I heard myself gasp, “Bruce…” in my sleep. And then immediately after that I heard Robert say, “Colleen! Colleen!” as he shook me awake. My eyes shot open to see him sitting up in bed next to me wearing that disturbed expression that people do when they’re trying to wake you up from a acting out a dream in your sleep.
“What happened?!” he asked me.
I felt dazed and breathless like Dorothy waking and recounting her dream at the end of The Wizard of Oz. I told him I had seen Bruce, my best friend from high school who was gay and had killed himself, as regular readers of this column will know. He’d taken me on a Dickensian tour of Brazil, India, Pakistan and more, where anti-transgender violence takes the lives of hundreds of people each year. Later that day, I saw that the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia was holding a vesper’s service honoring the victims of such violence the same night in honor of International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR, pronounced “TEE-door”). I knew I had to go. Robert and I passed the rest of the day quietly. He watched his daytime soap operas on his portable TV with an antenna that sat in our kitchen in Manhattan in the early 1980s. I tried to get some packing done around the RV in preparation for our impending move to a non-wheeled house in HoCo in 2019. I still felt disoriented from my dream, though, as if there was more I had to learn about our trans children losing their lives simply because of who they are. I kept sighing, and I could tell it was driving Robert crazy.
“Honey–talk to me! What?!” he sayidwith one eye still on the TV. I’d just shrug or nod in response. Later, we ate a light dinner. I put on my winter coat and boots to make my way to the service at UUCC. It had been cold the past week or so, and that night too, Sunday, November 19th, an icy wind was whipping around our RV. Once or twice the whole thing even shook a little. That got my voice to erupt out of me in a way that Robert’s pleae hadn’t. I clutched the couch both times, and closed my eyes trying to get a read on what otherworldly force was working in concert with meteorology to tell we who would listen…something. But what?
The second time I tried to commune with the wind-winged spirits, I opened my eyes to find Robert’s head in his hands in exasperation. After all these years, my belief in the metaphysical still annoys him. By the time I left, getting frustrated–he wassympathetic because of my obvious pain but irritated that I wouldn’t talk to him about it.
“I guess I’ll go…” I said.
“Good. I mean, for you…that’s good for you, because it’ll give you some peace…” he said.
I went over and rested my forehead on his for a second, as much for me as for him. Then I put my arms around him and squeezed him as if I were Del. Eric Ebersole (D-12) giving one of his Hugersoles.
“All right, all right! Get out of here already,” he said, pushing me away gently. That got me to smile.
The Answer Is Blowing In the Wind
Even for me it seemed hokey and a little too much when, as I shut the door of the RV behind me, I heard Bruce’s voice sweep by me in a gust of wind: “Remember…” But it did. I stopped on the steps down to the ground to make sure he wasn’t telling me something else. It was totally silent, and the stars twinkled in the cloudless sky as I looked around to make sure Bruce wasn’t trying to send me any more breeze-based messages. I huddled inside my coat and hurried to the car.
Somehow, the time had gotten away from me, and it was 7:29 p.m. as I raced from the parking lot of the Owen Brown Interfaith Center into the building. The warm air inside almost pushed me back as I opened the door, but I had a service to get to! Luckily, I was wearing flats, so I cleared two stairs at a time. There was UUCC’s own Rev. Paige Getty, whom Robert interviewed all about her work in divinity a few weeks ago, talking to a parishioner. She of course hugged me, and I was relieved that the service hadn’t started yet. I scurried inside, and I actually felt my heart rise a little in my chest as I saw so many familiar, beautiful faces: local activists Tina Sheets Horn, Suzi Gerb, and Carla Gates among just three of them. Carla didn’t see me at first, so I stopped to take in her amazing outfit: a full-length, black lace dress; black heels; and black lipstick. You can honor the dead in style, after all.
I took a seat behind Tina, and she reminded me that I’d asked her to save me one earlier that evening. She patted the seat beside her, and I got up to sit in it. Our arms were touching in our bulky winter gear, and it comforted me. I looked over at her as Paige approached the podium and she nodded. For the next hour, we sang, prayed, and read reflections on a world in which people are murdered–transfolk are killed–just for being who they are.
Bruce was gay, of course, but there’s overlap in the experiences of gayness and trans-ness. I absolutely consider him to be someone who was murdered for being who he was. I watched him plunge into a depression so deep that he took his own life, and the reason he did so is because he thought his loved ones would reject him if they knew he was gay. He murdered himself, pretty much to prevent the pain of having his soul murdered by a cruel society. In the absolute greatest irony of his whole situation, I’m sure that eventually his parents would have embraced him totally for who he was. They, like my parents and Robert’s parents, were members of the Conservative Jewish tradition, but their politics were very liberal. They had gay friends, and were vocal about being pro-gay rights. But Bruce knew, in his eminently wise way, that when it comes to their own child even the most open-minded thinkers might struggle with the idea that their son was different. He couldn’t risk it, I suppose.
