My first love was not male but female. She was my mom. I loved her. What did I love about her? I’ve never asked that question before.
I thought she was beautiful. She was different. When I was a child she would ask, “What color am I?” I would always say, orange. She’s more yellow than orange, but my answer would make her laugh. She didn’t laugh so much when I came home from middle school and said she was a mullato. I had just learned what a mullato was and realized it was my mom.
She was definitely proud to be black. Take for example the first time I heard her say, “shit.” As she said it, I could see her drawing out the sound with just the right amount of tension in her facial muscles as tiny droplets of spit shot from her teeth and lips with emphasis. “You said that perfectly,” I told her. “That’s because I’m black,” she responded. She wasn’t saying that black people curse a lot. She was commenting on how she as a black person does everything with style. That made me smile.
Or there was the time she came out of a department store dressing room in a beautiful green ball gown she needed for some function I can’t recall. When she stepped out in the dress, I noticed how everyone stopped and stared in admiration. That was my mom. I see now that she was mostly a beautiful image to reflect upon. Someone I might reach out for, but could never hold onto.
My father died when I was six, so my mom was gone a lot of the time. She had to pay for a new house with a pool that soon became a pond, a car to get her back and forth to work, and two kids who still needed a babysitter. At some point during this time, I had a dream that still haunts me: My mom and I are shopping in a mall and she’s exhausted. Ahead of us are rows of theater seats for customers to rest, and so my mom sits. An announcement is suddenly made that the mall is about to close. I instinctively know that when it does, my mom’s seat will fold up and sink into the floor. I pull at her arm, but she doesn’t budge. Her eyes won’t stay open and I can’t arouse her enough to get up. I yell and am forced to let go when the mall closes and the seats slowly fold into the floor with my mother inside. Gone.
I think that’s what happened to my mom. She grew too tired from her life and another version took her place. I have memories of her coming out to a volleyball game in elementary school and parent-teacher nights in middle school. I have memories of her attending my plays in high school, even though my step-father refused to come due to “the gays.” Mostly, I remember a woman who was there but not there. A woman I learned to keep secrets from and lie to in order to have some sense of self. Like when she wouldn’t allow me to become a safety patrol officer in the 6th grade. She didn’t think I could handle it. I did. As the year started, I took it upon myself to grab an extra orange belt and silver badge and began protecting my fellow students. No questions asked. The role fit whether my mother liked it or not.
“You’re a dream buster,” I told her once after hearing a motivational speaker at school. I took the speaker’s advice and I stopped telling my mother my dreams. Protecting them and myself from her judgments. I never told her about being bullied or being afraid or sad. I never told her about me. There was no point.
I remember my mom once gave me her old jewelry box. It never occurred to me then that she was giving her son a jewelry box. Perhaps it was a secret sign. Of knowing something we couldn’t openly talk about. Months later, she did something that upset me and I gave the box back before leaving the house. When I got home, I found it broken into pieces on my bed. I can’t remember what she did to upset me, but I can remember seeing that box broken into small unfixable pieces.
I also recall having a tantrum one night and being sent to my room. Once alone in silence, a overwhelming sense of remorse and love arose inside me. I knocked on my parents’ door in tears. My mom opened and I said I was sorry and loved her. All I could think of was hugging my mom and her showing me love and forgiveness. Instead, she continued to yell and told me that I needed to change. There was an emptiness as I turned and walked back to my room. That night something inside of me disappeared. What, I couldn’t tell you. I had forgotten it the moment it vanished.
As I grew older and became more aware of my sexuality, the silence within my home became worse. Now a studying Jehovah’s Witness, the boy who learned to not speak was finding his voice while knocking on doors to spread the good news, fending off school bullies that were growing larger and more threatening every year, and surprisingly through Eros. My family had started studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses at about the same time that middle school began. I often talked about the bible during lunch, earning the nick name, Moses. Learning about God was exciting. Like learning about magic. Discovering how unseen spirits and angels were around us all the time and how God had this plan that needed to be shared. How a certain number of people would serve with God while the rest who were faithful and true got to live forever in paradise on earth.
What was as equally exciting to my teen mind was a classmate named David Rodriguez. Known to be adopted by rich folks who let him get away with everything, David was one of the cool kids in school. Extremely handsome with jet black hair and yellowish skin like my mom, he always had on clothes my family couldn’t afford and did the things that I couldn’t or was too timid to try. That’s why when he started to show interest, I was not exactly confused but in awe. How could someone so together like someone so me? My jeans never touched my ankles. I had to roll up my shirt sleeves because they never reached my wrists. My life was anything but cool, but none of that mattered when David was around. Everything was right just the way it was. I can still hear his voice and laugh. See the black freckles strategically placed on his tanned face. Feel his pen slowly moving against my flesh as he drew on my arm while I kept my eyes closed in faith. Him whipping his thick hair out of his eyes to see me better. He was beautiful. I felt beautiful.
David learned to quickly partner with me in classes before my best friend could. “Sorry Josh, David asked first.” He left his seat with the cool kids at one end of the lunch table to hang out with me and my friends at the opposite end. He even called. He called and told me about what he was going to wear to church on Sunday: silk boxers. He loved the way they felt against his skin. I was still wearing white Fruit of the Loom cotton briefs. We talked about our love for peppermint schnapps, a drink I still haven’t tried. He called in the early afternoon before my parents got home. He called in the late evening when my parents were home. My parents noticed. Our classmates noticed. No one was happy and that made David unhappy. David soon stopped asking to be my partner in class. He retreated to the opposite end of the lunch table. He followed my parents’ order to stop calling.
The following year, our entire class was still together due to our accelerated courses, but David and I were like strangers. We never mentioned our old friendship. It was almost as if I had imagined it. He stayed with his clique and I stayed with mine. The groups would intermingle, but David and I rarely spoke to one another. Years later in high school, news quickly circulated that David was found dead. Hung from a tree in his yard. The police said it was suicide.
I still think of David. While riding the train through New York, I sometimes turn and see him in the crowd. I think, maybe he didn’t die. Maybe someone made that up. Maybe that could be him right there. I look for a moment and then I let the thoughts go. I let David go. Again and again.
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