“Why do you need to do that?”

He stood on the front porch of the clothing store she owned. She’d watched him pull down the rainbow flag and throw it to the ground, then asked him why.

In response, he shouted homophobic slurs. She repeated her question.

“But, why do you need to do that?”

He pulled out a gun, aimed and shot her straight through the heart.

She died in her store. He died a mile away, killed by law enforcement.

She was 66. He was 27.

They were total strangers.

Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton was shot for flying a gay pride flag. Here, in Southern California.

That caught me off guard.

It shouldn’t have.

Lauri Carleton was not gay. She was straight, married to a man, and the mother of nine children.

Lauri was murdered at 5 pm on a Friday night at her clothing store in Lake Arrowhead, just as a hurricane was barreling down on Southern California. Los Angeles, where I live, was about to be hit by the “Storm of the Century — a true weather rarity not seen since 1938.” Warnings of torrential floods. Power outages. Concerts and sporting events were canceled. Bottled water and flashlights emptied out of stores. On Saturday, my daughter and I spent the day at the fire station in Malibu, the only station left with sand where we could fill burlap bags for a family friend. Everyone wanted to be safe.

On Saturday night, exhausted and finally home, I was watching The Weather Channel and scrolling through my phone, when I saw the headline, Woman Killed For Flying Pride Flag. Then, the familiar blue and white Mag.Pi storefront sign. There are two Mag.Pi stores in Southern California. One in Lake Arrowhead, where Lauri was shot, and one in Los Angeles, at the bottom of my hill. Lauri Carleton, who owned both stores, was my neighbor.

I shouted to my teenage daughter and my girlfriend, who were both downstairs putting fresh batteries into new flashlights. At the tone of my voice, they ran upstairs instantly.

“You know Lauri, who lives down the street, in the house with the Little Free Library? She owns Mag.Pi, at the bottom of the hill?”

They’re both staring at me, not knowing what this has to do with the Storm of the Century.

“Someone shot her because she flew a rainbow flag.”

I looked at my daughter and my girlfriend, my two dogs, and my cat. The life and family I had created after decades of being alone.

“Someone killed her because she stood up for us.”

I was 7 years old when I saw the word “DYKE” spray painted in black across a garage door. My favorite teacher wasn’t in school that day, so I rode by her house on the way home to make sure she was okay. I stopped my blue bike, with its banana seat and tall handlebars with multicolored streamers, in front of her house, and stared hard at the word on her garage door.

I didn’t know what the word meant, but it looked angry. Someone was mad at her. I rang the doorbell but no one answered. Later that night, my mother told me that my teacher had been fired by the school district. Someone had seen her in the window of her home kissing her roommate—another woman. The next time I drove by her house, the angry word was painted over and the house was empty.

I was 11 years old when I first heard the word “queer.” I was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the big console TV set at my grandmother’s house. It was the 4th of July and we were waiting for the sun to go down so we could light sparklers in the backyard. When The Bionic Woman came on, I moved closer to the TV set. Too close. My father walked in with a plate of BBQ chicken. Time to go outside and light sparklers! But I didn’t want to leave the Bionic Woman. I loved her. My grandma turned to him and said, “Son, that girl of yours is as queer as an eight-dollar bill.”

When I was 17, I was the star singles tennis player in my small-town high school. Earlier that day, I lost my match against a better star singles tennis player from a bigger town. As I rode the bus home, I found my eyes resting on one of the doubles tennis players on our team, a girl with red hair. They had won their match. I wanted to go sit by her and get consoled for my loss.

Then my female tennis coach sat down next to me. I took my eyes off my teammate and looked at my coach. She said, “You know, Dipstick…” (Coach always called me “Dipstick” — “You’re such a thin and scrappy little thing, like the dipstick in my car.”) “You know, Dipstick, one day, you’re going to board a bus to a much bigger city and you’re going to find out there are other people just like you.”

I snapped back, angry, “I don’t know what you mean.” She looked over at my red-headed teammate, then she looked back at me and said gently, “One day you will, and I want you to know, you’ll be okay.”

She got up and returned to her seat on the bus.

That night, I went to the public library and looked up the word “Dyke” in the dictionary. Dykes were…mannish women. With short hair and big thighs. I looked down at my red-and-gold high school tennis uniform, my long blonde hair in braids. Then I read Dykes had sex with women. I’d never had sex. I was not a Dyke. What a fucking relief.

Until I had my first girlfriend in college. We kissed and kissed and never talked about what we were doing. It was perfect. The one and only time we had sex, she sat straight up in bed and halted me midway. Stop!, she said. Jesus was watching. I looked around. I didn’t see anyone. She got up and left. I never saw her again.

When I went home to visit family, I couldn’t hide my heartbreak. It was the first time I saw disgust on the faces of people who had always loved and nurtured me. Letters were written. I’d shamed the family. I was being cut out of the will, a story that quickly spreads throughout a family tree.

I’d overhear my mother say on the phone, “What did I do wrong?”

I’d overhear other conversations by other family members, too. “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” “She’s going to Hell.” “It’s so sad. No woman will ever love her like a man could.” Then there was the county fair. When my stepfather saw an effeminate man and shouted, “Faggots are pieces of shit.”

The last person I had left to face was my grandma, the one who watched me sit too close to the TV set watching The Bionic Woman. She was the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister. I watched her as she rolled quarters taken from her cigarette vending machines. After the last coin dropped, she said: “Baby, have you been suckin’ on a Brillo pad?”

I enrolled at the University of California, Riverside, to get my B.A. in Theatre Arts. Acting allowed you to become someone else, hopefully, someone better and stronger, if only for a little while, and playwriting allowed you to change the outcome, and I yearned to write a better ending.

It’s hard to fully explain Riverside. A conservative town, surrounded by orange groves. Riverside was only an hour and 15 minutes away from Los Angeles, one of the most diverse cities in America. Yet, Riverside felt like it was in another state. There were no gay pride events. No rainbow flags. Even UCR had no gay clubs on campus. It felt like gay people didn’t exist. Still, I knew if I was ever going to be loved, I had to get out and find those “other people like me” that my high school tennis coach told me about.

There was one gay bar in Riverside. The Menagerie. Near a Pussycat Theater. After parking my car several blocks away, I finally got the courage to walk in. It was dark. I shielded my eyes, waiting for them to adjust so I could see. There were two people inside. A bartender and a male customer. No one spoke to me. I spoke to no one. I walked out.

“I never thought there was anything strange about being gay.”

Tennis star Martina Navratilova wrote those words in her 1985 autobiography, Martina. The concept was revolutionary to me.

When I heard Martina was going to have a book signing in Los Angeles, I took the day off from work, which, for a waitress paying her way through college, meant being late on rent. Inside the bookstore, I was overwhelmed. It was the first time I’d seen two women holding hands in public. It was the first time I’d seen a rainbow pride flag.

When I reached the front of the line, I looked closely at Martina. She is so tall and strong. A warrior. She could handle anything. I slid my copy of her book over to her to sign. She asked my name.

Instead of answering her, I blurted out, “I’m afraid I’m gay.”

Martina looked up at me, and asked me a question that I would continue to ask myself for the rest of my life, “What are you afraid of?”

I hesitated. Then I said, “That people will hate me.”

The day after I graduated from UCR with my B.A. in Theatre Arts, I packed up my Volkswagen and headed to Los Angeles. I was finally moving to the big city where I would be okay. Before I left, I dumped my entire childhood, including all my yearbooks and all my photo albums, into the trash bin.

I moved into a single apartment inside a gothic old building on Crescent Heights Boulevard near Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. I went to my first gay pride parade. I cried when other people’s parents marched by in the hot summer sun with signs that said, “I love my gay son” or “I love my gay daughter.” The next day at work, I lied to my co-workers about why I was so sunburned.

My mother died a year after I moved to Los Angeles. Just as I was beginning to bloom, I was called back to wilt. I sat in the church pew listening to a preacher who never met her talk about her as he did. The death of your mother, no matter what the relationship, leaves you rudderless. I looked around me. Everyone seemed to be in twos. Men in suits had protective arms around their wives or girlfriends. I was alone. I wanted to lean my head on someone’s shoulder. Even if I was with someone, would I bring her to my mother’s funeral? Or would I be told not to bring her, because that be “creating a scene and making it about me,” like family dinners on holidays?

On Christmas Eve, I attended midnight mass alone at the big church on Highland Avenue, with the huge red AIDS ribbon, welcoming everyone inside. I wasn’t religious, but I loved the tradition of lighting candles and believing we are all connected to something greater. When I came home to my apartment, it was after 1 AM. I walked up to the second floor inside my building and found the body of a bloody naked white man lying on the floor in front of my door. He had been stabbed multiple times. I had no idea who he was. I looked around and saw one long streak of red blood, a hand dragging across the middle of the white wall, starting from the elevator and stopping at my door. The man groaned. He was alive.

I called for help. The ambulance came and took him away. I learned from a news story the man lived on the third floor. He was the victim of a serial murderer who picked up gay men in bars, went home with them, and then robbed and stabbed them, killing them. Because my neighbor survived, he could identify him. The killer was caught. Weeks later, I would receive a flower arrangement from the man who was attacked, thanking me for saving his life. I never met him. He had already moved out. So many people blamed him for picking up a stranger at a bar and taking him home. But I kept thinking, it was Christmas Eve. He was alone. Lonely. Just like I was.

