Like Me (5 page)

The playground for the Wellsville Elementary School was directly behind our classroom, and that year a huge new wooden jungle gym was being built right before our eyes. It was to be a couple of stories high, consisting of walkways, ropes, poles, chains, ladders, swings, and tunnels. The building materials were piled up and we played on them. There were huge railroad
ties scattered about—the large pieces of wood treated with creosote that support the steel rails of a railroad track. Our class decided to build something of our own until the construction workers needed them for their project. We would use the two-hundred-pound Lincoln Logs to build a cabin.

The stacking part was fun but dangerous—one of us could easily have lost a finger or some toes. Again, we did this
on
the playground with teachers watching us. I have no idea why we were allowed to do it, but we were.

After about a week, on the day we were to finish the project, there was excitement in the air. We rushed to our work site to slide the last of the ties onto what we called the roof, creating a secure box that could capably house a lion or a bear. The spaces between the ties were only about five or six inches apart, so once the last roof tie was set on, there would be no way out.

I was on the crew to carry the last huge piece of wood to be slid on the top. Josh Miller and I were lifting that final beam. He had come to our school that year and did not fit in, and I suspect he was happy to be included in the project. We were putting on the last piece and the gaggle of girls observing shouted out, “Chely, Josh, get inside of it, and that way you can lift from underneath.” We hopped inside. The girls up on the roof slid it shut. We were trapped. They taunted me from above, then began spitting on us, leaving it on my face, my hands and arms, and in my hair.

The bell rang and everyone took off running to the classroom door. Not only was I angry about being trapped, the taunting, and the spit, but there was no way I was going to be late getting in that line. Without Josh’s assistance, I moved a railroad tie enough to squeeze myself up and out of my cage. My classroom was in an annex just off of the main school building, so it didn’t take long for me to run and get in the line. The girls gathered near the end of the line and laughed at me. I heard Jane say,
“Don’t ignore me. I know you can hear me. Turn around when I’m talking to you. Chely is scared. You’re scared!!” I was covered in spit and dirt and was not about to turn around and let them see me cry. Then Jane instructed one of the others to make me turn around.

I continued to focus on the door handle. Then someone shoved me hard from behind. With a movement similar to whiplash, I crashed forward into the door handle, hit my chin and lip, and slid down the wall. I didn’t stay down long. I turned around, charged the entire group of girls without a single concern of who my victim would be. I beat one girl and left marks and blood on another.

M
y mother and Jane’s mother were called to the school for a meeting with Mr. Peterson. Predictably, Jane’s entire demeanor changed and she became submissive and polite to the adults. “Oh, I’m not sure
what
happened,” she said. “I didn’t see everything. I just saw Chely hitting those girls. I think it was a misunderstanding, but I’m not sure.” Jane’s mother offered my mother her opinion: I was too sensitive, and my mother needed to teach her kids to have a thicker skin. She said, “Chely, what you need to do when someone points out one of your flaws is to pick out a flaw that they have and say that back to them. If they have a big nose, just say, ‘Well, your nose is too big,’ and they’ll stop picking on you. Just point out what’s wrong with them.” She told me that her daughter and the other girls weren’t picking on me—they were just doing what kids do. She turned to my mom and said, “Don’t you think that’s the thing for Chely to do?” “No, I absolutely do not think that I want my daughter to pick out someone’s insecurity or weakness and throw it back in their face. No, that’s not what we’ll be doing.” My mother turned to Mr. Peterson and said, “I’ve got a load of laundry in
the washer and I’ve gotta get it hung on the line, so I’m going to go home now.” Mr. Peterson excused us all.

I
was bullied for no reason at all, but the torment caused so much pain and fear that I often considered not going to school at all. Perhaps I would have become withdrawn, or fallen behind in academics. Young gay students have an added strike against them when their schoolmates who are bullies identify another reason to single them out and push them to the margins of society.

G
rowing up, there were times when I believed that bad things happened to those I loved because of my sexuality. It was God’s punishment for my being gay. It was my fault that the Old House burned down, that my parents couldn’t stop fighting, that Uncle Earl was killed in a trucking accident. When my brother, Chris, broke his arm and shoulder and cracked his head open in a bike wreck, it was my fault. When my sister, Jeny, crashed her bike and needed dozens of stitches in her leg and face, it was my fault. These were messages of disapproval from the Lord Himself. That was the fire-and-brimstone God who berated me in church. Yet at the same time I knew that there was another, kinder God—one who knew and loved me and was on my side.

After the Old House had been reduced to ashes, we moved to a double-wide trailer on a three-acre plot surrounded by horse pasture outside of Wellsville. By then, I was talking regularly to both Gods in prayer. In church we’d pray for people who put their names on the prayer list—for so-and-so’s grandma’s bad hip or someone’s husband who’d had a heart attack. And I’d created the special prayer that I knew that I couldn’t ask to be put on any prayer list:
Please, God, don’t let me be gay
. I began saying it every day, three times a day. I did the math: Saying the prayer approximately 1,095 times per year. Multiply that by three years
and that’s 3,285. That should’ve worked, I thought. That’s many more times than we’d ever prayed for a hip or a liver. Then it occurred to me what I had been doing wrong. I had been saying my prayer silently, in my head. I knew that I needed to speak it, to say it out loud, like we did in church.

