mad at you. I’m mad at Charlie, and I’m mad at the world, and I’m mad at the government, but you’re hard to be mad at.”
“It’s because I’m so pitiful. No, really, it is. I’ve learned this recently. When you’re a sad sack of shit, no one feels anything for you but pity.”
“I don’t think you’re pitiful,” Yale said.
“Just wait till I weigh eighty pounds. I mean, you won’t ever see that, ’cause I’ll be gone. That’s my point. I hate being pitied. I wish you’d just be mad at me. I wish you’d kick me in the head. No one’s willing to be mad at me but God.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Yale said. “You can stay over, but Jerry Falwell can’t, okay?”
“I can’t shake the feeling that God chased me up here from Georgia. I tried to make my life perfect, and I came up here and everything was beautiful, it was so good, and I should have known. I should’ve been waiting for this.”
“I understand, but that’s—you’re internalizing a lot of bullshit.”
“Did I ever tell you about Disney World? Not when I worked there, the first time I went.”
Yale said no, got them more beer.
“They have this thing called Grad Night, when they keep the park open all night long for kids about to graduate high school. And Valdosta’s right across the border, so the Parents’ Association got us buses and bought us all tickets. You could go on any ride, no lines, and there were bands playing. You just had to stay awake all night. Everyone had a flask.
“And at first I was sticking with my friends, all these theater girls who thought they were gonna marry me, and then I start noticing these three guys from some other school. So beautiful. And so gay, like dripping with gay. Which wasn’t something I’d really seen in Georgia. We’re waiting behind them for Space Mountain, and one of them, this kid with an earring, starts talking to me and says they’re getting food next, do I want food. So by the time we get off the ride, I’m following these guys, eating ice cream with them, and my friends are gone. And the guy with the earring wants us to do the PeopleMover. It’s not even a ride, really, it’s like you go in this little box along an elevated track, but slow. So his friends go in one car, and he and I go in the next one, even though we could have squeezed together. And at this point in my life, just being in the same space as this guy is the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done. I’m terrified.
“So the ride goes through some buildings, and at one point it goes into the dark. And it’s only supposed to be a few seconds, but the ride gets stuck there. In the dark. Everyone’s shouting and laughing.”
Yale wasn’t sure if the story was about to turn pornographic or romantic or terrible, so he just said “Oh God,” which covered all three possibilities. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. The kid got down on his knees and unzipped my fly and sucked me off. It was the most amazing two minutes of my life. I mean, I was terrified they would turn on the lights, but I didn’t really have much mental space for that. The ride started moving again like half a second after I zipped back up.”
“That’s—wow.”
“Well, yeah. And my takeaway from the whole thing, besides the fact that I was definitely gay, was that there were good places and bad places in the world. Disney World was a good place, and Valdosta was a bad place, and I had to get back to Disney as fast as I could. Which I did. And then after a couple years it was about getting to a real city, so I tried Atlanta, and then it was about getting out of the south, getting to a bigger city, a bigger theater scene. Like, the more steps I took away from Valdosta, the safer I’d be. It was a ladder that just went up and up and up, right? And it ended in some kind of mansion in San Francisco. But look at me. I feel like such an idiot. That I ever thought I could have a really good life.”
Yale said, “You’ll have a better life if you stay here than if you go. You need to stay where people love you. Aren’t you falling into the same trap again?