Joey acted like he was begging for his life instead of asking someone to keep a secret.
“It’s all good, man,” Cash said. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I understand why you want to keep it from your family, but why not tell your friends? They seem open-minded enough to handle it.”
“I just don’t want to risk it, okay?” Joey said. “If word ever got back to my parents—well, I don’t know what would happen. They’d probably disown me or ship me off to some facility where they shock the gay out of you. It’s just better for everyone if I keep it to myself.”
“Mm-hmm.” Cash grunted. “Is that also why you’re going to Oklahoma Baptist University for performing arts? Because it’s better for everyone?”
“What are you getting at, Cash?”
“Dude, you’re bending over backward to please the people you’re never going to get approval from,” Cash said. “I know because I’m guilty of it, too, and it’s a total waste of time. It’s like when I spend my days off doing favors for television critics. No matter how many head shots I sign or videos I record for their bratty kids, it isn’t going to make them review my projects any better or write good things about me in their recaps.”
“No offense, but I think pleasing my family and pleasing a bunch of critics is totally different,” Joey said.
“Sorry—it was just the first example I could come up with,” Cash said. “Your whole world is going to open up once you get out from under your dad’s thumb. Don’t you remember that whole It Gets Better thing the Wiz Kids cast participated in?”
Cash was trying to help, but it was only making Joey angrier by the second.
“You Hollywood people are so full of shit,” Joey said. “You act like all our problems can be solved with a catchphrase or a hashtag—like our lives actually get easier if we see a bunch of celebrities with matching T-shirts in a PSA.”
“Dude, I’m just trying to sympathize with you,” Cash said. “I know what it’s like to—”
“No you don’t, Cash!” Joey yelled. “You don’t know what it’s like to feel ashamed every time you have a physical attraction! You don’t know what it’s like to have most of the planet think you’re a pervert, a demon, or mentally ill! You don’t know what it’s like to live in a country with judges and cabinet members that think you belong in jail! You don’t know what it’s like to know the people you love the most would never love the real you! You’ll never know any of those things, so don’t pretend you do!”
Joey had to catch his breath and recover from the outburst like he’d just run a marathon. He had been so successful at hiding his anger, he didn’t realize there was so much inside him. Once it started pouring out, Joey couldn’t stop it, as if Cash had put the final crack in the dam around his heart.
“Feel better?” Cash asked.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’ve—I’ve—I’ve never said those things to anyone before. I don’t think I’ve even said them to myself.”
“I was worried the furniture was going to start levitating,” Cash said. “You’re right, though. I don’t know what any of that is like. But I do know what it’s like to feel trapped and too afraid to do anything about it.”
“How so?” Joey asked.
“Agoraphobia,” Cash said.
“Agoraphobia?”
“It’s the fear of leaving your house,” Cash said. “Remember the Christmas episode in season five? The one that implied the Virgin Mary was an alien abductee and Jesus Christ was an extraterrestrial/human hybrid?”
“Of course,” Joey said. “People were not happy about that—my parents almost forbid me to watch the show.”
“It was the worst backlash Wiz Kids had ever received,” Cash said. “And even though I didn’t write it, since I was the face of the show, people took their anger out on me. I got death threats from five different radical religious groups.”
“What?”
Joey assumed it was another one of Cash’s exaggerated stories, but he was being dead serious.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “They threated to shoot me, to mail me poison, to put a bomb in my car—you name it! For a good year, I was terrified to leave my house. The only other places I went were the studio to shoot the show and WizCon to promote it.”
“What did you do? How did you get over it?” Joey said.
“One day I woke up and decided I had had enough,” Cash explained. “I realized it didn’t matter what might happen to me outside, because the damage was already done. Those maniacs had already taken my life away by making me live in fear; it just took me a while to recognize it. So I finally built up the courage to step outside, and you want to know what I learned?”
“What?”
Cash smiled serenely. “I learned why they call it fresh air,” he said. “And one day, you will, too.”