No one and nothing could have prepared me for the most beautiful man I’d ever seen volunteering to take me to my senior prom. I can’t tell you to this day or in a thousand years what motivated Shaun to do this, if it were his newly reformed sense of Jesus and desire to do a good deed, if he’d wanted to rectify himself in the eyes of Jesus or the church, or if by some remote chance he’d seen or witnessed in me some possibility of beauty, a beauty which escaped eyes of my small town, parents and boys alike. Perhaps Shaun saw potential in my tall, gangly form.
It was soon after I loved him. I loved him hard and became one of a string of women who loved him, though I was definitely the youngest and most naïve. The rest were porcelain, older, green-eyed, and glamorous like his mother.
There was something soft and magical he’d awakened in me the night of my senior prom. I was dressed in an ivory gown, he was in a tuxedo. We stood late night on a balcony. He kissed me openly and gently. Afterward he informed me, quite officiously, “Let’s see each other,” which like a late spring night was a cool way of saying, Let’s date, but by no means be exclusive. “Sure,” I said, playing cool while my heart nearly exploded. Perhaps I’m skipping around now as I did then, but I don’t remember any fear when sometime after the prom, in early summer, while riding in the backseat of a car with Shaun as someone else drove, he lifted my pant leg from the bottom and stroked his fingers up and down like a paintbrush effortlessly. Like a light bulb my skin prickled with electricity.
My mind flashes and races to the first time in his apartment above his grandmother’s. We were not fucking but he’s naked as I lie beneath him, topless, whispering into his ear breathlessly like a radio, turned on. In the end, he sits naked, back propped against the pillows, muscular arms and legs folded looking like those pictures of the Romans or a Greek God, only Shaun is smoking a cigarette. I stand at the edge of the bed in full view getting dressed. His eyes like the lens of a camera surveys my body and breasts. Though it’s my first time naked with a man, somehow I am unafraid to show myself. Like an artist or sculptor Shaun looks at me appreciatively and says, “Your body is beautiful, Hun.”
It was through Shaun that I was introduced to new ways of life. Everything about Shaun and his family was illicit. He took me from church and the suburbs into the back roads of Boston, which led like steps to an underground scene. Like the leader of a band or great conductor, Shaun took me to the first parties in Boston among artists and actors who starred in famous controversial plays, lived in kooky, alternative, and communal households. These were artists who had living rooms like my Uncle Vernon, decorated for effect, but instead of antique long-legged dolls, they displayed larger than life-sized wooden crosses and a huge stereo speaker system. These were artists who ran toilet paper through the streets at night as a signal and trail to the party. They also displayed ambiguous and diverse sexuality. They looked at my stature and shouted appreciatively, “Amazon, Amazon!” These were artists who weren’t afraid to take God’s name in vain. There were men who wore black leather jackets with tassels on the ends that jumped up when they danced. These were Black artists who dropped acid and were children of famous New York authors. These were Black artists who attended boarding schools, were students of the elite Harvard, Black artists who stayed in areas of Boston that are now too prestigious to live in.
Shaun introduced me to the underground Black gay sections of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, and to the infamous Thayer Street—the artistic loft section behind the drunken men’s hostel, where artists lived when it was still affordable. It was also at the height of the punk era with debuting bands like The Violent Femmes, Psychedelic Furs, and the Butthole Surfers. Shaun introduced me to Black gays who threw Friday night parties on Thayer Street. Everyone dressed up like on Halloween in dramatic costumes and stayed up all night waiting in anxious anticipation for the moment when Chaka Khan’s mega-hit “Ain’t Nobody” blasted through the speakers. At the party’s end, in a stunning dénouement, the other campy disco hit would blast out, about a scorned woman who comes to say to her lover, like Jennifer Holiday in the Broadway hit Dream Girls, “It’s not Over.” The entire place would go berserk with people dancing and living it up. These were artists who waited for Friday night to buy eight balls of cocaine and did it in back rooms where only the coolest of cool were invited. With Shaun I was always invited. His beauty and charm like my own were passports to a new world.
Eventually, Shaun faded into the background. I joined a vanguard and moved to the fore of an artistic world, which became my family and a trail leading me out of my small town. Through Shaun, I gained courage to call myself a lesbian, and it was he who showed me the pathway to becoming an artist.
Shaun was not gay, but gays were his chosen people. He prided himself on being different, and men as well as women loved him. There were trysts and things he’d never mentioned, like his father having shot someone, and he himself having spent time in prison. Sometimes it seemed like a cross he carried like Jesus.
One day in early summer, I had run into Shaun in downtown Boston. We stood on cobblestones near Boston Commons. We were newly broken up. We weren’t speaking. I was angry. “Hey
