Debate

I thought I was done talking about what happened in that nightclub when I told the story of the candle that's been burning in my heart for three decades. I flung those words out onto a page practically before the last strains of the requiem died, trying to give shape to my grief so that it could be dealt with. I almost succeeded.

I didn't see my son the day we gathered to voice the names of the dead. It's not an unusual occurrence; although he lives with me, he is an adult - a busy one at that. What was unusual was that he missed a moment of remembrance, especially one for LGBTQ+ people. When I saw him finally on Tuesday, I asked him where he'd been.

"Dad's house," he said.

"I saw the list. I couldn't read all the names."

My son came out to me as bisexual four years ago, on a bench by the sea. It was the middle of the night, very dark. He was nervous, shaking, couldn't meet my eyes. I asked him why he was scared, and he said, "I dunno. I just feel like it's something I'm not to supposed to be." I reminded him of the time when he was in third grade and he came home crying because another boy called him gay. That day, I had looked him in the eye and told him that the boy meant it as an insult, but it wasn't, because there was nothing insulting about who or how anyone loves. No one could dictate that, I had said, no one can tell you how you can love. The night my son came out, I was angry at the world that made him afraid to tell his mom that he had feelings he hadn't been taught to expect. I was angry at the world that made him think I would be angry at him for loving. No one can tell you who to love, I repeated. Not even me.

The day after the vigil, my son came to me at work and asked me to hold him. There had been fireworks in the night, he said, and he panicked, thinking they were gunshots. He was shaking, breathing too hard, holding too tight. The mother in me automatically soothed him as if he were small: "You're okay, little man. I've got you. You're safe."

He held me even closer and whispered, "Are we?"

He didn't mean me and him. 

He meant his sweet friend who is "them/him" to me and him and on social media, but who is "her" to their mom and their dad and their baby sister and to the university that made them sign a piece of paper promising not to be gay. He meant his musical theater teacher, who is wise and calm and the strongest man I've ever met - he can hold another full grown adult with one hand - and who just married the love of his life two summers ago. He meant his boss and her wife and their Latinx son. He meant the gawky blond 10 year old who planted himself next to his formless 5 year old self so they could share the illustrated story of the Nutcracker. He meant himself.

No, they are not safe. They are not safe. My queer son is not safe.

I keep seeing people saying that gun control is not the answer, and I keep wondering if they are being asked the same question. Yeah, there are a lot of ways that someone determined to hurt my kid could do it. But could they do it to a roomful of people like my son in seven minutes? What about a roomful of people like your child? - that happened, too, except most of the 24 people killed in minutes in Newtown couldn't even have hefted the gun the killer obtained legally, because they were actual children. Somewhere along the way, someone decided that the right to own a machine that was designed with the express purpose of ending another human's life took priority over HUMAN LIVES.

I am angry at the world that has told me to fear for my son's life. I am angry that it could be so easy for someone to take it. I am far, far angrier at those who refuse to make it just a little bit harder.

Vigil

The first time I went to a gay bar I was seven years old. My mother frantically wrapped me in a red plaid Pendleton blanket and firmly pushed down all the locks. I laid with my head propped on the armrest on the door in the tangerine sodium light, listening to the waves of passing cars until she returned, my Uncle Calvin tucked into the shelter of her embrace.

I don't remember his injuries; my mind has created scrapes and bruises on his freckled cheekbones and smooth forehead because at some point the story of that night became family history. I seem to recall a ripped shirt, icepacks on his kidneys and ribs, but I don't know if these are things I saw or things I heard in whispers later on. What I do remember is this: my mother's best friend - so dear I called him my uncle - begged her to marry him, begged to father my sisters and I, swore he'd be true and faithful because he had no choice. He was very young, maybe twenty two. He was gay. He'd been beaten, and was afraid. And my mother and my sisters and I were the only family he felt he had.

I loved him with a fierceness that is unique to children. Every moment I was with him, I loved him more than anyone else in the world. Now, here, half a lifetime later, I have so little left of him - his freckles, yes, and his quick smile but not the color of his eyes or the timbre of his voice. What I have left of him is the sure knowledge that I loved him, and was desperately upset with my mom when she turned down his proposal. I wanted to hold him and keep him and love him forever.

I got about three years.

I don't remember the last time I saw my Uncle Calvin, but I do remember the time before that, or maybe a couple times removed. He had met someone and fallen in love, and although he was stationed hours away from where we were, he and Rolf made the trip so Calvin could introduce him to my mother. Calvin was ebullient and talkative, Rolf quiet and observant behind his glasses. Rolf was thin and wore a turtleneck, even though the day was not particularly cool. They and my mother shared a bottle of the sweet white wine she was so fond of then and in passing Calvin mentioned that Rolf was having a hard time recovering from a winter's illness - bronchitis or the flu, something. The record player went on, and Calvin teased my mother about her country music. I think we must have had dinner a time or two after that - there were avocados - but that day is the last day I remember the feeling of loving him so well settling in my body like impending sleep. I was ten years old.

If you are my age or a little older, if you grew up with an Auntie Jeannie and an Auntie Ingrid who made their own pickles and didn't want kids, if you took a trip to see the quilt - you know the quilt, they could wrap the Washington Monument in it like it was a red plaid blanket - then you've been holding vigil for a long time. This afternoon I knelt, leaned my head against another and wrapped my hands around his while we struggled to light a candle while the wind whipped. All of our candles snuffed out, even after we pressed shoulder to shoulder in an effort to shield their tiny flames, but we knew that the light was there. I have to believe that it is. I am still holding vigil.