Transplants take root, but the echoes of our previous lives live deep inside us.
I try to cover the tainted reverberations of small town youth with a gym body, fierceness, designer tennis shoes, and a biting wit – but the seed of discontent will always be with me. It lays dormant, unfed, and contained. I had convinced myself that it was dead forever, that I am now freed from past. Free from the pain of being different, shamed, hunted, and persecuted.
Then I agreed to go back to the town of my birth to shelter my mom as they lower her mother’s body into the ground. It is my honor to be there for my mom, no matter what her shortcomings. It is a reminder of how far this gay man has come. It is a reminder that those memories were not a nightmare.
Gerle Men 