The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017 Read online

  My Turn to Be Selfish

  I was scared. Everything was built on “I’m not gay.” I didn’t come out because I was scared that I would lose the family that I had. Because that was a sign of weakness, being gay. They’d all made their comments. I heard all the comments my dad made. It’s never been a positive thing in my family. It’s not talked about, even now. I was in a relationship for an extended amount of time, and he never met my parents. My mom’s comment was always, “I have concerns about the lifestyle.” AIDS, and all that, STDs. But I could have sex with women, too, and the same things could happen. I’m not stupid. I use a condom, hello.

  I didn’t come out until I was twenty-four, but I figured it out in middle school. I remember first changing my status on MySpace from “straight” to “unsure.” And the controversy that caused at my job, you wouldn’t believe it.

  This is me. If you don’t like it, kick rocks. Don’t let the door hit ya’ where the good lord split ya’. I’m not going to stress my life over how you feel. That’s been very important to me. When I die, that’s one thing I want to be said at my funeral: Gabe cares about every one of you the way you cared about him. Because I know 60 percent of the people in that room didn’t give two shits for me, but are there because of the other people that are there. That’s how my family is. They’re there for show. And that’s fine. I know who cares about me, and the rest can kiss my ass. I don’t want to worry about everyone else. I want to worry about me. You know what? It’s my turn to be selfish. I’ve earned that right.

  In my mid-twenties I was back in Florence, and I was like, “I haven’t been to a football game since high school! Let’s go to a football game.” It’s like six years after high school. There were four people there. Three of them I had graduated with [in a class of about 110 people]. I told a girl I’d been friends with that I was gay. She said, “No, you’re not.” And I’m like,“Yeah, I am.” She wouldn’t believe me.

  I’m your typical guy who grew up in a small town, except I like to be with other men.

  Sometimes it’s just, “Why was I dealt this hand?” Be a twin, lose your twin. Be gay in a small town. Struggle with your weight. It’s like, what the fuck did I do to deserve this? What did I do in a previous life that put me on this path?

  At the same time, it has made me a more compassionate person. When someone tells me they lost a loved one, I tell them I’m so sorry for their loss, but I don’t stop the conversation there. I know how that kid felt. I wanted someone just to listen, to sit there and stare at me while I talked. No one did any of that kind of stuff. That’s what I got out of all this pain—it was compassion. It taught me compassion. Everything else about me is just me. The compassion I have is a direct result of all that horrible shit I went through. I don’t want anyone to ever, ever feel like that.

  I tell my friends, “If you need anyone, you call me, day or night.” I truly mean that. Because you never know when you need someone. I’ve needed people at 3 a.m.

  My Whole Life, It Was Tony’s Life

  I don’t think anyone else has been through what I’ve been through. I know people go through horrific things every day. Is mine any worse or better than theirs? Yes and no. Everyone handles things differently. I mean, I tried to end it twice. It wasn’t my time. I feel like I was put here to go through all these horrible, awful things because I can handle it. I’ve had to. After Tony died, I had to move on. I had to deal, you know? No one was there to support me. I had to pull up my bootstraps on my own.

  People will tell you, “Oh, we were there. We were supportive.” I’m like, just because you were in the room doesn’t mean you were there. What did you say to me when you were in the room? Well, nothing. I’m very vocal when I walk in a room. I say hello; I want people to know I’m there. I don’t want anyone to feel that way I felt for a lot of years. It wasn’t just that moment after Tony died. It almost felt like my whole life, it was Tony’s life. How I felt after all that happened was that everyone wanted Tony, and I was just the tagalong because we shared the embryo at birth. I was expendable, disposable.

  There’s no guidebook for something like this. The one thing when going through death and mourning is just ask questions. Ask a question. Doesn’t matter what that question is—I mean, “What’s your favorite color?” Engaging that person in anything no matter what it is or how minute it is could mean the world. I truly believe that. That would have meant the world to me, if someone would have just asked me anything, made me feel like they cared about the answer I gave. If someone would have said, “What’s your favorite color?” and I told them “Yellow,” and they listened to me, that would have meant so much.

  I Like the View from Here

  When his anniversary comes around, in March, it’s rough. My birthday’s really hard, too.

  It’s weird. I went years without going up and seeing his grave. And other times, I just want to go up there and hang out. It’s a peaceful place. I like going up there. It’s beautiful. It’s up at the top of the cemetery, next to that big tree. I signed his casket—“I will always love you. Love, Gabe.” I wrote that in black Sharpie on his casket.

  It’s weird: I’m thirty-four years old, and I have a cemetery plot. I don’t own my own home, but I do know where I’m going to be buried. I have a plot right next to Tony’s. When he died, my parents chose to buy the plot right next to his. They bought it for me. It’s weird knowing I have a cemetery plot. I wouldn’t say it’s comforting, but—and I know this sounds really morbid—I’m the one who chose where Tony got buried. I sat there, as a kid, and then I laid on the ground. I would lay on the ground in different places and be like, “I like the view from here.” I told them that the spot near the tree was where I wanted Tony to be buried. And that’s where they put him.

