I LEFT the hospital four days later, one day later than expected. Even so, reporters from a local television station were waiting outside.
Someone at the hospital must have informed them that one of the “survivors” was being released. They didn’t know it was me. And they sure as hell didn’t know until I was wheeled out the door that I was a minor.
They wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
The nurse tried to keep them away, but that was no longer possible.
Not only had I survived, but I was underage on top of it.
Jackpot.
At that stage, I guessed I was going to be a human-interest story of the day, filling the need for the public to hear from a survivor how it felt. How it felt. How it feels. To feed the public’s morbid sick fuck curiosity on what it’s like to survive a mass shooting at a gay club.
Especially from the perspective of an underage survivor.
Granted, if the story hadn’t involved me, I would have been one of those with a morbid sick fuck curiosity, so I did understand it.
How do you think it felt? I wanted to ask back. How do you think it feels, asshole?
I avoided looking at the cameras as they yelled their questions to me. At me, actually. Dad stepped up and asked that I be left alone at this time, thanking the doctors and nurses and everyone for saving my life, and expressed our sorrow for the families of those who didn’t survive and our prayers for those who did.
Less than an hour later, I was home. For the first time since I’d raced out the door to go—get Nate. And been so happy. I had been so happy.
If only I hadn’t gone.
I briefly wondered where my truck was.
I wondered what happened to the sexy jock I’d worn that night, and prayed to all available gods that it hadn’t been returned to my parents.
And except for doctor’s appointments and physical therapy, I didn’t leave home again for more than a month.
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t.
I was still in pain, and I couldn’t convince the doctors to give me anything really good to help with it. Or to help me sleep.
Or at least to stop the bad dreams I was having every single night.
I didn’t want to see anyone I knew. I didn’t want to talk to anyone I knew.
I didn’t want to see people I didn’t know but who I knew would know what had happened and would want to know more.
And I really didn’t want to see Nate’s family. Them maybe most of all.
What could I say to them? How could I answer their questions when I didn’t have any answers myself?
I couldn’t.
Kristen had texted me while I was in the hospital, but I couldn’t bring myself to reply.
I couldn’t talk about it.
Local newspapers and TV stations kept calling me, asking if I’d be willing to be interviewed.
I wasn’t willing. Not in the least.
I didn’t want to talk to anyone.
I did talk to the cops when they came by. I felt like I kind of had to, me being a hate crime victim and witness to a massacre and all.
Q: You and your friend… Nate. Was he your boyfriend?
A: No, we were just friends. Best friends.
Q: You and your… friend were both underage. How did you get into Pacific Coast?
A: Um… I knew someone who knew someone who could hook us up with IDs.
Q: And their names?
A: Honestly… I don’t really know any of them. It was that kind of thing. You know, a friend of a friend of a friend.
Q: When you got to Pacific Coast, did you notice anything unusual?
A: I don’t know what would be usual or unusual… it was our first time at a club.
Q: Can you tell us what was going on when you arrived?
A: It was really… crowded. And loud. The bar was really busy and crowded. People were drinking and dancing. It was almost too loud to talk to anyone.
Q: Were you drinking?
A: Well… yes. We bought our first drinks, and when we finished… two guys bought us our next round.
Q: Had you ever met them before?
A: No, they were just being nice because they could tell it was our first time there.
Q: Did you see the shooter arrive?
A: No.
Q: What can you tell us about the shooting?
A: There’s not that much to say. I heard noises… popping sounds. Everybody did. People started dropping, people started running… screaming… I got shot. Next thing I remember I was in an ambulance.
Q: And Nate?
A: (long pause)… I don’t know; I didn’t see. It all happened so fast.
They were my only visitors the first few weeks after I got home.
I did eventually text Kristen, promising her that I’d never tell anyone how we got the fake IDs. That if I had to, I’d take the blame myself.
It was the least I could do.
She didn’t respond right away. When she did, she sent this:
It’s all too damn much. Every day and every hour since that night has been a blur. Dad has shut down. Mom is a total mess. I couldn’t face Ziggy, he’s out of the picture. Everything has changed (as I’m sure you know all too well). I don’t think any of us will ever be the same. I can’t stop crying and I just can’t deal with any of it.
I could relate.
So for more than a month, I hid myself away in my room, coming downstairs for meals and that’s about it.
The rest of the time I slept. And tried to read. And tried to binge-watch anything I could find that would keep me from thinking about what had happened.
