The backyard was no different than it had been. It didn’t matter that an elastic, nylon layer of skin was not hiding my chest. I was frolicking with my friends, just us kids. The only shift was in my happiness, a moment of knowing, a crisp focus, enhancing all the colors and sounds. A rush of joy.
This was only the second time I had seen a Speedo in person. The first time was when I was eight, visiting Prince Edward Island. We drove the three and a half hours, crossing the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to PEI, heading to my mom’s pal Brenda’s place. She had a farm in North Rustico, on the northern side of the island. There were a few of us there—another friend of my mother’s, Sandy, came with her two children, who were close in age but a little younger than me. Their uncle, Sandy’s brother Kyle, also hopped over to the island with us.
Sandy’s brother was one of the only two gay people I knew (of) when I was a child. He was the kind of gay they showed on TV sometimes. The way he looked, the way he talked, the way he moved … a gay person. I’d find myself staring, sensing, a recognition. A fuse box tinkered with, my brain distributing microscopic sparks.
The farm was on a fifty-acre chunk of flat, fertile land. There was an old, large house with white shingles that sat proudly and a barn, behind, off to the right, sheltering the chickens that I scrambled out of bed at the first sign of light to feed. Mabel, an ancient, colossal pig, felt like a friend. I’d visit unprompted, wanting to get close, but not too close, skittish of her robustness. Conscious that reasoning with this creature was not a viable option. Opposite the barn stood a few trees, their branches protruding, bending, and curling; the perfect place. I’d remain outside for hours, building a fort, securing it from coyotes with a worn discarded hubcap that I rolled in front of the little opening. I have always loved being in nature.
During this vacation, we went to Rainbow Valley, a small amusement and water park in Cavendish. I never was that into swimming and water parks, and I speculate this had something to do with bathing suits. (I should give water parks another chance, start fresh in my swim trunks.) Waiting in line at the top of the most popular and highest slide, Kyle stood behind me in his Speedo. The wetness over his smooth skin twinkled. His firm, tanned body, the torso a dream. I tried not to look down at the tight Speedo, but I did look down at the tight Speedo. As did the teenage boys behind us.
“Faggot…” you could hear them whispering. The kind of mumbling made just audible enough to hear. Those fucking cowards.
I witnessed Kyle’s body immediately shrink, his shoulders rounded forward, his head ever so slightly shifting downward, stretching the back of his neck. The boys, in their long swim trunks, snickered and mocked, contemptuous of queers like him, like us. I did and did not know what was going on. Kyle said nothing, his focus on me, smiling as we crept up for our turn and flung ourselves toward the earth.
It turns out I am not exactly a Speedo guy, but wearing swim trunks for the first time, chest out and with my scars visible, was indescribable. Perhaps that moment in Toronto was best captured in a photo I posted on Instagram. A smile on my face as massive as they come.
I have gone from someone who lounged around a pool in ninety-degree weather practically bundled up to standing proudly, with this body that feels my own.
“Did you bring your swimming jeans?” a friend once joked as we sat on the roof of her apartment building under the scorching LA sun.
Swimming in that backyard in Toronto, my legs kicked, my arms stretched, and I could feel every part of me. I rose from the water and watched it drip down my chest as I picked at my wet swim trunks, stuck to my thighs. Stepping out of the pool, I settled into a beach chair, lying back, I soaked up the sun.
17
CRASH
As an adult, whenever I was heading home, I would prep myself. I spent so much of my professional life performing that I had come to the realization that I could not also perform in my personal life. I should not have to perform, I did not have to make things okay for Linda and for my dad.
Okay, THIS time you will say something. THIS time you will stand up for yourself.
“Please don’t say that.”
“Why do you have to talk to me like that?”
Practicing. Performing?
But, of course, as soon as I got there I could never give my all. I’d enter the door, hellos projected up and down the stairwell, and before I had finished removing my sneakers—back pain, anxiety, gas in the gut, brick on the chest. The feeling so visceral, the glares of judgment. It hijacks your resolve, pulverizing it like the pecans for her crumble. A doll with its string pulled, auto-response on replay, not even real. Looking back, I had been exhausting all efforts to earn her love and to keep my father content. If my dad was not defending me, clearly I must be the problem, and maybe, if at long last, I managed to find a solution, well, perhaps then I would feel safe. I started barely going home.
Instead, my father came to visit me in Los Angeles. I was twenty-five, living in my own place on Canton Drive—a quiet neighborhood, mostly young families and older folks. I liked it there. The house was a two-bedroom with a large backyard that had a steep incline. The scent of jasmine filled the garden—I’d planted it along the fence because I knew Ryan cherished it, the way that it suffused the air. I had a medium-size pool, shaped like a kidney bean, that glistened under the California sun. At night, the yard would light up bright purple (because a recent ex enjoyed colored lightbulbs, I kept forgetting to swap them, they eventually burned out).
The house had a decent-size living room with large windows that looked down to the street. It was sparsely furnished with a couch and two mid-century chairs that faced the white-painted brick fireplace. There was a small, sleek galley kitchen with a small half bath tucked to the left and two cozy bedrooms.
Before my father arrived, he’d told me that there were things he wanted to talk to me about this trip that had to do with my childhood. My first thought was of the animosity I’d experienced growing up from Linda, and his seeming inability to step in, or maybe he’d finally realized how his expressions of love shifted when we were alone versus with her. Dennis has a power reminiscent of Linda’s but it manifests differently. He does not need those burning looks, his soft tone takes care of it, manipulating the frequency to get what he wants. Washing over, bathing you in self-doubt, it implies comfort, but it chills the skin. And you don’t know why, but you go along with it.
I was too stunned on that phone call to ask what he meant, but fear and hope intermingled in my chest as I went to pick him up from the airport. The possibility of getting an apology from him, having a real conversation about it all, it felt like the time had finally come.
A day or two into his visit we sat in the parking lot of a Whole Foods after grabbing groceries. He turned to me, face filled with contemplation.
“What I wanted to talk to you about, well, I’ve been thinking a lot about it…” he began. “I feel I have carried guilt for so long and I have finally come to a place where I can let go of it.”
It wasn’t exactly what I’d expected but I still clung to the hope that this was the reckoning that could help us move forward.
“I’ve always felt so guilty for leaving your mother when you were little”—my brain twisted in confusion—“but if all that hadn’t happened, I never would have been with Linda.” I didn’t understand why he was saying this, why he was expressing it to me. I had felt so small and powerless growing up in that house with her. He continued, “I never would have had this life with her. I never would have had the love and happiness I have. I love her so much.”
I never would have had this life with her. I repeated his words to myself. This wonderful life. In that moment one thing was clear: He didn’t see it at all. He didn’t see me at all.
My lungs stopped working, chest on fire but still, the car a trap. The last time I was home I’d finally been able to share some of my experience, of my pain and the impact of growing up in that house. Here, again, it seemed my feelings were pushed aside, erased, an emotional punch to the gut.
I stared ahead, frozen and silent, my brain unable to follow the rest of the conversation. It wasn’t that I was not speaking, it was that I couldn’t speak, a sensation that has escorted me throughout my life, an imperceptible muzzle, hushing without notice. My level of discomposure has caused issues at work. The mirror, my face, the tight clothes, I did want to die, but I wasn’t going to do it, not consciously at least. The convenient and closest alternative was to shut it all down, trigger an outage. When these outages happen, I often lose myself to memory—stress piling on stress.
My mind slipped to another moment.