Trouble at the Intersection

It’s a humid Tuesday evening in late Spring, and I’m driving home after a particularly long day at work. It’s been warm all day and I’m in long sleeves, so I roll them up and roll the windows down, enjoying the breeze and my freedom. The album Come On Now Social by the Indigo Girls, one of my all-time favorites, is playing loudly on my CD player. The song is track four, called “Trouble.”

I stop at a red light, and suddenly become very tense. I turn the music down to a very low volume just before Emily Saliers sings these lines:

And when the clergy take a vote
all the gays will pay again
‘Cause there’s more than one
kind of criminal white collar

I nervously look around at the cars stopped around me to see if anyone else has their windows down. Then, very quickly, my anxiety is joined by shame. Why should I care who hears my music? It’s certainly no more objectionable than some of the obscene lyrics I’ve heard pouring out of other people’s car windows. I feel almost like I'm betraying one of my favorite bands by being bashful about listening to them in public, and betraying myself by caring more about the judgment of strangers than my own enjoyment of life and of art.

As the light turns green and traffic begins moving again, I feel more relaxed; specific lyrics aren’t as likely to be heard by passersby when the car is in motion. I turn the volume back up, and begin to examine my feelings as I drive.

Those four simple lines blatantly invoke the “Big Three”: the taboo subjects almost guaranteed to spark controversy, conflict, and hostility when brought up in the wrong company. Those subjects are religion, politics, and sex. They’re not only powerfully loaded subjects on their own, but almost always interlinked in some way. When two or more of the subjects intersect, they feed off one another and magnify each other’s discords.

With a sense of grim foreboding, I remember that it has been almost five years since Jim Adkisson walked into a Tennessee church and opened fire. The reason? The church was of a liberal denomination, and Adkisson blamed liberals for what he perceived as the nation’s ills. It was neither the first nor the last time that a citizen of my country has sought to murder others for their political beliefs. As I contemplate, several other specific incidents come to mind of people attacked and sometimes killed for being of a certain political party, a certain religion, a certain gender, or a certain sexual orientation. I’m sure you, too, can think of several similar stories without even trying; our news sources give us new examples almost on a daily basis.

Thinking of these stories, I suddenly feel less ashamed of my nervousness at the intersection. I live in a world where people are indeed endangered by their politics, religion, and sex, and it is not unreasonable to be cautious about bringing up such subjects among strangers. However, in the future I will attempt to be more courageous. After all, if I can be attacked for who I am and what I believe, I can just as easily be loved and celebrated for the same reasons. And so can all of us.

A few minutes later, track five plays on my CD player, and Amy Ray sings:

I  know your heart’s in danger
And so is your life.
I said you learn to trust a stranger,
Stop and rest for the night.
Set your site up in the headlight
The moon won’t be enough.
Light the embers of another
And the night won’t seem so rough,
Sister.

Something Beautiful

“Can you do something for me?” I said. I held his hands in mine as we both sat on my bed. “Not because it’ll do something for you - not because you’ll enjoy it - but for me, because it’ll do something for me. As a gift. Please?”

“What do you want?” he said. His face said that he wanted to say yes, though he didn‘t know what he was agreeing to yet.

“Be with me.” Stay with me, I thought. “Hang out with me. Tonight, or tomorrow... just, sometime. Be with me. Please.”

He didn’t answer, and I felt the weight of my anxiety and the sadness that had been hiding behind it. The loneliness that was always so much more sharp and sickening when coming on the heels of true connection. I laid back, still holding his hands. He didn’t answer, but looked down and away, wearing the frown that I’d come to recognize as concentration. I had never felt like he was farther away, and he was growing more distant by the moment. Be with me, I thought, for wherever he was, it was nowhere near where I was. We hadn’t been together all evening; we'd shared the same room, the same activities, but not the same experience.

My foot caressed his leg. There was a widening chasm between us that physical touch could not close. I tried to speak of it, to see if he felt it too. “Lately I just feel like I’ve lost track of you somehow, and I want to find my way back to you.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for his response, trying to reassure myself. Surely it was in my mind, an unfounded anxiety born of my irrational insecurities. His next words would be to comfort me. He would reach across the chasm and be with me again. I only had to be patient and trust that this moment would pass.

“Maybe...” he said. His voice was quiet and dark. “Maybe this isn’t what I want.”

My hands tightened around his, and I opened my eyes. I sat up straight. I looked into his face. “What?”

He continued looking down, but didn’t pull his hands away. He allowed me to cling to them, as if reluctant to let go himself. “It’s just taken me this long to figure out what I want,” he said.

I held his hands even tighter. “And you’re basing this on... what, a week and a half of dissatisfaction?” I couldn’t keep the twinge of accusation from my voice.

“Yeah.”

“And you don’t think it’s worthwhile to wait and see if it gets better?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?” I still held his hands so tightly that it might have been hurting him, and he neither pulled away nor returned the pressure. He finally looked me in the eyes, though. “I know...” I shook his hands slightly for emphasis. “I know that we can make this work.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He bent to press his forehead against our hands, still locked together by my one-sided grip. I looked down at the top of his head, his hair spread out across his back. I like when you put your forehead on me like that, I’d told him once. It makes me feel like you trust me. 

I let go of his hands and pulled away from him, wrapping my arms around my own waist instead. He stood up and took a few steps back from the bed, as if afraid of me, or perhaps afraid of hurting me.
I bent forward, my back curling around to encircle my gut, which was clenching like a fist grasping desperately at something that had suddenly slipped away. The chasm was real, and was opening up before my eyes. I was beginning to see, for the first time, that perhaps it could never be closed. Not by me. Not alone. Because there was nobody on the other side to reach across to.

He had already left.

***


Something beautiful is hidden in everything that has ever caused pain. You'll never find it if you only look for ways to numb yourself.