Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. People
Speaker 1: don't just happen. We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We
Speaker 1: sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The eye,
Speaker 1: it seems, doesn't exist until we are able to say
Speaker 1: I am no longer yours. My grandmother and I, without
Speaker 1: knowing it, we're faithfully following a script that had already
Speaker 1: been written for us. A woman raises a boy into
Speaker 1: a man, loving him so intensely that her commitment finally
Speaker 1: repulses him. Silent beside my grandmother on the same twenty
Speaker 1: minute drive we'd taken so many times that summer. I
Speaker 1: could feel the distance growing, but didn't understand it yet
Speaker 1: instead had a sense of certainty to group in me.
Speaker 1: I made myself a promise, even if it meant becoming
Speaker 1: a stranger to my loved ones, even if it meant
Speaker 1: keeping secrets, I would have a life of my own.
Speaker 1: That's say Jones, reading from his extraordinary memoir How We
Speaker 1: Fight for Our Lives. Said is a story of love
Speaker 1: and the unspoken, courage and shame, a mother and a son,
Speaker 1: and a long hard road to becoming who we really are.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets
Speaker 1: that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
Speaker 1: and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Describe for me
Speaker 1: the landscape of your childhood. The landscape of my childhood
Speaker 1: was really mostly the suburbs of North Texas. I grew
Speaker 1: up about fifteen minutes north of Dallas, Texas, and so
Speaker 1: that very kind of sprawling North Texas plane landscape that
Speaker 1: was it. And I literally lived off of Main Street,
Speaker 1: and I remember having a sense of feeling like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in the heart of suburban Americana. But we were
Speaker 1: like off Main Street in an apartment complex, you know,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like, it wasn't quite like that ideal.
Speaker 1: And then otherwise, an important part of the landscape of
Speaker 1: growing up was Memphis, Tennessee, where both sides of my
Speaker 1: family actually are from generations and generations and generations act
Speaker 1: and so I grew up with a really strong relationship
Speaker 1: to both of those different southern landscapes. Can you describe
Speaker 1: your mother, Well, one thing is she she raised me
Speaker 1: as a single parent. She did not graduate from college.
Speaker 1: She you know, studied for a few semesters in Memphis,
Speaker 1: kept her books which later became really important for me
Speaker 1: because I grew up in a house full of books
Speaker 1: and in a house with a lifelong reader. She read
Speaker 1: like three newspapers a day. She had literally like a
Speaker 1: second purse that she would like shove all of her
Speaker 1: newspapers in to carry around with her throughout the day.
Speaker 1: Then she was always reading. You know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of particularly in the nineties, like it was a
Speaker 1: really booming moment of black contemporary fiction. This is when
Speaker 1: Alice Walker, Terry McMillan, Gloria Naylor, Tony Morrison are all
Speaker 1: bestselling authors. So I grew up in a home rich
Speaker 1: with that kind of tradition because of her. And then
Speaker 1: one thing else I think that was really cool about
Speaker 1: my mom, aside from her biddy and her humor, is
Speaker 1: that she had the sense of the world. She worked
Speaker 1: as a flight attendant for a long time when I
Speaker 1: was younger, and actually worked for the airlines my entire life,
Speaker 1: and so she had traveled a lot. She was always
Speaker 1: in different capacities over the course of her career, just
Speaker 1: interacting with a lot of different kind of people, which
Speaker 1: meant that she brought that worldly nous, this appreciation for
Speaker 1: diversity and otherness into our home. And and so even
Speaker 1: though we were growing up, we were living in you know,
Speaker 1: two bedroom apartment, paycheck to paycheck, often eviction notices on
Speaker 1: the counter. We were always discussing the news. We had
Speaker 1: a sense an appreciation of culture and of art, and
Speaker 1: you know, we were trying different cuisine. She was always
Speaker 1: studying different recipes from different cultures. Um, so you know,
Speaker 1: we would have Indian currie one night for dinner, and
Speaker 1: then maybe a Pope pie the next and then she'd
Speaker 1: be making like Mexican fajitas. So there was just a
Speaker 1: richness to her that she always brought home and I
Speaker 1: loved And I guess the last thing I would say,
Speaker 1: we laughed a lot. My mom was very funny, and
Speaker 1: I would like to think that I got some of
Speaker 1: my humor from her. Well, and you have a great laugh,
Speaker 1: So I thank you. Do you think that that worldliness
Speaker 1: and that sense of you know, sort of connection to
Speaker 1: the wider world contributed to a sense of stability and
Speaker 1: security even though there was this paycheck to paycheck, you know,
Speaker 1: eviction notices on the kitchen counter kind of existence. I
Speaker 1: think so. I think, you know, as a kid who
Speaker 1: in my teens was coming into an understanding of my
Speaker 1: sexuality as a gay man, for example, or you know,
Speaker 1: my love of arts, which my mom always supported. She
Speaker 1: was always just like she loved that I was drawing
Speaker 1: and writing and reading, and you know, always encouraged that
Speaker 1: part of my life. I think culture, I guess I
Speaker 1: would say it was like a tether for me. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like even amidst the instability or the stress,
Speaker 1: being working poor is stressful, it's exhausting even on good days.