Several times a day, after school and into the evening, I’d head out to my “spot,” a huge pasture behind our trailer where eight horses roamed. I’d walk out into the middle of that pasture, where I knew that no one could possibly hear me, and speak my prayer. I’d often get back to the house and feel the need to turn around and do it all over again. Sometimes I got yelled at by Mom for taking off when there were chores to do. But my new approach to the prayer was far more important, and it filled me with hope. No one knew about my secret except those eight horses.

But it wasn’t enough to change me, or to spare those close to me. One Saturday morning, when I was ten, I heard my mother talking in hushed tones on the telephone to Aunt Char. She hung up, went to the back bedroom, and got my dad. Within a few minutes they’d piled us all into our Plymouth station wagon and headed to Aunt Char’s place in Kansas City. Our cousin David had unexpectedly been admitted to the hospital. He was thirteen, the second oldest in our mob of five cousins, and he and his sister, Carey, then nine, were as close to me as siblings. We played together, got spankings together. We were given nearly identical new pairs of pajamas to wear on Christmas Eve. We shared bathwater, underwear, beds, and parents.

While the adults played pinochle or poker in the kitchen, we cousins got into trouble. Carey was famous for swiping a pair of scissors and cutting her own bangs, with predictable results (to this day, I still scan Carey’s hairline to see if she’s been hacking away at her locks again). Jeny and David were the ringleaders who would corral the younger kids into capers like climbing onto the roof of Aunt Char’s house or lighting something on fire.
The only straight arrow among us was my brother, Chris, who would never tell a lie. David was wild enough to put Jeny into a clothes dryer, turn it on, and walk away. Despite any mischief, David was a shining star in our family. Aunt Char was a busy single mom and not a regular churchgoer, so David would take himself to services and Sunday school. He was a gifted violinist, and we often played music together. He was also a diabetic. David kept to a special diet, had to have snacks, peed on little sticks, and gave himself shots. Initially, the idea of his being in the hospital didn’t throw us. I remember my mother telling us as we sped along the interstate early that summer morning, “He’ll be all right. They just have to get his insulin levels straightened out and then he’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

At the hospital, Dad took us to the waiting room and bought us one bottle of Pepsi to share. Hours went by. Then Dad went
upstairs for what seemed like forever. When he returned, we asked after David. “He’s very sick and if he doesn’t start to get better within the next couple of hours, he could get worse,” my father said. “I’m going to take you kids to Aunt Char’s so the babysitter can leave.” Carey had been at home with a neighbor the whole day, and Dad told us on the drive there not to tell her how ill her brother was. After he dropped us off, he headed back to the hospital. We asked our little cousin what she wanted to do, and she suggested we all go swimming. There was a public pool within walking distance, but we needed money to get in. So Carey went into David’s room, took the little rubber stopper off the bottom of his piggy bank, and took out a few dollars.

My parents and my aunt Char never missed a chance to line us all up, oldest to youngest, when they took our picture. Chris (age 6), Jeny (age 5), David (age 5), me (age 4), and Carey (age 2)
.

All day I’d been dying to say my prayer. I had wanted to on the drive to Kansas City, at the hospital, and in Aunt Char’s bathroom. But I was afraid to risk it. So once I got to the pool, I jumped in and stayed underwater most of the time. I prayed underwater that day. I didn’t just speak the prayer. I screamed it. I was just so afraid that God had made David sick because of me. I came up for air, but then I’d just go back under and stay under. Over and over, I’d come up for a breath, then dive back down and pray. We didn’t stay at the pool long. After we got home and changed out of our damp suits, the big station wagon pulled into the driveway with Mom, Aunt Char, and Dad in it.

We all ran to the front door full of questions. “Where’s David?” My mom stared at the four of us blankly and said, “He died,” as if she were talking about the weather. That night we went to Godfather’s Pizza for supper. Aunt Char, Carey, and the rest of us sat at two tables with red-checkered tablecloths eating pizza and drinking pitchers of flat, warm Pepsi.

My prayer had failed me again.

On the back porch of our house out in the country in Wellsville, Kansas. 1983. Left to right: Carey, Jeny, me, Chris
.

I
started getting paid to sing and play piano when I was eleven, not long after David died. If there was no money to be paid, but there was a willing audience, I performed anyway. I’d haul my keyboard, an amp, and a microphone to bars, VFW halls, auto shop openings, picnics, weddings, funerals, hospitals, schools, churches, and living rooms. But my specialty was nursing homes.

I had landed my first official gig years before, when we were
still living in the Old House. The way my parents tell it, I was four years old, roaming free in our yard, when all of a sudden I disappeared. My folks searched the shed, the chicken coop, and under the big gray porch. Then they started to panic. Neighbors canvassed the neighborhood and finally found me six blocks away at the Wellsville Manor nursing home, playing their piano and singing songs to a couple of residents in wheelchairs.

After my parents got me home that night, they asked me where I had learned to play the piano. They say that I informed them that I always knew I could; I just needed a piano in the house and I’d play for them too. In my short life leading up to that day, I had spent many hours sitting on the lap of my great-grandmother, Melvina Dixon, as she played old-time church music on her upright piano. I can still see her and the light blue veins that crawled in her translucent, pale hands. I’d put my tiny hands right on top of hers as she played. I told her once, “Grandma, I can do that.” To which she replied, “I know you can.”