Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays

by R. Eric Thomas

There’s a Nayyirah Waheed quote: “If someone does not want me, it is not the end of the world. But if I do not want me, the world is nothing but endings.” That is the problem that troubles this book. “Listen, I have an idea,” Grover says. “If you do not turn any pages, we will never get to the end of this book.” And yet… I’m a spoiler kween; I’ll see you at the end.

They chose us. And in so doing they created a world motivated by that choice. That’s the goal. You work hard so that your children are able to live a life somewhat free from the burdens that plagued you. That’s the gift my parents gave us, free of charge. Or, at least, I assume that’s a parent’s goal. I don’t have any kids but I want those things for my houseplants.

Love seems to have infinite possible beginnings, endings, permutations, subtle shifts, and seismic changes. Love, I’ve learned, is different every time you look at it. Love is every possible love story all at once. Love is a library. And nothing is as fat with possibility as a library.

I tell this story to get back there, to unwind the ending, despite the realities of life. And of death. When one tells a story, one has to choose where to stop. So, for every story, there’s an infinite number of endings, a library’s worth of endings, every book a new chance. Perhaps, for us, for all of us, there are so many endings that they can’t all be heartbreaking and baffling. There must be a place to stop that is just a step into a new possibility.

Getting into college went from being a hazy, amorphous next step to the goal that I put all of my feelings of self-worth and my parents’ hope into. It was a source of pride but I didn’t realize that it was also a source of Black Pride. That was a horse of a different colored.

The feeling of being alone, I’ve found, is the poison that has no taste. It seeps in slowly and easily; it never seems unusual. Isolation presents as an undesired state but nothing serious, nothing permanent, until the lonely nights become lonely months.

When the fact of your being is used as a weapon against you, the process of relearning who you are and what your value is, is a long one. I don’t know that I’ll ever be finished. I don’t know that I’ll ever be fully there. But I’ve learned I can’t be the first person out there calling myself a faggot just to get it out of the way. That’s not how one stays safe and that’s not how one creates community.

For years, I thought that the way to keep from getting burned was to set myself on fire first or to snuff out my light. I didn’t know that I was a phoenix, growing more powerful with every unsuccessful attempt at the drag of presentability, every hurled insult, every strike, and every split. The flame is not my liability but my strength. It was inside me all along. (That’s what he said.)

I knew that spirituality was something that I wanted in my life (Jesus! What a pal!), but as I came more into myself as a gay person, I became resolute in my desire to never sit in a pew and be told I was going to hell again. It’s the little things.

I’d found myself in a number of open and affirming congregations, but most of them were largely white and their style of worship was so dramatically different from what I grew up with it was hard to take seriously as capital-C Church. Some of these people were wearing shorts. Jesus didn’t die on the cross for you to be exposing your knees like it’s Casual Friday, Mark.

The stories of black life in this nation and prior to this nation have never been as well kept as the stories of white life. We inherit a narrative that is full of sand. There are so many on the outside who want our stories, our histories of achievement, erased, so we have to save the space for them—in ourselves and in our midst.

Every family’s story is a tale of becoming, sometimes through oppression, sometimes through achievement, and sometimes simply through the current of time. We were born grasping after freedom, in a house that could not hold us; every day we get closer and closer to our destination, until our features come into view. Soon, everyone further on down the family line can see us from their seats at the table; we’re coming home. Set a place for us. We’re hungry, we have so much to talk about, and we’re coming home.

Discussion Questions Who are you most looking forward to seeing in heaven? Who are you trying to avoid? In church, God is our father and Jesus is our brother. Who are our cousins? Does heaven have an eccentric aunt? Do you have an eccentric aunt? I hope you do. The thing is, the promise of church is community, salvation, and a relationship with God. If the gay music minister and the person with AIDS cannot be part of the church, where do they find God?

We never had Easter egg hunts in church growing up. We were Baptists and that bunny didn’t die on the cross, did it? No, it did not! Our Easter baskets had chocolate crosses nestled in fake grass; I haven’t done the math, but I think from a square-inches perspective you get more chocolate from a cross than a bunny. So chalk one up for crucifixion, I guess.

Easter is about salvation, and salvation is free and available to everyone. Yet so many churches put barriers around it. If our religions aren’t about the business of achieving justice in our time, in this world, for everyone, what are they doing?

When it all goes south, I want to be remembered, not relied on.