Speaker 1: But I think having a sense of there's this world
Speaker 1: out there that we are connected to, either to our
Speaker 1: appreciation or by how I'm starting to write myself, I
Speaker 1: think it gave me a sense of hope, and it
Speaker 1: added dignity to our lives, you know, to our conversations,
Speaker 1: because we have so much to talk about beyond just
Speaker 1: the rigors of living paycheck to paycheck. It's a beautiful word, dignity.
Speaker 1: And along with this dignity came a careful economy of speech, said,
Speaker 1: and his mom talked about a lot of things, beautiful things,
Speaker 1: but there were places that it seemed they just couldn't go.
Speaker 1: This way of talking or not talking was a family condition.
Speaker 1: There was code on phone calls, if someone paused and said, well,
Speaker 1: it was good to hear your voice. That signaled the
Speaker 1: end of the conversation when said is twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 1: He comes across a photograph of a young man wedged
Speaker 1: into a copy of James Baldwin's Another Country. He had
Speaker 1: never seen the man before, and he asks his mother
Speaker 1: about him. It was kind of like the bookmark, which
Speaker 1: I do the same thing, you kind of like shove,
Speaker 1: you know, a photo or sheet from a notebook in
Speaker 1: a book. It was like this young man who I
Speaker 1: did not recognize, and it was dated like Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: with a date in the eighties, And I was like,
Speaker 1: is he uncle? Like who is this person? And I
Speaker 1: eventually asked her about it and found out that it
Speaker 1: was like this best friend of hers who she had
Speaker 1: never mentioned. And this was kind of the rub for
Speaker 1: our relationship, you know, amongst all of the richness and
Speaker 1: the laughter and the warmth, there would be these moments
Speaker 1: where all of a sudden, her language was like as
Speaker 1: efficient as possible. So she was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we were really good friends. We would go on road trips.
Speaker 1: Then he found out he was sick and he died.
Speaker 1: He killed himself and then she walked out of the room,
Speaker 1: and I was like what, And I think I shouted
Speaker 1: out maybe one more question because I didn't understand. I
Speaker 1: couldn't fathom as I would think. I was like twelve
Speaker 1: or thirteen, like what being sick had to do with
Speaker 1: killing oneself? Why would you do that? And she was
Speaker 1: like he had aids and she walked out. And that
Speaker 1: ended up being the first vivid memory I have of
Speaker 1: us implicitly talking about sexuality. He was a gay man
Speaker 1: who she a gay black man who she loved very
Speaker 1: very much and lost. And the way kids, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of unwittingly get to the hard questions. They don't
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, they're just digging around and their
Speaker 1: parents stuff. That's very much what happened. It's such a
Speaker 1: theme on this podcast. In almost every episode, there's snooping
Speaker 1: of some kind or another, just this sense of what
Speaker 1: are the adults up to? And you know, what are
Speaker 1: their secrets and what are their lives? You use the
Speaker 1: phrase economy of language or economy of speech. And when
Speaker 1: your mother didn't want to speak, she just didn't and
Speaker 1: she would pause for a really long time and you'd
Speaker 1: have to wait her out or think maybe she's done speaking,
Speaker 1: and then she would say something more right. Could you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the role of religion. It's
Speaker 1: fascinated by the fact that your mother was a Buddhist
Speaker 1: and that your grandmother, her mother was a Baptist who
Speaker 1: later joined in an evangelical church, and sort of what
Speaker 1: the role of all that was for you in these
Speaker 1: years where you were you were coming out to yourself,
Speaker 1: but you were not coming out to anyone around you,
Speaker 1: not too friends, certainly, not to your mother, certainly, not
Speaker 1: to your grandmother. Can you talk us through that period
Speaker 1: of time? Yeah, I mean, you know, really, you know,
Speaker 1: when you asked about kind of the landscape of my upbringing,
Speaker 1: I would say, also, you know, it was kind of
Speaker 1: helpful to think of the kind of the calendar of
Speaker 1: my childhood, which is to say, because my mom was
Speaker 1: a single parent raising me when I was not in
Speaker 1: school for winter break and summer break, it was normal
Speaker 1: for her to send me to Memphis to stay with
Speaker 1: her mother, my grandmother, because it's expensive raising boys. Boys
Speaker 1: are taking through all of your things, asking you tough questions,
Speaker 1: you know, getting into trouble, eating all of your food,
Speaker 1: and so that was a really kind of important, I
Speaker 1: don't know, kind of time relationship that we had because
Speaker 1: my mother and her twenties before I was born, started
Speaker 1: practicing nature and Buddhism. She chanted namniah inge K. She
Speaker 1: was very devout, very passionate about nature and Buddhist philosophy.
