Like Me (29 page)

My dad handed her one end of a long, leather dog leash and told her to put it around her waist. The other end was tied to the bumper of the car. Jeny stared at them and didn’t move. There was strength in her stillness, and I hoped that my folks were smart enough or kind enough to see it this time and back off. Unfortunately, they were not and they did not.

My mom said to my dad, “Get the strap.”

My dad had a razor strap (a wide, thin strip of leather) in his shop that he kept for sharpening knives and lawn mower blades, but as helpful as that leather was for keeping implements in top form, it was more commonly used in our house as a tool for keeping kids in line.

My dad had the strap, and I was praying that Jeny would take off before he could get her, but she didn’t. He smacked her hard across the back of her thighs. My mom got in the car, started the engine, and revved it up.

“Now put it on!” they screamed over six cylinders.

Jeny put the leash around her waist and fastened the brass
hardware like she was told to do. I remember seeing the leash around her center and how it cinched her in the middle of that white tank top with the little blue anchors on it. Now she
was
crying, and her face was as red as her cotton gym shorts, still soaked with pond water.

“We will not have a fat kid!”

“You’re gonna run if we have to drag you.”

My dad gave Jeny a couple more warning wallops on her legs to ensure that she was going to go along with her new workout regimen.

And so on the first day of summer vacation, my mom drove her Mercury Monarch out of our driveway, down the country road to the railroad tracks and back, with her oldest daughter, Jennifer, tied to the bumper of the car with a dog leash.

I was scared Jeny wouldn’t be able to keep up and that she’d trip and fall down, but I was also afraid that Darren, the boy she’d quietly liked for the past year, would be driving that same country road at just the wrong time and see her like that.

I felt thankful that it wasn’t me and also guilty that it wasn’t. Events like this didn’t occur with great frequency (about once a year), but knowing that something bad was coming and not knowing when it would arrive was nerve-racking.

The worst of what was happening to Jeny was not being whipped with a strap or dragged with a rope but rather the slow attempted murder of her spirit.

W
hen my thoughts would become too scary or dark, a beautiful image would appear as a counterattack. The images didn’t linger. They were stealthy—as suddenly as they appeared, they faded away.

I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to take my own life. Not only was I scared to do it, but there was some part of me urging me to fight. I knew the old me, the strong me, was somewhere, trying to get through.

I found it difficult to make it through even an hour without breaking down, though. I was exhausted from crying and I was exhausted from trying not to cry. When I finally got out of bed, days after holding a gun in my mouth, I didn’t make it much farther than the carpeted floor by my bed. I’d been saying prayers to God since the day it all began, but on this day my approach to prayer was different. I actually knelt by my bed, put my elbows up on the edge of the mattress, clasped my hands together, and rested my forehead on my hands. I prayed a different kind of prayer. I began to speak to God out loud. As I forced words to come out of my mouth, I realized that my voice was scratchy and weak. I knew God would hear me even if I didn’t speak the words, but I wanted God to know that I was committed to my plea.

I did not pray that Kristin would call or that she and I would
work it out. I didn’t ask Him to stop the crying or the pain for good. I simply asked for a moment’s peace. I asked God to please grant me a second or a minute or whatever amount of time He saw fit of peace. “Peace.” I’d heard that word used my entire life in so many contexts—war and peace, a peaceful meadow, peace be with you—but I never really knew what it meant until that moment.

In God’s name, I prayed. Still on my knees, with fingers interwoven, I sat back on my heels and exhaled.

I felt relief. I didn’t have to think about it or analyze whether or not I was getting the peace that I had asked for; there was no confusion. I experienced a complete sense of peace from the inside out and realized that I’d just been given a gift. I cried, but not one tear was shed from despair. The tears came from gratitude. When I spoke two more words aloud, I noticed that the gravel in my voice was gone and it took almost no effort to project those words. The sound of the words was even musical; like two different notes, I said, “Thank you.”

I
had to do something because “Thank you” was not enough. I wanted to do something different to show God that I knew I’d just been given a massive dose of grace and mercy. I should not, I could not, I would not squander this gift, I thought.

I got up off my bedroom floor and went down to the second floor of the house. I made a stop in the laundry room and put two sweatshirts on top of the long-underwear thermal top and long-sleeved shirt that I was already wearing. I had a pair of flannel pajama bottoms on and a pair of long-underwear thermal bottoms underneath those. Then I made my way down to the first floor, kicked off my slippers, and put on my tennis shoes over the two pair of stretched-out socks that I’d had on for days.

I keep a tube of lip balm in the entryway of the house, and before I headed out the door, I reached for it. It sat on the mantel
and as I grabbed it, I noticed the gun. I took the lid off of the Burt’s Bees Lip Balm and smeared it on my lips, all the while staring at the gun. It looked different to me in the daylight. Smaller, less significant, almost like a toy. I did not touch it. I stepped out onto the front porch of my East Nashville house and noticed that the sky was spitting a little snow.

My plan had been to bundle up and go for a walk. A little snow wouldn’t hurt me. I glanced to my left and saw my old bicycle sitting there on the porch. It was an inexpensive bike that I’d bought years ago at Target for $79. A few miles from my house was Shelby Park, which had a beautiful paved greenway that ran along the Cumberland River, but I hadn’t ridden since the fall. I pushed on the tires of my bike and was surprised that they still had air in them. I figured I couldn’t ride the three miles to the park, but I could at least go around the block a few times. I was skinny, tired, and weak, but I got on. Some people build a statue as a monument to mark a significant occasion or event. Some people write a song and dedicate it to the one they want to honor. Braving the cold on my bike would be my gesture to let God know that I was thankful for my moment of peace.