Say Their Names
As a part of the service on Sunday, several organizers took turns reading the names of victims of fatal anti-transgender violence from around the world. Despite the grief roiling around inside me since morning, I hadn’t had a good cry. That is, I hadn’t until two things happened. First I saw the normally cheerful Paige tearing up. I heard Tina say something then, and I turned to ask her what she’d said.
“Bloody hell,” she whispered looking at the front of the room. And then I lost it. I wept, letting the enraged sadness move through me finally. And for the first time I realized the true extent of my fury that Bruce had been taken from me, that all these Bruces had been taken from all these Colleens. Tina asked if she could hug me, and so I leaned over to her and she did.
Later, when I asked Melissa Affolter, a member of UUCC and attendee at the service that day what the most moving part of the evening was for her, she said it was the reading of the names too.
“I was most honored to just listen to the names that were read out loud of people who’ve died because of anti-transgender violence,” Melissa told mr. I got choked up again, and I dashed out to my car after bidding those I knew farewell and making a mental note to get to know the ones I didn’t. I didn’t want to burden anyone with my grief, even though they’d all been so kind before.
Robert and I spent an unusually silent evening in the RV during which Robert watched more soaps, and I putzed around, supposedly cleaning more but really just moving things around from here to there to distract myself.
After changing positions in bed for two hours, I think I may have actually sighed out loud as felt my eyes roll back in my head twenty minutes later.
Lend a Hand
Then Bruce and I were sitting across from each other at The Bagel Bin in River Hill. He looked as handsome as ever. His eyes were as piercingly blue as I remembered, his dark curly hair as shiny as I remembered, and his lips as full and red as I remembered. I thought of the first time we played together during recess from classes at Chare Zedek Congregation Hebrew school classes when we were eight. He was wearing the same gray sweater and blue jeans as when i watched him take his last breath in my arms while his mother slapped her forehead over and over and wailed next to me. I remembered the horror of feeling him go limp as his body finally shut down from an overdose of sleeping pills.
“Bruce” I said. “I’m mad at you.”
He didn’t even flinch, so I went on. I told him I was mad at him for leaving me, for giving up, and for stopping us from knowing who he could have been. I told him after meeting all these inspiring HoCo Democratic politicians, I’d been imagining him being a local legislator a la Sen, Guy Guzzone (D-13) or Del. Frank Turner (D-12).
“I know that sounds selfish,” I said. He reached over and put his hand on mine. He smiled just slightly and nodded no. “What should I do?” I asked him. We had always been able to read each other’s minds, so I knew he’d know I meant I wanted him to tell me how I should I deal with his absence, one that felt so raw to me even today 47 years after it happened (had it really been that long?!).
“Make sure all the other Bruces know they’re not alone and there is hope,” he said. I felt a sudden urge to rush out of the Bin right then and call Paige, or Max Crownover of PFLAG whom I’d interviewed a few weeks back, or one of the other amazing activists I’d met in HoCo and tell them to put me to work. Even Dream Colleen knew to wait until I woke to reach out for guidance, though!
When I did finally wake up, I was on my left side looking at the wood-panel walls of the RV. I was spent, but in the good way that you are after an emotional catharsis. I put on my flannel robe as I picked up my cell phone and called Robin Slaw, Director of Religious Education at UUCC, instinctively,
“Transgender people are welcomed at UUCC as themselves. We mourn the loss of people around the world who haven’t found acceptance yet.” Robin Slaw, Director of Religious Education at UUCC. I told her how happy this made me and asked her for guidance on how to help trans people who might feel alone, scared, or hopeless. She suggested I go to this website, transuu.org, for lots of information on what I can do to help transfolk who are struggling. Suzi told me to make sure RoCo’s readers now about the website translifeline.org.
Because in 2018, much to the glee of my children, David, Rebecca, and Rachel, I finally mastered the fine and very current art of a simple Google search, I also did my own search for “LGBTQ+ support groups HoCo.” I found this great list on the Psychology Today website of support groups in HoCo. I also remembered the It Gets Better project, which aims to show LGBTQ+ youth that…well, that things do get better.
I remembered what local gay blogger and activist Steve Charing had told me once about growing up LGBTQ+: “We all thought we were the only ones.” He meant that an LGBTQ+ young person can feel isolated and under siege even in their own families. That devastated me. He told me about The Trevor Project, too. It’s a suicide prevention organization targeted specifically at LGBTQ+ youth. With all these organizations and all these people, I was sure that, together, we could save our kids. I was so glad I’d gone to the service at UUCC to find that out.
Thanks for reading! Check back with us here at rocoinhoco.com every week as Robert, Colleen (and pup, Moses) get to know the many facets—one each week–of this prismatic place called Howard County. We want to take you along with us, so follow us on Twitter at @rocoinhoco, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagram at @rocoinhoco.