Speaker 1: And I would argue she was as dedicated to her
Speaker 1: faith as the rest of my family was to their
Speaker 1: Christian faiths at different times. I mean, there were Catholic members,
Speaker 1: they were Baptist and Evangelical, you know, but everyone was very,
Speaker 1: very passionate. I felt like often when I was growing
Speaker 1: up the only person who was ambivalent about religion, and
Speaker 1: I still am, probably because twice a year I was
Speaker 1: kind of being shuttled back and forth between these two
Speaker 1: really intense religious philosophies. And so it was like when
Speaker 1: I was home with mom Um in Texas, I would
Speaker 1: participate and do all kinds of nature and Buddhist activities,
Speaker 1: and that was just a part of our lives. I
Speaker 1: would chant with her in the mornings and evenings, and
Speaker 1: then in the winter or summer, when I was with
Speaker 1: my grandmother, I would go to church. I was baptized,
Speaker 1: you know, at one point, I would go to whatever
Speaker 1: the like, the Christian Bible camp, all of those different things.
Speaker 1: When my grandmother started going to a white, suburban Evangelical church,
Speaker 1: and that was very different. She until that moment been
Speaker 1: going to mostly black Baptist church. She started going to
Speaker 1: the church, you know, right basically at the beginning of
Speaker 1: high school for me, and it just felt like the
Speaker 1: kind of standard back and forth dysfunctional, but no one's
Speaker 1: talking about it. It's fine kind of relationship we'd all
Speaker 1: developed over the years regarding faith and how to live.
Speaker 1: I think because I was entering puberty and becoming a teenager,
Speaker 1: starting to talk back and frankly starting to become more
Speaker 1: self aware about my feelings for boys, starting to stow away.
Speaker 1: Calvin Klein adds, you know that, like my grandmother finds
Speaker 1: at one point in my stuff at her house. It
Speaker 1: just made it it almost like a do or die
Speaker 1: moment for my grandmother, where I think she felt, this
Speaker 1: is where I have to take my stand. I have
Speaker 1: to save my grandson. I've already lost my daughter. I
Speaker 1: very much feel as her perspective at that time, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, we were going to church four times
Speaker 1: a week, five times a week and it ends within
Speaker 1: a really heartbreaking kind of moment where my grandmother asked
Speaker 1: a visiting pastor to pray over me, basically to save me,
Speaker 1: you know, the sins of my mother. And it was
Speaker 1: it was awful. What kinds of things does the pastor
Speaker 1: say in that moment? I refrained that my grandmother had
Speaker 1: when introducing me to people at this new church, was
Speaker 1: this is my grandson's side. He's visiting from Texas. His
Speaker 1: mother was Buddhist. That was that was my introduction to
Speaker 1: countless people at this church. And of course, you know
Speaker 1: for teenagers, that's just uncomfortable anyway, right, But yeah, that
Speaker 1: has just kind of gone on and gone on and
Speaker 1: gone on, and it felt like everyone was making me
Speaker 1: their little pet Christian project in this church, being really
Speaker 1: nice and supportive. And then at the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: I think perhaps because my grandmother was aware that I
Speaker 1: was getting ready to go home and we've been having
Speaker 1: a lot of arguments, she decided at the end of
Speaker 1: a church service to actually take me to the front
Speaker 1: of the church when they say, you know, the doors
Speaker 1: of the church are open if if anyone would like
Speaker 1: to join the church, you're welcome. To do. So it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be voluntary. The ideas, you know, if if
Speaker 1: you are so inspired, you know, you are welcome to
Speaker 1: walk up to the front of the church and kind
Speaker 1: of have this moment. What happened is my grandmother took
Speaker 1: me by the hand, and I was so stunned. She
Speaker 1: didn't really have to drag me. She just kind of
Speaker 1: led me to the front of the church, and I
Speaker 1: just felt like I was having an out of body experience.
