There is a gay young man in one of my college classes who once said that "people take things too personally" when exposed to bigotry and threats. Months later, when he heard that I was starting an "atheist and friends" club at the school, he warned me not to tell another classmate, because the classmate was too argumentative.
"It's like what that priest said in 'The Laramie Project,'" he said gravely, referencing the film we watched in class, "When you say things like that, it IS violence. This guy would make it a very hateful place, and unwelcome to those who believe in...a spirit."*
I agreed not to tell that other classmate. I was amazed that Harrison had actually said that, had actually changed his mind.
Then the other day yet another classmate had a nail stuck in her tire, and she
happened to be parked next to me. I was glad for the chance to wait
with her and Harrison (who also waited with her), though of course I hated what
had happened to her.
"I've been trying to get ahold of my mom, but she's not answering," Harrison said, "I may have to get on a bus."
It warmed my heart to hear him talk about his mom, and it also surprised me. For some reason, I had a feeling that his parents were like those of Peter, a polyamorous Wiccan that I grew up with, who was disowned by his strict Christian family and probably kicked out of the house.
"I can drive you home," I offered. "Where do you live?"
"By Denny's," he answered, referring to the restaurant chain.
"Oh! You live by the goat!" I exclaimed, referring to someone's backyard pet, visible from the road. "My mom loves that goat. She offered to build a house for her last winter, if her owners couldn't, because she didn't have one." (She now has one, which her owners gave her.)
"Oh, yeah--the goat!" he laughed.
I did not know if he would need a ride home, but I hoped so, because I enjoyed visiting with him. As we waited, talking with Katie, I moved my bags to the back seat in anticipation.
It was getting later. "Seriously, you guys don't have to wait with me," Katie repeated. "My mom will be here any minute."
"Well..." I began, torn. "If you're sure..."
Suddenly Harrison looked up from his phone. "I think I will have to take that ride home, after all."
"Okay. Cool." I tried to hide my excitement. I was homeschooled from fifth grade on, and never got to go anywhere with friends, since I was rather isolated and introverted, and especially since I didn't have my driver's license until last fall ( at twenty-three) because of nervousness.
"Just...toss those things aside," I told him as he awkwardly put his backpack beside mine in the backseat.
"Can I roll my window down?" he asked as he got in the car.
"Yeah, do whatever you want," I shrugged. He would later put his foot out the window, so I guess he finally felt comfortable.
"The reason I can't usually go on a bus is that I get dizzy, and I don't know how bad it's going to be until I'm on," he explained as we pulled away.
"Yeah, I can't go on a long trip in the backseat," I sympathized, glad that I wasn't the only one with problems driving and being in cars. I wondered if my long-held fear had actually been mild dizziness.
"I can't remember how to get on the freeway from here; do I go straight?" I asked.
I laughed when he answered, "Well, friends don't tell friends to go straight, but...yeah, just keep going in the direction you're going."
Harrison looked at his phone and started laughing. "My friend and I were arguing about tea the other day, and he said that it's nothing but leaf juice, and that broth was nothing but saltwater. But it has bone marrow and stuff in it too, and it's often flavored with leaves, such as bay leaves, etc."
He sounded just like Cody, my eleven-year-old brother, whom I helped to raised from the time he was three days old. Cody had recently laughed about his friend and him kicking each other under their desks all day and "playing footsie" (he didn't know that it had a flirtatious meaning!). Harrison had never sounded like Cody before, and it surprised me. I made a mental note to myself that I should increase the frequency of the "it's okay, whatever you are" type of conversations with Cody, especially as Cody would be going through puberty at any time now.
"Oh, yeah," I laughed. "That's true."
"And then he texted me and asked, 'What do you call a whorehouse filled with broth?' And I said, 'A broth-full brothel,' and he said 'That's better than what I would have said.' So I guess whatever he would have said, it wasn't as good."
We talked about driving, and I was glad to hear that I was not the only one who gets very anxious around ledges, drop-offs and ditches, especially if I was not the one driving. I enjoyed visiting with him.
