*“Never will there be a moment, ever, when we all will be together, never” *
Today, May 8, 2005, is ten years to the day from Bill Clayton’s death. Bill was an openly bisexual young man living in Olympia, Washington. A month before his death, he and a friend had been beaten in a schoolyard for being perceived to be gay (his friend, in fact, is straight) Though there was an outpouring of community support against the hate crime, Bill was terrified that his whole life would be spent waiting for another group of boys to come around the corner and attack him. In one of his last journal entries, he asked, “Will it always be like this?” Not hearing the answers he needed to hear, Bill took his own life. He was seventeen.
- “Never such a moment. Never will we look around, and see these faces. All these faces, never…” *
I met Bill’s mother, Gabi, online, in 1999. Chatting over IM one day, my roommate looked at the screen and asked why anyone would try to impersonate Gabi Clayton. When I told her that it, in fact, was Gabi Clayton, she looked at me, astonished.
“But she’s famous.”
Had this woman won some sort of prize for having a dead son? I was appalled. But then Ann explained to me that Gabi had been spending the years since Bill’s death crusading for the welfare of gay youth, so that no child would ever have to deal with Bill’s fears again. Though I was dealing with my own coming out turmoil, I knew that someday, I, too, would be part of this journey. Whatever I was learning, through my voracious reading of gay history, through my experiences with the GLBT organizations at my school, all of this was making me who I would be as an adult. And when I got to that other side, I would find my way back.
*
“…will we hear these voices. Never, ever hear this sound.”
*
And then, in the fall of 2001, the opportunity to join Youth Task Force just fell into my lap (thanks to some amazing friends who saw things in me that I did not), and despite my full-time course load, my part-time job, in spite of any social life I wanted to have, I jumped at the chance. Months before I had any inclination as to what it might be like to sing with a group of gay kids, I could hear their voices. For a year and a half, through planning meetings and strategy sessions, I went to bed every night with the dream of something huge. If we could just get on stage, and sing a few songs, no matter WHAT the venue, perhaps somewhere we’d reach a kid like Bill Clayton. Perhaps we’d give that kid a message that they weren’t alone, that there were other kids like them surviving, and that there was hope. It wasn’t always going to be like this, and we were going to be the the promoters of change.
“No never. Never will we have that first time, or this last time.”
As I’ve commented a thousand times, the spring and summer of 2003 was the greatest time of my life. Everything was constantly in motion. The hours we spent rehearsing for the joint concert with NYCGMC and our inaugural Youth Pride Chorus were filled with adrenaline and excitement, but mostly, they were filled with love. I had never seen such unconditional love come from a group of friends before, but there we were, constantly huddled around tables at the diner or Vegetarian’s Paradise, relaxing by the pier, or wandering the street fairs. The main thing on our minds was how to make our brief moment in the spotlight so effective and mind-blowing that it would change the lives of our audience, and as a byproduct, our own.
*“Or just this time. Never get to live our lives all over. Never, ever.” *
It took me about a month to come down from the high of that June 18. At twenty-three years old, I had finally DONE something that made me proud of who I was. I had done it for myself, and I had done it for Bill Clayton and his mother, and for every person who had ever been shunned for who they loved. Though I was deeply saddened to be “aging out”, and thus ineligible to sing with YPC any further, it has been in watching this fabulous group grow that I have truly understood it’s worth.
When I was singing with YPC, so much was made of how to sing properly, where to breathe, how not to octave (and how obsessed was I with octaving?!)… when I hear them now, all of my senses are focused on the beauty of the singers themselves. Not just their voices, but their eyes and their smiles, the way they hold each other’s hands, the way they smile at Jeffrey, trusting his every move. And then I look around the room, at the audience, and know that many of them are re-living a childhood they never had. And some of them, the young gay men and women who may still be struggling, are taking in that beauty and thinking, “Me too. Me too.”
*
“Oh life will take us where it will. New beginnings. Ends.”
*
Last Monday, at rehearsal, I looked up and saw Anderson singing with the lower baritone section. Anderson, too, is a charter member of the Youth Pride Chorus, who joined NYCGMC at the start of its 25th season. But when I looked at him that night, for the first time I forgot that he had once been that young. To me, in that brief second, he was just Anderson. It was scary, at first, forgetting that, for it was as if I was forgetting my own short Prideful youth.
But then I realized my mistake. It wasn’t that I had forgotten. It was that we’ve moved forward in integrating what we learned there, and we’ve taken that knowledge elsewhere. We’ve crossed that border, and we’re giving back.
- “Take each moment as a gift. Take each moment as a gift. Take each moment as a gift. Give it back again.”
lyrics from “Never, Ever” from the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus’ “Naked Man”