Speaker 1: And the next thing I know, you know, I realized
Speaker 1: this man, this pastor, has been talking for several minutes
Speaker 1: because I was just like, what's going on, And I
Speaker 1: just realized she said, this is my grandson. Said he's
Speaker 1: from Texas. His mother's Buddhist, and he basically put a
Speaker 1: curse on my mother. I've heard a lot of prayers
Speaker 1: since then, and and and before then. You know, I
Speaker 1: know what a hopeful prayer sounds like. This wasn't it.
Speaker 1: He was basically praying for my mother to suffer and
Speaker 1: get sick and forgot to put all kinds of ailments
Speaker 1: very much like basically show her, you know, your seven plagues,
Speaker 1: so that she will see the light and come back
Speaker 1: to the church. And bring her son with her, and
Speaker 1: it was it was stunning. I mean, I I remember
Speaker 1: how I felt. I remember bird that I felt like
Speaker 1: I was frankly about to pass out, you know, because
Speaker 1: the entire time that he's saying these really awful things,
Speaker 1: things I wouldn't wish upon, frankly my worst enemy, with
Speaker 1: a few exceptions. Um, I realized, you know, like my
Speaker 1: mom's mom is holding my hand. And I'm not a parent,
Speaker 1: but I think it's fair to say, generally, if someone
Speaker 1: were to talk about your child, you know, and certainly
Speaker 1: your grandchild in this way, you know, you would be upset,
Speaker 1: you would be offended, you would stand up and instead,
Speaker 1: you know, I just was looking at my grandmother with
Speaker 1: her head bowed, and it was just we were just
Speaker 1: in two totally different realities, and you were just did
Speaker 1: the Matthew were fourteen at this point, Yeah, I believe. So.
Speaker 1: Imagine being fourteen years old and your grandmother is holding
Speaker 1: your hand as a pastor places what amounts to a
Speaker 1: curse her daughter, your own mother. And what's worse, if
Speaker 1: anything in this situation can possibly be worse, is that
Speaker 1: Sayid's mother has a serious heart condition. The pastor who
Speaker 1: was saying that didn't know about but my grandmother did.
Speaker 1: But my sense of right and wrong in that moment
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear. You know. I was like, this
Speaker 1: is wrong. This is not even for people who followed
Speaker 1: the Christian faith. I don't think that's what they want,
Speaker 1: you know, And so I remember feeling like, gosh, this
Speaker 1: is warped, this is toxic. I just felt really sad
Speaker 1: for myself, but also for my grandmother because I think
Speaker 1: though I didn't understand the depths of it, I did
Speaker 1: feel in that moment like there's no coming back from
Speaker 1: a moment like this for us. And it's also occurring
Speaker 1: to me that this pastor and his curse and your
Speaker 1: your grandmother's acceptance of all that is about your mother
Speaker 1: being a Buddhist, you are at this point, at the
Speaker 1: age of fourteen, carrying something much deeper and closer to
Speaker 1: your identity that would be problematic in that world, in
Speaker 1: the evangelical Christian world. Absolutely it felt yeah, And and
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, and to think about secrets. I
Speaker 1: think that nuance your pointing too, is distinctly Southern. My
Speaker 1: grandmother at that point knew that I had a crush
Speaker 1: on boys before she submits Said to the pastor. Sayd's
Speaker 1: grandmother had found a cutout page from a magazine, a
Speaker 1: Calvin Klein ad featuring Mark Wahlberg when she was going
Speaker 1: through Said's things. So she slaps him, hits him hard,
Speaker 1: calls him worldly more a code, but she doesn't speak
Speaker 1: to him directly about his sexuality. I think grandmother's often
Speaker 1: end up kind of surveilling and policing gender for boys
Speaker 1: and girls that they're raising, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: always like act like a boy, don't be a sissy,
Speaker 1: don't stand like that, don't own your hand like that.
Speaker 1: She knew. And so I think the fact that in
Speaker 1: this moment she takes me to the front of the church,
Speaker 1: she did not say I'm worried my grandson might be
Speaker 1: gay or whatever, I think it speaks to how deeply
Speaker 1: shameful homophobia and queerness in that space is embedded, you
Speaker 1: know that, because to me, it feels like that's really
Speaker 1: what was going on. That's clearly what she was worried
Speaker 1: about for me, but it felt like that was too
Speaker 1: too barbed to even speak in the church. So it
Speaker 1: almost feels like my mom and my mother's faith becomes
Speaker 1: the well the sacrificial lamp. We'll be back in a
Speaker 1: moment with more family secrets. Said is now in high school.
