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Overview
As a child, Jon tried desperately to be his father’s version of the all-American boy, denying his gayness in a futile attempt to earn the love and respect of an abusive man. With this he built a deep, internalized homophobia that made him want to disappear rather than live with the truth about himself. That denial played out in the forms of anorexia, bulimia, and obsessive running, which consumed him as an adolescent and young adult.It wasn’t until a grueling yet transformative Outward Bound experience that Jon began to face his sexual identity. This exploration continued as he entered college and started the serious work of sorting through years of repressed anger to separate from his father’s control and condemnation.My Thinning Years is an inspiring story of courage, creativity, and the will to live--and of recreating the definition of family to include friends, relatives, and teachers who support you in realizing your true self.In 1996, Jon wrote a song dreaming about finding a love and being able to live openly and freely. The song lyrics are in My Thinning Years and he recorded the song this summer with Broadway great Miguel Cervantes for others to hear. The song is available on iTunes and Spotify and profits will benefit The Trevor Project.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781616495633 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hazelden Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/19/2014 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 1,022,721 |
| File size: | 869 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Prologue
In my mind, it was this glob of fat making its way around my digestive system, looking for a place on my body to deposit itself, and it had to be stopped.
I was alternately speed-walking and lightly jogging around Boston in the wee hours of the morning, obsessing over what I’d done. (I would have been straight running if I weren’t still in my Khakis, button-down, sweater, and loafers from the evening before.) Oh my god, thought, I can’t believe I gave in. My life is over. I’m disgusting. I hate myself. And for all I know, semen has as many grams of fat as CREAM CHEESE. I need to burn this off now!
For a while I’d been limiting myself a maximum of five grams of fat a day, but lately I felt more at ease, safer, when I kept it closer to zero. Consume more than that, and I wouldn’t be able to stand myself, like how I felt right then, frantically wandering around Boston in the early morning light. I vowed to run again, more heavily, when I returned home to Andover later that day. Maybe I’d keep it up for two hours this time, in the mid-day sun, and really sweat. Anything to keep that fat glob from finding a home on my belly.
At seven in the morning, I’d moved on to berating myself for the dietary consequences of my transgression after first rehashing the graver implications for a solid hour. When I’d woken, startled, at six, with my skin literally sticking to Paul’s naked body, I could no longer escape the ugly truth: At nineteen, in the wake of my first sexual encounter ever, I was now without question what my father had most feared and strictly forbidden--a faggot. If he found out-- when he found out --he was going to kick my ass.
I was paralyzed, haunted by the paranoid fantasy that my father--big, imposing, a volunteer athletic coach in my hometown--was somehow there in the room with us, under the bed. Or outside in the hallway. Maybe the lobby. I knew, in my head, that he was safely in his bed thirty minutes away, at home in Andover and obviously not anywhere near the neighborhood of the college I was visiting--I knew it, but I still didn’t trust it.
Surely my father could telepathically detect that his youngest son had finally succumbed to the impure, un-Catholic urges he’d resisted for so long. At any instant, Dad might burst into the room, breaking the door off its hinges as he had at our house that one night, in a fit of rage. “You disgusting little faggot!” he’d shout before slugging me, or dragging me away from Paul’s bed by my hair. He’d be sure to throw in a verbal dig about my physique. “Nice tire around your waist, you fairy. Now give me a hundred push-ups.”
My father was a scary man. He stood about 5' 11", with a sizeable belly. He held most of his weight in his torso. He was a meaty guy, with chunky Italian hands that always frightened me. He always kept his finger nails buffed and impeccably manicured though, which I always thought strange for a “man’s man” like him, along with the flashy pinky ring he wore--gold with diamonds. He wore two gold chains that he never took off, one that was snug around his thick lower neck, and another that hung to the middle of his chest that held two gold pendants. You could hear the Jesus Christ medal hitting the cross when he moved, mean and fast.
He was meticulous about his clothes, too, and his thinning light brown hair, which was always perfectly combed over. Honestly, I hated the mere sight of him. I would look in the mirror, and pray that I would not see his pronounced nose or his double chin on my face.
The fantasy horror scene of my father barging into Paul’s room flickered before my eyes as I stared at the ceiling. I replayed it again and again; I even checked under the bed a few times to make sure. When it was clear my heart was not about to stop racing, I threw on my clothes and bolted, leaving Paul as he slept. On the way out, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror behind his door. I still looked the same--same preppy, medium-height guy with a strawberry blonde Buster Brown haircut and a faint glow from tanning. But inside, I was completely changed.
It would be a couple of hours before I could reasonably tiptoe back into my close high school friend Bianca’s dorm room. I was supposed to be visiting her for a simple college weekend tour. It was supposed to be all so innocent, so normal. What happened? How did I allow myself to sin? I’m going straight to hell.
I focused on the fat globule. I just kept moving, weaving in and out of one street then another, alternately walking and running, obsessing about burning it, getting rid of the indiscretion that was sitting in my stomach. It has to go, I said to myself, and sooner than later, so do I.
Chapter One: Sex Change for a Toddler?
I’d always gravitated toward my mom and admired everything about her. I loved the way she looked and smelled, even after she had just smoked a cigarette. She and I seemed to be connected from as early as I can remember.
My father, on the other hand, was oil to my water. I found him repellant. My earliest memories of him are entangled with fear and anxiety. I think he resented how close I was with my mother. Or he was afraid of it. He blamed her for everything I appeared to be, and was to become.