“Hello?”

Five years ago, Lauri’s first words to me were a question. My daughter and I had just moved into the white house on the hill, as we called it. I was in my garage, unpacking moving boxes, when I looked up to see some woman standing inside. She was tall, and strong, with long, blonde hair, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat. A silhouette of a sheriff, striding into town.

“I’m your neighbor. Lauri Carleton. I live down the street.”

We talked. She not only lived in the neighborhood, she also owned two stores called “Mag.Pi.” One was at the bottom of our hill. The other store was in Lake Arrowhead. I told her I grew up in Riverside, so I knew Lake Arrowhead. It was even farther away from Los Angeles than Riverside.

One month later, Lauri was still the only neighbor I’d met. So I went to her store, and bounced in to say hello. Do you remember me? Of course, I remember you. The store had a big, bold personality, just like the owner. Everything inside felt thoughtful and deliberate. That’s how a friendship started. On my daily walks. A wave from outside. A quick chat inside.

Two months before Lauri was shot, her killer posted a photo on social media of the rainbow pride flag engulfed in flames, and wrote: “What to do with the LGBTQP flag?”

“LGBTQP” was created by hate groups as a bastardization of the acronym LGBTQ, the P in their acronym stands for pedophile.

Also two months before Lauri was shot, I marched in the gay pride parade in West Hollywood. I was no longer a spectator on the sidelines, hiding from my work colleagues. For the last ten years, I have marched in the parade on a float. Things had changed. Same-sex marriage was legal. People had pronouns. Corporations handed out free gifts. I’d started to question if we needed pride parades — or rainbow flags — anymore.

But this year felt different. Book bans. Trans bans. Drag bans. More and more anti-gay laws were being passed in more and more states. Families were leaving good jobs and moving across the country to feel safe again or get healthcare. Yet, despite it all, I still believe the majority of people in America thought hating gay people was not cool anymore.

We were waiting for the gay pride parade to begin, standing by our float on Crescent Heights Boulevard. Behind us was the old gothic building I lived in when I first moved to Los Angeles. I checked in with Daniel, our leader and driver. I watched him fix his makeup in the rearview mirror. Daniel is a drag queen. I was holding a sign, “Drag Is Not A Crime.”

Daniel looked at me. I could see his anguish. He told me his mother, who is in her 80s, had just called him and asked him if he was a “groomer.” His mother, he said. Who knew he was gay, who had watched him perform, who went to his wedding? He wanted to know if he molested children.

Gay people aren’t just sinners anymore, who need to be saved.

Gay people are groomers. Children need to be saved.

“Why do you need to do that?”

In response to Lauri’s question, her killer made “several disparaging remarks about the rainbow flag” and then he shouted “many homophobic slurs” at Lauri herself.

Dyke spray painted on a garage door. Queer as an eight-dollar bill. Faggots are pieces of shit. Did he shout those slurs?

Lauri did not correct him. She did not tell him she was straight. Instead, in response to his name-calling, Lauri repeated her question.

“But, why do you need to do that?”

Human beings want to feel safe. Especially when we live in a world with 24/7 headline news, recycling horror, and fear. It’s really no surprise then that we stockpile guns, money, and food. We wait in long lines to buy water and flashlights in a storm. As silly as it is, I won’t leave my house unless my bed is made. Everything we do, on some level, is to feel safe.

“But, why do you need to do that?”

I need to kill these people before they kill me. Was that his answer? Why do some people only feel safe when they stop other groups from existing?

I need to kill these groomers. Why did some people only feel safe when they play the hero, believing they have to kill other groups to protect society?

We try to intellectualize it. Study psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Tribalism, scapegoating, world religions. We investigate the killer. Study social media posts, news channels, and family history.

Over time, we may even learn to ask who benefits most when we hate each other. Still, all these answers do nothing to alleviate. Intellectualizing doesn’t help when people you love get murdered.

“But, why do you need to do that?”

According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times, when Lauri asked the question again, the killer “almost flinched as if thinking twice but then went for it, grabbed the gun and then aimed it and shot Lauri. That caused her to fall back onto the floor, and then the door swung closed, and then he shot one shot through that door and then took off.”

When police arrived, Lauri was found suffering from a gunshot wound and later pronounced dead at the scene. The murder was filmed by the store’s closed-circuit cameras. Lauri was holding a phone when she was killed.

Lauri was killed on a Friday night. Saturday, we prepared for the Storm of the Century. Sunday morning, we woke up early, staring out the windows, ready for a hurricane — that never came. It was just another rainy day. Monday morning, I laid flowers for Lauri outside her Mag.Pi store in Los Angeles. It wasn’t the location where Lauri was shot and killed, but it was the Lauri that I knew. Cards, flowers, and pride flags were already left there. I was lying down with my sunflowers when a news van pulled up. A young male reporter in his 20s and a cameraman stepped out.

The Reporter told me journalists in the newsroom were still covering the Storm of the Century, out looking for fallen trees and power lines, but he told his boss he wanted to cover Lauri’s murder instead. He looked at me, emotional. “I never met her,” he said, “but it was important. She stood up for my community. I just can’t believe someone shot her for flying a flag.”

I had grown up without gay rights. He had grown up with gay rights. Yet, here we are. Both of us realize progress isn’t permanent. Even if society has made great strides, these strides are fragile.

“Yeah,” I said. “It caught me off guard, too. It shouldn’t have.”

The Reporter asked if he could interview me. I looked into the camera. “Lauri flew a gay pride flag because she believed in love. The greatest of all emotions. Is love only for straight people? Do straight people really want me to live my entire life — without love?”

After Lauri died, I drove back to Riverside. I hadn’t been back in 20 years. There is something about time that removes some of the sting of grief and sadness from our childhood. Still, when I took that exit into Riverside, I felt a familiar layer of loneliness. I realized I still carry it with me. That moment when I was a little girl watching The Bionic Woman and I first learned there was something wrong with me. I went from happy and carefree to sad and lonely. I felt danger. Not just from the outside world, where strangers lurk, but from the inside world, too. Where I learned the people I trusted the most to love me — could stop loving me — if I was queer.

I parked my car on Mission Inn Avenue. They had parking meters now. I saw two rainbow pride hearts side by side in two windows. They didn’t have those when I grew up. I pushed open the door and nervously walked inside. It was an art studio. One young man and one young woman, both in their early 20s, were painting watercolors. They looked up at me.

“I saw your rainbow hearts outside,” I said. “I used to live here. I went to UCR. We didn’t have gay people in Riverside back then.”

The Young Woman laughed, “Well, we do now. I’m a gay person — and non-binary.”

The Young Man piped up, “I’m gay!”

I told them it was very hard and lonely back then. I asked them if it’s better now, to be gay in Riverside.

The Young Man said, “When I was growing up, it was hard. I was bullied a lot. But it’s better now.”

The Young Man pointed to a stack of rainbow-themed postcards on the table.

“Riverside is holding their second gay pride event in a few weeks. You should come.”

Second? In 2023?

“I live in Los Angeles now. We’ve had gay pride parades forever. I even complained about the traffic…” My voice trailed off.

And suddenly, right there in an art store in Riverside, in front of total strangers, I started crying.

“I’m sorry,” I kept saying. “I’m sorry.”

I left the art store and drove by “The Menagerie,” the gay bar I walked into all those years ago. It was brightly lit. Men and women were standing outside, laughing. The roof of the bar was decorated with huge flags, all in a row. The rainbow flag. The bisexual flag. The transgender flag. The American flag. So many colors represent so many lives.

We are all here for such a short period of time. Drops in an ocean. Yet for thousands of years, the need to oppress people who look, love, or pray differently keeps being pushed forward.

From generation to generation, we keep playing out the same pain, and we keep punting the ball into the future, hoping the next generation will finally create a better world.

One where Lauri would not have to ask the question, “But, why do you need to do that?” because no one would.

I watched as the wind picked up the pride flags. I’ve spent half my life learning to love myself and the other half believing I was a piece of shit.

What an absurd waste of time. For me. For all of us, who’ve been hunted, hated, and marginalized.

Lauri died for a cause she believed in. So did her killer.

I found myself longing for that better world now.

An Injustice!

Straight Woman Killed For Flying Gay Pride Flag was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“God, I want to kiss her…”

As I watched her sing on stage, in her element, in her wildness, the thought of kissing her startled me.

It wasn’t startling because I wanted to kiss a woman, as that want hadn’t startled me since college when Leura’s hand brushed against mine under the table.

It wasn’t startling because the woman singing on stage was gorgeous, famous, married, unavailable, and not attracted to me. For better and worse, all of those traits had held me spellbound at one time or another.

What startled me was how my thought continued.

“God, I want to kiss her… but I’m too old.”

I turned and told my friend sitting next to me. He said, “You’re a woman in your 50s. You’re at the end of your shelf life.”

The end of your shelf life doesn’t mean you’re dead. It means you are no longer viable.

I was the bottle of milk you sniff before drinking. I was a walking loaf of day-old bread with a bright orange sticker, eyed with skepticism, wariness, and even, perhaps pity.

