these last days have been a season of suicide.
I used to listen to GayBC radio a lot. It started when I discovered a web-cammer named reX, who also did a radio (actually internet audio-streaming) show for GayBC. Other programs there became interesting to me; Dr Ruthless, the Mike Webb show, and the morning show: GAYBC Today
with John Mcmullen—who is also the company president—and Chris Diani. Eventually I listened less than several times a day, and when I logged-on last Wednesday to listen to the morning show, I hadn't listened for over a week. But I could still tell that Chris, usually vivacious, was not himself.
i was astonished to discover a while back that Chris grew-up in Southbridge, Massachusetts, and as spaces in this country go, it is intimate to Worcester; a twenty minute ride at most. Chris is a celebrity to me, because he possesses all the characteristics I associate with celebrity; he lives on the other side of the country, he works in the entertainment industry and in a particular facet of that industry which is new and growing fast, he is young and good looking and successful, and he is gay. Before I knew of his connection to Southbridge, I would have imagined his roots to be distant from where I live, in some hip metropolitan center like LA or San Francisco, maybe Miami, possibly New York. I knew he had not always lived in Seattle, but I would never have imagined, every time I listened to him 3 time zones away, that this end of our internet connection was so close to where he began.
Last Wednesday Chris Diani talked of Southbridge with great anger and sadness, and he talked of a boy named Matt with whom he had grown up. On Sunday, April 16, Chris's boyhood friend killed himself. Matt was gay.
Small towns will always be small, and Chris left Southbridge when he could, without regrets except perhaps that the life he chose to live could not be lived in his hometown. Chris didn't admit it, but the choice he made is no small leap of faith. To leave home and acknowledge that the community where you began is incompatible with your continuing, and to relegate to memory all things familial and neighborly sometimes appears to some a step to big to take. It was a step too big for Matt. Some gay youth who cannot accept that their home and family are not good places for them to be, make poignant but ill-fated attempts to fit-in. They cannot acknowledge that those closest pose a mortal threat, much less fathom how an undiscovered community could provide a kind of nurturing which they have never known. Instead of that big step, they take their lives.
chris expressed his rage toward gay entertainers who maintain the lie that they are straight, which does nothing to help a desperate boy confront the self-loathing he has been taught, and in fact reaffirms the misperception that gay is bad. However, the imperative to speak is not conferred upon stars just because they occupy center stage in our culture, nor because they possess the power in their popularity to make an influential social statement that would unquestionably save many gay youth from committing suicide. The reason closeted gay entertainers must tell the truth and help to end the fatal bigotry, though at great personal cost, is because every other alternative promotes the fear and provides harbor for the hate that drives young men to suicide.
Need it be said again? Silence equals death.
is it just the season? I mean April is the cruelest month. Or am I just more aware of young men taking their own lives lately? Only two days after Chris told of Matt's suicide on GAYBC Today, the husband of a former co-worker jumped to his death on Main Street in Worcester. In the past perhaps I dismissed this particular violence, the self-contained explosion of suicide, as a taboo best avoided and ignored. The newspaper never applies the term to individuals in their obituaries, using it only occasionally in reference to historical figures who have killed themselves, or as a general reference to the social issue of suicide on those rare instances when it becomes news.
But it's not the season. I have noticed suicide more lately because it has been on my mind a lot. It comes to me from time to time, like a homeless ex-lover who I tolerate uneasily but allow to stay a while, because having him around—despite the discomfort—has its benefits. Eventually, of course, he has to go, and he knows this too. But he knows me as only one from his perspective could; he knows about me the things I refuse to know myself. He never comes to take me away, though I often wish he would. He can't. He can only present to me a means of escape, but within that presentation is my opportunity to realize that I want to stay. And that once again, he must go.
|
|
|