Most mornings before noontime pre-school, Mom and I went to Mary and Ted's restaurant in the center of town, where we’d sit in the same booth every time. I had a cheese omelet and she had Frosted Flakes with whole milk and an English muffin smothered with butter and grape jelly. From the picture window beside our booth, I could see the kids from my nursery school’s morning session playing in the church's yard. I wondered what it was like to play on the swings and to climb on the tires. I never went outside during recess.
Our breakfasts were some of my favorite times in Hudson, Ohio. Everyone at Mary and Ted’s knew us by our first names and my mom would chat with Jo, our waitress, about the tornado sightings from the spring before and about the chill in the air, signs of the coming winter.
After our late morning feasts, Mom would drop me off in her oversized, brown, Chevy station wagon. The car seemed giant to me and felt like it could fit dozens of people. On many hot summer days, when I didn’t have school, we would load the wagon full of towels, chairs, tennis rackets, and our neighbors, the Vildans, and go to Redwood Swim Club.
Every time we got into that wagon, I insisted that I sit on the "hump," the armrest in between the driver and passenger seats, and she let me. (What a different world then; no mandatory car seats strapped in with seatbelts.) Around noontime, she’d drive me across the town green to the church and I would jump out after receiving a Winston 100-scented, maroon lipstick kiss on my cheek. I spent the rest of the afternoon at Hudson Country Day.
Hudson Country Day was located in the basement of a very small church in the center of town. Its white paint had been rotted by many mid-western downpours. It had green doors and a bell tower that rung every day at noon. We actually got to pull the bell's rope one day at school as part of a lesson. The dong of the bell was deafening from where we stood.
School was held in the church basement. The floor’s concrete was covered with a worn, blue, industrial rug and the room had oversized chests filled with overflowing toys, games, costumes, Etch-a-Sketches, and abacuses. Scattered throughout were beanbags, pillows, and metal folding chairs.
In one corner of the classroom there was an old cherry wood vanity. It had a mirror that had been stained with rust and six drawers on either side of the pushed-in chair. Next to it was a floor-to-ceiling mirror. In the drawers were faux pearls and diamonds, hair clips, broaches, pins, feathered hats, boas, scarves, dresses and other dress-up items. Draped on the mirror were faux fur stoles and old fashioned umbrellas and yellowed, white lace parasols. Not many of the boys in my class were drawn to the vanity. But I was. Whenever Miss Turley read to us, I’d imagine myself over by the vanity coming up with the next outfit for the girls to wear. At recess, the boys would run outside to play on the hard top, but I’d run to the vanity.
My mom picked me up every afternoon at three o'clock, after the end-of-day snack and story-time. Usually our snacks were graham crackers, dates, raisins, peanuts, or peanut butter and crackers with pink plastic juice bottles or pint-sized milk cartons. Once or maybe twice, when my father wasn’t away on business, my mom and dad would pick me up together in his fancy company car.
Mr. Coffee, for whom my dad worked, gave him a brand new Buick and because it was a company car, we were rarely allowed to go in it. It was brown with a beige, imitation, convertible top and it had silver spoke wheels. The interior dash and doors were covered in shiny wood and the seats were made of crushed amber velour. I loved stroking the seats in the back with my hand, changing the color from dark to light, depending on which way I rubbed them.
One of the rare occasions when my dad joined my mom in picking me up after school happened to be a movie day. I’d stuffed myself with two bags of yellow, buttered movie popcorn and so I didn't feel very well. I didn’t say anything at first. My dad didn’t like it when I “whined like a girl.” When I came to the car, I groveled to sit on the soft hump, like I always did. “Okay,” my mother said. “It’s a special occasion.” We were going out for dinner to a nice restaurant in Cleveland, as a family. Jared and Julie were getting ready at home and we were on our way to pick them up.
My mom was already dressed for dinner and she looked beautiful. She had on a black dress, ruby earrings, and a matching ruby and gold necklace. She always wore rubies; they were her birthstone. She was also wearing her diamond pinky ring. It was my favorite ring of hers because it was shaped like a heart. Inside the heart were what seemed to be hundreds of tiny, white diamonds. The gold of the ring wrapped around her finger like a snake. She wore it on the same hand as her wedding and engagement rings, but only when she dressed in out-to-dinner clothes. Because it was late fall and our first frost was due that evening, my mom also had on her rabbit fur coat. I was enamored with her coat of many colors; white, brown, gold, and grey. The fur was so silky; I would bury my face in it and move my hands all over it before she went out to business dinners with my father. It smelled like her and her Charlie perfume. Sometimes when my dad was away, my mom would let me wrap myself in it and walk around the house. She’d laugh with me as I’d pretend to be a king or a queen.
Table of Contents
DedicationAcknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One: Sex Change for a Toddler
Chapter Two: Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Chapter Three: The Greatest Love of All
Chapter Four: Life with Father
Chapter Five: And Then There Was Chad
Chapter Six: Running over the Creek
Chapter Seven Mr. Andover High School
Chapter Eight: The Unearthing
Chapter Nine: Suicide is Painless
Chapter Ten: To Bates and Back
Chapter Eleven: Soup for Lunch
Chapter Twelve: He’s under the Bed
Chapter Thirteen: The Mornings After
Chapter Fourteen: Going Outward to Go Inward
Chapter Fifteen: Letter from a Castle
Chapter Sixteen: Laxatives, and the Moment of Truth
Chapter Seventeen: Holidays on Ice
Chapter Eighteen: Boystown
Chapter Nineteen: An Ocean Away
Chapter Twenty: Risking It All
Chapter Twenty-one: The Guy in the Photo
Chapter Twenty-two: Finding Home
Chapter Twenty-three: Saying Goodbye
Epilogue
Resources