We all have a tool bag of seduction, items we’ve collected over the years. What worked, what didn’t, learned after trial and error, rejection and heartbreak. Even in my 20s and 30s, I was not “hot.” Every person I’ve ever been with has said some version of, “I wasn’t attracted to you at first, but you grew on me because you’re smart and funny.” So, into my tool bag went intellect and witty repartee. I never relied on my looks or my body. Or so I had thought.

SHELF LIFE OF A BISEXUAL WOMAN

My 20s were the decade of education. I wanted to be smart, so I worked at it. I waitressed at night and went to college during the day. I had no money, but I had a degree. Growing up, I was not given the example of a healthy relationship, so I did not have any. I was not in my body or my authenticity. It took a long time to realize that my childhood was not my relationship.

Still, in my 20s, I weighed less, had a flat stomach, and my breasts were perky. I seduced a straight woman from Texas, who suddenly sat up in the bed just before she came and told me to stop because Jesus was watching. I seduced a gentle, shy man who told me he couldn’t see me anymore because I was too much like Space Mountain and he preferred It’s A Small World. But even when the relationships ended, I was young enough to believe love, at first sight, was still possible.

My 30s were the decade of struggle. I chose to Goethe myself. I left a job as an executive at a movie studio to become a screenwriter. I wish I could say such boldness held genius, power and magic, and that I was instantly rewarded for my bravery, but that was not the case. Success took a long time. Years. I lived off Ramen, drained all my savings, and started delivering flowers for Floral & Hardy.

Once, I delivered it to my old studio. I’ll never forget walking down the executive floor wearing overalls and carrying a dozen red roses. I’ll never forget walking past my old office, now inhabited by a new male exec. I’ll never forget walking into the Monday Morning Meeting seeing my former colleagues around the boardroom. The stares, the fear. There but for the grace of God go I.

Still, despite a decade of struggle, the 30s shelf life was strong! The expiration date remained unchecked. Why bother looking, when the sex was great? There was a male actor who fed me an unbirthday cake in the shower when I was crying because I bounced a rent check. A female musician I spent a wild night within a New Orleans cemetery. After all, who doesn’t love a tortured writer who gave it all up for her passion? The shelf was packed with dreams.

My 40s were my decade of success. I gave birth to my first child and my first TV show. We shot the pilot when I was seven months pregnant. I wrote the second episode, hit send, and, two-and-a-half hours later, gave birth to my daughter in a scheduled C section. Unfortunately, she didn’t take everything with her. She left behind 10lbs and stretch marks, a dent in the Frigidaire.

Also in my 40s, I wrote a romantic comedy that made over $100 million at the box office; I bought a house; I was on the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America West, surrounded by the smartest and sexiest minds in my profession. I learned there is nothing more erotic than a good conversation. Shelf life was far from my mind.

SHELF LIFE OF MOTHERHOOD

I was on a ferry to Catalina Island with my daughter. I was 46 years old and my daughter was four. I watched a man return from the snack bar carrying a box of popcorn. He bent down and started feeding twin girls inside a double stroller. A woman leaned against the stroller, exhausted. The man suddenly turned and looked at us. Probably because he felt my daughter staring intently — not at him, but at the popcorn, the same way our dog stared at a bush where she once found a half-eaten cheeseburger.

“Do you want some popcorn?” the man asked my daughter. An emphatic yes. He smiled at me. “Ask your grandma if it’s okay.” The woman leaning on the stroller jerked upright; my daughter screeched, “That is not my Grandma! That is my MOMMY!”

I got off the Catalina ferry, strapped my daughter into her car seat, and stared at myself in the rearview mirror. I looked closer. I was aging, sure, but I still recognized myself. A top-shelf brand! But the packaging was starting to wear, the vibrancy of the label starting to fade.

SHELF LIFE OF A SENIOR CITIZEN DISCOUNT

I am in my 50s now. The decade of What the Hell is Happening. It started out well. I wrote another holiday movie with an all-star cast. I regularly hosted community dinners in my backyard under the moonlight. My daughter and I walked the Camino de Santiago, the famous pilgrimage in Spain, carrying all we needed on our backs.

Menopause hit. I was rearranged. My ass moved to my stomach. My eyelids drooped. Jowls appeared. I plucked a hair from my chin. My neck started mimicking the folds of my vagina, while my clitoris wanted nothing to do with me. I stopped looking like my mother and started looking like my father. I no longer recognized myself in the rearview mirror. The checker at the hardware store asked if I wanted the senior citizen discount.

My daughter is now a teenager. I am no longer the hero I once was. My cape is tattered and torn. It is a biological mandate that your child pulls away from you and leaves the nest. I understand it intellectually, but no one fully prepares you for how it feels. The loss of the sidekick holding your hand. The loss of tiny arms around your waist. The loss of joy on their face at the unexpected sight of you in the 4th-grade classroom.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s subtle. But they “leave” you. The relationship you had with your child is over. You are beginning a new relationship now, with someone who looks like your child, but is not your child anymore. The shelf life of motherhood hits you hard. Being a parent is such a paradox…you have to teach the person you love most in the world to live happily and healthily without you. So when that hideous rip of Velcro comes, and it will splinter your soul, it also means you did your job.

There has been a costume change. The woman on stage is singing a new song, a cover. Even though I am not close to the stage, I can see she is younger than I am. I went to the bathroom, away from her, to think. Inside the stall, I sat down on the closed toilet seat. Contemplating. I recognize desire when I feel it, but when you get older, what do you DO with it?

SHELF LIFE OF A CAT

Prudence, our tortoiseshell cat, never strayed far from our yard, and always came home for dinner. Until she missed dinner one evening, and then the next.

A South African man found her collar on the ground, in an empty lot next to our house. What a kindness to stop, pick it up, and call. We live on a hill in the mountainous Laurel Canyon. The coyotes, owls, hawks, deer, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, rats, opossums, and snakes all live here with us. They were also here before us. New “Lost Pet” signs with photos of pleading eyes and relaxed poses are taped to telephone poles and street lamps almost every week.

I started my search with my hair in braids, wearing baggy pants and a backpack in case I found something. Remains, if any exist, would be nearby. I started up the hill where the collar was found. It is rocky terrain on loose dirt at a steep 45-degree angle. It is not for human hiking. It is a between-street pathway for animals on hills that stretch throughout the canyons. I heard it connects all the way down to the Santa Monica Mountains and then to the sea.

Because it’s so steep and unstable, I can only go up. I cannot come back down. I slid a few times and found a broken tree limb, with several small branches still attached, to help me climb. I have always been athletic, but I have not always been in my 50s. I cursed being older, my limbs not as strong as they used to be. Some close calls, some confusion on why I’m navigating abandoned baby cribs and record players along with tree stumps and poison ivy, but I made it all the way to the top, screaming Prudence’s name — to no reply. At the top of the hill was a new string of houses, the wealthy set who have a panoramic view of our city.

In the search for my cat, I found myself climbing up into the backyard of a house. No. A mansion. A mansion with no back fence. Presumably, no one would be crazy enough to scale up the rocky, weedy hills into the backyard. I stepped right onto their deck with lawn chairs, BBQ and a bubbling jacuzzi. From afar, I could see a man in the kitchen. I could also see my own reflection. A short blonde woman in braids holding a broken tree branch, face scratched and bleeding, covered in dirt, dust and spiders. I waved my hands in the air. Screamed, please don’t shoot me. The man didn’t shoot — or even turn my way. I got closer and closer until I was at the long stretch of glass windows. The man wore headphones, was on a Zoom call. He couldn’t hear me. I quickly chose to abandon his help and walk around his house to get the hell out of there.

On the side of the house, there are more glass windows. Then, I came face to face with a claw foot tub. Thank God, it was empty. But the surprise of seeing it, feet away, gave me a jolting memory of making love to someone in a claw foot tub in Paris. It was a tumultuous, dramatic relationship. The kind novels are written about and movies are made — doomed from the beginning and never end well. We all seem to have one in a lifetime. It was in that clawfoot tub that she had a moment of vulnerability. “There’s something wrong with me,” she said. “When you told me that you didn’t get the job, I was glad. I don’t want you to be more successful than me. I love you but I’m not good for you.” Although I spent years with her, that is the only snapshot that remains.

I walked around to the front of the house. Three sports cars — Ferraris, Lamborghinis, I have no idea. Spoilers, stripes, low to the ground, from a racetrack. It was a long, winding driveway curving down to the street. As I started down, I started jogging. As I jogged, I prayed he didn’t look at his security system and see Crazy Stick Lady running across his property. Stick and I jogged around a curve until we saw a big iron gate. We were locked in. I kept going until I reached the gate. There’s got to be a way out of here. Then I saw the keypad. Hands shaking, I opened it. Randomly hit 1234, then 4321. Nothing. I stared at the keypad. The numbers 6, 8 and 0 were worn and dirty, the rest of the keys were new and clean. I hit 6 8 0 then 0 again and the gate opened. The worn keys set me free. I still have the stick in my backyard.