  I wanted him to be buried right under the tree, actually, but because of the roots and all that, they don’t allow it. Rules. The whole idea of being planted and becoming a tree still interests me. I love that. I think that is the coolest idea. Like, when my dog dies, I will plant her under a tree. My wild fern grows somewhere. I think that is the coolest way to remember someone, to have that. Because the tree can live on forever, you know? It gets its life from you. How cool is that? My energy’s all gone because I’m dead, but what’s left of me is in this tree.

  But I know where I’m going to end up. Saying that out loud, it sounds weird. I’ve never thought about it much until just the other day, when I was talking to someone and I’m like, “I know where I’m going to be buried when I die.” I’m thirty-four years old and I know where I’m going to be buried when I die.

  That World Is Gone

  I remember flipping through channels one day with my mom and landing on The Jenny Jones Show. It was an episode about “twinless twins,” and my mom was like, “We have to watch this!” I was like, really? After Tony died my mom went through this kind of crazy death thing. Twinless twins are networks of people who have lost their twins. I’ve never contacted one. I’ve looked into it, but I’ve never reached out to a twinless twin.

  Why would I reach out to another pained soul? I can’t answer for what happened then. Back then, I felt worthless. I was the leftover, the remnant. Why would I want to bring another person into that feeling? Or why would I want to surround myself with people who felt that same way? That’d just make me feel even worse. Nothing like a little more death in the room. Ugh, no thanks.

  I don’t want to reach out to a community where all they’re going to do is bitch and moan or talk about the loss of their twin. I lost my twin. I don’t want to dwell on it. Your story is your story and my story is my story. I’m not trying to one-up you or any of that stuff with my loss, but then again . . . good luck beating my story.

  There’s always death. I mean, everyone in the world is going to experience death, close to them, somehow. An animal, a parent, a family member. But there’s a certain pain when you lose that other half of you. It’s indescribable. I can’t put it into words.

 
I don’t want to say it’s a special kind of alone because, when you say it’s special, it makes it a good thing. It makes it sound positive. It’s the worst. There are certain things you don’t wish on your worst enemy, and the loss of a twin, that feeling of abandonment and loneliness—I don’t wish that on anyone in the world.

  At the same time, I’m proud that I’ve survived all of the things I’ve gone through. Those experiences have made me a stronger person. They’ve made me much more of a compassionate person because I know how fragile life is. I know how hurtful words are cause I grew up with bullying my whole life.

  My childhood ended when Tony died, and I don’t even think about what happened prior to his death because that world is gone. I can’t ever get it back, so why dwell on it? I believe your life is a specific path that you’re meant to take. I was put on this world to take the path I’ve taken. I take it full charge. Sometimes I have someone next to me help out. Most times I don’t. That’s okay. Let’s go. I don’t know why my path was lined with such awful, horrible things along the way, but I’ve survived it. And I’m still surviving it, you know?

  Here’s the New Planet You Live On

  After Tony died, I was living in that awful negativity. Because one moment everything was—I don’t want to say normal, I hate using that word—but everything was the way it was supposed to be, and in this one little fraction of a second, my whole world was gone.

  Now here’s the new planet that you live on. Here’s everything new that you’re supposed to get used to. Here’s the semicolon.

  Finally, in my thirties, I was like, “Why am I living in such a horrible, negative world? I want to be happy.” I can’t say that I’ve been happy very much in my life. When I met my ex, I remember that feeling, that feeling of happiness. I was like, “Wow. I feel loved.” He made me feel cared about. I thought, This is what being a human feels like. This is what it feels like to be treated with respect and to be cared about. He showed me what that was like. It was very eye-opening. That’s when I was like, I need to stop doing all this shit. I need to stop letting all these little things bother me. I want to feel like this more often.

  That relationship ended, but I wanted to keep that feeling. I needed to stop worrying, and I needed to stop taking things so personal. Everything that happened, I took so personally. So I just stopped. I mean, it’s hard. There are all these what-ifs. My whole world is what-if. But I’ve finally stopped living the what-if, and that’s when I stopped feeling alone. I can’t live in a what-if world. I need to live in this world that I have right now.

  I’m content right now where I’m at. Ever since I got Nix, it’s been a lot better. You know, coming home and being excited for her to be excited that I’m home, and vice-versa. Not coming home to an empty house helps a lot. She has helped me so much, just in the last nine months that I’ve had her.

  It’s a day-by-day process. When you lose someone close to you, it doesn’t go away. You deal with it on a regular basis. It gets easier to deal with, and some days are just a cakewalk and some days I don’t want to get out of bed. I still have those days. But I’ve got to feed the dog.

  I celebrate my birthday. Every year, I’m glad I made it through. I’ve been on my own since I was thirteen. I truly feel that way. I may not have supported myself financially and stuff, but I’ve been alone since I was thirteen. Not until I hit my thirties did I feel like I wasn’t alone.

