What Becomes of the Brokenhearted Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR E. LYNN HARRIS

  “Harris’s talent as a writer has increased with each of his books. His stories have become the toast of bookstores, reading groups, men, women, and gay and straight people.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “A powerful memoir.… A universal story of triumph over agony and loss.”

  —Ebony

  “Harris is a great storyteller who knows how to tug on the heartstrings with wit and sensitivity.”

  —USA Today

  “Harris’s work exemplifies a command of the language and a skill at describing physical settings and mental states that elevate storytelling into the realm of literature.”

  —Austin American-Statesman

  “Harris’s fans will embrace his fast-paced memoir eagerly, and then be caught up in this engaging writer’s engagingly told life story.”

  —Booklist

  “Harris is a wonderful writer.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “What’s got audiences hooked? Harris’s unique spin on the ever-fascinating topics of identity, class, intimacy, sexuality, and friendship.”

  —Vibe

  E. LYNN HARRIS

  WHAT BECOMES OF THE BROKENHEARTED

  E. Lynn Harris is the author of eleven novels and the memoir What Becomes of the Brokenhearted. His novels Just Too Good to Be True, I Say a Little Prayer, A Love of My Own, and Any Way the Wind Blows hit the bestseller lists in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other publications. Harris died in 2009.

  www.elynnharris.com

  BOOKS BY E. LYNN HARRIS

  Invisible Life

  Just As I Am

  And This Too Shall Pass

  If This World Were Mine

  Abide with Me

  Not a Day Goes By

  Any Way the Wind Blows

  A Love of My Own

  What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

  I Say a Little Prayer

  Just Too Good to Be True

  Basketball Jones

  FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JULY 2004

  Copyright © 2003 by E. Lynn Harris

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2003.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The names and other identifying characteristics of certain persons depicted in this book have been changed in order to protect their privacy.

  The Library of Congress has established a record for this title.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83114-9

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.1

  For my mother, Etta W. Harris, for unconditional love and

  being the most remarkable woman I know

  and

  For Aunt Gee, for teaching me that love worth having was

  worth waiting for, and also for being my first true best friend

  In Memory

  Lawrence Allen Sr. (Uncle Lawrence)

  Duane Bremond

  Eric Gupton

  Thelma Coleman

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Work like you don’t need the money

  Dance like nobody is watching

  and

  Love like you’ve never been hurt

  —ANONYMOUS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This author is grateful to God for waking me up each morning and allowing me to have a career that I love and have a great deal of passion for.

  The author thanks his family and friends, old and new. (More on them later.)

  This author is proud to be a part of a publishing company that cares more about people than publishing bestsellers.

  The author thanks Stephen (still the great) Rubin for his leadership, friendship, and support. Also to the amazing team of Michael Palgon, Jackie Everly, Bill Thomas, Suzanne Herz, Jen Marshall, Pauline James, Gerry Triano, Dorothy Boyajy, Emma Bolton, Clare McMahon, Kim Cacho, Rebecca Holland, Meredith McGinnis, Jenny Frost, Kathy Trager, Judy Jacoby, John Fontana, Tracy Jacobs, Anne Messitte, LuAnn Walther.

  The author thanks Chris Fortunato and his staff.

  Special thanks and love to Alison Rich, my publicist, whom I will miss dearly this summer as she gets to know the new love of her life. Hurry back, Alison!

  Thanks to Sherri Steinfield and Felicia Polk for picking up the publicity slack. Welcome back, Sherri.

  The author expresses special thanks to Martha Levin for discovering me and encouraging me to write this book. Your support and friendship mean the world to me.

  The author is thankful that he has the best editor in the world who also happens to be one of my most treasured friends, the amazing and talented Janet Hill.

  Thanks also to my backup editors and wonderful friends Charles Flowers and Chandra Taylor.

  Thanks so much to Carol Mackey of Black Expressions for all your support.

  Thank you to Christine McNamara, Karen DiMattia, and the folks in audio.

  The author thanks his support staff: my agents John Hawkins, Moses Cardona, and Irv Schwartz. My accountant, Bob Braunschweig, and banker, Renee Ruff. The author couldn’t make it without his special and trusty attorney, Amy Goldson. How do I manage without Anthony Bell and Laura Gilmore? Thanks, guys!

  A warm shout out and a load of thanks to Tony Hillery (of TZR) and crew.

  Many, many thanks also to the staff of the Trump International Hotel and Tower, with special thanks to Elizabeth, Suzy, and Carlos for being amazing people and friends who have never said no. I will miss you guys next fall more than you know.

  The author thanks the following organizations for their continued and wonderful support: Delta Sigma Theta, Zeta Phi Beta, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sigma Gamma Rho, Kappa Alpha Psi, Alpha Phi Alpha, The Links, NAACP, and all the book club members who read my novels and then write me and tell me what they really think.