We lost our white cat Pax to a car, our black cat Margo to cancer, and our dog Abraham was stolen, taken out of my car while I was feeding quarters to a machine at a coin car wash. Prudence was a stray, born under a house. Most cats love their cat life, roaming, killing birds and mice (which Prudence did a lot of) and racing out into the night to prowl. Much like those Ferraris and Lamborghinis. On day six of searching, I found Prudence’s remains. Her death was tragic, and also random. Hit by a car, dying of cancer, taken by a predator. An animal’s death is also a human’s death. It’s very hard to take freedom back from a cat, or a person, once they’ve tasted it. Prudence was 11 years old. She went outside on the wrong night. But until then, she had the comfort and warmth of a loving home, food, and a bed. She was a cat. Living her cat life — until she died.

The show ends. The singer bows. The audience rises to their feet. For two hours, the outside world was forgotten. A line formed. The singer stepped off stage, into the audience and into the arms of the first person waiting. Although she must have felt the euphoria that comes when a show ends and all the hard work has paid off, she wasn’t glazed or showy. She was sincere and kind. She is a good person, I could feel it. I wanted to meet her, but I didn’t go backstage. I had already learned what it feels like to realize you are on a different shelf.

SHELF LIFE OF A VETERINARIAN

The first time I met “the Veterinarian,” I had just walked off a set and was feeling pretty fancy. Inside the cramped exam room, a woman with long dark hair wearing a lab coat walked in. She was not my regular male veterinarian. She was young, smart, capable, and composed. Completely startled, I blurted out, are you a real vet? Yes, she said. So I dug my hole deeper. What I mean is, you look like the TV version of a vet. A movie star vet. Not a real vet. This was not going well. I had now insulted not only her but maybe all veterinarians everywhere.

The majority of the population is heterosexual. The early years of having a bisexual shelf-life meant trying to figure out if another woman would even consider opening the refrigerator door. Look at the shoes, the nails, the haircut — the directness. Being without limitations in love is freeing, but also frightening. I believe when you connect with another person on the highest level, the soul level, everything, including sexual attraction, is possible. But we don’t always meet another person at the soul level. Sometimes we meet in a veterinarian’s office.

You start your dating life on the same shelf. When you’re in your late teens, 20s to 30s, age differences don’t matter. I would guess she was about 25. I was 40. That’s a 15 year age difference. A 25-year-old does not want to date a 40-year-old, period. (This does not apply to men, however, who at any age can date 19-year-olds.) It was no longer a question of whether or not she was interested or whether or not dating your veterinarian was ethical. It was worse. For the first time in my life, I had left my shelf.

Suddenly, I was a creep. I was that old guy in his 40s, wearing tight black jeans, sitting at the bar hitting on young girls in the club dancing to “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League.

Leaving your shelf is not voluntary. One day you wake up, meet someone and realize you’re on a different shelf. How many shelves are there? As the years go by, do the shelves merge? Do 40-year-olds date 55-year-olds? Do 60-year-olds date 75-year-olds? At some point, do we all get thrown together in the lettuce bin and make a salad? I do not want to be a crouton.

I did not go backstage and try to meet the singer and make an impression. I drove home. My teenage daughter was fast asleep, so I kissed her forehead, and got into bed. I laid there for quite some time, thinking of my shelf life. I touched my body. The dents, the stains, the scars, the stretch marks, the belly that once produced the child I kissed good night. I wondered if anyone would ever desire it again. I touched even lower, tried to feel something. For the singer, the Veterinarian — the ones I longed for, but would never have. For the lovers in other countries, for the boy who loved It’s A Small World, and even for the girl who didn’t want me to succeed and outshine her. At one time, they were all exactly who I wanted — and I got them. There was no response to my touch. It’s been that way for quite some time now.

SHELF LIFE ON THE SOFTBALL FIELD

I was walking my dogs in the park, when I paused to watch the co-ed Senior Softball League. I was smitten with one man in particular. He had to be 80. Hunched over, he stutter-stepped to the plate and gave it his all. I cheered him on, when Morty walked up. Judging by his shirt, he was a Dodgers fan. You play, he asked. Yes, I replied, in school. Were you any good? I was good — back in the day. Morty said this is a “Senior” league, you have to be over 45 if you’re a gal and 55 if you’re a man. Forty-five, I said, loudly, incredulous. He laughed. What are you, he asked. 26? I laughed. I am in my 50s. Take off your sunglasses, he exclaimed. I did. Oh, said Morty. He told me he was 84, switching topics.

He pointed out a tall platinum-haired woman in pigtails. She used to play for the Canadian National League. She has a daughter who needs 24/7 medical care. It turns out the man I was smitten with is in fact 80 years old — and he’s dying of cancer. Morty pointed out each player. There were prosecutors, doctors, a brain surgeon, a chef, a former NFL player, a proctologist, and a once-famous TV star. There was even a story about a man, Bernie, who died on the field during the game — and none of those doctors or surgeons on the field could save him. I went home, asking myself, am I ready to play in a “Senior” league? Is that accepting my shelf life?

SHELF LIFE IS STILL LIFE

We are born into a society that thrives on making people feel shitty about themselves. From our gender, our skin color, our country of birth — to the brand of clothes we wear, the car we drive, where we sit on an airplane. We are always jockeying for position in a game of superiority versus inferiority. Yet, there are no winners in this game because we all feel there is something wrong with ourselves no matter who we put down or who we lift up. Now, add aging to the mix.

When we say we’re getting old, we are not fishing for compliments. This is not about hearing how good you look “for your age.” We’re scared. Our outsides no longer match our insides. We’ve been talking to 20, 30, and 40-year-olds for years, thinking we are on the same playing field — and we have just found out, we are not. We are old for the first time in our lives and we need to learn how to play a new game.

I told myself I didn’t want to join the Senior Softball League because I was insulted that a 45-year-old woman was considered a senior. But, truthfully, I didn’t want to get out on the field and find out I suck. I was on the All-Star Team. Who wants to ruin that image of themselves? I didn’t go backstage to meet the singer because I didn’t have the looks or body I once did. I didn’t want to spoil the memory of who I once was, swinging naked from chandeliers, to find out the person I am now is not worth loving.

What happens when something expires? When it reaches the end of its fresh date? Do we become sour milk, rotten eggs, moldy cheese, day-old bread? Or do we get better the longer we are on the shelf like fine wine or a good whiskey? Some things do get bitter and rancid as they age, but other things get sweeter and better. Some shelves don’t suit us anymore, but others welcome us.

There is comfort in knowing whatever I wanted to do, I did. Sure, there are the ones who got away and the ones I should have let get away sooner, but I have no regrets. There is comfort in going to bed at 9 pm and no longer fearing I am missing out. There is comfort in knowing I have reached the age where I can want to kiss someone — and not have to do anything about it.

I went back to the softball game and watched the team play. The batter hit a hard fast ground ball toward the shortstop. That was a hardball to catch and your best shot was running, stretching low, throwing out your glove, and catching it on the hop. If I tried that move now, I’d trip and fall over. The shortstop was an Asian man, in his 70s. He did not try to field the ball on the run and catch it with his glove. Instead, he got in front of the ball and stopped it with his foot. Then he bent down, picked up the ball, and threw it to first base. You’d think those extra steps would mean the runner was safe on first base. But he wasn’t. Because the runner had slowed down, too. Morty, this team. They all know they are on their way out but they found a way to keep playing the game they love until the very end.

Aging is here. We can’t stop it, so we have to embrace it. We have to laugh our way through it. Find the humor in it. Moving from shelf to shelf is still moving. You’re growing older, but you’re moving forward, too. Leaving your shelf, and leaving behind anything that doesn’t serve you anymore.

We have to believe we can stop the ball with our feet.

We have to believe we can climb mountains and swing from chandeliers.

We have to believe we can kiss a famous singer or a beautiful veterinarian — or someone else entirely new. Because somebody is going to buy that day-old bread on the shelf, it just might be somebody different than you think.

When they say the best is yet to come, I believe that. Your best laugh, your best work, your best kiss, your best love, your best you. Is still out there. Waiting for you. On your new shelf.

An Injustice!

I was in India, travelling all over the country. We were digging wells, riding elephants, studying Buddhism. Inside the rickety old bus, with ripped leather seats, no air conditioning, and red and yellow cloth curtains, I sat with our Indian guide, Shantum.

I offered Shantum a piece of spearmint gum. He said thank you immediately, took it, carefully opening the silver wrapper like Charlie Bucket opening a Wonka bar. Then, he put the gum in his mouth and chewed slowly, savoring the flavor within.

We started speaking about many things — arranged marriage, the caste system, why Buddha is always incarnated as a man — when I noticed a slight grimace on his face.

Shantum took the gum out and put it back into the silver wrapper and tucked it deep inside his brown robes, continuing the conversation. But, I had seen his expression, so asked, “Don’t you like gum?”

“I do not like spearmint,” he smiled. “Odd for an Indian not to like mint, but there you go.”

I asked him why then, did he take the gum?

He said — because you were offering me a gift. If I didn’t take the gum, I would rob you of the joy you felt by giving me a gift.

I was completely thrown. I would never take gum I didn’t like — but I had never seen it as robbing someone of their joy whenever I said no.

“You Americans are a very curious breed,” he said. “Often when I offer you something your first instinct is to say ‘no’ immediately. Even if you do want what I am offering, you always say ‘no’ first. As if you’ve been taught that being polite means saying ‘no’ to what you want. Have you wondered how it feels to the person who offered you a gift to be so quickly refused?”

I admitted I had not.

