Freaks and Revelations (22 page)

Now, I see a little boy. Fourteen. A child.

As the newscast continues, I play through that night, recalling what I felt, what I thought, how everything that happened went so quickly out of control.

“Kill the faggots!”

I remember the skinheads, the sounds of their boots. Them, chanting. Me, running. Coco’s screams. How none of it seemed real, until I saw those eyes.

Did Matthew Shepard feel the same?

He got into their car, he couldn’t have known they wanted to hurt him. When did that change? Was it fast, all of a sudden, or did it start in his gut and creep through his skin? Did he try to get out? What did he think when they pulled out a gun? Did he beg them? Will he remember being tied to the fence, seeing them climb back in the car and drive away?

Did he think they’d come back? Was he conscious? Did he see their eyes?

Will he remember? I didn’t, not until now.

When did he know he was alone?

He cried, that much is clear—the tears made tracks down his face. What did he think in those dark morning hours? Did he see the glow of day on the mountains? Feel the cold? What were his thoughts before sunrise?

Before the alley, I didn’t understand that people could stop being human and still live. That a mother could decide not to love her child. That a stranger could want to kill you for being who you are. That there are people who breathe and walk and speak and live and do not care about other people at all. People who cannot see.

Like tricks who go with little boys.

Like the skinheads.

Like the men who passed me and turned their heads.

Like my uncle.

Like my mother.

When I understood this, all those years ago, my heart broke, and because the pain was more than I could take, I stopped crying. I wrapped up the tears and hid them away where I could forget it had even happened.

Matthew Shepard dies and my heart breaks again.

This time, I won’t stop my tears. I can’t.

I’ll cry for the young murdered boy, for his family, for his last moments, for the truth he was forced to see before he died, for the fact that the two men live, and he does not.

I’ll cry for myself. For all the children whose mothers cannot love them. For boys who are gay and must hide. For hearts so hard they can’t feel their own pain, much less anyone else’s. I’ll cry because we are here such a very short time, and while we are here, we can choose.

Because of Matthew Shepard, I am changed.

I touch my forehead often now. I comb my hair to the other side, so the scar will clearly show. I won’t hide it anymore. I won’t hide me, not even when I’m afraid, not even when it seems easier to hate.

I won’t choose hate. I can’t.

Because I know what happens. I’ve seen eyes as they disconnect.

Because Matthew Shepard died, and I did not.

If my heart must break each and every day, brand-new, for the rest of my life, so be it. I will not hate another human being. I will never again forget.

May, 2005

LOS ANGELES

Close up, the guy’s huge. He eases himself into the plastic chair, sets his coffee down, and rubs a big hand over his shaved head. He puts his cane between the plate glass and the table, but doesn’t loosen his grip on it. My skin turns cold. What the hell was I thinking? I don’t like skinheads, even outside Coffee Bean in broad daylight, with all these people around us.

“Hi,” I say.

He nods and glances at me briefly, and dumps sugar into his cup.

I tell myself to relax. He’s an
ex
-skinhead. He got all those tattoos ages ago. Isn’t he at the Museum of Tolerance, just like me? Isn’t he here to help me out? Whatever—my hands are sweating. I perch on the edge of the chair and keep a clear line to the street.

“Avra wants me to bring a group to your lecture next Friday,” I say, managing a smile. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Yeah, sure, Friday’s good.” He glances over again, then taps his cane lightly on the concrete. Sweat trickles down my sides.

“So, what do you talk about, specifically?”

“Oh, you know, my old lifestyle, why I left it, how I left it, and—” He cuts himself off and shrugs. His face clouds, like I’m making him mad. Or maybe he doesn’t like gay men.

“Okay, and?”

“Okay, and, I don’t know—I try to get kids to see how your choices can screw you up. I tell them all the stupid things I did and—”

For a brief second, I hold his stare.

His eyes are very blue.

He turns away slightly and continues.

“You mighta heard—I did some pretty violent shit. At clubs, out on the street. And there was this place we’d go a lot, down on Santa Monica and—”

“Martel,” I interrupt. “Oki Dogs.” The cup in my hand is shaking, I set it down.

