I was stupid. I should’ve known the actual rally would be much worse than the work before it.
Uncle Russell did most of the talking, as usual, in his booming preacher voice. “God’s word in the Book of Revelation tells us militant homosexuals are the harbingers of the end days! It’s on all us Christian patriots to show the world where we stand, or join the sinners in Hellfire!” Et cetera.
(The junior high kids giggled when he said “Hellfire.” We’re supposed to say “H-E-double-hockey-sticks.”)
It was the chanting that did me in, though.
It was HORRIBLE, Harvey.
They made us all do it. A hundred voices, echoing in unison through the gym. If I’d stayed quiet, they’d have seen and wondered why, so I had to chant with everybody else. I couldn’t even dig my nails into my palms, because Carolyn was sitting right beside me and she’d have noticed for sure.
TV cameras were pointed right at us the whole time, too, so now all of California has seen me yelling “Schools aren’t for sinners!” and “Christians have rights!” and “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” and acting as if I meant every word.
Harvey, I—
I’ll come back in a minute.
Okay. I’m back. I just threw up.
Sorry. I know it’s gross. Everything’s gross right now.
At the end of the chanting, Uncle Russell made us all join hands. “Please, Lord, deliver us from evil,” he said, “and protect our children from those who’d tempt them to the devil’s harmful path.”
Everyone except me said, “Amen.”
Do none of them ever think about what they’re saying?
I’m a child. They’re the ones harming me.
That was when I started crying. Next to me, Carolyn was crying, too, but she was whispering prayers at the same time, and she probably thought I was crying out of passion for Jesus. That only made me cry harder.
And then—and Harvey, I don’t know if she’d planned this all along, or if she decided to do it right in that moment, but I guess it doesn’t matter—Aunt Mandy looked up at the bleachers, right at me. And she said, “Now we call on your youth group vice president, Tammy Larson, to offer up her own prayer on behalf of California’s children.”
I froze. I couldn’t move at all, Harvey. Until Carolyn pushed my shoulder from behind, and before I knew what was happening, I was standing up.
I climbed down from the bleachers. All I could see was the blinding lights from the cameras pointed in my face. I don’t know how I made it down those steps and out into the middle of the gym floor, but all of a sudden Uncle Russell was sticking his microphone in my face. Then he fucking winked at me.
I turned around to face the crowd. I wiped my eyes and held up the microphone, and I said…
I don’t remember. It was impossible to hear myself over the buzzing in my ears. I tried to remember Uncle Russell’s prayer, and I said something like “Lord, forgive us our sins and use us, your children, as instruments of righteousness. In your holy name, amen.”
I don’t know if I was supposed to end the prayer or not, but I couldn’t take another second of that shit.
Harvey… I wanted to rip the skin off my face and fling it in my aunt and uncle’s faces. I wanted to scream and scream and scream until there was nothing left inside me but air.
Somehow I must’ve managed to keep all of that in, because no one seemed to think anything was unusual. The whole crowd chimed “Amen” when I was done. Uncle Russell lifted his arms, and everyone started clapping and stomping their feet and shouting, as if this was the most fun they’d ever had.
At first I thought they were all just celebrating the fact that we’d gotten to miss sixth period. Then two sophomore guys in the bleachers near me started chanting, in perfect rhythm to all those stomping feet. “KILL A QUEER FOR CHRIST! KILL A QUEER FOR CHRIST!”