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Prologue
Introduction
This is the story of Jonah, a 35–45-year-old human who is a vaguely tangential part of my circle of friends. I would love to tell you more, but we don’t know a lot of things about Jonah. Their gender is indeterminate. Their sex-assigned-at-birth is indeterminate. Whether their understanding of their gender now matches the one they may or may not have been assigned at birth is deeply unknown. Ask them what they have in their trousers, and they snap back at you with, “keys, phone, wallet, and nunya.”[1] We don’t know what their sexuality is, what general style of human – feminine, masculine, or androgynous – they’re attracted to, or if, in fact, they experience sexual or romantic attraction at all. Take Jonah to a Gay Pride event some June, ask them to pick a flag, and they’re likely to laugh, flip the vendor off, and go hunt down an oatmilk iced latte with lavender. Because the one thing we know about Jonah is that they are queer.
The *one* thing. We don’t know what their race is. We’re pretty sure it’s not white, but we don’t know if the rest of the world is aware of that. We’ve seen them mistaken for Black, Hispanic, East and South Asian, “Middle-Eastern,” Pacific Islander, and any of a number of Aboriginal peoples of the world. Except Sámi. They’ve never been mistaken for Sámi. They’ve gotten shit for all of it, too – every single one of those supposed racial identities has bit them in the ass at one point or another. Cops don’t care. Mall security doesn’t care. They just see “deviant.” It's not that Jonah is none of these things. Jonah is any and/or all of these things, all at the same time, depending on who is looking, and who wants to know. I use they/them pronouns when talking about Jonah, but for as much as they deign to give us an answer to the pronoun question, it’s, “whatever. No, really, whatever. Just don’t be a dick about it.”
I’ve been to their place once. It’s in West Orange, NJ, over by the Thomas Edison historical site. They rent, but so does everyone who didn’t buy before 2020 and who isn’t a multi-millionaire. They’ve been there for a while, and seen the neighborhood gentrify around them. If they’ve been to college, they don’t talk about it. There are no pictures of a graduation in their apartment, or anything else for that matter. Some art that they’ve made, some that their more artsy friends have made, but nothing to suggest an education or the lack of it. That doesn't help them get a job. I once made the mistake of asking about religion, and they growled. They literally growled, and said, “Fuck God. I don’t ever want to hear about God or religion or any of that bullshit again. God ruined my whole fucking life.”
Jonah is an angry person, but if you had their story, you’d be pretty angry, too. One night, my friends and I – and Jonah – had gone to see some blues in that little triangle in front of Urban Outfitters in Montclair during the Jazz Festival. We had had a few, Jonah perhaps more than a few, so when the singer started talking about how he’d lost his voice and it came back to him through the power of prayer, Jonah flipped. They started yelling at the singer about how he didn’t know God, about how God hates everyone and wants to see us miserable. So, we dragged them out of there and went back to their place, because it was closest. By then they’d sobered up a bit too much for their liking, so they pulled a bottle of Jack Daniels and five glasses out of their kitchen and poured a round.
“Okay,” they said, “you want to hear about why I hate God so goddamn much? Well, buckle-up, kids, ‘cause this one’s a ride…”
Jonah’s Story
Growing up in Attleboro, Mass., in the ‘90s and being “wicked quee-ah” just wasn’t a good combination, so I pretended I wasn’t, even though I pretty much knew I was from birth. In high school I dated people appropriate to maintain a cishetero appearance, I styled myself in a way that wouldn’t bring any suspicion my way and went about my life as the most normal teenager ever to grace southern New England. Even went to Mass every Sunday like a good Catholic kid. But that all went to hell at 16 when the voices started. They said things like, “go, warn them,” “they are in danger,” and “the whole city.” Today, a kid would go talk to their parents, because mental illness isn’t as stigmatized as it was back then, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that. Instead, I sat with them, and they got louder and louder over the next few years. By the time I was a senior, I was starting to get visions with these voices. Gruesome visions of explosions, with cars being flung into the air, people screaming, ambulances wailing… it was awful. They began to pick up in frequency, so I was seeing and hearing these hallucinations every 2-3 days. And, still, I didn’t tell anyone.
The summer after my senior year is when it all came to a head. My mom, my sister, and I were at Mass on a warm Sunday morning in June. It was Pentecost Sunday, so there was incense, and it was crowded, and I hadn’t eaten. I remember this clear as day: The choir was singing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and the room started spinning. Then it got very, very dark in the church, and I saw a light and heard a voice. It said,
“Jonah. I need to you go to New York. I need you to warn them that they are in danger.”
“Is this…?”
“Yes, Jonah. I AM,” God replied, and even in that dream state, I felt the ground shake.
“Okay, so you’re the one who’s been sending me all of these messages? All of these visions? I’m not going crazy?”
“That’s not important now, Jonah. You need to go to New York. You need to warn them. Go. Now. You will know what to say when you get there.”
The next thing I knew, there was a hand slapping my face. My mother was trying to wake me up, looking a little nervous. I pushed her hands away, muttered something about forgetting breakfast, she pulled a granola bar out of her purse, and I was all set. That night, I said “good night” to her and my sister, and that was the last time I ever saw either of them. By 4:30 the next morning, I was on a commuter rail train to South Station, and by noon I had emptied my savings account of all of my graduation money and was on a Greyhound bound for Seattle to start my new life as an openly queer person, and to sign up as an Ordinary Seaman with the Merchant Marines.
