The Day My Grandmother Saved My Life
by James Kilbourne
I watched the straight line of red creep across my wrist. I asked myself, “How did it come to this?”
I knew suddenly that I wouldn’t cut any deeper. I didn’t want to die. But I hadn’t known a moment earlier that I still loved life. What self-hatred, what despair had clouded my vision and made death seem like the only option just a few short breaths ago? What truth had I been evading? What was it that I didn’t see?
I loved Bill, and he loved me. I had met him when he was brought before me for striking a counselor. I was a junior in college, and president of the student government. He was a freshman, and all I remember of that incident is that Bill had overreacted, and the counselor had been asking for it. The year was 1966 and I was 22 years old. I was strong and confident, then, and very sure of my opinions. I wanted to know what was true, and felt no loss of self-esteem when I was proven wrong about something; I didn’t need to be right all the time.
I can still see Bill in my mind’s eye as he looked the evening we met. He was beautiful. He was pale in coloring, and I could see the light shine through the blond hairs on his slender arms as he paced before me, trying to explain his actions. A lock of hair fell on his forehead. He kept brushing it back, annoyed that it wouldn’t stay put. He had the most penetrating blue eyes I had ever seen. Later, after many hours of being lost in them, I discovered that one eye had a few specks of brown in it. He gave me the most earnest look I had ever been given, and I remember feeling more naked than the day I was born. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I had fallen instantly in love.
Bill and I were inseparable for the next two years, and I spent every waking moment obsessed with his mind and body. Bill had a girlfriend who went to a school in Connecticut. She would come to visit us, and eventually we ended up in a three-way “love affair”. We talked of a new way to love and how we would forever share our lives together. That morning I had awakened beside them, and I knew that it was all a lie. I had watched them make love before me – and I had realized that they belonged together, and that I had no right to be there. I had rationalized myself right into their arms, and now I felt like the intruder I was. Suddenly, I saw my future life, and it was terrifying. I had to find a way out. I cried out that I’d had enough of life, and ran into the bathroom and locked the door. While Cathy and Bill were pounding on the door, I slowly looked up at my reflection in the mirror, put the razor blade against my wrist, and cut.
If I had learned nothing else in my 22 years, I had learned that homosexuals were weak and disgusting people. I had never heard a serious challenge to that assessment. I had tried to save my self-esteem by telling myself I wasn’t really homosexual. I just had more love and passion in me than most people. And I had higher standards; it took a long time to meet the right girl, who undoubtedly would come around some corner one day and sweep me off my feet. Meanwhile, I was just “experimenting.” It was that morning that I realized I was homosexual. This wasn’t a phase or an experiment. No “perfect woman” was going to save me. This was as much a part of me as my need for water and air. I had looked at Bill and I had looked at Cathy. I could no longer avoid the truth.
I gazed into that mirror almost dispassionately, trying to see who it was that was looking back. As I stood there, all at once I felt my grandmother’s presence near me, and I felt myself fall into her arms. I was a little boy again, back in the safety and warmth of her great love for me. The words of the lullaby she used to sing to me flooded my memory: “Grandma loves her Jimmy, by-lo-by.” I remembered how she used to look at me. I remembered the joy we both felt in each other’s company. At the center of my psyche, deeper than any philosophy or issue of sexual identity, was the knowledge that I was a jewel in my grandmother’s eyes. I dropped the razor blade and smiled. The bathroom door gave way and then the three of us, laughing, fell into the bathtub covered by a ripped shower curtain.
I had looked in my own eyes and experienced a sudden feeling that might be described as the culmination of the thought process: “Okay. I’m homosexual. But I have known what it feels like to be loved. I know the love I feel for others and theirs for me springs from something wonderful inside of me. I will find a complete love someday.”
Later that day, after Bill and Cathy had left. . . later, while I picked up the things that had been scattered all around me while I was fighting for my life. . . later, and for the first time, I thought, “Maybe everything I’ve been taught about homosexuality is wrong. . . . ”
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