Disingenuous

14. Portland

2014

It got weird fast.

Jackson started to have a hard time buying weed in London. People in public started recognizing him off of YouTube or other places, and the queer friendly spaces he'd been frequenting before started to become uncomfortable. Jackson didn't know if the discomfort was warranted or if he was just being dramatic. He was pretty sure he wasn't being dramatic. He just knew that people in the queer spaces he'd been frequenting were calling him Jackson, and he'd been introducing himself as Lemuel for years. He knew that they knew who he was, and he knew that meant they'd been listening to the music. The music where he'd sang about women.

Jackson hadn't felt like himself for a long time. He'd felt so much like another person that he'd used a fake name and created a fake persona entirely. The music thing had been the only thing he'd done that felt genuine in so long.

And then he'd gone and made it disingenuous in spite of himself.

Regardless of whether or not the ostracizing feeling was real or not, Jackson knew that the people who knew he was gay also knew he was lying, and that wasn't something he was imagining. That was real and he hated it, so he found himself spending less time in that circle until he wasn't there at all. He bought weed from a university student instead, and he took more of the pills the doctor gave him, and he told himself it was fine.

He'd just keep doing the music thing. Things would fall into place. It would be fine.

Since Jackson had an abundance of money for the first time, he did something else to get drugs that he knew he'd grow to regret later. He went to a private doctor and he got a proper prescription for Xanax. They made it way too easy. He ditched the shitty limp dick anxiety meds and embraced the way Xanax hugged him to sleep at night. He honestly didn't need pot that much when he had those. He barely even drank on nights when he was getting friendly with Xanax. Drinking was more of a day hobby anyway. Performing while drinking was fun.

Jacksons mother called him that year. He knew it was her number without much thought. He just recognized it on the screen. Jackson hadn't expected that and so he stared at his phone while it rang for a while, and then watched it go to voicemail. He'd had the bad thoughts that night. Panic had risen up in his chest. The heavy breathing had come back. The drinking and the pills hadn't stopped it.

Beryl had him scheduled to perform that night, but he texted and cancelled. He just sat awake all night, lying in bed shivering at the thoughts.

She'd called again a week later and he'd answered immediately with a sort of numbness to the issue. Their conversation was brief, but his mother wanted him to know she'd seen pictures of him naked on the news. Art club photos had leaked. Mostly they were just the sketched portraits but there were a few artfully posed shots he'd allowed a student to take for a photography project and he'd honestly not minded when Beryl told him they'd been leaked online. That was one of the few things he handled well about the way his name was shooting to popularity. He didn't much care what was seen online about him since be barely knew how to search himself up online anyways. As long as nobody talked about his sexuality, he didn't really care.

He pretended he didn't know what his exact hang up was, but it was hard for him to ignore when his mother said to him, "You talk about women when you sing. I don't suppose that means you've abandoned that invert nonsense does it?"

"No," he breathed out in response.

"That's a shame," she chided. "Well in that case, thank you for not making such a show of it."

And Jackson had told her she was welcome while his eyes watered because the true appreciation in her voice had made him want to die. Even more, it had made him think of a time so long ago when her approval had been so easy to attain.