The seafaring life was tough – no doubt. Tougher still when you’re queer and living in close quarters with a bunch of late-adolescents who fancied themselves rough-and-tumble sailors. But, like back home, I did my best to keep my head down, focus on my work, and just get through the day. And it lasted that way for a while. I got my Transportation card, got out on the open sea, and five years later, I was the highest-level Able Seaman you could be, able to work on ships that sailed all over the world, and best of all, I hadn’t had a vision or heard a voice since I left Massachusetts. By the time 9/11 happened, I figured that was what God had been trying to warn me about. I felt a little guilty, but what had I been supposed to do anyway, call George Bush and tell him to get his head out of his ass?
In 2003 I took my first cruise to Indonesia. There is a tradition among sailors that when the Equator is crossed for the first time, a hazing ritual of sorts is performed, and those who decide to go through this ritual are forever known as “Shellbacks.” You get a certificate and everything. And my shellback ceremony is where it all went wrong. I was lined up with the six other “wogs” (uninitiated), on hands and knees near the fantail waiting to be whipped with a hose. When I saw the Boatswain and a few other ABs rip the trousers of each wog to their knees to get a bare-ass beating, I knew I was done for. And, sure enough, from the time they got to me, tore my pants down, and saw something different than what they thought they would, my life on board that or any other merchant vessel was forfeit. It started with Boats and the Third Mate in an unused storage space, telling me they “couldn’t have something like me on board their ship,” before proceeding to ‘fix’ the queer right out of me. Three days later, I was securing some lines on the cargo deck, when every other seaman on that ship circled around me, yelling things at me like “freak,” and “unnatural.” I saw the first mate in the back of the crowd, watching, making sure what had to happen happened. They pushed me up against the side railing. And there was no where to go but over, and 150 feet down into the drink. As I fell, I heard someone whisper “man overboard,” someone laugh, and then that was it.
Safety gear was mandatory on the cargo deck, and I was wearing a flotation device, and that plus some warm early-June ocean waters undoubtedly kept me alive for the hour or so I was in the Indian Ocean before I was rescued, and things went from bad to worse.
ii.
“Get in, Jonah,” the strange man in the 20-foot sailboat said. You’ve got to warn them.”
His name was Fish, and about the time I saw him convince the people at the US consulate in Singapore that this bedraggled human without a shred of paperwork needed a passport and a flight to New York, I was convinced that I was never going to get out of this mission. Truth be told, I was grateful to Fish for pulling me out of that water, but it might have been kinder of God to just let me drown.
iii.
Sure enough, by the time I landed at JFK, I knew what I needed to do, just like the vision had told me back in Attleboro. When I got to Manhattan and checked into the room Fish had arranged for me, I went to the FBI field office downtown. I told them that the city was in trouble, that there was a plot to destroy monuments and stage a massacre at the Pride parade at the end of the month. I told them what I knew, (without telling them the source), and where they could find evidence to back up my story. After I took a minute to come to terms with a cop treating me like a person, I gave them the number of the encrypted cellphone Fish had given me, and they kept in touch. The following day, they had found everything, and promised to keep my name secure. But there was only so much they could do, and eventually I was found by the organizing committee of the NYC Pride March and invited to their offices.
“We wanted to thank you,” the CEO said. “The FBI told us that the group that targeted us was not alone, and neither was NYC Pride. They are trying to ‘root out’ decadence and unhealthy lifestyles, and other groups will be coming for us, so thanks to you, we can prepare. We were already partnering with Disney, and they will help us make our event more family-friendly. Our theme will be, “Salute to the Gay Family,” and we will be doubling our police presence, including two floats. There will be conduct and decorum standards for every float in the parade, and we’re working with the City to change the route so we go north from Bryant Park instead of south. If we can show the City – and the world – that gay people can be just like them, we can convince those who meant to hurt us that we pose no threat to a normal way of life.”
And they thanked me for that, at the same time the FBI gave me a substantial reward for the tip. I should have been happy. I’d saved the day. But my name started to circulate through the gay grapevine, and the queer community was not happy, either. Bars stopped serving me. Coffee shops stopped serving me. I couldn’t buy a beer, an iced latte, or a boba tea south of 34th street. National news picked up on my story, and I got a brief phone call from my mother to tell me I was no longer welcome in her house as long as I maintained my ‘deviant and sinful lifestyle.’ Seafaring was done. New York was done. New England was done. I had no home, and nowhere to go.
iv.
So, I hopped on a train and came to Jersey. Stopped off at one of those Protestant churches in the suburbs with the big Pride flags. It was All Saints Day. There was incense. I hadn’t eaten. And as we started to sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and the church once again went black, I had a few things to say to God.
“Congratulations,” God said. “You did it. The city is safe.”
“Is it, though?” I asked. “That parade didn’t look safe, it looked sanitized.”
“Exactly. Sanitized and safe. Isn’t that what we wanted?”
“God, if that’s what you want from queer people, you and I have some very different opinions about a lot of things.”
“Tens of thousands of lives were saved. Are you not happy?”
“No, I’m not happy,” I replied. “I have no home in New England because my family is a homophobic nightmare, I can’t get back into the Merchant Marines because I’m too queer for them and they tried to kill me, and I can’t even be in New York because no one will serve me a drink. Does that sound happy to you?”
And that’s when I woke up. I took my reward money and got a place here in Jersey, right outside the City. That was fifteen years ago, and I’ve never set foot in a church again.
[1] Nunya? Nunya business.