This is not possible.

“Yeah,” he replies. He taps the cane again, harder.

“Skinheads hung out there a lot.” I can’t feel my legs. I need to throw up.

“Yeah, pretty much always after we went clubbing.”

“So you were only there on weekends?”

“No. Thursdays too.”

The biggest demon of all stands with laser eyes boring down.“He’s not out yet?!”

“We beat a kid up there once. Real bad.”

“A gay kid.” I grip the edge of my chair. I will not run.

“Yeah.” He draws his cane toward him, looks away. A vein pulses on his temple.

I press my lips together. I drop my head. The cane raps harder, again and then again.

I lift my head and meet his eyes. I ask:

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.”

I knew him the second I sat down. The eyes. I couldn’t look at them. Now I can’t look away. He stands, grabs his jacket, and stomps off. Just stomps off. The buzzing in my head kicks to a roar; rubbing doesn’t help. Every possible outcome presents itself and none of them are good. I sit still a minute to gather myself. I get out a pain pill and take it with my coffee. My hand’s shaking.

Why does this shit happen to me?

I don’t know how I make it home. How I call the twins’ mom and tell her to keep them for the night. I do know that what I’m feeling is dangerously close to out of control, that I’m going to have to work carefully to get through this one. I’m feeling like I did in jail, like I did way back in the day, when what I needed more than anything was to kick somebody’s face in.

I could kick somebody’s face in RIGHT NOW.

This is impossible. This can’t be real. When do I get a break? How much fucking harder am I supposed to work to make something come out right?

I know I’m getting fired. I know that.

I know there’s nobody in my world now who’ll understand that shit like this happened all the time. He just shoulda stayed at the burger place. Why the hell did he cross that street?

I didn’t know what I was doing. I was too wasted. I never saw him as a little kid—he wasn’t a kid to me, he was the invader—and I honestly didn’t mean to hurt him that bad, just get him out of our—

Suddenly the roar in my brain stops.

He was the same age as my son is now…

Everything inside me caves in, collapses. I don’t know what to do.

FRIDAY

“I made stupid choices because I didn’t realize that everything I did was going to have an effect on someone.
Including
myself. You can’t do violence without paying a price.”

I’m midway through my presentation. The kids are watching hard to see if I’m telling the truth. This is
his
group, but he didn’t show. I’m winging it on my own.

The door at the back of the auditorium opens and
he
slips through. My heart takes off. I look straight at him. He freezes, but holds my stare. My mouth goes dry.

“You know, I hurt a lot of people.” My throat closes, I’m barely getting the words out. “And one of them just walked through that door.” Suddenly the place is silent. The kids turn, stare. He doesn’t move, but his eyes—it’s like that night. Suddenly, there’s no one here but him and me. I still don’t know what to do.

My voice is now barely more than a whisper. But it fills the entire room.

“Dude. I’m sorry.”

AFTERWORD

FROM HATE 2 HOPE

Matthew Boger (Jason) is often asked if he’s truly forgiven Tim Zaal (Doug).

“I have. But it took a long time. I had to discover what it means to forgive someone who’s done such a terrible thing. But really, it’s not about helping the
other
person; it’s about healing yourself. Until you forgive, that person holds power over your life. I needed to own my
self
, so I forgave. Not only Tim, but my mother too.”

Tim is asked if people can really change.

“Yes, they do, I’m living proof. But it’s a conscious thing. If you don’t see the problem, you walk around in a delusion. Until you admit what you’ve is done wrong, you can’t change it. I have to separate myself from the person I was in that alley, because even now, when I’m angry or feel stereotyped, victimized—I can slip into that kick-your-ass skinhead attitude. I have to keep that guy in check. I know that. I have to look objectively at the situation so I can talk about it.”

“When we first started FROM HATE 2 HOPE,” Matthew says, “I was afraid when I told a roomful of people I’m gay, they’d get up and leave. But there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not broken, I don’t need to be fixed. People who hate are broken. So as hard as it is to tell our stories, we do it.”

