and our minimum-wage jobs. We talked until 3 a.m. about whether our classes were near each other’s and when I’d be able to visit his mom and how he wanted me to crash over at his place soon.
“It’s gonna be awesome,” Max said as he hugged me good night. I held on to him a little too long, remembering how large he was and how his body always felt warmer than anyone else’s, like it was on high heat. I’d forgotten the way he smelled and hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. As we let go of each other, I remembered something.
“Max! Remind me I still have your shirt.”
“My shirt?”
“The one you gave me when I puked all over myself the first night we met.”
“My big leprechaun shirt?” he exclaimed, grabbing me by the shoulders and grinning. “Awww, man! I missed that shirt.” He pulled me in and joyfully crushed me in a too-tight bear hug. “And I missed you too.”
“Come on, drunky,” said Sarah, smiling as she pulled him toward her car. “He doesn’t know his own strength,” she whispered, winking at me as she led him away.
I started my car and pulled away a few minutes later. Twenty feet down the street, Max jumped in the middle of the road, flagging me down to stop. Sarah stood by her parked car, rolling her eyes and mouthing, “Sorry, David.”
Max gestured for me to roll down the window and leaned inside the car.
“Hey,” he mumbled, his drunken gaze slipping from my eyes to my shoulder as he spoke, “listen to this!”
He handed me a Memorex cassette. The case was covered in both of our handwriting.
“This one is my favorite. I still listen to it all the time.”
“Thanks, Max. You still have these?”
“You got my shirt in the breakup. And I got the tapes,” he said, resting his chin on the window ledge of the door. “Hey, man. Um, I just need to say something.”
“Max, you don’t have to say—”
“Shhh,” he said, reaching down with his fumbling hand to hush my mouth but accidentally covering my entire face. “No, it’s just . . . I’m sorry.”
“I am too, Max.”
“You?” he asked. “Why are you sorry?”
A car behind us honked as Sarah skipped into the road to grab Max.
“Baby, let’s get you out of the road and home. You’re drunk.”
“Okay, uh . . .” The rest of his sentence faded away as they walked back to Sarah’s car.
As she stopped him from tripping over the curb and helped him into her car, I popped the tape into the jam box in the passenger seat. He waved good-bye with a huge grin as I pulled away, our favorite song thundering through my cheap, tinny speakers.
She tuned the radio ’til music was around us
A rushing calm around my heart I knew had found us
Some of the friends I’d made in Seguin were nice enough to invite me to hang out after prom. I was dateless and didn’t actually attend. But they picked me up in a limo afterward. Because it was a special occasion I blew out my hair and put on a paisley tie. This is one of those moments during which I was overtaken by the feeling that I was supposed to be somewhere else, in spite of how much fun I was having. I think my hands nervously picking at my jeans and the far-off gaze out the limousine window say it all.
My Seguin friends called themselves the Freedom Club. Here we are with the Freedom Van.
CHAPTER 29
Here’s Where the Story Ends
I was supposed to be in my art history class. I loved that class. I liked sitting in the stadium seats of that cold, dark room, looking at slides of famous works of art. It was almost Thanksgiving and we’d moved into pop art, my favorite period, full of romanticized representations of Coke bottles, comic-book panels, and vacuum cleaners, ordinary stuff that someone turned into “art” by placing it on a pedestal or under a glass box. I wanted to be there that day, shivering in the hyperactive air-conditioning, looking at a stack of soup cans that transcended themselves because someone loved them so much. I was supposed to be in that classroom, not standing in a black suit in the rain.
The minister finished his sermon and a few members of the family approached the casket, placing their hands on it or whispering to it, as if the dead person inside could hear them. I hadn’t expected so many people to be there, so many kids I hadn’t seen in ages, wearing makeshift, not-quite-matching black suits and baby-doll dresses carefully tailored into tasteful funeral attire. Nose rings had been taken out, and Mohawks were combed over and gelled flat for the ceremony. Some of the kids I’d remembered didn’t look like kids anymore. They’d gotten chubby, or cut their long hair, or had bags under their eyes, like they’d aged ten years in a little over one. A couple of girls I’d remembered in dog collars and fishnet gloves were now wearing sensible, knee-length skirts, sobbing over the tiny babies they held in their arms.
