Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [39]
I felt the blessing. I felt the grace.
And even though I was sorry the thing between me and CO didn’t work out, I stayed away because I wasn’t interested in hooking up with someone ruled by jealousy. Life is too short for that shit.
I didn’t go running into another relationship. That ain’t me. I’ve never been promiscuous. Never been known to run around with two different girls at once. Truth is, I’ve had only a couple of serious relationships. I don’t need to be with a woman on a date to have a good time.
Lots of time I go out by myself. I like seeing movies alone.
Not long after I got out of the Cut, I went to see Hillary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry. I’d heard it was about a girl who pretended to be a boy. People said it was a great movie. I wanted to check it out.
I sat in that dark theater, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Couldn’t believe how much I loved the story and loved the movie.
I identified with the girl called Brandon who wanted to be a boy.
I felt that her pain was my pain, her dilemma my dilemma, her heart my heart. She was sweet and she was good. Wasn’t looking to hurt no one. She was just being who she was. She was good people. I was rooting for her to get by.
I was deep into the love story. I knew that a girl who feels like a boy can fall in love with a girl. And I know that a girl can love a girl who dresses and acts like a boy. I been there. I done that. That shit’s real.
The whole movie was real. Hillary Swank chewed it up. As an actress, she had balls, just like the Brandon girl she was playing had balls. That whole movie had balls to show what it was showing. It had balls ’cause it made you love the Brandon girl. Didn’t judge her. Didn’t make it like she was sick or wrong. The movie understood. The movie loved her. And you had to love the movie.
Well, I did. I was rooting for Brandon. I forgot, at least for a minute, that it was a real story that had a real ending. I was rooting for a happy ending. Come on, Brandon. You can do it. You can act like a boy, love on a girl, and have a happy life. You can get by. You can survive all the ignorance and hate that the world puts on gays. You get what you want and come out a winner. In the end, good triumphs over bad. Love wins all. Brandon’s gonna get through this thing. Brandon’s gonna survive. Gotta survive ’cause her heart is right and she ain’t hurt a fly and there’s no reason to hurt her.
And then it happens.
They rape her. And then they came in there with all the guns and stuff. And they murder her.
Boys don’t cry, but I was crying. If you had a goddamn heart, you had to be crying. And then I got mad. Real fuckin’ mad. And then I got to thinking:
If a big boy tried to rape me like that, I wouldn’t fight back because, one by one, a big boy will beat up a smaller female. Ain’t shit you can do. But afterward I’d come back. I’d come back when he thought everything was good. I’d come when he was sleeping. I’d come back and cut off his balls with a knife, slice off his dick, shove it up his butt and blow his fuckin’ brains out with a gun.
That’s what I’d do to the motherfucker who messed up Brandon.
That’s what I’d like to do all the motherfuckers who make fun of gay people by scaring ’em and hurting ’em and torturing ’em and humiliating ’em and treating ’em like we dirt.
Boys Don’t Cry broke my heart and enraged my mind that there’s still all these assholes out there who got nothing better to do than mess up people different from them. Why? What’s the point? What they trying to prove?
Ain’t we all supposed to be children of God?
Ain’t he supposed to love us the way we are?
Ain’t this grace business about not having to do nothing to get God’s love? He already loves you. He can’t do nothing but love you.
He don’t love just white or black or gay or straight. He don’t say this church is wrong and that church is right.
He’s just loving.
The guys who killed Brandon were a long way from feeling that love.
All they was feeling was blind hate.
Like Uncle say, you go up or you go down.
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