"You talked about brothels, did you know the origin of the phrase, 'You've got to be shitting me'?" I asked, getting ready to tell an old joke. "George Washington and his men were crossing the Delaware, and Lieutenant Peters fell in the water and they couldn't find him. So they went on without him, and they came to a house, but they didn't know that the house was a brothel. So the madam opens up the door, and is really pleased to see so many men. She asks how many men there are, and George Washington says, 'There are forty-two of us here without Peters.' And the madam says, 'You've got to be shitting me!'"
It took Harrison a second to get the joke.
"Oh!" he laughed softly. "Just drop me here. This is the little driveway I have to walk down," he finally said. As he got out, I accidentally saw the waistband of his boxers, and the word "Batman" was printed on them. Again, it reminded me of Cody.
Cody was absolutely obsessed with Batman when he was about three years old, and I was about fifteen. We both had masks and capes, and I was "Batman-girl" and "Batman-Wobbin." He would "save" the cat and pretend to beat my mom up because my dad told him that she was The Penguin. I still have my mask, and somewhere we still have his mask and cape (mine was plain, while his had the Batman logo). My mask is a felt purple bat with black sequins, and Cody's is a felt cat face with one pink sequined ear that my mom did not have time to remove before giving it to him. At that age, he was fooled and didn't care.
My mom had to cut the eye holes bigger in the middle, because his head was so small and his eyes were closer together. He asked that my mask be "fixed" too, and my mom told him that we had already fixed it (but we really hadn't, because my head was bigger).
My mom and I had so much fun finding costumes for Cody and me, and he was absolutely thrilled when we played with them, beating up invisible bad guys and posing for pictures with tough faces, spreading our capes out behind us.
I kept this very happy flashback inside of me, though, because it would be very rude and creepy to comment on somebody's underwear.
"Just let me grab my junk," Harrison said, in the present time.
"Sure. You better not grab your junk in public, though," I joked. "Sorry. My mom and I are so dirty all the time..."
"Oh. Okay," he laughed politely. "Thanks."
"See ya, Harrison."
Later that night, I wondered if he had truly made it home safely. I felt protective of him since he now reminded me so much of my little brother (who is often more like my son, or at least that's how it feels), because he did not have a car, and because he had a mom who presumably cared very much about him, as I did about my Cody. I also felt responsible for seeing him home safely, because I had driven him home; I felt like a young man in a 1950s TV show taking his date safely home.
But it would have been way too awkward to ask, "Was there a hate crime in your driveway?"
So I messaged him on Facebook about a project he mentioned doing for the local theater, in which he felt overwhelmed, having to organize the costume department after years of neglect. I said that I wanted to help. It was the truth, and it also served my purpose nicely.
I arrived first the next day. "I saw Katie, so she made it home okay," I said when he arrived. "I brought trash bags, and brownies."
We got to work. After about an hour, he had to go to class.
"Do you have a ride home?" I asked.
"Yeah, I got one," he nodded.
"If you ever need a ride home again, just tell me. I had fun visiting with you last night," I added.
"Oh. Okay. Thanks. See ya."
"Oh, wait! You forgot your brownie!" I exclaimed, giving one of the sandwich baggies to him. "It's gluten-free."
"Oh. Nice!" he laughed.
"I made them last night anyway, so you get one, too," I said. "Have a good class!"
"Oh, I will!" he smiled.
It wasn't until much later that I realized what I had done: I had literally just sent him off to school with a lunch!
Harrison now has two mommies.
*The interview with the priest is one of the more uplifting moments in an otherwise mostly traumatic movie. It starts with one of the (lesbian) interviewers saying, "Great--two queers and a Catholic priest!"
The quote Harrison referred to starts at about 52:37, though the link starts at around 51:33, and I would recommend watching the whole small segment, as the priest also states, among other things, that he did not ask permission from the bishop to hold a vigil because, "His permission does not make it correct. What is correct, is correct."
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