Eric Shaw Quinn

The First Word

In the beginning there was the word.  So says an oft quoted and much abused text.  “The word was God,” asserts the writer.  I tend to agree.

Words are that powerful.  Words call into existence everything we create and believe.  There was a description of a submarine in a novel long before there were submarines under the sea.  A Hollywood script writer invented the cell phone when he put a wireless communicator in Captain Kirk’s hand.  And July 4th celebrates not a battle but words that, once set down and signed, invented a nation.

Words have the power to create.

When  I was young, I heard over and over that “queer” was a bad thing; that being a “fag” was the worst thing you could be.  Only somewhat belatedly did I learn what a “fag” was; what “queers” got up to.  I filed this information away along with other oft repeated enjoinders.

Words create bigotry and hatred.

With such received wisdom, I never went in the water after eating — though I never got stomach cramps in the water or elsewhere and I’ve never known anyone who has.  I did not run indoors.  I was mindful of my permanent record.  I refrained from touching anything electrical with wet hands.  The faces I pulled were always brief so that my expression never got stuck and my eyes remained uncrossed.   I lived in mortal fear of the many ways of putting my eye out and behaved accordingly.

Words create fear.

Mine was a blameless and successful life until Roy Slade transferred from exotic Alaska into my ninth grade class at Keenan High School.  He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and I knew in an instant that, for all my best efforts, I was the worst thing that a boy could be.  Death was clearly the only reasonable solution.  I couldn’t tell anyone.  Dead, I reasoned, no one would know how bad I was.

Words can also destroy.

I stopped eating.  I was only what? 12? 13?  It was the only thing I could think of.  Our house was only two stories tall so jumping, I’d only really risk a sprain or at worst a broken wing.  The school was no taller.  I couldn’t drive.  There was nothing stronger than aspirin in the medicine cabinets and that hardly seemed fatal.  So, I locked myself in my room, drank only Coca-Cola — it had never occurred to me that was food — listened to Carly Simon’s No Secrets and The Carpenters Greatest Hits, cried and waited to die.

I didn’t.

In my Coca-Cola induced stupor, I realized that there was nothing wrong with me.  Despite popular wisdom and the suggestions of most every bully I’d ever met, being a fag wasn’t the worst thing you can be.  In fact, I thought, I was actually a pretty great guy.  I could only imagine that there had been a mistake of some sort; that people had gotten the wrong idea about me.  My path was clear.  I would use what talents I had to try to get out the word that there was nothing wrong with being a fag, that it was in fact a terrific thing so long as there were Roy Slades in the world.

Words also have the power to inspire.