“Americans,” he continued to explain, “need to be asked three times before they will accept anything — a piece of gum, a compliment, even another piece of birthday cake — all get turned down.”

“Trust me,” he said, “I’ve counted. Three quick and rapid No! No! No!— before an American will say yes, thank you, I accept your gift.”

It’s been over 20 years since I went on pilgrimage to India. But I’ve thought about what Shantum said on that rickety old bus many, many times and he was right. It is three times.

No. No, thank you. No, I mean it. Okay, fine, if you insist.

He was also right about something else. Each “no” robs someone of the joy of giving a gift. The heart deflates, the hand falls. It becomes a plea.

So now, I will listen to a story I have already heard just to see your face light up as you tell it.

Now, I will listen to the young man in the long line at Trader Joe’s earnestly telling me health tips about a virus spreading throughout the land, even if it is information I already know, just to see his face flood with relief when he is done, believing he helped another person stay alive.

Now, I will listen to your sage advice, even if I already know I may not take it, just to feel the warmth of the bright searchlight of your being trying to light my way out of the Gothic pull of my own darkness.

Now, I will accept you telling me you love me, love the lumps and faultlines of my body, love the forever turbulent mixmaster of my heart.

Now, I will take the piece of gum offered the first time I am asked — even if I am not a fan of mint.

“Can I call you ‘sis’?” I asked.

My friend laughed, smiled. “Oh, hell no.”

A white woman calling a black woman “sis” is out of bounds.

I admit, I was hurt. Surely, she knows how much I love her? But she was telling me that no matter how “woke” or evolved I may think I am, I walk this world as a white woman, which means I’ll never truly understand what it is to walk this world as a Black woman.

It was hard to hear. I wanted to call her “sis” because I deeply wanted that feeling of sisterhood and kinship. But I also knew she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was loving me enough to tell me the truth.

Of course, I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to hand her my bio of protest marches and rallies. I’ve had a Black male lover. I’ve had female lovers. I know what discrimination feels like. I’ve been told I’m going to hell from family members and from my own religion. I am a woman… That alone qualifies me, surely?

Nope. Still doesn’t make me Black. No oppression, no misogyny, no religious persecution will ever make me a Black woman. I am always going to be a white woman walking down the street.

Sure, I was spit on by a white man when I held a Black man’s hand walking down the street, but I was spit on because of Kelvin. Had he not been there, it would have just been me and my white skin. No Kelvin, no spit.

In March, my 11-year-old daughter and I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC. As we approached the museum, we watched a big group of folks — grandparents, parents, and kids — step off a tourist bus and enter the museum, as many do every day.

This group was all white, as many are, with every member dressed in a uniform of red MAGA hats, American flags, bald eagles, USA and red, white and blue. They wanted to be identified by who they are and what they believed in. No different than me in my ACLU beanie and Sandy Hook Promise t-shirt.

But regardless of costume, we all wander through museums roughly the same. About an hour or so later, my daughter occupied with an exhibit nearby, I found myself alone in an emptier museum section with a teenaged girl and boy, both white, blonde and wearing MAGA hats.

We weren’t alone for long. A Black teenage boy walked up to them, from across the museum, with purpose. He faced them and said:

“I matter.” They laughed, confused, what?

He pointed to their MAGA hats. “That hat makes me uncomfortable,” he said.

They, with no meanness, replied, “This is a white country.”

They gestured. Look around. The museum was filled almost entirely with white people.

The Black boy’s cheeks reddened. He was brave, but he was alone.

Not sure how much to say or what exactly to do, I moved closer and stood beside the Black teenage boy. Together, we stood, side by side, and faced the two white MAGA teenagers.

I didn’t say anything. I just wanted him to know that I, a middle-aged white woman, was there for him. He never looked at me. I don’t know if he even knew I was there. But I could feel the electricity in his body. See the sweat beading on his forehead. I could imagine his heart racing. As mine once had, walking down the street holding Kelvin’s Black hand or a woman’s white hand in mine.

“This is not a white country,” he said.

The white teenage boy and girl again laughed. Not of derision but confusion. The Black teenage boy was close to tears.

I was the first to notice the MAGA families walking toward us. Their parents, I assumed. I took a step closer to the Black teenage boy. Maybe it was my slight movement closer to him that made him look and see them, too.

He said, “It’s all our country. Why don’t you get that?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He’d said his peace. So, he walked away.

Later that night, I wondered, had I done enough? Was being a witness enough?

The next day in DC was spent at the National African American History Museum. At this museum, there were no MAGA filled tourist buses. My daughter and I were some of the only white people.

I was acutely aware of being white while looking at images of human beings in chains, babies stolen from crying mothers who were sold on the auction block, the backs of Black men whipped and scarred.

There are many ethnicities living in America but Black people have the unique constitutional distinction of being owned and quite literally dehumanized by white people. That, and all that followed in service to that, no matter how long ago it was, still sits deep in all our psyches.

I waited in a long line of Black people to see Emmett Till’s coffin. In 1955, Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago who was visiting Mississippi.

A married 21-year-old white woman accused him of whistling at her. Three days later, the Black teenager was hauled away from his bed by white men. He was lynched, beaten, mutilated and shot in the head. Witnesses passing by could hear his screams. “Mama. Come save me.” The killers strung barbed wire and a 75-pound metal fan around his neck then dumped his lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River.

Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till, insisted on an open casket. She wanted the country to view her son’s bloated, mangled body. “When people saw what happened to my son, men stood up who had never stood up before,” Mamie Till said.

The all-white jury took one hour to acquit the two white men of Emmett’s murder. They would have acquitted him sooner, they said, but they stopped for a soda break. 100 days after Emmett’s murder, Rosa Parks was riding a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Sixty-two years later, Carolyn Bryant, the woman who accused Emmett Till of whistling at her, admitted she lied.

Standing in front of Emmett’s coffin, I felt such rage, such anger at what happened that I could not contain it. Like a broken vase, water started seeping out of my eyes. My entire body started shaking, cracking, breaking. I can’t explain it other than, I’d left that room for a moment and went somewhere else.

We believe we hand down talent, personality, and the physical and emotional genetics of our ancestors. What if we also hand down their pain? Generation after generation of unhealed pain of being an oppressor or the oppressed?

When I returned to my body again, I felt warmth all around me. Hands were on my back, on my shoulders, holding me upright. I looked down. The hands were all Black. It was one of the most profound moments of my life. To be held and witnessed like that.

Later that night, I thought — should I, as a white woman, have kept it together? Should anyone, in front of such violence, be expected to? How many generations of Black people have been expected to?

When I was a 20-year-old white girl holding my Black boyfriend’s hand as we walked down the street, Kelvin did not tell the white man who spit on me to fuck right the hell off. I did, causing Kelvin to grab my arm and drag me away. Later, Kelvin and I had our worst fight as a young couple.

I was angry he didn’t stand up for me. He was angry I didn’t understand why he couldn’t.

I didn’t get it when Kelvin pulled me away. I made it about me.

I didn’t get it when my friend told me I couldn’t call her “sis.” I didn’t realize that I was asking to adopt another race’s culture, experience and identity. I made it about me.

The white MAGA teens inside the Air and Space Museum didn’t get why a Black boy needed to say, “I matter.” They made it about them.

Carolyn Bryant didn’t get it when she accused 14-year-old Emmett Till. She made it about her.

J.W. Milam didn’t get it when he murdered Emmett Till. “What else could I do?“ he said. “He thought he was as good as any white man.” He made it about him.

Very few describe themselves as racist, but all white people benefit from racism.

White people benefit every time they rent an apartment, buy a car, apply for a loan, apply to college. My child and I are more likely to survive childbirth, and I am far more likely to be alive after I’m pulled over by a white cop.

Racism is not an attitude or a feeling toward people who are different than you, it is a structural, institutional system that has benefited white people from the day Europeans landed on this soil.

White people own the top percent of the vast wealth in this county, which was created by exploiting the unpaid labor of people of color. White people own the majority of real estate, run the vast majority of corporations, determine the cost of their products and the pay of the employees. White people control the political system, the judicial system, the educational system, the health system and the legal system.

But none of these systems are broken. They were built this way. White people are broken. They built these systems this way.

Racism hasn’t ended because white people don’t want it to end. If white people did not benefit from racism, they would have ended racism a long time ago.

What is the measure of any society? Is it the health and happiness of all its people — or just a select group? That we live in a society where anyone would have to assert they matter at all, should tell you something is very wrong.

White people are broken, but they don’t have to be. Broken is not evil. Broken means it needs to be fixed. Healed. Changed. White supremacy is a white people problem. White people created this mess. White people need to clean it up.

Yet, we well meaning white people get confused about when to speak up and when to shut up, and we’re deeply afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing. So often, we do or say nothing.

White people saying nothing is why we are at the place we are now.

So perhaps we can start by accepting we don’t know what we don’t know?

Perhaps when we are called out for getting it wrong, we don’t defend, we ask why?

Perhaps when a Black person tells us racism exists, we believe them.

We become curious, not critical. We ask to hear their experiences. We listen not to respond, but to understand. To actively understand where the person you are listening to is coming from.

For a Black person to say, “Black is Beautiful,” a white person first said, “Black is Not Beautiful.”

For a Black person to say “Black Lives Matter,” a white person first said, “Black Lives Do Not Matter.”