By the time the casket was lowered into the ground, we were all soaking wet, two hundred people beneath a slate-gray sky, looking like drowned rats. The ones who’d retained their goth/punk aesthetic post–high school looked especially pathetic, streaks of black tears and dripping hair dye in the rain, like those clammy kids in the crosswalk I’d seen years earlier. We paced through the mud toward the tent to pay our respects and greet the family. I got in line and made my way forward, wanting to be out of the rain and under the tent but not looking forward to hugging Ruth, not like this. As I got closer to her I started to think about all the things I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her son, how he saved me from being completely alone, how the times she’d let me into her home were so special to me. She was my summer mom.
I nodded to Max’s sisters, whose faces looked gray and hard, like stones. Ruth looked exhausted too, but she was managing to put on a smile as each kid broke into tears and hugged her. She comforted each one of them, stuck in the role of mom even at her own son’s funeral.
I told myself I wasn’t going to break down or freak out. I was going to be strong and mature. I was going to say something substantial and honest that was meaningful and true. As I faced her and smiled, she tilted her head to the side, her bottom lip quivering a bit. I threw my arms around her and we held each other for a moment.
“Hi, David,” she whispered, rubbing my back.
“Hi, Ruth. I’m sorry, I . . .” I stammered, suddenly at a loss for words. I always managed to say so much in the moments when I didn’t mean to, but now I was coming up dry when it mattered.
“You, uh . . .” I stuttered, “you smell so good.”
That was what I said to her before she started to cry on my shoulder.
You smel
l good.
We held each other for another moment, before the outside world around us interrupted our embrace. A line of a hundred people was waiting behind me. Ruth had to do this another hundred times, hopefully with people who could muster something more meaningful than complimenting her perfume.
“Thank you,” she said, taking my hands.
“Sorry,” I stammered. “I’m sorry, Ruth. I’m sorry . . .”
“I know,” she said, smiling and patting my cheek.
I walked through the mud back to my car, where I sat in the driver’s seat and watched people leave the cemetery. Sean noticed me from the driver’s seat of his brown truck and nodded solemnly, a gesture that, coming from him, felt like a tearful embrace. An hour later everyone had left and a small crew of men arrived to shovel dirt into the hole on top of Max’s coffin. By the time they finished and left with the tent, it was a full-on rainstorm outside. I got out of my car and walked back across the field to Max’s grave, which now looked like a work site. Orange tape and wooden pegs in the ground surrounded the area. A few two-by-two-foot flats of soiled grass sat stacked in a small wheelbarrow beside two shovels that stuck up from the ground. Max was down there, somewhere underneath a small hill of mud. Alone.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and finally had the opportunity to put my feelings into words.
Fifteen minutes later I was driving down I-35, not knowing where to go. I drove around New Braunfels, past the places Max and had I spent time together, all of which felt empty and transformed without him. I drove to Seguin past the Primitive Baptist cemetery, thinking of all the stupid poetry I’d written there. I stared past the flower box into the window of our little country house, at my mother washing dishes, and knew I couldn’t go inside. So I drove to San Antonio.
I pulled up at Greg’s house and walked halfway up the sidewalk before I noticed the silence. There were no twinkling chimes to welcome me up to the front door. Behind me I noticed a FOR SALE sign sticking out of the grass. I walked behind the house to the office window, which had always had a broken lock. Inside the house was nothing. The electricity had been turned off. It felt like a tomb. I illuminated my way through with a Bic lighter. Absentmindedly I called Greg’s name, as if he would pop out from the kitchen in a Morrissey shirt with a tray of defrosted egg-roll bites. I walked down the corridor to his room, which, of course, was empty. I stayed in the room and smoked for a while, lying in different spots on the floor where I approximated that my twin bed had been.