Who Wouldn’t Like Joel?
Josiah is our firstborn son. He had come home to Bangkok for the weekend. Last May he moved to the south where he took a job teaching high-school English. It had been four months since we’d seen him face to face. After we’d all hugged and helloed we found ourselves around the dining-room table. Noticing that he hadn’t had a haircut for a long while, Peter said, “Your hair is quite long, son. I could take you to a good place if you want.”
“Thanks, but I’m letting it grow.”
“Oh”.
We went on to talk about everything, about his work, his trips around the south, his house and his cooking. He answered our questions and he asked some of his own. Then it dawned on me… there was nothing in his life that worried me. So I told him.
“Josiah, it’s really nice that nothing about your life feels worrying to me.”
He looked at me with understanding. He was well aware of turbulent family moments, remembering, I’m sure, the deep conflicts and stress we’d all gone through over the 27 years of his life. Then he asked me a question.
“What about Joel? Do you worry about him?” I smiled on the inside at this subtle gesture of brotherly affection, an older brother, maybe worried himself, wanting to know about his younger brother.
I thought for a moment and I could honestly say, “No. I don’t worry about Joel. Joel’s doing well. His job is now fulltime so he won’t go hungry. He has moved out of that sketchy Jane and Finch neighborhood and loves living downtown. He’s in a great school. He had some challenges at work for a while, thought that maybe his boss didn’t like him, but he feels that his boss likes him now.”
“Well who wouldn’t like Joel?” Josiah said.
It’s true. Everyone who knows him can’t help but love him, despite his imperfections.
As a child Joel was a writer. Mostly he wrote short, sweet love notes to me and Peter. One morning I woke up and saw my expensive Yves St. Laurent lipstick opened on my dresser. It had been turned up all the way and the waxy part obviously had not survived the pressure. My eyes fell on the folded piece of paper that had been torn from the spiral notebook. Tell-tale stains in Yves St. Laurent-pink bled through. My face became red with the beginnings of anger. I unfolded the page and saw the words written in a child’s careful but uneven penmanship, words that doused the heat of my anger as I read, “You are the most beautiful mom. I love you so much, from Jojo.” There was a little smile drawn under the curve of the j so that his name actually looked like a smiley face with a big nose.
From the time he was a baby in Quebec we called him Jojo. ‘Jojo’ translated well intoThai.He had this fine blond hair that was soft and floaty like ostrich feathers; playfully we’d turn him upside down and pretend to sweep the floor with this human ‘feather duster’.
Because of that hair and his white baby skin, he caught the attention of strangers in the northeastern town ofNong Khai. It wasn’t long before many knew him by name. Most Sunday afternoons we’d make the 50 kilometers trip to Udonthani to hang out at the mall and escape the heat. One Sunday we were walking along the street and two young girls drove by on their scooter, waving and shouting, “Jojo! Jojo!” as though he was a celebrity. Peter and I just looked at each other and shook our heads in awe. At the mall the vendors in the food court loved to give him freebies. He’d wander off a little ways and return with an ice-cream cone, or a cocktail sausage or a plate of ‘kicky rice and kicken’.
There was no such thing as a stranger for Jojo. Everyone was more like a friend he still needed to meet. At a stop-light he’d lean out the back window of the car and call to the person –any person- who happened to be standing at the corner, “Pii kin khaow rue yang krap?” which was the common greeting in Thai, asking, ‘Hey big brother, have you eaten yet?’ They’d smile, far too delighted to be greeted like that, and they’d look around to see if anyone else happened to witness what just happened.
He brought so much attention to us in public and his older brothers got tired of it. Once when we stopped at a country gas station to fill up, the girls at the pumps kept looking at all of us, putting their faces against the glass and cupping their hands over their eyes to see beyond the tinted glass. Josiah was in the front with his widow down. One of the girls boldly asked him, as she pointed to Joel in the back seat, “Wass eess hees name?” Turning slowly so that he was face-to-face with the girl, he answered, exaggerating each syllable, “Rum-ple-STILT-skin.”
We often traveled by train in those days. Jojo loved being among so many potential new friends. I’ll never forget the day he opened up a conversation with a British couple just across the isle from us. He walked up to them, pointing over at me while declaring proudly, “That’s my mom. She can do the biggest burps of our whole family!”
He was always proud of me.
As a teen he never had that I’m-so-embarrassed-of-my-parents issue. He would come into our room, hardly ever knocking, and he’d plop right down between us on the bed, filling us in on his life. He’d stay late and we would have to tell him we were tired and it was time to go to sleep and he could bring a mat and sleep in the room if he wanted to stay. We loved having him there.
Having said that, I must tell you, there was a short period of time when he became reserved and withdrawn. He’d come home from school and rush up to his room, only coming out for meals. I noticed the change immediately. One day I took him aside and asked him if there was anything wrong. He’d had a few difficult teachers in the past and I worried there might be another one. He shook his head ‘no’ and blurted out, “I’m so sorry, Mom. I’ve been treating you badly. I’ve always heard about teens going through rebellion so I wanted to try it and see what it was like. I decided to stay in my room and act unhappy just to see what it felt like to rebel. But I can’t do it any more. I see it’s hurting you, so I won’t rebel anymore. I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me?”
Who wouldn’t like Joel?
Well, I can think of many. Public transit drivers have refused to stop for him on a cold winter’s night. Young punks on the subway frequently make rude remarks to him. A church member was upset that he went forward for communion. Teachers and schools allowed bullying, and they often participated in it and emboldened other students to continue to bully. And to be brutally honest with you, I can’t sit here and write and feel like I am somehow better than them. Until six years ago, I would have done the same and I probably did treat someone else’s son or daughter like that.
You are probably wondering ‘But Pat, why on earth would you have been like that? What happened?’
Until six years ago I didn’t know that my son, the little Jojo with a love note always in his fingertips waiting to be written, the feathery-haired, gentle-hearted Joel… was gay.
Who wouldn’t like Joel?
It’s quite clear now isn’t it? We can all think of people who wouldn’t like Joel.
Patricia DeWit
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