They say that 13 is an unlucky number. For some reason, it is a number that seems to always pester me. I had to work very hard to get around there being 13 tracks on my album, because 13 is just what it wanted to be. I reached into my bag of tricks to fix that one.
I was 13 years old when I lost my virginity. I was so in love with J. He was 6'4" tall and far too developed for his age(14). I had a secret crush on him and would steal glances when I thought no one was looking. I guess he was looking more than I realized because it was he that approached me. It was he that invited me to his grandmother's house to help him with his math homework. I lost my virginity in his grandmother's laundry room up against the washing machine. I know, it sounds like some sort of slutty pulp story, but it was not.
I was in love with him. I just wanted to hold his hand, kiss him, and have his adopted chinese babies. He was determined that he was straight. He would go on a date with a girl and tell me that things were over between us, that I should never contact him. I was crushed repeatedly by J. Yet I was always there when he came back around. Mind you, this was in a town of 1,000 people in Kansas. We were a dirty little secret.
13 was such a hard age. I was very very skinny and scrawny. I was always reading or singing or listening to classical music. I was overly sensetive and could cry at the drop of a hat. The brutality of 13 year old boys is the fiercest you may ever encounter. They look for any sign of weekness and they feed on it.
There was not a single day that I did not walk down the hallway to hear the word fagggot thrown at me, spat on me, or kicked against my shins.
I hit rock bottom at 13 when I contemplated murder. The torture had grown to such an extent that I was torn between two choices, murder of self(suicide) and murder of M.
M. led the verbal and physical assaults against me. I began contemplating killing him. I know. It sounds horrifying. You couldn't possibly be as horrified as I was at the time. I decided that first I would speak to M and try to reason with him. I had to try every alternative before doing something so unforiveable.
I approached him one day.
I asked him to please just leave me alone. I stressed that I didn't do anything to deserve the way he was treating me. I asked him why.
His response was that I was a faggot. That was the why.
As reasoning did not work, my next step was to speak with the principal. I told him how unbearable the torture had become. I told him that I dreaded going to school every day. He told me that doing anything about it would only make it worse and that I was a little old to be a tattle tale.
My final resort was to talk to my parents, but I was too embarassed to even tell them what people were saying. I couldn't talk to them.
My mother was going to nursing school nights in a town about an hour away. My father had feared for her safety so had purchased a hand gun for her protection.
There was a cabinet over the kitchen sink, the highest cabinet in the room. In it was the scotch my father would occasionally drink when my sister and I were in bed and the gun my father had purchased for my mother.
I was in the house alone one afternoon. I climbed up on top of the sink and reached into the cabinet pulling out the gun. I just stared at it for minutes. I thought about what would happen if I shot M. I thought about the fact that I was 13. Would they try me as an adult? For a few moments I was sitting on the witness stand explaining that it was self defense, that I was being tortured and slowly killed from the inside. I had no choice. Then I saw M's Mother, crying, staring at me with such anger and loss. I knew at that moment that I couldn't murder another human being. I didn't have it in me.
I put the gun in my mouth and held the trigger. I saw my mother, walking in to the house, finding my body in the kitchen floor. I saw grief like I had never imagined. I pulled the gun out of my mouth and put it back in the cabinet.
From that point forward I decided that I would let them hurt me. I would take their anger and their insecurity into me. I would feel it surge through my body. I would let the tears flow down my face. I would let them tease me for crying. I would just let it happen. There was no choice. I never stopped crying. I never became numb. I spent the next three years taking in their rage and letting it out in the form of tears and poems. The poems slowly turned to songs.
At age 16 I petitioned the board of education to let me graduate from high school early. I had been taking classes through correspondence to fulfill the credits I needed to graduate. I had been planning my escape. When my request was granted, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief and a lifting of so much weight. Yes, 13 is a cruel number indeed.
Just a note: I feel that the work of organizations that provide a supportive environment for GLBT youth is so important. I didn't have that support when I was growing up, and I know that it would have helped me so much if I had.
