After the movie, and much to the dismay of my new family, I returned to my uncle’s house, using the excuse that I didn’t bring clothes to spend the night. They were all disappointed, but James Jr. took it harder than anyone. His tears almost made me change my mind.
When I got back to my uncle’s house, Wayne and I talked all night about my father’s house and my new brothers and sisters. I was tempted to call Mama and tell her about my evening, but I didn’t.
BEFORE THE SUMMER ENDED and I returned to Little Rock for my junior year, I visited my father’s house several times. I never spent the night or felt totally relaxed around him. I loved my brothers and sisters and David and Jean. My father’s wife was easy to talk to and told me it was okay for me not to feel totally comfortable with my father, that our relationship would come with time. I told her that now that my father was no longer a fantasy but human flesh, I was afraid that he might disappoint me or I would disappoint him. Jean gave me solid advice by telling me to just be myself. I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I felt being myself had never been good enough.
On those rare occasions when my father and I talked alone, he tried hard to make up for all the lost years. He shared how when I was a baby my mother would leave me with him for long weekends while she worked. He told me he would make a pallet on the floor and play with me until we both became exhausted. My father told me how much his parents (when they were alive) had spoiled me as well. When he talked, his face would brighten, but I couldn’t relax and return his smiles.
I learned from my father that my mama and I had left Flint when I was about three years old. He told me how sad he was, and I wanted to ask him why he didn’t come and get me. Didn’t he know all the torture I was going through with Ben? Weren’t daddies supposed to protect their children?
My mind was filled with so many questions that I didn’t ask him. Like why didn’t he marry my mother? Why didn’t he come to visit my mother and me in Little Rock? Why had he waited until I was almost an adult to show up?
I thought maybe once I felt more comfortable with him and was able to distinguish my dream father from my real father, I could really talk to him. This was, after all, really the beginning for us, and we had next summer and so many summers to come.
MY QUESTIONS FOR MY FATHER were never answered. I never had the opportunity to ask them. The father I never really knew was killed before I could return to Flint the following summer. The victim of a drunk driver, my father was killed instantly when a car in which he was a passenger collided with a parked eighteen-wheel truck.
It was April and I was in Jacksonville, Arkansas, spending the weekend with my Aunt Gee and her family, who were now living on the Little Rock Air Force Base. My older cousin Kennie and I had gone to see The Odd Couple at the base theater.
It was a dreary Friday, and when we returned my aunt asked me to come into the dining room alone. Her beautiful face was covered with a look I had never seen. I could tell something was wrong. My first thought was that something had happened to my mother, grandmother, or sisters. She told me there had been an accident in Michigan and that my father had been killed instantly. At first I was relieved it was my father and not my mother. Things could be tense at times between my mother and me, but life without my mother was something I couldn’t imagine.
My aunt hugged me, as she often did whenever I saw her, but this time she held me longer, and the hug was tighter than usual, as if she were really trying to assure me that everything would be fine.
When I went into the room where I slept, I was confused about how I was supposed to feel. I really didn’t feel sad, and that bothered me. I had known friends who had lost their fathers, and recalled how sad they’d been. Where were my tears? My stomach was full of nervous energy, and I couldn’t fall asleep. But there were no tears.
In the pitch-dark room my eyes remained open the entire night. I tried to remember what my father looked like, but his face wouldn’t come to mind. I suddenly wished I had a photo of him.
As I lay there in silence, I hoped that I would get some kind of sign from my father or God on how I was supposed to feel, or that I would hear some voice that would tell me it was all right if I didn’t feel like crying. But there was only silence.
MY FATHER’S DEATH WAS the first time Mama acknowledged him. When I returned home from the weekend, she asked me if I wanted to go to the funeral. I didn’t know where she would get the money to fly me to Michigan, because times were still hard for us. I told her no, because I didn’t like funerals and I had never flown on a plane.
She didn’t pressure me to go, nor did she volunteer any more information about my father. I started to call Jean and my brothers and sisters, but I didn’t. Months later when I tried, the phone had been disconnected.
What I did after my father’s death was what I had done before I met him: I depended on my fantasy father, who could be whatever I wanted him to be. My father now could be my best friend. He would be a kind and loving man who would understand that I was different from most boys my age.
My fantasy father would provide me a shoulder to cry on when people disappointed me. My father would assure me that I could do anything I dreamed of, as long as I treated people the way I wanted to be treated. But mostly, my fantasy father would just be proud of me.
I never saw my brothers and sisters again after that summer. I heard from my Uncle Clarence that Jean had died from complications of alcoholism a year after my father had been killed. I wondered if my brothers and sister were sent to live with relatives or if they were shifted around to different foster homes. It was horrible for them to lose both parents, and I was thankful I still had my mother. I have always regretted that our lives never crossed again. Maybe someday they will.
CHAPTER 6
The summer of ’72 was a time when I finally had to acknowledge to myself that my feelings toward men were not like those of most boys my age.
