“The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters.”
—James Baldwin, Another Country
That’s how James Baldwin describes the fallacy of believing he is living a secret life and how it’s only a secret to himself and not at all to those around him, who know him or who encounter him each day. For those who see the secret before the dissembler does, they have a way of laying him bare, sometimes to cause harm, sometimes not. My being laid bare came with a name scrawled on a boys’ locker room wall in an Illinois high school in 1965.
Flesh Eater Whispered around me, irritating like a cloud of gnats swirling around my head in the sheltered harbor of a classroom; in hallways with no teachers about, shouted loud enough to sting, again, again, again. Flesh Eater Conceived months before, in a ski lodge bed above the Mississippi, but never uttered, the name saved for later, by a boy with a felt tip marker sketching dreams late at night, wide awake, a whispered conversation. Ever done it with a guy? My queried passion bred an answer on proper technique that he expected. Right Guard-laced sweat, metallic taste, an almost heaven followed by shame. A rural roadside ditch, gravel scarring knees my only footing, leaning in, caressing backseat-straddled thighs as rows and rows of corn stalks penetrate spring soil. For the last time, still nameless, still safe but for the interrupting stillness, an eerily green sky, a felt tip marker in his hand. Like Dorothy outrunning the twister, outrunning fate, but no cellar shelter waits, only my mother, an agitated and angry Auntie Em, wondering why I’m late where I was, why my knees are caked in dirt as the town's sirens wail: take cover. Names are born on locker room walls and sometimes it’s yours, no matter how much you deny it, and you learn what you are in third period English right before lunch. Flesh Eater
Photo credit: Stephen Barnes