  The author thanks many members of the media for continued support, but most especially Roy Johnson, Linda Johnson Rice, Susan Taylor, Patrik Henry Bass, Deborah Gregory, and Essence, Ebony, and Savoy magazines. Black Radio continues to be the life-line between my fans and me. Heartfelt thanks to: The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Doug Banks and DeDe McGuire, Wendy (Got the Heat) Williams, Steve Harvey, Frank Ski and his team, with special kisses to Wanda, Ryan Cameron, Donnie Simpson (much love to his beautiful wife, Pamela), Skip Murphy and his crazy team, with kisses to Nannette, Cliff, and Jeanie on the left coast. Summer wouldn’t be summer without you guys. Thank you, thank you!

  The author expresses thanks and love to his many fans who buy all my books, spread the word, and show up in the heat to get their books signed. Your support means the world to me! Now you can stop asking me when the memoir’s coming out and what the “E.” in “E. Lynn” stands for.<
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  e. lynn harris

  Atlanta, Georgia

  May 2003

  INTRODUCTION

  I wanted the first line of my memoir to be brilliant. Something poetic that would linger after the final page had been turned. But I have learned that life brings you only lightninglike bursts of brilliance, and they are rarely lyrical. There is no other way to say it: I tried to kill myself one humid summer evening. Thank God I failed.

  It was August 1990. After the day’s heat had broken, I wandered around my one-bedroom Washington, D.C., apartment hopelessly depressed. Even though it was the beginning of a new decade, I was wondering how I had survived the previous two.

  I had been depressed before, but never to the extent I felt the days preceding that night. I drank a bottle of Korbel champagne, and then made a call of desperation to my favorite Aunt, Gee, and her son Kenny, a minister who lives right outside of Atlanta. I mumbled on for a few minutes about how bad my life was; they told me they loved me, but I already knew that. They told me to trust in God and pray. I told them I would try to feel better, even though I felt God wanted no part of me. In my state of sadness, nothing I could say could explain how I felt: that my family’s love was not enough, and that I had no reason to believe in God, much less live another day. I was convinced that I would die one of the brokenhearted.

  I moved slowly into my bathroom and took out a large bottle of sleeping pills that I had convinced a close doctor friend to prescribe because recently I had found drinking was the only way I could get a few hours of sleep. I emptied the jar and assembled the white capsules in a straight line on my glass coffee table and slowly and methodically began to take them. I took one at a time, and then two at a time. I chased them with naked gulps straight from a bottle of hundred-proof vodka.

  Before the pills began to take effect, I turned off the lights, the television, and the stereo. It still wasn’t quiet enough. The darkness and silence were compromised by the sounds of the busy city traffic outside the three-story brick walk-up. Directly next door was a twenty-four-hour service station, and I could faintly hear the ding-ding of cars driving over a hose that alerted the attendants to the need for service. I could also hear the distant slamming of car doors, and the faint sound of voices.

  I crawled into my bed and decided to give God a final chance to perform one of the miracles I’d heard about in childhood Sunday school classes. I talked silently to God, telling Him that I was ready to leave this place called earth. I asked Him to forgive me for taking matters into my own hands, but I knew He understood my pain and knew my heart. I closed my eyes and believed I was closing them for the last time.

  I AWOKE ON THE HARDWOOD FLOOR next to my bed, with my face in my own vomit. For a moment I didn’t remember how I had ended up on the floor or how I’d vomited, something I had done only twice in my entire life. I was confused and disoriented, and I had a headache from hell. My stomach was beckoning my attention as well.

  The bedroom was still dark, so I didn’t know what time it was. The night before, the pills and vodka, came back to me. I realized that my suicide attempt had failed, that God was in control and not ready for me yet. For a few startled moments I did not move. I just lay there in a fetal position with my eyes wide open and my eyelashes still.

  Finally, I crawled and stumbled into my bathroom, then stood up and attempted to wash my face. The medicine cabinet mirror would not allow me to forget the previous night. I knew I was in deep trouble. I went to pick up the phone and realized it was off the hook. Once I got a dial tone I started to dial 911, but ended up calling a taxi instead.

  It was only later, at Howard University Hospital, seated in the busy emergency room among gunshot victims and drug addicts, that I realized I wanted to live. Why I wanted to live was not quite clear, but I knew that I must live. My suicide attempt the night before had been unsuccessful for a reason.

  Some of my recollections of the days preceding my attempt are a blur. I remember being overwhelmed by hopelessness and the feeling of how badly I wanted to die and be forgotten. I wanted to join my several close friends who had gone on before me. I wanted to be released from all the loneliness, feelings of shame and despair. The pain I felt but couldn’t describe. I wondered how I, once described by a college professor as “a young man of unlimited promise,” could end up trying to take my own life. Was it because I was a black man living in America? Was it because I was gay? Or was it because I was a gay black man who was living in a world that had a problem with both?

