Coal to Diamonds (10 page)

From that day with Jeri in front of the talk show forward, I started to change the way I thought about myself. When my mother made comments about fat people, and about her own body, I simply asked her to stop speaking negatively about herself and others, and she never made those types of jokes again. My boyfriend, Anthony, was fat too, so he was supportive, and I decided, after having my confused and ashamed attitude toward my body constantly reinforced, that I would only surround myself with fat-positive people from there out.

One night at Jennifer’s house we were on the phone together with Jeri. It wasn’t long-distance to talk, and I was excited to be able to just jabber without anyone worrying about catching hell from a parent for a jacked-up phone bill. Jennifer got bored and went into
the living room to watch TV, and I stayed in the kitchen. I could hear the canned television laughter in the other room, drowning me out, so I just asked him.
Jeri, are you gay?

Yes
, he said.

I remember the word “fag” coming up in the conversation, and Jeri saying,
It’s okay, you can call me that
. I thought about calling Jeri a fag, when so many guys at school hurled the word around. Would it be different if I called him that, “fag”? But he was a fag, if “fag” meant being a boy like Jeri, swishy and queeny and funny and sensitive and in love with boys. Those were all good things, so “fag” was a good word. Jeri had read about boys calling themselves fags in zines like it was a good thing—confounding the bashers—and dykes were doing the same thing. It was some sort of fantastic language revolution. He was refusing to believe that being a fag was a bad thing, just like I was refusing to believe that being fat was shameful.

Okay, fag
, I said, careful not to be too loud. I was so happy! Happy and scared for him, and scared for me, but also I felt way closer to Jeri, and I thought, Yup, Jeri came to me and I came to him so we could have each other and deal with this gay bullshit. He had only ever told Kathy about being gay. Quiet Kathy was an excellent secret keeper.

Jeri eventually told Jennifer, and it must have been a relief to finally understand why her boyfriend hadn’t ever kissed her. Jeri and Jennifer broke up, and Jennifer became more scarce as we all moved on with our intensifying friendship.

Then, one night, Jennifer tried to kiss Anthony while I was in a deep conversation with Jeri. That was the absolute end of my friendship with Jennifer. As confusing as everything was—and it was confusing—one thing was obvious: you don’t go trying to kiss your best friend’s boyfriend, even if your best friend is a frustrated dyke.

Jennifer was around just long enough to bring us all together, and then, once we clicked, Jennifer was gone.

After telling me and Jennifer that he was gay, Jeri sort of loosened up and told more people. He told Nathan, who didn’t care, and Kathy didn’t care, and I sure as hell didn’t care. But the stress of coming out was powerful, and the fear Jeri felt was real. Some stupid punk kid found out and told Jeri that he was going to hell. Now, you just can’t grow up in apocalyptic Arkansas without half thinking you might actually be going to hell all the time. This might sound nuts to people who weren’t raised with such intense, frightening religion, but if that’s the air you breathe, it sticks a bit to your insides. Hearing his biggest fear spoken aloud by some asshole was enough for Jeri, in his fragile, spooked coming-out state, to lose it. Jeri collected every gayish thing he owned, a bunch of clothes and magazines, some records, a book, jewelry, anything that struck him as homo—and lots of his stuff did seem gay, because it was all his stuff, and he was gay. He made a big pile of all his excellent weirdo clothes, his pinned-together outfits and homemade accessories, the zines written by boys like him, scared in small towns knowing they’re queer—and he set the whole thing on fire in his backyard. Jeri had messed around with a boy, and he was still hung up on him, really liked him, and the single photo that he had of him went into the burning pile too. Afterward he hopped into his car and drove, crying, out to see me. He came to see me a lot back then. The gayness brought me and Jeri together.

That night Jeri and I talked about God, and if God existed, and wasn’t God probably just some wild creative energy, something beyond our grasp, something that had made every single thing we knew, including us, and had made us gay, had made Jeri feel pulled toward the boy he’d had his fling with, had made the crazy, wonderful feelings when they kissed. Wasn’t that God? The world is too special to have been made by a hateful god. We thought we were
so
deep that night.

