Seventeen is too young to be on your own. Out of everything that he has learned from this life, it is the one thing that he can say with certainty. He has discovered that things you think you know change over time, but seventeen will never be old enough to be on your own. Never.
It wasn't his choice to leave. That isn't to say that it wasn't welcome. But he was never given a choice. He was given an order. Orders were what his childhood was all about. "Choices," his father used to tell him, "are for queers who think they can run their own lives when clearly, they can't."
He left his house with nothing more then the clothes on his back, twenty dollars, and the notion of who his father said he was supposed to be, who he was, and who he wanted to be. "Don't you come back here," his father yelled from the front porch, over his mother's sobs and his sister's quiet pleas. "You hear me, Kenneth? Don't you ever come back to this house. I don't need no friggin' queers livin' in this house."
That was the day that he stopped being Kenneth Eric Dumatt. He climbed on a bus bound for New York City and shed his life of hell and high-water. "No Day But Today," he quietly reminded himself when he thought of his mother's tears and felt that knot of guilt hit his stomach.
He sat alone, next to the window, and watched life fly by as the bus passed it. Was this how life was supposed to be? Thrilling, exhilarating, yet terrifying all at one time? It was different from how he had ever considered anything before. Where would this adventure take him?
Nearly halfway through his journey, he spent 10 dollars at a rest stop to buy an old wig from a man sitting by the side of the road. His very first wig. The first step to becoming who he knew he was supposed to be. Or who he thought he was supposed to be, anyway.
A skinhead approached him four stops later and began to pick at him. "Hey fag. Yeah, you. Stop looking at me, queer. You're a guy, fag. You know what that means? It means you wear clothes for MEN. You don't go no long hair. You don't wear no wigs. Come on, queer boy. Yeah, come on, you know I'm right. You fags and those Jews, ya'll need to be wiped out. White pride, man. White, straight pride!"
He couldn't stand it anymore. Finally, he turned his head slightly to look at the young boy sitting across the aisle and said softly, "You're just one angry boy. Do you know why that is?"
"Why fag? Think you can tell me about me, queer? No way, no how. Come on, try it."
Calmly, he replied, "You're just one angry boy because I am more of a man then you will ever be, and more of a woman then you will ever get."
The skinhead was at a loss for words. The sound of laughter rang from the front of the bus where a young girl was making her way to his seat. "Is this seat…I mean, do you mind?" she asked of him softly.
"No, not at all," he murmured back and scooted his stuff over to make room for her.
"Mimi. I'm Mimi. You?" She said after she had settled in, offering him her hand.
"Angel. Angel Dumatt Schunard," he replied, smiling.
No Day But Today.
New York City was different from anything he had ever experienced before. Mimi, his new-found friend from the bus, convinced him to share an apartment with her. She was only fifteen, but she had made the choice to leave. "You had a choice," he marveled to her once. "A real, live choice."
She'd laughed at that. "Of course, chica. What is life if it doesn't have choices?"
He had no answer for that.
Once a month a small, handwritten letter would make its way to their apartment addressed to "Kenneth Dumatt". Mimi never questioned their appearance or the name attached to the address. She just simply handed the letters to him and made herself scarce for awhile. Except for the day he received the last letter.
"Ange…" she whispered softly, reading the words over his shoulder - the hard, cold words that came two weeks too late. Blank, empty words of a sympathy card from his sister, explaining how his mother had died due to a stroke and how his father wouldn't let Angel be contacted to the funeral. A funeral card, some useless apologies, and the simple question – "When are you comin' back to town?"
It took him weeks to come up with an answer – weeks of grieving for the time lost with his mother, weeks of anger at his father, detestation of his sister for not disobeying their father, just once, for something so important. It was Mimi who finally came up with the words to send back. "Just tell them you need some gravity."
Sis –
"When they stop building roads, and all God needs is gravity to hold me down."
- Angel