looked around the room and wondered how many people there thought of themselves as beautiful and handsome. I wondered whether there were people in the room who thought of
me
as beautiful and handsome. I wondered how many beautiful and handsome people actually felt like they belonged.
Tonight, for the Karaoke Lounge, Bill had donned a purple A-line skirt, a glittery black top with two shawls—one peach, one silver—and a tangled ratty gray wig. He sang “Build Me Up, Buttercup” like an adorable lunatic. He had no conception of how to sing or move, and he got lost every line. “He does that every year,” James told me afterward. “He knows it doesn’t work, but he can’t figure out why.”
After the karaoke finally ended, I found myself talking with Bill about our childhoods. “When I was a little boy,” he said, “there was this older guy, and he spent a lot of time at our house—I think he had a crush on my dad. He was very flamboyant, but I have no idea where he got it from. The town was tiny, there certainly weren’t any models for him to follow. Did he just make it up out of nowhere? He had a really hairy chest and a gold chain. He played piano like Liberace and I was terrified of him. Eventually some kids bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat.” Bill was very matter-of-fact as he related this. “Even now, I’m not attracted to guys who are flamboyant, and I just know it’s because of him.”
And I thought, that’s what has always happened to people who try to fit in where they’re told they don’t belong, isn’t it? The baseball bat, the rope and the tree, the gas.
When I was in seventh grade, a sign appeared one day in an empty window on Charleston’s main shopping street that read OPENING SOON: CACAO’S HANDMADE CHOCOLATES . Since I understood even at the tender age of thirteen that chocolate was the elixir of life, I rushed to the store after school the day it opened and bubbled at the proprietors, Mark and Rob, until they were forced to show me around. The shop was filled with what could only have been alchemical equipment, and the odors heavy in the air worked an enchantment on me more powerful than any spell Circe ever wrought. Even the words Mark and Rob used to describe what they did sounded magical: couverture, conching, theobroma.
Over the next two years I spent many of my free hours at Cacao’s, and for the first time in a long while I knew something of what it felt like to be understood. Since my peers and I did not seek out one another’s company, I was drawn to my teachers, and many of them found me amusing, but even if they regarded me as anything but a precocious child, the constraints of professionalism prevented them from more than a friendly acquaintance. Here in Cacao’s, however, for the first time, I met adults who seemed to want to be my friends. They answered my questions without condescension or comment about my age and they listened to my opinions with what appeared to be respect. Rob was straight but Mark, I came to learn, was gay, as were many of the men and women who might be found chatting with him of an afternoon, and they welcomed me into their company (though I didn’t yet understand how much we had in common). No tinge of sexuality ever colored our interactions; these people simply talked about interesting things and declined to patronize me when I chimed in. They were older than I, and their concerns were different, but the way they treated me revealed a glimpse of the camaraderie my future might hold.
Oddly, in Charleston my biggest problem fitting in wasn’t being gay; it was being smart. Ever since well-educated carpetbaggers came south after the Civil War and hoodwinked former Confederates out of their land and their money and their political power, many Southerners have felt they have good reason to be suspicious of education. That’s why states below the Mason-Dixon Line spend less money on schools and have lower literacy rates than the
me
as beautiful and handsome. I wondered how many beautiful and handsome people actually felt like they belonged.
Tonight, for the Karaoke Lounge, Bill had donned a purple A-line skirt, a glittery black top with two shawls—one peach, one silver—and a tangled ratty gray wig. He sang “Build Me Up, Buttercup” like an adorable lunatic. He had no conception of how to sing or move, and he got lost every line. “He does that every year,” James told me afterward. “He knows it doesn’t work, but he can’t figure out why.”
After the karaoke finally ended, I found myself talking with Bill about our childhoods. “When I was a little boy,” he said, “there was this older guy, and he spent a lot of time at our house—I think he had a crush on my dad. He was very flamboyant, but I have no idea where he got it from. The town was tiny, there certainly weren’t any models for him to follow. Did he just make it up out of nowhere? He had a really hairy chest and a gold chain. He played piano like Liberace and I was terrified of him. Eventually some kids bludgeoned him to death with a baseball bat.” Bill was very matter-of-fact as he related this. “Even now, I’m not attracted to guys who are flamboyant, and I just know it’s because of him.”
And I thought, that’s what has always happened to people who try to fit in where they’re told they don’t belong, isn’t it? The baseball bat, the rope and the tree, the gas.
When I was in seventh grade, a sign appeared one day in an empty window on Charleston’s main shopping street that read OPENING SOON: CACAO’S HANDMADE CHOCOLATES . Since I understood even at the tender age of thirteen that chocolate was the elixir of life, I rushed to the store after school the day it opened and bubbled at the proprietors, Mark and Rob, until they were forced to show me around. The shop was filled with what could only have been alchemical equipment, and the odors heavy in the air worked an enchantment on me more powerful than any spell Circe ever wrought. Even the words Mark and Rob used to describe what they did sounded magical: couverture, conching, theobroma.
Over the next two years I spent many of my free hours at Cacao’s, and for the first time in a long while I knew something of what it felt like to be understood. Since my peers and I did not seek out one another’s company, I was drawn to my teachers, and many of them found me amusing, but even if they regarded me as anything but a precocious child, the constraints of professionalism prevented them from more than a friendly acquaintance. Here in Cacao’s, however, for the first time, I met adults who seemed to want to be my friends. They answered my questions without condescension or comment about my age and they listened to my opinions with what appeared to be respect. Rob was straight but Mark, I came to learn, was gay, as were many of the men and women who might be found chatting with him of an afternoon, and they welcomed me into their company (though I didn’t yet understand how much we had in common). No tinge of sexuality ever colored our interactions; these people simply talked about interesting things and declined to patronize me when I chimed in. They were older than I, and their concerns were different, but the way they treated me revealed a glimpse of the camaraderie my future might hold.
Oddly, in Charleston my biggest problem fitting in wasn’t being gay; it was being smart. Ever since well-educated carpetbaggers came south after the Civil War and hoodwinked former Confederates out of their land and their money and their political power, many Southerners have felt they have good reason to be suspicious of education. That’s why states below the Mason-Dixon Line spend less money on schools and have lower literacy rates than the
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