I ask Matthew and Tim what they’d like people to take from our book.

Matthew says: “I’d like them to walk away with a true, deep understanding of the word
respect
. To realize that it’s okay to respect others even if you disagree with their beliefs or their lifestyles. My being gay is a very small part of who I am. When you respect people you open the door to seeing who they really are. That’s a stepping-stone to acceptance.”

Tim agrees: “It’s the essence of being American. Without respect, you have nothing. You can’t have dialogue without respect, and more than anything now, we need a dialogue. All the things that happen in the schools—riots, guns, kids killing kids, killing themselves—might not have happened if people could see each other. When you respect others, you don’t bully, you see. It’s hard to hate what you understand. People have to start somewhere to go to the next point. We hope this book will be a beginning. An introduction.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

September, 2006—I was back teaching theater and casting my first show when my agent called. Had I read the article in the
LA Times
about the ex-skinhead and the gay man? I had. Would I be interested in weaving some of their experiences into a story?

Are you kidding?

We met at the Paradigm Agency—I was interviewed by Lucy Stille, Avra Shapiro, and the two men—Tim Zaal sat to my left, silent, watchful, and intimidating; Matthew Boger smiled from across the table, his eyes never leaving my face. (He told me a year later he needed to see if he could trust me. He did.) We got to work.

Matthew began by outlining the events he most clearly remembered. Tim told me how the Punk movement had given him a place to fit in. I listened to Tim’s playlist of Punk Rock, watched every film I could find, and visited his old stomping grounds, trying to see it through his sixteen-year-old eyes. I flew to San Francisco and walked down Polk Street late at night, hung out in The Castro, sat in Union Square—all the while imagining thirteen-year-old Matthew.

I wrote from four until six thirty each weekday morning, before going to teach, then nonstop on weekends. I started the story thirteen different ways. None of them worked. Tim and Matthew were telling as much as they remembered, but children who are compromised must hide the most dangerous things from themselves in order to survive.

One Sunday afternoon, I suggested an acting exercise. Tim and Matthew retold the incident in the alley in
present
tense, relating only what they experienced through their five senses. For example, “We get out of the car and the air’s cold on my face. I hear a motorcycle go by. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth and throat, etc.” The intent was to bring immediacy to the experience. It worked.

Later that week, I met Matthew on the corner of Santa Monica and Martel, where Oki Dogs used to be. He pointed out where he’d first seen the skinheads march across the street. He walked me through the parking lot to where they’d caught him. I crouched down as he had, curled in a little ball on my knees, holding my head. I sat against the concrete barrier and imagined waking up there, beaten and alone. The night rushed in. I went home and wrote it. Jason and Doug were born.

The core of Jason’s story tumbled out in early summer, in three weeks of nonstop writing in a house in Cambria, where an eager muse woke me each morning at six to pour words through my fingers into my laptop. I sat by the ocean and wrote until my eyes hurt. They were ten-hour days, but glorious.

Doug refused to show up. I wrote 150 pages about him, and my agent wisely sent it back (key word: about). I needed to find the little boy so I could find the teen who had so much hate. Tim and I got back to work. He shared his fears and hopes, the wish that some adult had taken the time to see him. Doug peeked out. My husband’s insightful comments helped me connect the dots. I took advice from my agent Bonnie, her assistant Sarah, my editor Alvina, and my dear friends Anne and Shelly. Doug finally showed up.

I reordered chapters and cut pages and pages of story. I created characters and situations, stringing together bits of Tim’s and Matthew’s experiences, shaping them with details from my imagination, until finally,
Freaks and Revelations
emerged. The incident in the alley is absolute fact. All else is a work of fiction. Even so—Matthew and Tim thanked me for telling a story that they feel captures the heart of their experiences.

But it’s me who has received the greatest gift—the friendship of these two remarkable men, and the chance to witness the effect that they have in the world. Matthew Boger and Tim Zaal intimately understand the devastation hate causes. They know the healing power of forgiveness and love. They believe that there is always a choice.

I believe it now too.

—D.W.H.