How We Fight For Our Lives

by Saeed Jones

because you’re young and don’t know the difference between abandoned and alone

I decided I knew better than to ask the wrinkled woman at the circulation desk where to find books about being gay. Instead, I slowly walked up and down each aisle, scanning book spines until I found what I was looking for. The first book that stopped me was for parents dealing with gay children. The introduction was worded like it was intended for readers coping with a late-stage cancer diagnosis. I put the book back on the shelf, wrong side out.

All the books I found about being gay were also about AIDS. Gay men dying of AIDS like it was a logical sequence of events, a mathematical formula, or a life cycle. Caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly; gay boy, gay man, AIDS. It was certain. Mom’s friend got AIDS because he was gay. Because he was gay, he killed himself. Because he knew he was dying anyway.

I read about gay men who were abandoned by their families when they came out. Or worse, who didn’t tell anyone that they were gay, even when lesions started to blossom on their skin like awful flowers. Either way, the men in those books always seemed to die alone.

After a long day of work, James Byrd Jr., a black man, accepted a ride home from three white men. Three white supremacists, he realized a moment too late. They beat him, chained him to the back of their truck, and dragged him for more than a mile down a desolate country road. Jasper, where Byrd lived and died, is just a four-hour drive from the living room where my mother and I sat that evening. Separated by a heavy silence, we watched the local news reporter’s mouth twist and morph to find the right shape for the word “dismembered.” I

For a moment, I was the wolf outside the door. But then I was a black boy in America again, curled fetal in his twin bed, a bloody stone in hand, ears ringing with the rattle of chains. Silent, troubled, and helplessly myself.

Just as some cultures have a hundred words for “snow,” there should be a hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night.

she turned to me and told me to stop holding my books “like a girl.” I can’t remember why I was even carrying a stack of books, but there they were, three slim books pressed against my chest, secured by my crossed arms. “Well, tell me how boys carry their books,” I spat back. And, without turning to look at me or pausing in her stride, my grandmother slapped me across the face with the back of her hand.

Precisely because my grandmother loved—loves—me, she tightened her grip until it became so painful that I had no choice but to yank myself free.

People don’t just happen. We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The “I” it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, “I am no longer yours.” My grandmother and I, without knowing it, were faithfully following a script that had already been written for us. A woman raises a boy into a man, loving him so intensely that her commitment finally repulses him.

I made myself a promise: even if it meant becoming a stranger to my loved ones, even if it meant keeping secrets, I would have a life of my own.

Somewhere between the fact we know and the anxiety we feel is the reality we live. —MAMIE ELIZABETH TILL-MOBLEY

the two truths finally collided: Being black can get you killed. Being gay can get you killed. Being a black gay boy is a death wish. And one day, if you’re lucky, your life and death will become some artist’s new “project.”

I slipped on the forcefully carefree posture of the other boys around me. The existential shrug of young men afraid to admit that they’ve been touched by art, and that they want to be touched in that way again.

I think I didn’t feel as if a burden had been lifted because my being gay was never actually the burden. There was still so much I hadn’t told my mother, so much I knew that I would probably never tell her. I had come out to my mother as a gay man, but within minutes, I realized I had not come out to her as myself.

When I looked up, she was staring at me, wide-eyed, almost pleadingly—as if I’d led someone afraid of heights to the edge of a rusting bridge. And then I did exactly what I thought all people who love each other do: I changed the subject; I changed myself; I erased everything I had just said; I erased myself so I could be her son again.

Boys like us never really got away, it seemed. We just bought ourselves time. A few more gasps of air, a few more poems, a few more years. History hurt more than any weapon inflicted on us.

I don’t know how long I sat on the floor in that restroom, staring and seeing nothing. Eventually, I stood up again and washed my face, still avoiding my reflection. It seemed as if my life were waiting for me outside that room, like a polite guest I’d left behind at the table. It was rude to keep him waiting. It helped to think of my life as someone separate from me, a person who didn’t deserve to be abandoned.

I have no memory of hearing the words “brain dead” for the first time. As my memory tells it, when I walked into that tiny room, I had a mother and when I walked out, I didn’t.

Tears don’t always just fall; sometimes they rip through you, like storm-painted gusts instead of mere raindrops.

“Uncle, I’m gay,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road ahead of us. “I guess I’ve never actually said it to you.” “Oh, I know,” he answered, his eyes also steady on the road. His tone wasn’t dismissive or heavy; it was simply his, that calm directness that made it clear why he was so good at being the father of a large family, a deacon at his church, and a senior executive at his company. “It doesn’t really seem to matter much now, to be honest, but I just wanted to say it.” “Okay, nephew.” He smiled. I went back to watching the trees blur as we sped past them. At the grocery store, I held up two different packages of hot dog buns, trying to decide, while he picked up a bag of chips. When my uncle turned his back to me, I looked at him and then almost cried thinking of his smile.