My selection to Arkansas Boys State marked the starting point for my summer of discovery. Boys State was a one-week program sponsored by the American Legion to prepare young men for leadership roles in government. Some of its graduates include former president William Jefferson Clinton and current Arkansas governor Mike Huckbee, and being selected was an honor I had coveted since ninth grade, when I saw a neighbor, Mike Price, who attended Central, wearing the white with navy blue trim Boys State T-shirt. I was impressed.
Despite the sophomore-year election, I still hadn’t given up on a career in politics, and Boys State was a place to test those aspirations. I didn’t run for junior class representative, because Brian had done a good job and seemed more popular than when he had first come to Hall. I decided against challenging him for student body president, because I was contemplating applying to several colleges for early admission after scoring high on the ACT I took during my junior year. My score was so impressive that my counselors wondered why I wasn’t on the honors track at Hall. An after-school job and trying to combat my sexual emotions became much more than I could handle, so school work didn’t always get my full attention.
My urge to leave Little Rock was stronger than ever. I was convinced that the city was too small for my dreams and differences. I looked to Boys State as a chance to receive leadership recognition on a state level. Privately, I was beginning to realize that my interest in politics and the support of others was a search for self-esteem. If I could win an office at Boys State, white people at Hall would view me as an equal, while black students would respect me and look up to me. In my sixteen-year-old mind, respect would become very important if people ever learned of my difference.
Boys State was held at Camp Robinson, a former military base outside of North Little Rock. The size of each school in Arkansas determined how many delegates it sent. Hall had eleven, and I was one of three black students selected, a first at Hall.
All the representatives were assigned to barracks named after different cities and counties in the state. There were so many delegates that
it was rare to be in the same county as someone from your school. The entire week I caught only glimpses of the boys from Hall, the majority of whom were star athletes, and, of course, Brian, who had been elected student body president for the upcoming school year.
The first night, I was elected mayor of my city, which was ironically named Hall County, but I had my eye on the lieutenant governor spot. No black had ever held that position, and it was crazy to think a black could be elected governor of Boys State in 1972, since blacks made up less than 4 percent of the thousand-plus participants. Dexter Reed, someone I knew from Booker Junior High and a star basketball player at Parkview, did run for governor that year and lost badly to Mike Huckbee, the same Huckbee who would become the real governor of Arkansas in 1997.
To win a state office, you had to have the support of your city and the political party to which you were assigned. The parties were not the standard Democrat or Republican but instead were represented by the colors green and gray. I was a member of the Green party.
I was not elected lieutenant governor at Boys State in 1972. In fact, I wasn’t even nominated, but I received something I had dreamed of my whole life: my first best friend.
John Carl Gessler slept in the bunk below me. I don’t recall the first time I saw him or how we became such fast friends. He blended in with all the other white boys in the crowded barracks. I do remember his coming up to me, extending his hand, and saying, “Hi, I’m Carl Gessler and I’m running for the gate, trying to get out of here. Will you vote for me?” He joked about how most every guy he met was running for something, and it didn’t seem to bother anyone but Gessler that we were locked behind Camp Robinson’s massive gate.
Carl had beautiful olive-colored skin, with angular features and full lips, and dark black hair that fell boyishly over his forehead. His smile revealed perfect rows of white teeth. His physique was slight and unremarkable when compared to the hundreds of high school football players around us.
We would talk while marching alongside each other as we traveled to the mess hall and classroom sessions. He was always cracking jokes. Carl had this smile of infinite kindness that I had never known from a white person or any boy my own age.
I became so enamored with Gessler, as I would come to call him, that I gave up my dreams of running for a major office (which would use up a lot of time) so that I could spend all of my free moments with him. Luckily, we both were elected to the office of state senator. The win ensured us a trip to the state capitol on the Friday before the camp ended. In the real Arkansas senate chambers I would nominate my new friend for senate president, an office he won easily.
Looking back, I know my attraction to Gessler was not sexual. But our friendship was special and intense. I had never met anyone who thought so highly of me, and who didn’t mind telling me and showing me with boyish hugs of affection and kind words.
Gessler was from Hot Springs, a city fifty-five miles southwest of Little Rock. The city of about 35,000 was known for its hot mineral baths, the Miss Arkansas pageant, and Oaklawn Racetrack. In the fifties the city was known as a little Las Vegas because of gambling and rumors of the mafia coming in and out of town.
At the end of Boys State, Gessler made me promise I would come and spend the weekend with him. I had been to a white person’s house for the first time during my junior year when I had attended a Key Club meeting at the home of Connie Blass, one of the most popular and wealthy young ladies at Hall. I was nervous, but Connie and her mother both went out of their way to make me feel comfortable.
I told Gessler I would try, but I was on my way to Washington, D.C., for a government program the week after Boys State ended. I was so looking forward to going to D.C. and visiting the campus at Howard University, one of the schools I was considering attending. But my friendship with Gessler made me wish I hadn’t been selected for this exclusive program that was bringing low-income African American students from around the country to work in a government agency. I wanted to spend the summer in Hot Springs. In fact, I wanted to move there.
