Tethers
By Shannon Tyo
Not to sink into my rocking chair and pull my sweater close around my shoulders, but I do think gay kids these days have it easier.
I mean, could be better, knowwhatimsayin — <Insert obligatory rant about the state of the world here> — but I have a word limit and you’re reading a literary magazine published by a venerable Off-Broadway theater. You already know what it is. Of course it’s bad. But it’s been worse.
(sidebar: I salute you, the generation of elder gays muttering the same about me under their breaths.)
But no matter the progress, I can’t imagine a world in which we’re ever entirely free of these two formative gay experiences: religious abuse and torment in our childhoods, and an early romantic partner denying they were ever involved with or in love with us. Both devastating, and eerily similar in their cycles:
You’re sure it happened.
The other party denies it happened.
You question yourself, start to think maybe it never did happen, because you don’t have proof, only memories.
You grow up, take space from the other party, and realize You are the proof. Your life is the proof. Something had to have happened because without it, you would be a different person.
You start to believe yourself again. It did happen. Because you live every day inside the repercussions.
The other party denies it happened.
You’re sure it happened.
Reading Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God was like watching these cycles — ouroboroses interlocking like the Olympic rings — slowly consume themselves: Frances and her former church, Frances and her mother, Frances and her first love, Agnieszka. We cheer for Frances to win. We anticipate a liturgical smackdown. We root for her gay liberation.
Even so, I sympathize with the idea of wanting, missing, something foundational, something you used to love, even though it was bad for you. And it might feel better to have those memories of the bad than no memories at all. Because remembering gives you something like ownership. And ownership tethers you to the ground.
One actor, Jen Tullock, plays all the roles in Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God. This one person takes ownership of all the characters, including and surrounding Frances — all their logical points of view, all their realities, all the ways they have helped or harmed one another — because one person is remembering each character’s memories, one by one, with uncommon generosity.
Each performance tethers her back to the ground.
In the theater world and in gay culture, as they currently exist, no one will challenge the statement, “I am a queer person and I was abused in the name of religion.” It’s an easily righteous narrative. Overwhelmingly, the people reading this will nod and agree.
But braver the gay that says, “The Church was my first love. It gave me a world, then forced me to leave, and I miss the world, I miss the earth crumbling under my feet, I miss the family that never existed, I miss the congregation that never loved me anyway.”
Shannon Tyo is an actor, writer, and director. She was in the recent Broadway revival of Yellow Face; Off-Broadway credits include, The Comeuppance (Signature Theatre; Obie Award, Special Citation- Ensemble), Regretfully, So the Birds Are (Playwrights Horizons), The Far Country (Atlantic Theater Co), peerless (Primary Stages), The Chinese Lady (Ma-Yi at The Public; Lortel Award, Theater World Award, Drama Desk nom), Kentucky (EST). Obie Award for Sustained Achievement.