  It gives me solace that I’ve lived a life of honesty and I’ve been myself. I know that one day I’ll meet all the people that I care about and have lost. Before my grandfather died a few weeks back, I told him, “Please tell everyone I love them. I’m jealous that you get to see them. I know I’ll get to see them one day. Just tell them all hi for me. Give them my love.” People are gone, but they’re not gone forever. That’s what gets me through. There will come a day that I will get to see these people again.

  I’ve always wondered, too: Is Tony going to be the thirteen-year-old version of him, or am I going to see him as an adult? Is he going to age along with me? How is that going to work?

  CHEN CHEN

  ■

  I am reminded via email to submit my preferences for the schedule

  FROM Poets.org

  But really

  I would prefer

  to sit, drink water,

  reread some Russians

  a while longer

  —a luxury

  perhaps, but why

  should I, anyone,

  call it that, why

  should reading

  what I want,

  in a well-hydrated fashion,

  always be what I’m

  planning to finally

  do, like hiking

  or biking, & now

  that I think of it, reading

  should make me, anyone,

  breathe harder, then

  easier, reach for cold,

  cold water, & I

  prefer my reading

  that way, I prefer

  Ivan Turgenev,

  who makes me work for

  not quite pleasure

  no, some truer

  sweatier thing,

  Turgenev,

  who is just now,

  in my small room

  in West Texas,

  getting to the good part,

  the very Russian part,

  the last few pages

  of “The Singers”

  when the story

  should be over,

  Yakov the Turk

  has sung with fervor,

  meaning true

  Russian spirit,

  meaning he’s won

  a kind of 19th century

  Idol in the village

  tavern, The End, but

  Turgenev goes

  on, the narrator walks

  out, down a hill,

  into a dark

  enveloping mist,

  & he hears

  from misty far away

  some little boy

  calling out for

  Antropka!

  calling hoarsely,

  darkly,

  Antropka-a-a!

  & it’s that voice that stops

  then opens my breath

  that voice

  & all Monday-Wednesday-Fridays

  all Tuesday-Thursdays

  are gone

  I have arrived

  in the village of

  no day none

  & I am sitting

  with the villagers

  who are each at once

  young old

  who have the coldest

  water to give me

  & songs

  I think I have sung before

  they sing

  their underground

  tree-root syllables

  they give me silences

  from their long

  long hair

  GEORGE SAUNDERS

  ■

  Who Are All These Trump Supporters?

  FROM The New Yorker

  He Appears

  Trump is wearing the red baseball cap, or not. From this distance, he is strangely handsome, well proportioned, puts you in mind of a sea captain: Alan Hale from Gilligan’s Island, say, had Hale been slimmer, richer, more self-confident. We are afforded a side view of a head of silver-yellow hair and a hawklike orange-red face, the cheeks of which, if stared at steadily enough, will seem, through some optical illusion, to glow orange-redder at moments when the crowd is especially pleased. If you’ve ever, watching The Apprentice, entertained fantasies of how you might fare in the boardroom (the Donald, recognizing your excellent qualities with his professional businessman’s acumen, does not fire you but, on the contrary, pulls you aside to assign you some important non-TV, real-world mission), you may, for a brief, embarrassing instant, as he scans the crowd, expect him to recognize you.

  He is blessing us here in San Jose, California, with his celebrity, promising never to disappoint us, letting
us in on the latest bit of inside-baseball campaign strategy: “Lyin’ Ted” is no longer to be Lyin’ Ted; henceforth he will be just “Ted.” Hillary, however, shall be “Lyin’ Crooked.” And, by the way, Hillary has to go to jail. The statute of limitations is five years, and if he gets elected in November, well . . . The crowd sends forth a coarse blood roar. “She’s guilty as hell,” he snarls.

  He growls, rants, shouts, digresses, careens from shtick nugget to shtick nugget, rhapsodizes over past landslides, name-drops Ivanka, Melania, Mike Tyson, Newt Gingrich, Bobby Knight, Bill O’Reilly. His right shoulder thrusts out as he makes the pinched-finger mudra with downswinging arm. His trademark double-eye squint evokes that group of beanie-hatted street-tough Munchkin kids; you expect him to kick gruffly at an imaginary stone. In person, his autocratic streak is presentationally complicated by a Ralph Kramdenesque vulnerability. He’s a man who has just dropped a can opener into his wife’s freshly baked pie. He’s not about to start grovelling about it, and yet he’s sorry—but, come on, it was an accident. He’s sorry, he’s sorry, okay, but do you expect him to say it? He’s a good guy. Anyway, he didn’t do it.

  Once, Jack Benny, whose character was known for frugality and selfishness, got a huge laugh by glancing down at the baseball he was supposed to be first-pitching, pocketing it, and walking off the field. Trump, similarly, knows how well we know him from TV. He is who he is. So sue me, okay? I probably shouldn’t say this, but oops—just did. (Hillary’s attack ads? “So false. Ah, some of them aren’t that false, actually.”) It’s oddly riveting, watching someone take such pleasure in going so much farther out on thin ice than anyone else as famous would dare to go. His crowds are ever hopeful for the next thrilling rude swerve. “There could be no politics which gave warmth to one’s body until the country had recovered its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and incalculable,” Norman Mailer wrote in 1960.