After the first few blocks, I felt a burn in my chest. The air was so cold that it stung every inch of tissue it touched, starting on the inside of my nose, to the back of my throat, through my windpipe, then finally exploding in the center of my lungs. It hurt, but it was a good hurt. The muscles in my legs were quivering, not because of the cold but due to lack of use—I’d been bed-bound for a month.

I remember every revolution of my pedals from that ride. I thought of nothing but being on that bike, and that my only duty in life left me focused on turning those wheels.

As it turned out, I didn’t ride around the block. I rode to that park, over the entire eight miles of greenway, and back home. I rode thirteen miles in flannel pajama bottoms in the snow. I was building a statue—a monument of thanks, paying honor to God
for the gift He’d just given me. “Keep pedaling, keep pushing, keep fighting for a breath,” I said to myself. “Because you are thankful.”

My beloved Scott CR 1 Road Bike. After I took that ride in the snow in my pajamas on my old bike, I continued to ride nearly every day. I rode alone for a long time—nearly a year. Then my rides slowly became something I shared with others. Now it’s all about happiness, fun, health, and friends. 2008
. (Jan Volz)

I got home, took a hot bath, and put on a fresh set of pajamas. I heated up a can of tomato soup in the microwave and forced it down. As I headed up to the third floor for the evening, I picked up the gun, carried it upstairs, and put it back where I’d found it a few days before.

I
have been thinking a lot lately about people in my life. The reality is that I let many of them stay or treat me poorly because I was afraid of them.

I’d confided in a couple of people that I was gay, but there were other people in my life whom I hadn’t told, though they were close to me and knew many specific details about me. Perhaps their knowledge of my life led them to make assumptions. I couldn’t control what they thought they’d figured out. I certainly could have made the choice not to have friends, but that’s not how I wanted to live.

I wanted friendships in my life, and if some of those people knew that I shared a house with a woman and that we spent our holidays and vacations together, that was just how it had to be. Now, as I recall those years, I realize that I allowed myself to be held hostage by a couple of those relationships.

I had an employee for a few years with whom I’d had a business relationship since the mid-1990s. She’d been close enough to me since that time to know certain personal details of my life, but I didn’t confide in her that I was gay until late 2005. My doing so was really a matter of necessity; otherwise, I would have left it as it had been for a decade.

I’d wanted to end our working relationship for a couple of
years because I needed someone with more experience in her position. Before she worked for me, she worked for a large corporation, and I knew that she used the company credit cards for personal expenses, often taking her friends and family out for meals. After she began working for me, there were times that I thought the expense reports she turned in were questionable. I suspected that I (my corporation) was buying meals here and there for her and maybe for her family too. I wanted to tell her that whether or not what she was doing was technically stealing or illegal, it was sneaky and unethical. I didn’t because I was afraid that she’d use my secret against me. I felt trapped.

There was an incident one summer where she went too far. She was adept at keeping certain things from me when dealing with my business associates. There is a particular advantage to being selective about the truth, and she put together a scenario that I wouldn’t have endorsed and she knew it. I suspect she thought that I’d never delve into all of the details of it, but I did. This time, though, the one who was slighted in funds was not my company or her former company—it was a nonprofit organization with which I work on occasion.

I carefully gathered the facts, then had a meeting with her and asked her to explain it to me. I laid out the information I had and gave her a chance to correct me if I was wrong. She claimed she’d just been kidding with the nonprofit when she told them they’d have to satisfy certain needs of hers in order for the tour to happen. They met her needs, however, and she was fully aware of it every step of the way. She hadn’t been kidding with them—she just didn’t think that I’d find out.

Thousands of dollars were spent on satisfying her “needs,” which she was allegedly joking about. She would even go on to accept cash from the organization. If she’d been sneaky with my business, I would be the one to lose. I allowed that because I was afraid to have her hurt me, but I wasn’t going to allow a charity to be forced to spend more than it needed to.

Days after our meeting, she e-mailed me and said she thought she had explained what had happened and asked me why I couldn’t just let it go. She claimed that the organization wouldn’t even notice the financial hit—a weak rationalization. I told her I’d made up my mind: she had been unethical.

A few days later, she e-mailed and said that she was resigning.

I knew that by confronting her I’d made myself vulnerable, and I worried about whom she would gossip to.

Another person who was close to me for a long time—and is no longer in my life—started out as an intern in an office that handled my career. I eventually hired Brandon to work exclusively for me. After a few years, he moved on to another position with a new company and I was happy for him. We remained good friends, and he became friends with the other people who were close to me. We spent holidays together, leaned on each other during hard times, and shared in each other’s lives.

Although Brandon was no longer my employee, he was still involved in some of my work-related functions like Reading, Writing & Rhythm, a nonprofit organization that I founded. Brandon’s involvement was an integral part of its success.

Brandon would make up fantastic stories—some might call them lies. All of our friends would laugh at his tales, and on occasion we’d ask one another if a particular story was true. They rarely were—he wasn’t careful about keeping his details straight, telling each of us slightly different versions. The few instances when we all took the time to compare details left us laughing. “That’s just Brandon,” we would say.