But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t read. Or watch TV. Or Netflix and chill. Chilling, it seemed, was no longer a possibility.
Instead I spent most of my time online.
Watching news reports about that night. About all the nights after. National news coverage. Local news coverage. Interviews with those who were there. Interviews with friends and family of those who were there.
Everything I could find.
I watched a guy tell a reporter that his boyfriend had been texting his mom that someone was shooting and that he loved her, when he got hit twice.
He died in his boyfriend’s arms.
I saw an interview with the owner of a lesbian bar just down the street from Pacific Coast:
“It was awful. Blood everywhere and all those beautiful boys dead and wounded for no good reason. Just awful. What struck me was how quiet it was. Nobody was saying a word; nobody was screaming; everyone seemed to be in total shock. The only sound I heard was the music that was still playing and all those cell phones ringing and receiving texts. And the music didn’t stop. All I could think about was all those people trying to make sure that their son or brother or sister or friend was okay. And so many of them weren’t.
“I was with this young guy, this kid; he’d been shot in the stomach and was bleeding a lot. I’ve never seen so much blood. I did what I could to try to make it stop, but there was so much of it. I kept telling him that he was going to be okay, that help was on its way and that I wasn’t going anywhere, I was staying with him. But he kept whispering to me, telling me he knew he wasn’t going to make it, that he was going to die, and asking me over and over again to tell his parents he loved them and that he was sorry about everything, so very sorry. I’m pretty sure he hadn’t told his parents that he was gay yet and didn’t want to cause them any more hurt by learning about it on TV or online or something. I was trying not to cry while he was telling me all this, but afterwards, after I’d gone with him to the ambulance and they took him away… I couldn’t stop. I still haven’t been able to stop.”
So many of them. So many stories.
There was even an interview with Mike, that guy we’d met in the first bar we’d gone to. He was with a crowd across the street from Pacific Coast, watching as the bodies of the dead and wounded, meaning Nate and me, were being removed from the building.
He told the reporter that he had still been in the bar when he heard the news:
“All I could think about was those two guys I’d met. I sent them there, those two kids. Had they been there when it happened? Please, I thought, please let them be safe. Please let them be okay.
“I ran over here and joined all these people. I’ve never felt so completely hopeless. And while I’m not a praying guy, I started in the moment I arrived, and then it suddenly hit me that I didn’t even know their names. We’d talked, but….
“I was here when they started bringing out the wounded. One stretcher after another after another with body after body. With some it was obvious that they’d be okay. There were others where the bodies were so covered in blood, I couldn’t be sure.
“Finally they brought out one of the two. His skin was so pale, so white… and there was so much blood. His hair, that hair I had brushed back from his face at the bar, was caked with it.
“The wounded kept being taken out, but I still didn’t see the other guy.
“And when they began bringing out the dead, I knew that he hadn’t made it.”
At this point, Mike broke down in sobs.
Oh, Nate.
It was an out-of-body experience to watch and listen to Mike, who I… who we had met less than an hour before it happened, talking about me and Nate. It was real and unreal at the same time. Like he was talking about us and talking about someone else at the same time.
I watched that interview over and over.
I listened to the reports of the crowds outside the club, watching as the ambulance sped away. Trying to see if I could see myself getting taken away. Or Nate. Or either of the guys we were dancing with.
Shit. Them.
I can’t remember their names. They’re a total blank.
Or Kristen and Ziggy, who raced to the club the moment the first reports hit social media.
I watched everything I could find. Every report. Every interview. Everything.
I was binge-watching my own story.
I knew I shouldn’t be doing it. I knew I needed to stop.
But I couldn’t stop.
I had to keep seeing it. I had to keep hearing about it.
What I thought I’d learn or get out of it, I had no idea.
I still don’t.
I even watched a news report on Nate’s funeral, the one I couldn’t go to because I was still in the hospital.
I saw the deep pain on his parents’ faces, how lost and bewildered they looked. I saw Kristen clinging to Ziggy. I saw the demonstrators from that goddamn church in Kansas who had driven ten hours just to shove their signs saying that Nate was a fag who deserved to die right in the faces of his parents and Kristen.
How dare they. How fucking dare they do that to Nate.
It was awful. I could only watch that once.
But here’s the thing. No matter how much I watched, I didn’t cry.
I never cried.
It never felt real.
