Prayers for Bobby - Leroy Aarons [37]
Andrea was witness to the endless debates. In retrospect, she viewed Mary and Joy as a kind of “religious tag team. They’d corral Bobby under the guise of philosophy, but what I saw was fanaticism, religious rantings and ravings, well into the night. I saw the hammering away, the chiseling of his soul.”
Bobby challenged them, but Andrea could see that deep down he was succumbing, believing what they told him. He was no match for the combined power of God and family, she concluded. Underlying it all was his overwhelming sense of failing his family and himself. Bobby was indoctrinating himself, becoming a foot soldier, and it angered her. Yet, wrestling with her own sexuality at the time (she later accepted herself as a lesbian), Andrea was too dependent on the goodwill of the Griffiths to speak up on Bobby’s behalf.
Bobby’s own anger resounded in his diary.
No one does understand me. No one in this house can accept my side of the story. Each person has his or her own pet theory about me, including the solution to my “problems.”
I really hate being damned. It’s always for the same reason, my sexuality. “Even the animals know who to do it with,” that’s my mother’s logic. Well, Mother dear, you don’t know the half of it. Why am I the way that I am? If I only knew. “You can change if you really want to,” they say. “Don’t underestimate the Lord’s power.” God damnit, how in the hell do any of them know? What gives them the right to tell me I’m going to burn in eternal hellfire and damnation? They account my “deviation” to an inherent sinful nature. Well, then, if God gave it to me, I’m gonna keep it! They think I’m so blind and stupid, well they’re the ones who are wrong. I feel good about my rebellion.
Now seventeen, a senior at Las Lomas High School, Bobby in his rebel mode contradicted his mother, and became increasingly silent and removed. In early 1981, he gave his hair a strawberry blond rinse (“to see if blondes really do have more fun”) and moved from the room with Ed. He fabricated a bedroom in a tiny attic space built by his father at the top of a staircase between Joy and Nancy’s and Ed’s bedrooms. There he spent long hours alone, staying up late, emerging to watch Marilyn Monroe movies (a wounded and ill-fated soul with whom he could identify).
Last night, about 2 A.M., I heard a familiar voice singing, “That Old Black Magic.” It was Marilyn. I jumped up and ran into the family room and there she was as big as life in beautiful living color. Oh, God, she is so gorgeous. The movie was Bus Stop. That was a good movi…. I could feel exactly the frustration she was going through.
School offered little respite. Bobby felt like an outsider at Las Lomas as well. It was a typical sprawling suburban campus high school in a pleasant section of Walnut Creek, with a reputation for good instruction. But Bobby made few friends there, and kept to himself. He obviously was not interested in participating in his peers’ heterosexual mating games, and was terrified of being exposed. His strategy was to remain as invisible as possible, although even at school he would express his individuality in subtle ways, such as dress.
“I have a bittersweet relationship with Las Lomas,” he wrote in early 1981, his senior year.
Sometimes I hate it and other times I really enjoy it. Today, I enjoy being here. I wore my “penny-loafers” and my peg leg jeans with my white gas station shirt—“ERNIE” the name on it. And on top of it all I wore my new, old trench coat which looks like the one Sherlock Holmes used to wear. I just know people think I’m weird, weird, weird! But that’s exactly how I want it.
Right now I’m in second period, “World Lit.” Of course I’m sitting alone in the corner. No one would dare be caught sitting near a weirdo like me! These stupid high school kids! Sometimes I just can’t figure them out. Oh well, I can always entertain