With Gessler, I shared many long-held secrets except for my sexual interest in men. Gessler was sympathetic when I told him about Ben and losing my father so soon after meeting him. I even shared with him the fact that I hadn’t cried since my real father’s death.
“That’s understandable. You really didn’t know him,” Gessler said to me.
The night before camp ended, while most guys were celebrating their return home, Gessler and I escaped from the crowd. On the concrete steps of an empty barracks we talked about how much we would miss each other and promised to write every week of the summer. On this beautiful moonlit night, Gessler tossed his hair back from his eyes and looked at me and said, “You know what?”
“What?” I responded.
“I just realized something,” Gessler said.
“What’s that?”
“You’re black.”
“Yeah, and you know what else?” I said.
“What?”
“You’re white.”
We both broke out into joyous laughter as we reached for each other and gently butted our heads together, briefly holding tight to each other’s neck. It was also on that night when we discovered we were born the same day, only hours apart. From that moment on, we became known to mutual friends as the salt-and-pepper twins. I left Boys State without the office I thought I needed to feel good about myself, but with a friendship that made me feel even better.
WHEN I THINK BACK ON THAT SUMMER, I remember Stevie Wonder’s beautiful ballad from his album, Music of My Mind. “Super Woman (Where Were You When I Needed You)” expresses the loneliness one feels when he’s lost someone special, not to death, but distance. And even though neither a lover nor a friend had died, I felt lonely for most of the summer and my senior year. Maybe it was the first time I realized that my feelings toward men meant the only love I could expect was the love I already had—from my mother and people required by convention to at least try to love me, like my sisters and other relatives.
I REMEMBER THE NERVOUS ENERGY I felt as I boarded my first flight to Washington, D.C. Actually it was more than being nervous; I was scared, so fearful that the plane would fall out of the sky that I called the program director a couple of days before I was due in Washington to see if they could provide me with a bus ticket. Although she convinced me that the plane would be safe, I still had reservations until my grandma shared a little prayer with me. She told me to say it before I got on the plane. Today I travel constantly, but I don’t get on a plane without her prayer: Dear God, I’m going on a little trip today. Please keep me safe all the way.
I arrived safely in Washington, D.C., and caught a cab to Calhoun Hall at George Washington University, where the participants would be staying for the six-week program. We would work half-days at government agencies and spend the rest of our time attending classes on things like etiquette, and sightseeing in the nation’s capital and surrounding areas.
During the first day of orientation, one of the counselors warned boys in the program to be careful because Washington had a huge gay problem. Gay problem? Curious, I raised my hand, and when the program’s director recognized me, I asked, “What is gay?”
The room roared with laughter. Here I was, this hick from Arkansas who had already been singled out as the one who wanted to ride the Greyhound bus to D.C., asking what gay was. Maybe the students were laughing at my heavy southern accent, which most of the kids from larger urban areas called “country.” The director had a puzzled look on her face as she glanced toward one of the male counselors for help.
A participant from Omaha, Nebraska, a big football player type, stopped his laughter long enough to look at me and say, “Punks, sissies. Boys who want to be girls. I know y’all got them down south.”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. So that’s what I was. Gay. Part of a problem. From that moment on, Washington seemed determined to teach me things about myself.
I noticed how a
t times I became uncomfortable with my own kind. By this I mean black male teenagers from low-income homes. Of course, I gravitated toward the girls in the program. I formed few close friendships with the boys, because I felt I had little in common with them. They teased me about the way I talked, because I had a body that resembled a young girl’s, and because, they said, I dressed like a white boy with my Izod shirt and penny loafers. I was proud of the fact that my after-school jobs allowed me to dress like most of the kids at Hall. The boys seemed to receive great joy inflicting pain in tearing one another down. I learned how racism becomes internalized and self-destructive. For a teenager already lacking self-esteem, the words hurt.
I missed Gessler desperately—so much so that when I didn’t receive a letter from him, I became depressed. I called him and explained how important his letters were. I guess he got the message, because practically every day for the rest of my time in Washington I got a letter from Gessler. So what if it was a copy of his first letter. A rerun wasn’t what I wanted, but it helped ease some of the loneliness I felt. I knew he had to be thinking about me every time he put the letter in the mailbox. I also got letters from some of my classmates at Hall, like Connie Blass and Karen, and Becca, who was attending Central.
Not all my experiences with the guys were bad. When some of them realized I knew a lot about sports, they actually talked to me. I got along great with all the girls in the program, including the director, a beautiful schoolteacher from Detroit who allowed me to come to her apartment in the dorm when I was feeling lonely and needed someone to talk to. I told Ms. Jefferies all about Gessler and what a special friend he was. One day when I was down in the dumps, she looked at me and asked, “You miss that white boy, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted Page 8