No One is Alone

a story for little bird

One time, Leland Speed, the real estate developer, not the mayor, although he was a real estate developer too, said, “Boyd, you could be a great leader one day. You just have to find your way.”

I’ve always had, not just a deep respect for the man, but a deep love as well. His connection to me goes back to a time before even he was born. Instead of being a polite boy and saying what I’m expected to say, like “Thank you, sir, I’ll do my best.” I decided to tell him the truth.

“It’s best that people don’t follow me if I don’t know my way.” It was a confession. A truer confession than I was willing to tell even my own father.

Little boys with communication problems feel very alone. It’s a symptom of whatever is causing the problem.

Little boys who have communication problems ARE very alone. It’s a condition of their lives.

It’s not just me. It’s common. Boys like me move from wife-to-wife, friend-to-friend, city-to-city, job-to-job, country-to-country, never feeling they belong where they are. Papa Hemingway felt it so intently that he swallowed his own shotgun.

It’s not just men. Sylvia Plath covered the opening below the doors to her children’s bedrooms, then sat in her kitchen with the oven on, but not lit, until she wasn’t alone anymore. My beloved Katie decided she didn’t want to become fourteen like Uncle Boyd, so she found other uses for her swingset.

I’m not in any danger of doing these things. Once you’ve tried to stop the blood from coming out of someone, and living with the aftermath of suicide, you develop a sort of immunity—although it can be argued that I tried to die by breaking my ties to the world, one-by-one, then eating too much food that wasn’t even good. My body proved to be more durable than my mind.

A lot of lonely boys become writers. I used to sit in bars in Jackson and watch Willie Morris pretend he wasn’t lonely, then watch Michael Rubenstein relish in it. The last time I saw Michael alive, he was eating alone at the end of the bar at Hal & Mals. They have a sandwich named after him, but I think this was a hamburger. He had a drink and stared at the colorful bottles with the ancient neon lights taken from the Lamar Movie theater reflected on his skin. Michael was technically a newscaster, but he excelled at interviews, which is writing. He died at sixty of a bloodclot. Silently, quickly, without warning, in his home. My dad died almost to the day, the same age, and almost the same way. Daddy had a heart attack that took him out all at once. Michael was at home. Daddy died behind his desk in his office, which was probably the only real home he ever had since he left St. Ann Street for Berlin, Germany, watching for Russians coming over the border to destroy us. Since he was thirteen, there was no woman in the world besides my mother, but she could never make a home for him. Not a real one. Not like his desk.

One day, in high school, my precious Sarah Hawthorne asked, “Why are you so moody?”

“I’m not.” That was a lie.

Let’s see, what’s the truth? I never got to see my father. My brother lost his mind. My grades suck because I read about a third of the speed of the rest of you. My brother tried to kill me because the voices told him to. Mike Sheppard made the entire goddamn school believe I was in love with September Moore when I wasn’t. The headmaster and I hate each other. I’m taking male hormones on top of all the hormones that normally hit you when you’re seventeen. The only girl I really care about doesn’t even go here anymore, so I can’t look at her without speaking to her like I used to. Lunch sucked, and the starter on my car broke again. Is that enough to be grumpy about?

It’s not the soul that separates man from beast. It’s words. It’s the communication and social centers of the brain that made the weakest of the great apes become the most dominant life-form on earth. Numbers aren’t words, but our expressions of them are. Boys with dyslexia, dyscalculia, stuttering, ADHD, and other issues all begin in the verbal centers of the brain. So do depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. We have problems with words, and without words, we become isolated from everyone.

Like the honkin’ mole on my eyebrow, Dr. Alexander said, “Boyd will grow out of his stutter, so no action was taken. Unable to speak and unable to read, I began feeling very alone and very, very ugly.

It never occurred to me that I might have body dysmorphia until a couple of months ago, when an angel said, “Boyd, if you don’t stop saying you’re ugly, I won’t talk to you anymore.” That’s a lot of motivation. She was right, though. She was always right. She’s always been right, starting when we were seven.

I used to know such fantastic writers, but I never mentioned that I wrote. I hesitate, even now, to say I wrote, too. One night, in a little town with a little school where they play football, I got absolutely obliterated with Barry Hannah and Larry Brown. Brown, I met because of Randy Yates. I had arranged to meet Hannah years before because I wanted to have sexual congress with one of his students. She did not.

