We fall quiet as we watch the sun reach over the horizon. No matter where we are, no matter who we’re watching, we pause. Sometimes we look to the distance to see the dawning of the day. And other times we witness it as it’s reflected on the people we’ve come to care about, watch as the light spreads over their sleeping features. How can you not hope as the world, for an instant, glows gold? We, who can no longer feel, still feel it, the memory is so strong.
Waking is hard, and waking is glorious. We watch as you stir, then as you stumble out of your beds. We know that gratitude is the last thing on your mind. But you should be grateful.
You’ve made it to another day.
Harry wakes up excited. Today is the day. After all the planning, after all the practice. This particular Saturday is no longer a square on the calendar. It is no longer a date talked about in future tense. It is a day, arriving like any other day, but not feeling like any day that has come before.
He goes straight from his bed to the kitchen—moppy hair askew, clothes sleepworn—and finds his parents there, gearing up in their way for his day. His dad is making breakfast and his mom is at the kitchen table, reading the crossword clues out loud so the puzzle can be filled in together.
“We were just about to wake you,” his mother says.
Harry keeps walking to the den. Craig is sitting bolt upright on the couch, looking like the morning is a mathematical problem he needs to solve before he gets out of bed.
“Dad’s making French toast,” Harry says, knowing the addition of food to the equation will help it get solved faster.
Craig responds with something that sounds like “Muh.”
Harry pats him on the foot and heads back to the kitchen.
Tariq’s alarm goes off, but he doesn’t feel alarmed. With his headphones still dulling the outside noise, it sounds like there’s music coming from the next room, and he takes it, slowly, as an invitation.
As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter.
You up? he asks.
And the reply comes instantly:
For anything.
We smile at this, but then we look over to Cooper’s house and we stop. He is still asleep at his desk, his face just barely glancing the keyboard, keeping the computer awake through the night. His father is coming into the room, and he doesn’t look happy. All of Cooper’s chat windows are still on the screen.
We shiver in recognition at what’s about to happen. We see it on his father’s face. Who among us hasn’t done what Cooper’s just done? That one mistake. That stupid slip. The magazine left spread-eagled on the floor. The love notes hidden under the mattress, the most obvious place. The torn-out underwear ad folded into the dictionary, destined to fall out when the dictionary is opened. The doodles we should have burned. The writing of another boy’s name, over and over, over and over. The clothes shoved in the back of our closet. The book by James Baldwin sitting on our shelf, wearing another book’s jacket. Walt Whitman beneath our pillow. A snapshot of the boy we love, grinning, the conspiracy of us in his eyes. A snapshot of the boy we love who has no idea that we love him, captured oblivious, not knowing the camera was there. A snapshot we kept in our top desk drawer, in a fold in our wallet, in a pocket next to our heart. We should have remembered to take it out before throwing it in the laundry hamper. We should have known what would happen when our mother opened the drawer, looking for a pencil. He’s just a friend, we’d argue. But if he was just a friend, why was he hidden, why were we so upset to have him discovered?
We want to wake Cooper up. We want to make the door louder as it opens. We want his father’s footsteps to sound like thunder, but instead they sound like lightning. His father knows how to do this, his anger building quiet speed. He leans over his son and reads the remnants of last night’s conversations. Some are merely conversational, a bored patois. What’s up? Not much. U? Not much. But others are frank, sexual, explicit. Here’s what I’d do to you. Is that the way you want it? We look closely, hoping for concern to spread over the father’s face. Concern is okay. Concern is understandable. But we, who have looked so long for signs of concern in others, see only disgust. Revulsion.
“Wake up,” the father says.
Anger. Rage.
When Cooper doesn’t stir, he says it again and kicks Cooper’s chair.
That does it.
Cooper jolts awake, his face pressing into the keyboard, creating an unsayable word. His contact lenses feel like dry wafers on his eyes. His breath tastes like morning worms.
His father kicks his chair again.
“Is this what you do?” is the angry accusation. “When we’re asleep. Is this what you’re up to?”
Cooper doesn’t understand at first. Then he raises his head, swallows the meager spit in his mouth, sees the screen. Quickly, he closes the laptop. But it’s too late.
“Is this what you do in my house? Is this what you do to your mother and me?”
From a cold distance, we know that confusion is at the heart of this disgust. And into that heart is pumping a steady flow of hate and ignorance.
We know that Cooper doesn’t have a chance.
His father grabs him by the shirt and pulls him up, so he can be screamed at eye to eye.
“What are you? How could you do this?”
Cooper doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to do. There aren’t even answers.
The father’s face is burning red now. “Do you just go off and fuck men? Is that it? While we’re asleep, you go out and fuck them?”
“No,” Cooper finally says. “No!”
“Then what is this?” A disgusted gesture to the closed computer. “What kind of whore are you?”
Fuck. Whore. These are not words any son should hear from his father. But the father’s rage has its own language. It does not have to talk like a father.
“Stop,” Cooper whispers, tears filling his eyes. “Just stop.”
But there is no stopping. Cooper’s father pushes him against the wall. Impact. The wall shakes and things fall. Cooper is no longer nowhere. He is somewhere now. And it is a horror. It is everything he never wanted to happen, and it’s happening.
His mother comes running into the room. For a moment we are grateful. For a moment, we think it will stop. But the father doesn’t care. He keeps yelling. Faggot. Disgrace. Whore. Sick.
“What’s going on?” the mother yells. “What’s going on?”
Cooper cannot stop crying, which makes his father even angrier. And now his father is explaining to his mother. “He sells himself to men on the Internet.”
“No,” Cooper says. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Open it,” his father commands his mother. “Read.”
Cooper actually lunges, tries to grab the laptop away. But his father knocks him back, pins him down as his mother opens the computer. The screen lights up. She begins to read.
“It’s just chatting,” Cooper tries to tell her. “Nothing ever happens.”
But the look on her face as she reads … some of us have to turn away. We know that look. Something inside her is breaking. And in that breakage, she is giving up on us.
There is nothing more painful than watching someone give up on you. Especially if it’s your mother.
Some mothers recover from this moment. Some never do. And within the moment, the trouble is: You can’t know which way it will go.