Black people do not need us to speak for them. They need us to hand them the mic.

Perhaps we’ve said enough for a while. Perhaps it’s time to listen.

Because to be held and witnessed is something we can all do for one another.

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Dear Ms. Nicole Hockley,

I have read your open letter to me dated November 15, 2017 regarding gun violence. I wanted to respond sooner, and I tried to do so on December 14th, the 5 year anniversary of the death of your son, Dylan, at Sandy Hook Elementary, but found myself at a loss for words. So perhaps it is fitting that I write to you now, while you and your family are here in Washington, DC for “March for Our Lives,” in support of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Please let me first offer my deepest sympathies for your loss. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said: “There is no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.” I agree with that sentiment. Life’s natural order is for children to bury their parents. Only in times of war should a mother ever bury her child first. Dylan was in first grade. He was not a soldier. But he was a casualty in a war on our own soil.

As a parent myself, one of the most painful realizations I’ve had is that I will not be alive to witness all of my child’s life. I will not know how “it all turned out.” As a parent, you will witness your child’s birth, nurse their skinned knees, cheer them on at their college graduations, walk them down the aisle at their wedding and spoil your grandchildren until that final day when we, as parents, take our last breath and let them go on to live their lives without us. I often reflect on the pain of that final day — not in my own death, but in knowing I will never know how my child’s story ends.

Dylan’s story did not end naturally. The pages of his life were torn out by a mass shooter. I know you still have your son Jake with you and that must be some comfort to you, but I imagine when you lose one child, the worst thing that can be said is to take comfort in the child you still have. How would I feel if someone asked me to choose which child I could live without?

You have asked me not to accept these national tragedies as the “norm.” I want you to know that I will not. To accept mass shootings as the norm in our society is to say that your son Dylan died in vain. To accept mass shootings as the norm is to say that all the other men, women and children who have died at the hands of gun violence have also died in vain. No one dies a violent death in vain. If they did, that would mean we are willing to sacrifice our most vulnerable, our children, to maintain a violent way of life. That cannot be who we are as a society.

We have all heard the expression we are only as strong as our weakest link. If our weakest link is allowing anyone to pick up a military-grade weapon and senselessly slaughter innocent people then I would say we are not a very strong country at all. Our freedom to own a gun is not absolute and inflexible and should not include the ability to own any possible weapon of war intended for use solely by trained experts. There must be a reasonable balance.

You have made many salient points including Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) to protect families and communities from gun violence, federal public safety grants, and more. I want you to know that I was truly moved by your final line to me: “To have part of my legacy be in protecting American lives.”

As you know, gun control is a volatile issue in our country, but we have weathered many volatile issues in our history before and we’ve always made the right choice in the end. We did so after we searched our souls and realized that doing what is right may not always be what is popular at the time.

So, I would ask all of us to search our souls now. Do we have a spiritual contract to leave the world a better place than we found it? Have we left the world a better place when children are dying in the arms of their teachers? Have we left the world a better place when we are dying in theaters or concert halls or nightclubs or praying in our churches?

To change the hearts and minds of those we must change will be difficult. Hell, it’s going to be nearly impossible. Change is always messy in the beginning, cleaner in the middle and glorious in the end. Still, time is and always has been on the side of change.

Love of country and love of each other can look like many things to many people. But genuine love is never toxic. I will not be alive to see the end of my children’s story, but I will do everything in my power that when they see the end of mine — they will know I did what I could to leave the world a better place for them.

Thank you again for your letter, Ms. Hockley. I will keep it, and the memory of your son, with me always.

Sincerely,

The President of the United States.

P.S. Ms. Hockley, this is me now, speaking directly to you. The President may never read your letter. He may never respond. But I wanted you to know that I read your letter. I felt it deserved a response.

You deserve to be heard. You have a voice. We all have a voice.

If we all don’t speak up, our voices will never be heard.

I want to acknowledge how extraordinarily difficult it must have been to write that letter. I am grateful you found the strength to write it. Your experience and knowledge has incredible value. No one else has your unique perspective. That holds true for all of us — and why we should all speak up about the issues we care about. Words have power. Silence is deemed as approval.

Your letter reminded us to have the courageous conversations we all need to be having with our friends, our families, our churches, and our communities.

Your letter reminded us to write our own letters — even if we suspect we may never get a response from the person to whom they are written.

Sometimes we don’t know who our words are truly meant for —but we must trust they will find the person who needs them. In speaking your truth, you will also find you are not alone in your thinking.

Each day we are writing a page in our own life story, by using the words we speak and the words we do not. With the actions we take and the actions we do not. We are the stories we tell each other and the stories we tell ourselves.

Your story, Nicole Hockley, is a powerful story. But it is not a tragedy. It is a love story. All stories are love stories in the end.

I believe we do have a spiritual contract to leave the world a better place.

Your letter to the President was about leaving the world a better place. That is love. That is the love you have for Dylan, for Jake, and for the world itself.

You have not let Dylan down. You have not let yourself down.

You have, instead, lifted all of us up with you.

Thank you for using your voice, Nicole.

We hear you.

Read Nicole Hockley’s Open Letter to the President in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/15/president-trump-sandy-hook-gun-reform

It starts somewhere. It starts in the home. I know what a mass shooter can look like.

First time I saw him, I was 13. The sun wasn’t even up yet and I was wearing my track uniform. I poured myself a bowl of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, turned and there he was, sitting at the round pale-blue Formica table reading the newspaper and drinking a cup of coffee.

He was a large man. Wavy hair and beard intertwined with strands of black and white. Blue-blue eyes. A department store Santa. He smiled at me. Introduced himself. I was late for practice. So I told him to wash his dishes before he left.

My mother met him the night before. The bowling alley was the place-to-be in our small town, with a crowded bar, nightly bowling leagues, giant trophies and a video game arcade. Normally we went with her, gorging on pizza and Dr. Pepper, but my youngest sister was sick. So my mom went alone, met him and brought him home.

She’d been looking for a man for a while. She was a mother with three little girls. She did not have a job. That was a lot to take on for anyone. Her second marriage had ended a year earlier. He started sleeping in her bedroom every night after they met. A few weeks later, I woke up to find them both gone. It was Christmas Eve morning. She’d left a note. They had gone to Vegas, a four hour drive. Watch your two younger sisters, please. They’d be back that night.

I wasn’t mad. I was hopeful. She was lonely, she was drinking more and the laundry was piling up in the garage. He lifted her up, easily, and swung her around the room, happily, and he bought all three of us brand new bicycles. I wanted it to work out for her this time. We all did.

I woke up before dawn on Christmas morning and they still hadn’t come home. The Christmas tree was decorated and the red and green lights were blinking expectantly, but the cookies and milk were untouched. I ate the cookies, drank the milk, and then stole her money from the cigar box.

I rode my new banana seat bike that he bought me in the dark to the 7-Eleven on Grand Avenue, where I bought presents on behalf of Santa. I bought records for my two sisters. The 45’s of I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family and I Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes by Jim Stafford. The three of us had a band called “Wonder.” I played the drums on the back of a set of silver pots, while they played the tambourine and maracas. Our mother was best and only audience. At the store, I bought as much candy, soapy bubbles and plastic toys as I could afford. Then, I bought one more thing. A gift for my mother. The .45 record of You and Me Against the World by Helen Reddy.

“When all the others turn their backs and walk away

You can count on me to stay…”

I wanted her to know I would stay.

“And when one of us is gone

And one of us is left to carry on

Remembering will have to do…”

I wanted her to know I would remember her.

I rode my bike home as the sun rose. I wrapped the Christmas presents and put them under the tree. I quickly made pancakes, which my mother had always done for us on Christmas morning. My sisters woke up shortly after and opened their gifts. If they were disappointed in the small bounty, they didn’t say. We got out the silver pots, played the records and sang the songs. It was a happy Christmas morning. The only thing missing was our audience.

My mother called hours later. They were driving back from Vegas. Would I find a restaurant open for Christmas dinner? Scouring the Yellow Pages, I made a reservation at a Chinese restaurant in the next town, and it was there my mother showed us her diamond ring and told us they were getting married. From that day forward, he lived with us. The changes happened rather fast.

I never liked meat. Even as a very small child, my mother told me I would spit out beef. For dinner, my mother made meatloaf, his favorite. She gave me the side dishes: mashed potatoes, green beans, macaroni and cheese. He insisted I eat the meatloaf. I wouldn’t. My mother defended me. But he was the man of the house now. I could not leave the kitchen table until I ate the meatloaf. My mother shook me awake the next morning. I had fallen asleep. She had a black eye. I never saw him hit her. But I didn’t have to eat the meatloaf.

He bought her a red Lotus, an expensive sports car with a stick shift. Then, they took another trip to Vegas and left us alone. I stole my mother’s car keys and drove my sisters to school in the brand new Lotus. I taught myself how to drive her stick shift, but not very well, because I hit a tree in the school parking lot. Students stared. Teachers stared. The car was towed.

I was 14 and didn’t have a driver’s license. They called my mother in Vegas. She returned with a black eye, a split lip and a badly bruised arm hanging limply by her side. He walked right past me into the house without saying a word. She looked right at me and said, quietly, “I took it for you.”

It was my fault I wrecked the car. It was my fault he beat her.

