When They Tell You to Be Good by When They Tell You to Be Good (retail) (epub)

Author:When They Tell You to Be Good (retail) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Tin House Books

If I couldn’t trust the adults in my life, maybe I could learn to trust myself. I came home to an empty house again because my mother and brother were both at work. On The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah talked to a friend, who was a gay man. They joked about what it would take for him to have sex with a woman, and then Oprah said, “It makes no sense to me that you should hate yourself. Just let it go. Be whoever you are meant to be.”

It haunted me that when Oprah spoke, her expression was not tinged with disgust that many of the adults I knew had for gay people. She looked at me, the viewer, with a parental love and protectiveness that I craved. I broke. The disease festering inside of me shriveled up. Even though I was terrified, I turned to my journal with shaky hands and a dry throat. I wrote the truth for the first time in code, “9. 1, 13. 7, 1, 25.” I eventually found the courage to write, “I am gay and this is going to explode my world.” I realized that choosing to love myself was not the paramount decision. The crux was how committed to self-love I was, how I defined it, and how I defended it.

With this realization, writing became the elixir to many of my mental wounds. I sat at my desk as my pregnant eighth-grade teacher turned to the class and brushed her black hair behind her ear.

“I want you all to write a short story about whatever you want. Anything at all, just make it three to five pages,” she said.

Everyone cleared their desks and packed up to go home. I was slow to leave as my mind raced with all of the possibilities. I went home, sat at my desk cluttered with piles of R. L. Stine books, and hunched over my laptop. If life was breaking down all around me, at least I could use my mind to build something. That evening I turned into my own God, one that was capable of giving redemption.

My teacher called me into her classroom during recess after I turned in the short story. This teacher was far from my favorite. A few weeks before I’d told her that I had problems with the other boys in my grade being mean to me, which was an understatement. She replied, “Maybe if you didn’t act differently, then they wouldn’t treat you differently.”

“Now, Prince. I read your short story and I can tell that you put so much work into it,” she said. “But I’m concerned about why you wrote it.”

She handed the story back to me marked with an A and folded her hands in front of her at her desk. I tried to wrap my head around what she was saying, or better yet, asking.

“I just thought it would be a cool story,” I replied.

“How are things at home?”

I detected a sort of knowing and unknowing in her gaze and was confused.

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