This is for Joseph By Doug Spearman
There’s a scene in Brokeback Mountain that is almost too personal for me to watch. Heath Ledger is standing in Jake Gyllenhaal’s childhood bedroom. There is only one window, open half-way, looking out over a barren and seemingly endless landscape. A plastic pony sits on the window ledge, the only toy in the room. Under the window there’s a small, four-legged stool. It’s easy for me to imagine a little boy sitting at the one window that belongs to him, pretending to ride his horse over the horizon to something new, something different, something better. It’s easy for me, because I was that kind of little boy.
I just read portions of a suicide note. It was written by a 26 year old black man named Joseph Jefferson. He lived in New York. His windows looked out on the busiest most important city in the world, millions of people and the wealth of an empire all spread out before him, and he saw no hope. He hung himself because he couldn’t take not belonging. He couldn’t continue the fight for not just equality, but a place where he, as a black gay man fit in. I bet Joseph was that kind of boy, too.
Except my room was much nicer than the one in the movie and filled with toys. And instead of a depression-era landscape, I looked over a forest of maple and oak trees in Maryland. The feelings, however, were the same. How would I make it out of here? Who was going to love me?
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