My mother started drinking more. He started drinking more. The fights happened more. A passion play and we were the audience. Parenting became an afterthought. When the food in the house ran out, my sisters and I would take a taxi and my mother’s check book to the grocery store. We’d load up the shopping cart and not with very good choices. In front of the cashier, I’d carefully fill out the dollar amount on the check, and then forge my mother’s signature. It was a small town.

Everybody knew why. But nobody said a thing.

What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.

Life became a routine. When the fighting started downstairs, my younger sisters left their bedrooms and showed up in mine. The record player went on. The record collection grew. I learned which chair to wedge under the doorknob to keep my bedroom door shut. I learned which concealer worked best to hide her bruises the next morning. Sometimes, the ambulance would come. Sometimes, she’d wear dark sunglasses, a loose sweatshirt and a big floppy hat when she walked the dogs.

Everybody knew. But nobody said a thing.

What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.

There were moments of hope. Because nobody is angry and violent all day, every day. They just have to be angry and violent one day. My mother would wake us up in the middle of the night, and tell us to pack a suitcase. We’d hole up in a hotel. We were underworld spies, prisoners from a jailbreak. We’d order food, watch Charlie’s Angels, hope to never to be found. But we were never really lost, because a day or two later, he’d knock on the hotel door, carrying flowers. And it was over. Because who doesn’t want to go to Disneyland? Who doesn’t want to be the first house on the block to have a swimming pool?

My mother hated guns, so there were no guns in our house. I slept with a butcher knife under my pillow. I used it once. I was 16. The fighting downstairs stopped, abruptly, in the middle of my mother’s scream. I called 911 and then I crept downstairs. He was hunched over her body. She was on the floor in a pool of her own blood. I put the knife to the back of his neck to stop him from killing my mother. The ambulance came and took her away. The police came and took him away. We snuck into a next door neighbor’s backyard and slept on their lawn furniture. We woke up with blankets. Of course, they knew.

Everybody knew. But nobody said a thing.

What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.

Weeks later, I was called out of my high school English class. My mother was at the school and wanted to talk to me. It was Halloween. I was a vampire, my long black cape flapping in the wind. She, newly released from the hospital, looked like a mummy, with her hollow eyes, her head shaved and her 32 stitches wrapped in white bandages. School was in session, so we were alone. She’d paid his bail. He was sorry. He was waiting at the house. Would I give him another chance, please?

My mother came to my school, begging me not to break up with her.

“When all the others turn their backs and walk away

You can count on me to stay…”

I broke my own heart when I did not come home from school that day. My mother could “take it” for me, but I couldn’t “take it” anymore. My middle sister, 13, ran away. Our father, remarried with two new small children, put her into a boarding school. My youngest sister, who had a different father from my mother’s second marriage, was only 6, so she cried herself to sleep at night. Our family was torn apart. So they moved to a new house on the outskirts of our small town on a secluded dirt road.

Last time I saw him, I was 16. When I pulled up to the new house to get my things, he stepped outside to meet me. The beard was gone. He’d lost weight. He was calm. He held a shotgun in his hand. It was pointed down, non-threatening. There was finality in the moment. I was leaving home for good. There was finality in the presence of a weapon. If I was willing to use a knife, he was willing to use a gun.

My sister was still in that house. My mother was still in that house.

Everybody knew.

Neighbors, coaches, grocery store cashiers, elementary, junior and high school teachers, school principals, classmates. Her parents knew, my father knew.

Everybody knew. Nobody said a thing.

What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.

I never saw my stepfather again. There is no big turning point moment here, where I confronted him about the abuse. Where I asked him, point blank, why did you beat my mother? Where I told him, point blank, the pain he caused my sisters and me could be forgiven, but it could never be undone. My mother left him a few years later. She died a few years after that.

My stepfather did not murder my mother. My stepfather did not murder me.

But had my stepfather picked up a gun and killed us all, nobody would have been surprised. He was a violent guy, they’d tell the news cameras. Everybody knew that.

But nobody got involved. Because we somehow believe that we are safe from a guy who “only” beats his wife. We’re not a member of that family, so it doesn’t really affect us.

Had my stepfather picked up a semi-automatic weapon and killed scores of strangers in a public place, nobody would have been surprised by that either. He was a violent guy, they’d tell the news cameras. Everybody knew that.

But now everybody’s involved. Because innocent people have been killed in a church, in a nightclub, at a concert or a cafe, and in an elementary school.

Domestic violence no longer lives inside that one house on the block. Domestic violence lives in the public now.

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the majority of all mass shooters in the United States killed an intimate partner or family member during the massacre or had a history of domestic violence.

Somebody out there, right now, knows the next big mass shooter. Somebody out there is getting blamed, screamed at, beaten up.

Somebody out there wants to believe that he’s sorry, that he’s changed and that love means giving him a second chance. Even if that second chance means giving him another bullet because he missed the first time.

Somebody out there, right now, needs our help.

Once, you could feel sorry for the three little girls from the violent home forging a check at the grocery store. Once, you could smile softly, avert your eyes and do nothing. Not anymore.

The facts show that domestic violence is a very clear warning sign that people outside of the family might also be hurt in the future.

Violent men don’t just drop out of the sky with guns and start shooting up people in public places. There are warning signs.

Abused women and children are the canary in the coal mine.

It starts somewhere. It starts in the home.

Nobody would have been surprised if I had died.

“And when one of us is gone

And one of us is left to carry on

Then remembering will have to do

Our memories alone will get us through

Think about the days of me and you

Of you and me against the world

I love you, Mommy

I love you, baby…”

“Don’t worry, pretty lady. I’ll make sure to use a good, strong lock to keep the niggers out.”

He smiled. I blinked. Fifteen years ago, I was moving into my third-floor condo in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. I’d hired a neighborhood locksmith to re-key the locks. The place was the size of a postage stamp but it was all mine and it had an extraordinary view. Below me was a lush courtyard where weddings took place. If I stood on my tiptoes, carefully leaned over the wooden dish rack with mismatched dishes and looked out my tiny kitchen window, I could see the Mississippi River.

As the locksmith worked in the open doorway, the trilling chords of the calliope from a steamboat clung to the cold river air and crossed the threshold, drifting inside, chilling the room.

The word had been given no special weight among the rest. The man’s eyes kind. His skin white, his belly thick, his hands bruised and scarred. He was missing a finger. He reached into his worn leather bag and withdrew a heavy deadbolt. Bigger than the one I had.

I’m white. A woman. Five-foot-two and blonde. He was white. A man. He didn’t want to just re-key the locks I had. He wanted me to feel safe.

I let it slide. I let him believe it was safe to speak to me that way.

When I turned 13 years old, I learned the “other” is not always on the outside of the door. It was summer. A pool party. Bathing suits, pimples and braces. I was a brand new teenager and he was a brand new stepfather. Even though it was my birthday, the charismatic stepfather was the center of attention. Women on the block were drawn to him. He was big, strong, virile. Men liked his sense of humor, bold and crass. He held the room in his hands.

He liked to drink. He sang the loudest as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake. He drank some more. Then my new stepfather pulled my mother onto his lap. It was easy for him to do. She was small, blonde, like me. He put his large hand over her vagina, twisting her bathing suit bottoms in his hand, wriggling for the right fit, like fingers in a bowling ball.

He told the men in Bermuda shorts and sandals, “See this? This is my cunt — You boys stay away from it.”

An uncomfortable silence. Was it from his actions, the word he used — or both? Then he laughed heartily, breaking the spell.

I looked at my mother. She wouldn’t look at me. She looked down, at her bare feet, and stayed very still. My mother was 31 years old. This was her third marriage. She had three children. She didn’t have a job. So, she let it slide. And picked up a glass of wine.

When I was 15, my stepfather took me on a road trip. I was the oldest child and something had to give. He was a truck driver. Cocooned inside the top of his cab, I watched the world go by as we passed tall green trees and crossed state lines. He knew the names of all the waitresses at truck stops. And they knew mine. Oh, does he brag about you. Shows us pictures of all you kids. He bought me every tacky souvenir I wanted, taught me how to use his CB radio and he never had one drink. It was a good week. People can surprise you.

When I was 16, my stepfather took a rotary dial telephone in his right hand, held my mother down with his left hand and bashed her repeatedly over the head. The blood spurted out of her like water from a drinking fountain — straight up, then cascading down all over the floor. I held a knife to the back of his neck. He stopped hitting her. The police came. He was taken to jail. My mother left in an ambulance. When she returned home she had a shaved head with stitches crisscrossing like railroad tracks. My mother told me he was sorry and he promised he would never do it again. I told her I was leaving.

What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.

He told me I could take whatever I could fit into one suitcase. Everything else, he reasoned, was his. He had paid for it. I skateboarded to my job working nights at Burger King to pay the rent. For the first time in my life, I did not live in my own house. I slept through the night. And I didn’t have a deadbolt.

I was known as The Girl Who Lived In The House Where the Ambulance Came or simply Ambulance Girl. Arleen didn’t care what they said about me. She was my best friend. She was a round, cozy Latina, happy as a Buddha. I loved her. She came to my track meets. So did other members of my family, concerned about me. They saw me fall into Arleen’s arms after a brutal race.

“Don’t you have any other friends?” I said yes. But Arleen’s my best friend.

