Jeffery Rudell - Under the Influence

 

At the age of 19, I fell prey to a powerful and deeply corrupting influence. It dogged me for six years, costing me many a friend and in the process, bringing my family to ruin. It crippled me to such an extent that I have spent the intervening 15 years recovering from it. The influence I speak of is hope. [audience laughter] 

 

Now, you should know at the get go, there's nothing in my childhood to suggest I might find myself on such a wayward path as that. My parents loved me terribly. They taught me right from wrong, they taught me to be courageous in the face of bullies, they taught me patience and forgiveness, they taught me that love would see you through any misfortune. 

 

My trouble began on Independence Day. Not the Independence Day, but my Independence Day. My Independence Day occurred on Memorial Day, 1982. That was the day I told my family, I was gay. The act itself, “Mom, dad, I'm gay,” was relatively unexceptional. In fact, it should have been more exceptional, and I've always wished that it had been. However, subsequent events overshadowed it and it pales by comparison. 

 

The subsequent events occurred in my absence, after the fact, as I was in my car driving back to college to take my final freshman exams. I remember being on the highway and thinking how, I expected my parents to freak out a little. [audience laughter] And to my surprise, they had not freaked out. They'd been calm and cool and collected. Oddly calm, cool and collected, but still, I was really happy as I drove back to school. Meanwhile, subsequent events were busy unfolding back home. 

 

My mother was going through the house where I grew up and was gathering together things I had made for her, a jewelry box when I was in 4H, and a painting when I was 16, a box containing the letters that I'd written them from school, which I used to do every week. She was removing photographs from the walls and placing them in little piles around the house. She was directing my father, who never dared not follow her direction, to take the bed and the desk and the chair and the lamp and the Smith Corona even, and they put them all in the front yard next to the rock garden, not too close to the maple tree. 

 

My clothes, my books, my bookcases, my report cards, my Farrah Fawcett posters, my shoes, three years’ worth of Interview magazines, the good ones with the Andy Warhol covers, [audience laughter], everything. Then with my brother and my sister and my grandparents watching, my mother removed a cigarette from this tiny crocheted case she always kept them in. She lit the cigarette and then she took the match and put it to the pile of things there in the front yard that contained the sole and complete record of my existence in my family. It burned for seven and a half hours, thanks in part to the addition of some lighter fluid to help get the larger pieces of furniture going. All of it, all that was me prior to that memorable Memorial Day up in flames. 

 

According to my sister, who years later recounted these details to me, it was a mighty impressive blaze. In their eagerness to feed it and due to an unexpected wind off the fields around the house, the sugar maple that was older than my great grandfather caught a spark in its branches and was sacrificed. They cut off all communication with me. They emptied and closed our joint bank account. There goes college. They barred the door. They stopped talking, stopped answering my letters, stopped taking my calls. They stopped anything with me. They just stopped. 

 

I was completely disbelieving. I mean, this didn't make any sense. All of my friends had stories about telling their families they were gay and they all ended the same way. Sooner or later, everything worked out fine. I even had a friend named Neil who parents had done the same thing. At first, they just stopped talking to him. But one year later, they were inviting his new boyfriend to come home with him for the holidays. Everyone counseled me to have a little patience and have a little hope. And this is how it starts, slowly, just a little hope, just enough to get you through. But hope is cumulative. A little bit here and a little bit there, it builds up in the system until it becomes something, denial. 

 

Their reaction had been, yes, extreme, but not the worst that could happen. The thing to do was to be a good son, to make them proud, to earn back their love. So, I got a job, and then another and then a third. Three shifts, three restaurants, six days a week. That would show them. But they weren't watching. I wrote them letters, lots of letters about nothing. It's Tuesday and it's hot. Or, my new roommate is named Kathy. Or, my friends took me out for my birthday yesterday. They didn't write back. 

 

Living for me came to a halt, despite the fact that my life just went on and on. I didn't think about my future, I didn't think about my needs, I didn't think about my sadness, I didn't think about any of it. I didn't have to, because I had hope. Every day whispering in my ear, “Don't give up. Don't walk away. You're almost there. Don't stop. Don't grow. Don't develop. Don't worry. Just don't make any sudden movements or you'll blow it.” 

 

So, six years went on like this without a word from them. So, finally, hurt and confused beyond my ability to hold it in, and frankly, finding it really difficult to maintain the illusion that this was temporary, [audience laughter] I decided to make one more attempt to force the issue. So, I flew home, and showed up unannounced at my mother's office. It was an amazing visit. 

 

I asked the receptionist to page my mother and tell her she had a surprise visitor. I stood there in the lobby, and I remember seeing my mother come down this long hallway toward me. She was walking, and then she looked up and she saw me, and then she recognized who it was, and she turned and walked away again. It was a really amazing 92nd visit. 

 

Two and a half weeks later, a black funeral wreath was delivered to me at my office with a note that said, “In memory of our son.” Clearly, it was time to give up hope and take up therapy. [audience laughter] So, I talked to a counselor who asked me, why I had invited this turmoil into my life. I talked to a minister who suggested a Christian youth camp. [audience laughter] I talked to a lesbian who offered to slash my mother's tires if I paid for her flight there. [audience laughter] 

 

I signed up for scream therapy, where I beat pillows with tennis rackets and screamed obscenities and pulled a muscle in my shoulder. Mostly, I talked to friends, and mostly the pain persisted. The sheer weight of it nearly crushed me or at least that's how it felt at the time. Since it was my constant companion, I spent most of my time turning it over in my mind, fingering it like some sort of psychological worry stone. 

 

Over the years, it's been eroded by so much handling. All that remains now is a small, hard, nearly weightless pebble, really. Worn away is most of the anger and much of the hurt. But one question remains, how was it possible that they taught me love and loyalty in excess of that which they themselves possessed? I have come to believe that it's not possible to understand what they did. Not possible for me, anyway. To understand it, it would seem to indicate that there was some justification for it, and I know for certain that there is not. 

 

Still, there's no escaping my parents. This thing they did. This extreme and unfathomable and many layered thing they did, tore a hole in the middle of my life. I have spent years and a lot of money darning that hole while trying to keep the rest of my world from unraveling, and yet their influence on me is enduring. My parents loved me terribly. I have been courageous in the face of bullies. There is such a thing as too much patience, but no such thing as too much forgiveness, and love has seen me through every misfortune.