Mom and Dad tried to help. Mom made all my favorite stuff to eat, even the brownies she refused to keep around the house because she knew she’d end up eating half of them. Dad would come up to my room to “visit” and tell me that if I wanted to talk to him or Mom, or if I wanted to go see a therapist or something, that I could and should.
I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do less than tell a stranger all my deepest feelings and stuff.
It was weird, but even though Mom had said in the hospital we’d “continue this discussion later,” my parents never really asked me about it. Or yelled at me about going there. Or asked where we got our IDs. Nothing.
It was as if they didn’t want to know themselves. Or they figured I’d been punished enough without them piling on me on top of it.
Or they were probably following some guideline on how to be good parents and waiting for me to come to them. I’m going with that one.
But here’s the thing—I knew I wasn’t doing well. Deep down I knew that I was totally stressed-out and scared and angry and all that. But I held on to it.
I didn’t want things to be normal. I didn’t want to feel better.
I didn’t want to feel anything.
And I didn’t. Or at least I thought I didn’t.
Until the Fourth of July rolled around.
I DON’T think I’ve mentioned my dog, Clark. He’s part Jack Russell terrier and part something else nobody can quite figure out.
He’s been my dog since I was eight.
I love him a lot.
But he’s not great when it comes to loud noises. Thunder is bad. Fireworks and firecrackers and all that kind of stuff are even worse.
They totally freak him out.
So when the first stuff started going off around my house, it was no surprise when he started running around the house, crying, trying to find a place to hide.
But what I didn’t expect, what I hadn’t even thought about, what had never occurred to me, was how I’d react.
Badly, as it turns out.
I freaked out even worse than Clark. And like him, I had no control over myself.
Animal survival mode, I guess.
Which freaked me out even more.
When the first pop pop pop went off, I jumped.
My heart started racing.
I started sweating.
When the next round started, my hands started shaking. And I couldn’t make them stop.
As more and more went off in loud sporadic bursts, pop pop pop, then pop pop POP pop, I started pacing around my room. Faster and faster. I wanted to run. I wanted to escape. But there was nowhere to go.
I turned the music up to try and drown it out. It didn’t help.
I was seeing that night in flashes. I was in my room and I was at the club. Flashbacks, I guess they’re called. And I couldn’t make it stop.
The shots. The screaming. And even worse, the sound when the screaming stopped.
I could even smell the gunshots. The smell of piss and shit. And the blood. So much blood. Everywhere.
It kept going and going and going….
I needed it to stop. I cried out for it to stop. I even prayed for it to stop even though I don’t buy into any of that stuff. But it just got worse and worse.
The sense of panic, my sense of panic, was overwhelming. And real.
Clark was cowering on the floor of my closet; I got down on the floor, shaking and sweating, and joined him.
And I held him. Both of us shaking. Both of us whimpering and crying.
My face was buried in his warm fur. His face was pressed against my shoulder.
But neither one of us could help the other or do anything to bring each other comfort.
We were lost in our own worlds of panic and fear and terror.
I wanted to start screaming. But I didn’t want my parents to hear, so I didn’t.
I still had that much control at least.
Besides, I was scared that if I started screaming, I’d just keep going and would never be able to stop.
There I was, lying on the floor of my closet. Crying and petting Clark and hating myself for acting like the little gay boy I promised myself I’d never ever be, unable to get myself under control. I was freaking Clark out so bad that he took a break from his own fears to lick my forehead to try and comfort me.
It felt like it would never stop. Like the explosions and loud noises and pops and smell of the firecrackers coming up into my room would never end.
After a couple of hours that seemed like they went on forever, people began running out of supplies, and it eased up and finally stopped.
I pulled myself out of the closet, shaking and exhausted and soaked in sweat. Clark stayed behind, tightly curling himself up and quickly falling asleep. I figured even he’d had enough of me by that point.
I know I had.
I snuck downstairs to my parents’ liquor cabinet, grabbed the first bottle I could find, which turned out to be Dad’s good tequila, and drank. It burned. I coughed and nearly puked, took a breath and let things settle, and drank some more.
Anything to stop the shaking.
I went back up to my room and lay down on my bed, hoping to pass out, waiting for my body to stop trembling and for my hands to stop clenching and to stop hearing gunshots and screams in my head and realizing that I wasn’t handling things nearly as well as I thought I was.
And not knowing what to do about that.