It was the fall of 1998. I’d just met my first serious boyfriend. It felt like a giddy time, though slightly fraught with worry, the unknown and the uncomfortable notion of opening up my life to another person, and the vaguest sliver of worry that this wasn’t the one, at least the one who would last forever. And then the more frightening notion that maybe not anyone would last forever.
The job I had was my first brush with an office environment – as a research analyst for John Hancock. Located just a few blocks from the condo, my commute was a seven minute leisurely walk, five if I was rushing, which I never was back then. It was dull and monotonous work, the scope of which was never entirely explained to us (other than a class-action lawsuit was involved and we needed to find duplicate numbers on microfiche) but I excelled and moved up the limited ranks quite quickly. A little over a month on the job, I felt comfortable in talking about my new boyfriend, feeling a relatively new sensation of pride in another person, in being part of a couple. But there were still moments of doubt. We never held hands. We never walked too close. We never kissed in public.
Mother clutches the head of her dying son
Anger and tears, so many things to feel
Sensitive boy, good with his hands
Noone mentions the unmentionable, but everybody understands
Here in this cold white room
Tied up to these machines
It’s hard to imagine him as he used to be…
On October 12, 1998, I walked into the office and was about to begin the usual routine. Co-workers whirled through the microfiche readers, while others ate their breakfast bagels at the center table. I heard the news before I saw it in the paper – back when we got news from the newspaper, back when that was usually the first one would hear of anything. A co-worker blurted out that Matthew Shepard had died. After a few days in a coma, he’d given up his fight. His life was finished. It was the only time up to that day where I felt the wind knocked out of me, and I had to literally sit down at the table in the middle of the room and pretend that I was looking at some microfiche nonsense. Anything to keep from crying.
Many things haunted me, starting at that moment. The image of him being mistaken for a scarecrow at first. The image of his face being soiled and dirty save for the trails of his tears. The image of a loneliness so pervading that the feigned interest of a couple of questionable guys made the danger worth the risk.
Laughing screaming tumbling queen
Like the most amazing light show you’ve ever seen
Whirling swirling never blue
How could you go and die, what a lonely thing to do…
What everyone else in that office saw as just another dead guy – one of probably a dozen in a paper as sprawling as the Boston Globe – I saw as something far more personal. This 21-year-old – just a year younger than myself – had been killed simply for being gay. He was murdered for being what I was. From that point forward the world would be haunted in a way that most of my straight friends could never fully feel. It changed everything in an instant, and the immense sorrow of where we were, and how far we really hadn’t come, took up residence in my mind, the lingering remnants of which surface to this very day.
Silence equals death, this is what they say
But the anger and the tears do not take the pain away
How far must it go, how near must it be
Before it touches you, before it touches me
Here in this cold white room
Tied up to these machines
It’s hard to imagine life as it used to be…
The details of the night he was attacked felt eerily familiar in the way it all began. A random encounter at a bar – where we all went looking for love back then – that ended with a drive onto the desolate and cold back roads of Wyoming – some sad American nightmare where Matthew was brutally beaten and tortured by two straight men… and for what reason? For being gay? For being different? For wanting to be loved? How could anyone be so hated simply for loving?
Laughing screaming tumbling queen
Like the most amazing light show that you’ve ever seen
Whirling swirling never blue
How could you go and die, what a selfish thing to do
After we learned of what had happened, when a guy riding his bicycle passed Matthew’s body strung up on a fence, and initially mistook him for a scarecrow, I didn’t think he would die. The world couldn’t be that cruel. It couldn’t be that cold. So when he did, and when someone so flippantly said he was dead, I had to sit down, because whatever hopes and dreams I had secretly harbored since I was a kid were suddenly knocked out of me.
It was an act of hatred that I would never understand, and in the following days and weeks and years I would read everything I could about what happened, trying to come to some sort of understanding as to why they did it, and at every turn and every new piece of information, I failed. Yet throughout all that time, and through all these years, the memory of Matthew has remained alive. I’d forgotten the names and fates of his killers, but Matthew Shepard is indelibly imprinted upon my memory, imprinted on my heart, imprinted on that precious part of life that should have been filled with innocence and hope and dreams.
Did you ever ask those strangers what they’re searching for?
Did they laugh and tell you they’re not really sure?
You were hurt by love but still you came right back for more
Il adore, il adore, il adore…