Speaker 1: One day, his class is let out early because the
Speaker 1: drama department is putting on a production of The Laramie Project,
Speaker 1: a theater piece based on the murder of Matthew Shepard.
Speaker 1: It's all said can do to hold himself together. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want anyone to see him cry. He remains closeted
Speaker 1: through high school and then wins a fellowship for speech
Speaker 1: and debate at Western Kentucky University and initially remains closeted
Speaker 1: there as well. He refers to this in his book
Speaker 1: as his second closeting, writing it shouldn't have been that
Speaker 1: easy to unbecome myself, I mean to me, so much
Speaker 1: of your story is about unbecoming and the cost and
Speaker 1: the price of unbecoming and becoming and this kind of
Speaker 1: dance between those two states. Yeah. One myth that heterosexual
Speaker 1: people have about the closet, and of course there are
Speaker 1: all kinds of cultural closets, but one myth is that
Speaker 1: it's like queer people come out once and that's it,
Speaker 1: you know, like we just like we we send a
Speaker 1: flare into the air and everyone's like, Okay, Side's gay,
Speaker 1: and then that's it for the rest of sides life.
Speaker 1: And of course that's not the case. Every time we
Speaker 1: start a new job, every time we step into a bar,
Speaker 1: you know, every time we meet a new doctor or nurse,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're going over our sexual history. All
Speaker 1: of those kinds of moments we are having to negotiate.
Speaker 1: We're having to decide is it safe for me to share,
Speaker 1: Do I need to share, should I you know, or
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely going to share. And it's fluid, and it's
Speaker 1: based on the space we're in, how safe we feel,
Speaker 1: if it feels relevant, if we have the energy to
Speaker 1: do so. And that was not something I understand stood
Speaker 1: as a young man coming into my sexual identity. So
Speaker 1: when I got to college, for example, you see, and
Speaker 1: it's like literally in the first day, I mean, I'm like,
Speaker 1: after years of being like I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: away from home and go to school and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna finally be myself because surely the only issue I'm
Speaker 1: struggling with here is my family. I step onto this
Speaker 1: college campus and it's like, within like five hellos, I've
Speaker 1: stepped right back into the closet I've taken on this
Speaker 1: new persona. I'm trying to act like one of the
Speaker 1: jocks from my high school who never would have so
Speaker 1: much have sat with me at the cafeteria at One
Speaker 1: Word school, But that was the persona I was like
Speaker 1: trying to embrace during my first year experience that weird
Speaker 1: orientation week, you know college students have. I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing I'm thinking about is you're speaking, is the poignancy
Speaker 1: or the pain of performing a persona like in that
Speaker 1: first week to be accepted and then to be accepted.
Speaker 1: But you're not being accepted as yourself right. The goal
Speaker 1: is simply to be accepted, and you're leaving you know,
Speaker 1: one is leaving oneself kind of in the dust. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you find a group of friends pretty quickly where you
Speaker 1: feel safe and comfortable being yourself. M hm. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about safety because as you're growing up
Speaker 1: to feeling that it is not safe to be gay,
Speaker 1: it is not safe to be black, and it is
Speaker 1: really not safe to be a black gay man, and
Speaker 1: then you get to this place where it almost seems
Speaker 1: like you're just like fuck that. Your Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: handle is the ferocity and there's this moment in your
Speaker 1: book about halfway through where you describe as a ferocity
Speaker 1: you know with which you are going to be your
Speaker 1: most authentic self. Thank you for catching that detailized sure
Speaker 1: that little easter um. You know, you go to your
Speaker 1: first few college parties, the first few times you you know,
Speaker 1: have like the messy hook ups, and and you're in
Speaker 1: a mixed group of students your age, older students, and
Speaker 1: you get to kiss a boy and plain sight of
Speaker 1: all of those different people, and no one cares because
Speaker 1: they're making out with whoever they're making out. They're nodding
Speaker 1: as you're like, oh, you found someone, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's all that matters. You found someone. It's been on
Speaker 1: my mind so much because, of course, with the pandemic,
Speaker 1: there are still college students who were very much looking
Speaker 1: forward to getting to have those kinds of experiences. And
Speaker 1: I understand, and certainly we need to socially distance and
Speaker 1: those parties should not be happening right now. They're not healthy,
Speaker 1: it's not good, it's not worth it. But also I
Speaker 1: do want to honor that ache I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: of queer young people who are looking for those kinds
Speaker 1: of spaces. Who were so king forward to those kinds
Speaker 1: of moments, And if you don't need them, you don't
Speaker 1: understand how important it can be to have a night
Speaker 1: like that. You know what I mean, to dance and
Speaker 1: swing and mess your way into yourself, and that is
Speaker 1: that is an important part of learning who we are
Speaker 1: as young people in particular, right, the fun, the joy,
Speaker 1: particularly after years of self policing, you know, a bullying
Speaker 1: of anxiety and depression. It's those first few moments of
Speaker 1: like just the endorphin rush of oh wow, this is
Speaker 1: what it feels like. Is this what I'll feel like
Speaker 1: all the time? That is a profound moment, because of
Speaker 1: course you go, oh, well, I want to feel like
Speaker 1: this forever. I want to be my full fear self.
