Suicide and Murder in Middle America

Barnaby shot himself in the head in the woods just outside of our hometown.

“He went crazy. That’s why he did it. He turned into one of those Jesus freaks and eventually ended it all by splattering his brains down in a pine grove,” according to local news.

I thought he was much stronger than that. He should have known better. It’s not smart to decide to leave the Bible belt as a teenager to become an open queer, only to change your mind and go back there after the wrath of God has come down in the form of a virus that eats away at the very soul.

I’m sure he got many evil-eyes the day he woke up and decided this is the day.

Men with big beer bellies and greasy baseball caps probably looked at him like one of them damn queers when he went into the Seven-Eleven for his last cup of frothy Cappuccino that morning he pulled the trigger.

Church ladies likely waved at him from afar telling him that it’s not too late to repent and be saved.

“Suicide is the only sin that the lord cannot forgive,” the townsfolk whispered the night Barnaby took that great leap of faith.

Perhaps I should have called him when my mother first told me he came back home and wasn’t looking very healthy.

What could I have done? Go back there to change his shitty bed sheets when nobody else wanted to?

They may have figured out that I was a queer too if I did that.

They would have ridden me out of town on a rail and dragged me down to the pine grove and shot me!

I’m smarter than that.

Queers do not move back home to kill themselves.

They can do that here in the big cities where nobody judges one for pulling their own trigger.