  I’ve never had a problem being black, and on most of my days have taken great pride in that fact. I know that being light-skinned has given me a few advantages not enjoyed by every African American. But at the same time, I have to admit that I’ve sometimes felt a little disconnected from other African Americans, like I didn’t quite belong, that I hadn’t suffered in the same ways of many who had come before me and therefore wasn’t “black” enough.

  Once, when I was about nine years old, I asked my mother if my cousin Charles Jr., who shares the same skin color as mine, and I were white. She gave me a Boy, you must be crazy! look and suddenly burst out laughing and said, “Naw, boy, you and Charles Jr. ain’t white.” It wasn’t that I wanted to be white, but I could look and see that our skin color was different from my sisters’ and most of my cousins’. For some reason I still felt different, and as a young boy I had no way of explaining why. As a child I only knew that if it wasn’t my color, then what could it be?

  I don’t recall the exact day I discovered I was gay or different. When I was young I always felt that it was something that only God and I knew. That it was our little secret and made me feel closer to Him. Still, being gay was the one thing about me that I prayed constantly that God would change. He didn’t.

  I am a black gay man.

  Years ago, it would have caused me great pain to even write the word gay on paper to describe myself. I have cried more tears than the rivers can hold because of the word “gay.” Early in my career as a novelist, no matter the subject matter that I was writing about, I would dodge questions about my sexuality. Maybe because there is so much more to describe me.

  Still, each day that I’m alive, I become a little more self-assured and comfortable in my body. My healing process has been aided by saying what I know to be true. Writing has allowed me to change my self-hatred and doubt into true self-esteem and self-love. My prayers have changed out of absolute necessity so that I could fully enjoy the second half of my life.

  After several months of intensive daily therapy, I returned to Little Rock, Arkansas, the city in which I was raised. My doctor thought it would be helpful in assisting with my recovery from my illness. At first I was afraid the trip might cause my depression to deepen, but I traveled back home despite my reservations.

  On that trip I visited my grandmother, Bessie Harvey, the rock of my family, who was living in a high-rise retirement home. When I was young, I called it the old folks’ home, but my grandma didn’t appear old to me despite the fact that she was in her eighties. Neither she nor my mother knew of my suicide attempt, and when I told them I had been sick, I think they naturally assumed I had AIDS. I quickly volunteered the fact that I didn’t. They had reason to be concerned, especially since in the previous two years I had repeatedly informed them that another one of my friends under thirty had died. I told them I was taking medication and seeing a doctor regularly, and that with prayer (something they both believed in) I would be well soon. I didn’t think they would understand if I told them I had been diagnosed as clinically depressed.

  I began to wonder if depression ran in my family. Did my mother and grandmother do what many other blacks with depression do—simply ignore it? Were their statements of “being down in the dumps” or “feeling blue” a form of depression?

  During the visit, a table in the corner of Grandma’s tiny studio apartment captured my attention. Covered with various knickknacks and a faux crystal candy dish, the table hosted pictures of all h
er children, grandchild, and great-grands—a pictorial history of our family. One picture stood out: In the middle of the table in a dusty silver frame, there was a sepia-colored photo of a little boy.

  He looked about two years old. Smiling with tiny teeth, he had lively teddy-bear brown eyes and dark sandy-colored hair, neatly parted. He looked happy, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Grandma, who is this?” I asked as I picked up the picture to inspect it closer.

  “Let me see, baby,” she said, as she reached for her glasses.

  But before I showed the picture to her, it dawned on me that the little boy in the photo was me. I stood transfixed, looking at the picture and wondering if I was ever really that happy, and if so, whether I could ever be that happy again.

  IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN twelve years since that afternoon. My grandma has since gone on to glory and her rewards. My success as a novelist has allowed me to experience the happiness I saw in the eyes of my childhood photo. There have been amazing days and nights in my life that I couldn’t have even dreamed of myself.

  I’ve also experienced disappointments. I realize that I live in a world that constantly reminds me that being black can sometimes be unacceptable and that I am a member of a race many of whom consider my sexuality inappropriate. I understand that no matter how much I have accomplished since that night in Washington, D.C., filmmakers and movie studios aren’t rushing to make my life story a feature film or even a movie of the week.

  In many ways writing saved my life. It’s my hope that sharing my experience will give hope to others who are learning to deal with their “difference.” I want them to know that they don’t have to live their lives in a permanent “don’t ask, don’t tell” existence. Truth is a powerful healing tool.

  But my hope for this book doesn’t stop there. I think there is a message here for anyone who has ever suffered from a lack of self-esteem, felt the pain of loneliness, or sought love in all the wrong places. The lessons I have learned are not limited to race, gender, or sexual orientation. Anyone can learn from my journey. Anyone can overcome a broken heart.