Speaker 1: And for me, it wasn't just oh, this is a
Speaker 1: cool party. It was learning how to unite all of
Speaker 1: myselves in plain sight. I'm always kind of trying to
Speaker 1: figure out which mask, which persona is most viable in
Speaker 1: the space. Yeah, there's a moment where you're writing about
Speaker 1: your mother, and you're right. We both allowed too deep
Speaker 1: of a contrast between our interiors and our exteriors, and
Speaker 1: there's such a price to be paid for that, the
Speaker 1: sense that who we are on the inside is not
Speaker 1: it's not what we're showing. It's not safe to show it,
Speaker 1: or we think it's not, or there's shame or self loathing.
Speaker 1: There are moments where, even after I come out to
Speaker 1: my mom, at one point, the awkwardness of talking about dating,
Speaker 1: of talking about boyfriends would be so intense at times
Speaker 1: in those first couple of years after I came out
Speaker 1: to her that sometimes I would just give up. I
Speaker 1: would like raise a question hin and she I would
Speaker 1: look at her and she would have a look of
Speaker 1: total panic on her face, and I would change the subject.
Speaker 1: And I think that is an aspect of identity that
Speaker 1: doesn't get as much mainstream attention. But actually, I would
Speaker 1: argue is a much more common, ongoing part of queer
Speaker 1: life because it's something we're constantly negotiating. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: you know. That's sort of brings me to the part
Speaker 1: of your book where you write about a relationship with
Speaker 1: you call him the botanist, that is, you know, just
Speaker 1: defined by its violence and defilement, and that goes on
Speaker 1: for a bit even as I is finding his footing,
Speaker 1: settling in and becoming more himself with his new college friends,
Speaker 1: there is a strong undercurrent of self loathing. This self
Speaker 1: loathing takes the form of his being drawn into encounters
Speaker 1: with sadistic men in which this inner directed hatred gets
Speaker 1: played out in terrifying ways. One of these he calls
Speaker 1: the botanist a cold and punishing man, and the other
Speaker 1: he calls Daniel. Daniel fully intends to kill said, and
Speaker 1: very nearly does. There's a moment where a professor of
Speaker 1: yours says to you, said, what happened to your smile?
Speaker 1: Used to smile all the time? What was that trajectory?
Speaker 1: I think it's funny. You know, we've forgotten it already
Speaker 1: because our conversation about queerness and LGBT rights as a
Speaker 1: country has moved pretty quickly, which is nice. But you
Speaker 1: know what, I was a high school student in a
Speaker 1: college student when we would talk about these kinds of issues.
Speaker 1: We didn't use the word ally. We didn't talk about this,
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about inclusion. The word was tolerance. Remember
Speaker 1: that that was the kind of euphemism or the framework
Speaker 1: that we would talk about. Basically accepting gay people, trans
Speaker 1: people weren't even a part of the conversation at the time, right,
Speaker 1: it was like this, we are tolerant community. And and
Speaker 1: so I think what I discovered as a college student
Speaker 1: was that though I wasn't being bullied, though I wasn't
Speaker 1: being harassed or explicitly other it was fine. You know,
Speaker 1: people dated, people knew I was having crushes or going
Speaker 1: on dates or hooking up a bit. You know, I
Speaker 1: would break it up a bit with friends and mixed company.
Speaker 1: I realized, I think over time and in retrospect, that
Speaker 1: it was tolerated. I didn't feel comfortable, I think talking
Speaker 1: about the less fun parts of my sexual identity. I
Speaker 1: didn't feel comfortable talking about the messiness, the confusion and
Speaker 1: things that we now have. I think a far better
Speaker 1: conversation about grape culture consent. What does racism look like
Speaker 1: in a sexual context? You know? What what is sexual
Speaker 1: education and sexual health for queer people look like? Like?