I was always a little terrified to talk to Eudora Welty. It’s not that she was a writer, but that she was my grandmother’s friend. She also knew me when I was too little to speak without a stutter. Except for Margaret Key, it was hard for me to talk around any of the church ladies because they’d been there when I couldn’t talk intelligibly. I could talk to Clay Lee, but I did what I almost always did with men. I imitated my dad. I was pretty good at imitating my dad, including the way he’d look down before laughing from his soul.

The first time I ever met Ray Mabus, he shook my hand, looked at me, then at dad, like, “Is this an act?” By that time, I had become pretty good at presenting like Jim Campbell. It used to annoy George Harmon. Most things annoyed George Harmon.

There came a time in my life when even I realized the drinking had gotten out of control. I didn’t consider Alcoholics Anonymous because their slogan was “You Are Not Alone.” Wanna bet? I don’t mind being alone, but I don’t want some bullshit slogan to say I wasn’t.

I met Little Bird because, on Facebook, she looked like her mom, who I hadn’t seen in forty years. I think, at first, she thought I was this weird old dude, which I was, and then I asked, “Does your mom still have the two tiny moles on her hand like a vampire bit her?” That level of ancient intimacy caught her off guard. Our conversations took a different tone after that.

I sent her a story I wrote almost two years before about how her grandmother taught me to read. At this point, I was still pretty terrified of communicating directly with her mom. “Can you send it to your mom?” I said. That may have been the first moment when the Angel realized I was still alive.

I learned that Little Bird was a very alone child too. While she’s a little neurodivergent, she was alone because terrible things happened when she was a child, things she’s still trying to understand how to process. What she didn’t know was that it was probably my fault. I promised her grandmother, and so many other people, that I’d be there to prevent anything bad from happening, and I just wasn’t. I don’t think I could have stopped what happened, but having lived through it before, I could have helped.

I can’t even explain why I wasn’t there. I felt inadequate and confused. Her mother was so brilliant and so strong, the possibility that I could help her in any way seemed beyond remote. I should have stuck with the plan.

Seeking ways to help Little Bird feel less alone, I compiled a playlist of songs, each about human connections in their own way. I called it “Songs for Little Bird,” but really, it’s “Songs for Boyd.” It’s playing now.

I’m a theater person, but I’m not gay, so I only like musicals where terrible things happen to terrible people. That’s a terrible joke. I apologize.

In American Theater History, we read two or three plays a week, sometimes more. One of the students said, “Why do these people have such horrible lives?” Meaning the characters in the play. The particular play, I think, was “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

“I dunno, would YOU go to a play about happy, well-adjusted people?” I said. Brent roared in laughter. I love it when I catch him off guard like that.

I have a sort of hierarchy of favorite Musical composers and writers. Andrew Lloyd Webber is enormously emotional, but not that deep. Plus, I have sort of a trauma-bond with “Phantom of the Opera.” My second and third favorites are Kander and Ebb. “Mein Heir” is one of the greatest drinking songs I know.

My favorite, though, has to be Sondheim. He paints different layers of meaning through his lyrics and melodies, constantly seeking a higher level of truth.

Little Bird had a rough week. She buss’ her head wide open, then some girls tried to bully her. She cut their heads off. I was so impressed. She went out of town to recharge her batteries, which seems to have worked. When she got home, I sent her a link to “No One is Alone” from “Into the Woods.”

Mother cannot guide you
Now you’re on your own
Only me beside you
Still, you’re not alone
No one is alone, truly
No one is alone

Sometimes people leave you
Halfway through the wood
Others may deceive you
You decide what’s good
You decide alone
But no one is alone

People make mistakes
Holding to their own
Thinking they’re alone
Honor their mistakes
Fight for their mistakes—

Everybody makes—
One another’s
Terrible mistakes

Witches can be right
Giants can be good
You decide what’s right
You decide what’s good

Just remember:
Someone is on your side
Our side
Someone else is not

While we’re seeing our side—
Our side—
Our side—

Maybe we forgot:
They are not alone
No one is alone

Hard to see the light now
Just don’t let it go

Things will come out right now
We can make it so

Someone is on your side—
No one is alone

I know you’re busy and playing catch-up. Read this when you can, Little Bird. I love you. I love your mother. Your grandmother said I had to.

Call me when you have time,

U B