“Arleen doesn’t belong here.”

They smiled. The same smile of kindness on their faces that I saw on the locksmith in New Orleans. What does that mean, I asked? Of course Arleen belongs here. She literally goes to the same school that I do. Why is she different? Don’t you have any other friends, they asked again? Our school was half-Mexican, half-white. We had no black kids, no Jewish kids and one Asian girl, Thanh, who had just transferred in. Thanh was my other friend.

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My mother would let me know when my stepfather was gone and I would pick up my little sisters and take them to the park. My mother and I behaved like divorced parents who only spoke because of the kids. But when I saw her next, I blurted out what they said about Arleen. Her green eyes hardened.

It was my mother, after all, who rescued feral kittens and damaged people from alleys and gave them a home. Although she couldn’t defend herself against her attacker, she defended me. She said I could choose any friend I like and to fuck them. It was then that I realized I’d never heard my mother say a curse word — or a racist, hateful word.

I was eight years old. My grandmother and I were wearing matching overalls inside “The K-Mart.” My grandmother was shuffling through coupons when she suddenly reached out and grabbed me by the arm. I stopped short. She pointed out a little black boy my age who was shopping with his mom.

“This is what I’ve been trying to tell you about them.” She said in her Southern accent. “Look at his ears. He’s got tiny ears.” I looked at his ears. They looked like normal kid ears to me. “Tiny ears are the mark of the Devil.”

My grandmother was born in the backwoods of Kentucky, the youngest of 13 children born to a fire-and-brimstone Baptist minister. He taught them to love Jesus and he beat them across the back of the legs with a switch to keep them in line. They grew up in a cramped two bedroom house with no electricity. The Devil got a hold of her older brother. She fought him off when he tried to rape her in a shared bed. He wasn’t punished. They prayed for him.

She dropped out of school in 8th grade and got married. At 16, she gave birth to my father. Her husband went away to war. He returned home wounded and died. She moved from state to state, working in factories by day, waitressing by night. She was a single mother who paid her taxes, did the right thing, but there was never enough money and she never fell in love again. Over time, she wore her own scars and bruises from life, just as the locksmith.

She used the N word. A lot. The Little Boy’s mother heard her use it in K-Mart. So she hurried him away. But not before I saw the hurt in her eyes. Like my mother’s eyes when she became a bowling ball. I collected that hurt.

The people who raise you, they don’t just teach you to put on your clothes and look both ways when you cross the street. They also teach you words. They teach you how to speak about people who look differently than you do. They teach you how to respond to crisis. Do you remain silent and let it pass or do you speak up and call for help? They teach you what a lover relationship looks like. Does it look like a partner who shares the responsibility of cooking dinner? Or does it look like a partner who smacks you to the ground with his fists because dinner isn’t on the table?

My grandmother took care of me when my parents couldn’t. She loved me something fierce, so much so that I wrote a movie about her. When I was a teenager, I asked her to stop using the N word. She was defensive. We’ve always used that word. I said, it’s a racist, hurtful word. She was angry, but there was something else — anguish. She knew she shouldn’t be using the N word, but she needed it. So she held on tightly, not letting me take it from her.

In college, I fell in love with a boy named Kelvin. He was kind, prone to pratfall and we both felt like outsiders. I was a theatre major in a predominantly pre-med school. He was black. Kelvin wasn’t the Devil. He was studying to be a doctor. Unlike my father’s mother, my mother’s parents came from a wealthy, conservative family. They spent thousands of dollars trying to save my mother. They hired lawyers, sent her to year-long rehabs and paid for therapy. Nothing lasted. They also helped me. They sent me $100 a month to help pay for my college expenses and they bought me a car.

When I introduced Kelvin to my grandparents after a play, their reaction was faster than it was at the track meet with Arleen. They got up out of their seats, turned their backs on us, and walked out of the theater. Days later, I received a letter telling me they were heartbroken. He may be a nice boy, but imagine what the neighbors would think if they saw a black boy walking up to your front door? I had disgraced myself and our family and I would no longer be receiving their monthly $100 check. I was in school from 9am to noon and waitressing at Bob’s Big Boy from 4pm to midnight. With their help, I was lucky to have $20 bucks left over each month as it is.

Kelvin said we should move in together. It would save us both money. I would like to say that I was courageous. That I, like my mother talking about Arleen, told my grandparents to fuck off. I would like to say that I told Kelvin I loved him and let him swing me around the University Avenue laundromat as we folded our clothes together. That would be the movie ending.

After all, I recognized what my grandparents were saying was wrong. And it was unfair. And it was racist. But I was not able to do anything beyond recognizing that.

I was 21. Early in the morning, when my mother was sober, a car accident took her life. My mother had abused alcohol, and she had been abused, for over a decade. But if you looked closer, looked gently, you could see she’d long been on the road to an early death. So I broke up with Kelvin coldly and abruptly, never really giving him a reason. I needed my family.

At 25, I dated a woman for the first time. Leura. I told my grandmother. She wasn’t thrilled but, she said, when push comes to shove, a white girl is better than a black boy. Leura was invited to my grandmother’s house. She was fed fried chicken, collard greens and corn bread. She and my grandmother bonded. I went to bed early and they stayed up late playing Pinochle. Leura wanted to move in with me. So I broke up with her.

When my grandmother was dying of lung cancer, her roommate in the hospital was a black woman her age, also dying of cancer. Death united them and they became deep and fast friends. They finished each other’s sentences and watched the same soaps. They shared a love and familiarity that could only come from 50 years of marriage — or from realizing the outside world will never understand what you’re going through and you only have each other.

I was visiting them both in the hospital when my grandmother said, simply: I was wrong to use the N word. And I was wrong to tell you all those horrible things about black people. It’s what my daddy taught me and it was wrong. She said it in front of her roommate, who listened but never said a word. It was a movie ending — and it was true.

At 34, I was invited to a dinner party at the candlelit Chateau Marmont. In our red velvet booth sat the famous and semi-famous in plunging necklines, tight pants, expensive jewelry and perfectly manicured nails. They were all white, all straight, all in couples except for one man, who I realized was invited for me, the other single person.

Like most kids from dysfunctional homes, I’ve never felt good enough. Especially in heightened situations like these, that overflow with money and prestige. The clues are all there. I eat too fast, from years of half-hour breaks during waitressing shifts. My nails aren’t manicured. I’m quirky, not coiffed. But it’s something more. It’s who I am, the way I move. I’m just not put together enough and it’s only a matter of time before they realize I’m a fraud. So as superficial as it was, to be accepted by fame and fancy was a thrill.

After a few drinks the homophobic comments began. I was surprised because these were successful folks in the film and television community. Surely, we’re not like that? We work with gay people every day. But this is how casual racism and casual bigotry works. It works with two faces. The public face, where all the right words are said. And the private face, where your mother is beaten and kids are told to keep their mouths shut or else.

I said with a smile, hey. I don’t think those comments about gay people are cool.

“Are you a dyke or something?”

He asked. Not unkindly. I was floored. His question implied that to stand up against a racist or bigoted thought, you must secretly be one of them. Because no straight person would call out another straight person over a gay comment. No white person would call out another white person over a racist comment.

I was angry because I had slept with a black boy and a white girl and that lessened, in their eyes, my defense. I was angry because they could see the answer on my face and I could feel their relief. I was the one to blame. I had hidden myself in plain sight. But Kelvin cannot hide in plain sight. Whenever he walks down the street — he’s a black man. Arleen can’t hide in plain sight — she’s a brown woman. And even if a gay person can put on the straight mask and hide in plain sight walking down the street, they should not have to drop the hand of the person they love to feel safe.

I looked at the man, “You just said a pretty hateful comment about how ‘faggots’ are taking over Hollywood and that a faggot actor got a job that you think you deserved, rather than thinking just maybe that actor had more talent than you did and deserved the role.”

Now they were angry. No one likes to be called a racist or a bigot. Despite what they say or do.

I continued, “But to answer your question. Yes, I’ve slept with women. But if you think that means calling you out doesn’t matter as long as straight white people give you a pass, then we’re going to be waiting a long time for this world to change, because what you said is not okay.”

When I was done, my voice was shaking. My heart was pounding in my throat. I looked around the table, just as I had looked at all the adult faces at my 13th birthday party. Anyone going to help me out? I looked especially close at the women. Anyone have my back here? They, like my mother, looked away.

I picked up my purse and walked out of the restaurant. I have no idea if what I said made a difference to anyone at that dinner party, then or years later, but it did to me. Because I didn’t let it slide. I’ve learned what letting it slide does to a person.

The racist waving his flag isn’t a surprise. I see him. You see him. We all know what that’s about. But racism and bigotry don’t always march down the street. Sometimes the racist or the bigot sits down at your dinner table and asks you to pass the bread. Those are the ones who surprise you. Racism grows and festers in intimate spaces and behind closed doors. In the words spoken by the people you know and love and who look just like you.

Should I have kicked out the locksmith? Should I have stormed out of the restaurant? Would you have?

Letting a comment slide can feel like a deadbolt sliding over your soul. And speaking up doesn’t always feel like a victory, especially in the moment.

What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.

May you always have the courage to speak out. And when you do, may it unlock the soul and warm the chilliest of rooms.

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