Speaker 1: All of that was not I didn't see a way
Speaker 1: to bring that into the conversation. I don't think my
Speaker 1: friends did. We didn't have that tool. And so it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's important for us to
Speaker 1: understand that just because people aren't explicitly trying to kill
Speaker 1: us does not mean that we are truly free. And
Speaker 1: I think that's the struggle when you have been alienated
Speaker 1: for so long you don't even understand that you're kind
Speaker 1: of trying to survive on like crumbs and small morsels.
Speaker 1: You're not really getting sustenance. And so though you know,
Speaker 1: a lot had changed and it felt more inclusive than
Speaker 1: where I grew up in Texas, for example, I think
Speaker 1: I started inflicting my own shame and starting to keep
Speaker 1: my own secrets on my own. I think America is
Speaker 1: really good at getting women to be sexist to women,
Speaker 1: getting black people to be racist to ourselves, getting queer
Speaker 1: people to inflict homophobia transphobia on ourselves and each other.
Speaker 1: You know, it's almost like that toxicity is like whispering
Speaker 1: in your ear for so long that you start saying
Speaker 1: it to yourself. And I feel that, like in college,
Speaker 1: that caught up with me. Does that makes so much sense?
Speaker 1: It's like internalizing it becomes the internal annihilator. Oh, absolutely
Speaker 1: to that point. I mean, you know, thank goodness for
Speaker 1: Women's studies fellows and Audrey lore did Glory Anzell do it.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember taking a women studies class in
Speaker 1: college and seeing the phrase internalized sexism, and I thought
Speaker 1: my whole body was going to burst into flames because
Speaker 1: it was such a profound idea, like, oh, of course,
Speaker 1: we can totally internalize all of this stuff. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I identified with, I guess is that
Speaker 1: this And I'm wondering whether in my identification, I'm right,
Speaker 1: this period of time where you are kind of acting
Speaker 1: out of this internalized toxicity, how long after that is
Speaker 1: it that your your mother who has been I mean,
Speaker 1: your mother's secret in a way is that she has
Speaker 1: this heart condition. It's not a secret, but she basically
Speaker 1: acts like it doesn't exist, and she keeps smoking cigarettes
Speaker 1: and she just lives like somebody who isn't sick. She
Speaker 1: just refuses to be sick, right, but it catches up
Speaker 1: with her, and you get a phone call that she's
Speaker 1: very sick, and ultimately your mother dies. There's something in
Speaker 1: there about becoming real. In the aftermath of your mother's death,
Speaker 1: you're with your uncle and you've never explicitly come out
Speaker 1: to him, and now you're there and you're making arrangements
Speaker 1: about your mom, and you're right. There were no more
Speaker 1: masks left for me to hide behind. And I just
Speaker 1: wonder whether it's too nate and tidy, perhaps, but it
Speaker 1: felt to me that, I mean, you and your mother
Speaker 1: really loved each other, and her loss was huge. But
Speaker 1: it also feels like it may have been the thing
Speaker 1: that rendered or kind of undid that particular kind of
Speaker 1: acting out of that deep internal self annihilation. Something I
Speaker 1: say often about losing my mom is that it was
Speaker 1: the most humanizing at that time, the most humanizing experience
Speaker 1: I've ever had, even more so than literally, you know,
Speaker 1: someone almost killing me, which at the time did not
Speaker 1: feel like this profoundly enlightening. It was just like a
Speaker 1: horrible thing that happened, you know. So how I saw
Speaker 1: it when my mom died, I felt like grief, and
Speaker 1: it was. It was staringly painful, but it it revealed
Speaker 1: the depths of our relationship to one another. It revealed
Speaker 1: her humanity as an independent person, as just a woman,
Speaker 1: as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend, you know,
Speaker 1: just watching and meeting and have you know, just seeing
Speaker 1: over and over again, all of these people have just
Speaker 1: such an intensely profound grief because of their relationship with her.
Speaker 1: I think something about that and the finality of death,
Speaker 1: as you have these moments where you're like, gosh, she
Speaker 1: was an incredible person, because of course your next thing
Speaker 1: is want to go I should tell her. I want
Speaker 1: to tell her this, I want to tell her what
Speaker 1: I now understand. And then you go, oh, but I can't,
Speaker 1: you know, so you're in this like loop. I think
Speaker 1: that that loop of bereavement introduced me to myself in
Speaker 1: a way. It it is hard to find language for it.