Jeri’s mother is a typical Southern mom with the typical Southern name—Sue Ann—and the first real hint that her son might be gay came from a prank Nathan pulled on Jeri’s waterbed. Nathan
and Jeri had named Jeri’s waterbed Vicky, and they liked to pretend it was alive, like some big hungry beast. They would offer Vicky sacrifices. Vicky was a graveyard where pizza crusts went to die. Jeri and Nathan would lodge the crusts between the wooden frame and the mattress. That was exactly the sort of absurd nonsense that made me fall in love with them. Naming a waterbed Vicky and feeding it pizza? It was hilarious. They would also pull off the top sheet, exposing the rubber mattress, and tattoo Vicky in Sharpie. One night, Nathan wrote,
MOM, I’M GAY. LOVE, JERI
in big black letters.

Sue Ann was making Jeri’s bed like a good Southern mom and she saw the message. That was the first time she thought her son might be gay. You might say that Jeri didn’t come out to his mom; his waterbed Vicky did it for him.

Even though I was spending all my time with Jeri, Nathan, and Kathy, I felt like I was on the outside of their intense friendship. I knew they liked me, so I was way more comfortable around them, but I was still the newcomer. What we needed was a bonding experience to bring me into the fold, and thanks to Nathan, we got one. The night we became a little punk rock family of avant-garde misfits was the night that Nathan told an enormous lie.

Nathan was a notorious liar. There was a sort of famous punk couple who lived in Little Rock, Vic and Stacy. They were so hot and cool and punk that their legend had spread all the way to Judsonia. They were like the Kennedys of Arkansas punk, like royalty. Nathan said he had arranged for us to stay with them, to sleep overnight in their punk rock castle in Arkansas.

Vic and Stacy!
Maybe Stacy would take to me in a sweet, big-sister way. She would be so impressed with how I did my hair, she would ask me to style hers, and I would! I would somehow help the impossibly cool Stacy become even cooler, and maybe she would take me in.

Not only was I finally going to catch a glimpse of Vic and Stacy—whom I’d never seen—I was going to sleep at their house! Crash on their floor! It was so thrilling.

I had told my mother that I was going off to Little Rock to stay at the home of an adult couple. She was suspicious.

Punks take care of each other!
I tried to explain. We were all in the same big misfit community.

Well, I want you to call me when you get there, and I want to talk to this Vic and Stacy
, my mother demanded. It was annoying and embarrassing. Why was she all of a sudden feeling the pull of maternal duty? And why did she have to have a phone?

Fine
, I said,
I’ll call you. You can talk to them
. The thought of my mother talking to the famous Vic and Stacy was kind of hilarious. She had no idea what legends she’d be speaking to.

The drive to Little Rock in Kathy’s car was life changing. It was the first time I was alone with all three of them—Jeri, Kathy, and Nathan. Jennifer was gone for good now. It was just us, cruising along, listening to music and cracking up. I laughed so hard on that drive I peed my polyester pants. Imitations, weird voices, utter nonsense. It was the perfect road trip.

At the Waffle House on the side of the freeway in Little Rock, I sipped at my sweet tea and ate hash browns as we waited for Nathan to come back from the pay phones out front. He was putting in a call to Vic and Stacy, our chaperones. He swung through the glass door and walked back inside the Waffle House, his dirty suit and clanking dog chain raising the eyebrows of the waitresses behind the lunch counter.

What’s up?

Nathan shrugged; he was avoiding eye contact behind his heavy, Buddy Holly eyeglasses.
I don’t know
, he mumbled.
They’re not answering their phone
.

For someone who lied so often you’d think Nathan would be better at it. He’d been so evasive when I’d asked him about Vic and Stacy: what they were like, where they lived, where we would
sleep, how he’d met them, if they were excited to meet us. He’d give me a shrug and look at the ground, making me feel like an overeager kid for wanting so much information. Beneath the garish lights of the Waffle House, country music wheezing from the jukebox by the door, it all became clear: Nathan didn’t know Vic and Stacy any more than we did. We’d all come down to Little Rock on a lie and had no place to spend the night.

Suddenly the night went from awesome to totally awesome. I could have been mad at Nathan, but I was so high on us being together and feeling like I’d finally lodged myself into their gang. And we’d gotten ourselves to Little Rock! I didn’t care if we spent the night at a famous punk’s house or at a twenty-four-hour chain diner so long as we were all together.