Speaker 1: It feels way to some simplistic to say it made
Speaker 1: me want to live more. But I think maybe it
Speaker 1: helped me understand that my mother this whole time had
Speaker 1: been fighting for her life and trying her best. And
Speaker 1: here I am, if not being ambivalent about my own
Speaker 1: life at times, being my own worst enemy at times literally,
Speaker 1: I mean, in the case of Daniel, just kind of
Speaker 1: almost willingly forfeitting my life, forfeitting at least my appreciation
Speaker 1: for my life and my my well being. And I
Speaker 1: think there was something about the profound loss of my
Speaker 1: mother where I just feel like, how dare you? You
Speaker 1: loved her so much and you now feel the full
Speaker 1: range of her love for you, How could you do this?
Speaker 1: How could you fail to appreciate the very person she
Speaker 1: loves so much? It's not like there was like a
Speaker 1: single moment where all of this became clear. But I
Speaker 1: think beginning with the experience of losing my mother, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to understand your sexual identity or racial identity,
Speaker 1: at least enough to be able to talk about them,
Speaker 1: which is not nothing. I think it's an altogether different
Speaker 1: journey to say, Okay, what are you going to do
Speaker 1: with this life? What are you gonna do with the
Speaker 1: self that you've been working so hard to name? And
Speaker 1: I think in a way it was like, and maybe
Speaker 1: this is the tragedy of the book, homophobia and all
Speaker 1: of the failures of identity kept my mother and I
Speaker 1: from having some really important conversations that I still wish
Speaker 1: we could have. And I think when I lost her,
Speaker 1: there's something about that deficit that I felt like I
Speaker 1: have to make up on my own. Now. Oh, how
Speaker 1: we fight for our lives. We try and we try,
Speaker 1: and perhaps the magnificence the deliverance is in the trying,
Speaker 1: And perhaps those who are lost to us are finally
Speaker 1: not lost to us. Perhaps the conversations we couldn't have
Speaker 1: are the ones that swirl around in our heads and
Speaker 1: hearts and keep us going that's really beautiful. It occurs
Speaker 1: to me too that if we can if we enter
Speaker 1: analize annihilation and we internalize toxicity, we can also internalize love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's possible. And you know, and I think, and as
Speaker 1: a writer who's always is drawn to annihilation, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, in some ways, that's that's it's much easier.
Speaker 1: That kind of peril is often, you know, like clear
Speaker 1: and present, and it often has to be dealt with
Speaker 1: the moment it emerges. Right. But but the rigor of love,
Speaker 1: the rigor of like you know, in a moment you
Speaker 1: see where my mom's in the emergency room when I'm
Speaker 1: in high school earlier in the book, and she's like
Speaker 1: just has her fist in the air and says, like
Speaker 1: I must win. The rigor it takes to become the
Speaker 1: kind of person who can have that kind of determination,
Speaker 1: I would say it's three times as difficult as simply
Speaker 1: trying to escape immediate peril your side eating one left
Speaker 1: passage from his memoir Always like Us never really got away.
Speaker 1: It seemed we just bought ourselves time, a few more
Speaker 1: gasps of air, a few more poems, a few more years.
Speaker 1: History hurt more than any weapon inflicted on us. It
Speaker 1: hit back harder than any weapon we could wield, any
Speaker 1: weapon we could turn ourselves into. I sunk down, I
Speaker 1: looked away. I felt that loneliness and let it settle
Speaker 1: in heavy and final. I don't know how long I
Speaker 1: sat on the floor in that restroom, staring and seeing nothing.
Speaker 1: Eventually I stood up again and washed my face, still
Speaker 1: avoiding my reflection. It seemed as if my life were
Speaker 1: waiting for me outside that room, like polite guest I
Speaker 1: had left behind at the table. It was rude to
Speaker 1: keep him waiting. It helped to think of my life
Speaker 1: as someone separate from me, a person who didn't deserve
Speaker 1: to be abandoned. Sending back down in front of the
Speaker 1: pile of books, I returned to Reginald Shepherd's words. He
Speaker 1: was gone, but they were still here. I thought about
Speaker 1: all the poets who had kept me going. One more minute,
Speaker 1: one more step of the drowned and the drowning, Reginald
Speaker 1: Shepherd wrote, I felt the cord pool taught between us.
Speaker 1: I took a breath. I started a draft of a
Speaker 1: new poem. Family Secrets is an iHeart Media product action.
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer and Bethan Macaluso is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. We'd also like to give a special
Speaker 1: thanks to Tyler Klang and Tristan McNeil. If you have
Speaker 1: a family secret you'd like to share, leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail and your story could appear on an upcoming episode.
Speaker 1: Our number is one eight eight eight secret zero. That's
Speaker 1: secret and then the number zero. You can also find
Speaker 1: us on Instagram at Danny Ryder and Facebook at facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash Family Secrets Pod, and Twitter at FAMI
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.