We left some money on the table and moved on to Vino’s, a club where a band was playing. The Delta 72 had a record on Kill Rock Stars, Bikini Kill’s label in Olympia, Washington. After the show, we went back to the Waffle House again looking for rancid coffee and sweet tea to keep everyone awake for the drive back. When we pulled into the parking lot a gang of violent jocks started messing with us. We were used to being mercilessly made fun of in public, because it was impossible for us to blend in.

The jocks in the parking lot surrounded us as we sat in Kathy’s dumpy little ride. They called us
Fat Farm
. They smacked at the roof of the car with their hands.
Get out of the car, we will kick your ass!
they invited us.

Jeri just sat there, staring out the window. He sat in the front—he always got shotgun because of his height—beside Kathy, and the jocks’ faces smeared themselves across the windshield. They smacked their palms on the passenger window, like they were hitting Jeri in the head. If Jeri had gotten out of the car and shown the jocks what they were dealing with, the thugs would have freaked out, but Jeri was a pacifist and a lady. We just huddled inside Kathy’s car until they got bored with us and took off. We sat in the silence, everything more quiet without fists pounding on the roof.
We just sat there in the parking lot, listening to music, trying to collect ourselves and get a plan together for the trip home.

The pay phone in the parking lot reminded me I was supposed to call my mother.
Goddamn it!
I didn’t want her to worry, but I didn’t know what to tell her, and I didn’t want to be a freak-bashing target if those jocks were still around. Kathy rolled the car up close to the booth and I made a collect call to Mom and Tom’s.

Let me say hello to Vic and Stacy
, she said. I hemmed and hawed. Finally, I blurted out,
There is no Vic and Stacy, Mom. Nathan lied
. It didn’t occur to me to lie myself, since Mom never cared what I was doing or not doing.

So, you’re not anywhere, then?
she asked.

No, I’m in the Waffle House parking lot almost getting beat up by jocks. We’re going to drink a bunch of coffee and drive home, and I’ll sleep in Jeri’s waterbed, Vicky
.

I’m coming to pick you up
, she said. It was so weird when Mom took motherly interest in my well-being. We barely even saw each other—recently she’d resorted to communicating with me via a textbook I’d left at her house. She’d slipped a note into the pages of my science book:
I love you. I know you don’t think I do, but I do
. It made me sad.

Mom came all the way to Little Rock to drive me to my sister’s house.
I wanted to sleep in Vicky
, I said to Jeri, as I hugged him goodbye, wrapping my arms around him. I wanted to end the night with a slumber party, talking in the dark about deep things, about love and God and our families, about music and clothes and life outside of Arkansas, and about how good it was that Nathan was such a liar because if he hadn’t told such a whopper we probably never would have done the road trip to Little Rock, and it had been so much fun. Instead, I’d be fighting off the dark at my sister’s place. But I knew that something had shifted that night between me and my friends. We’d become closer on our adventure, and as I pulled away from them in my mother’s car, I could feel that I really belonged with them, and they really belonged with me.

I wouldn’t have the life I have today, think the thoughts I think, or be myself without them. I’d be pregnant in Arkansas, wondering how come all my babies didn’t take my queerness away. Jeri is still my soul mate, and Nathan is still the person who keeps upstaging me with his knowledge of music and culture. I think that, creatively, I keep him grounded, while he keeps my head in the air. Since Kathy was my first full-on girl-crush, that has lodged her in my heart forever. I do think my mom put a spell on me and brought these people into my life, because it feels predestined that I met them when I did.

As amazing as life got with my chosen family around me, it took a serious turn for the worse during my senior year of high school. Kathy, Nathan, and Jeri, all three of them older than me, were freed from school, and one by one they did the inevitable—they left Arkansas.

Kathy left first, to go to college. She was always motivated by school and learning, and she wanted to go to Evergreen, in Olympia, Washington. Olympia was home to Kill Rock Stars and Riot Grrrl and everything we worshipped. Evergreen was a state school, not a bourgie, fancy private university, but it was a financial struggle for Kathy to be there. Evergreen was radical and taught its students about politics and encouraged them to be activists and to use art to create social change. At Evergreen you learned about the political dimensions of everything. Your food was political. Your family’s economic state was political. Automobiles and gasoline were political. Trash was political. Evergreen was a revelation.