| Book Contents |
|
| My Heartbeat |
| Garret Freymann-Weyr |
| Houghton Mifflin |
| 154 pages |
| Copyright 2002 |
| MCMLS Call No.YA F – Wey |
| Library
Catalog Summary: As she tries to understand the closeness between her
older brother and his best friend, fourteen year old Ellen finds her
relationship with each of them changing |
|
| Library Catalog Subjects: |
| Brothers and sisters – Fiction |
| Homosexuality – Fiction |
| Interpersonal relations - Fiction |
|
| -
Book is about a E, a 14-year old girl who “loves” the high school
senior boy who is her brother’s (also a high school senior) best
friend. She (and everyone else) thinks both the boys are homosexual and
in love with one another. Her brother verbally denies this but E (and
everyone else) doesn’t believe him. E eventually has sex with her
brother’s friend, who has slept with other men but also likes girls.
The cover has two large figures (her older brother and friend) clasping
arms, with a heart between them, towering over a smaller figure who,
with head bowed, is punching both of them. |
| - E talks to older brother about a boy his friend went out with. “I don’t think he likes that guy at all,” she says. |
| -
Classmate tells her that her brother and his friend are a “couple.” She
thinks about this and wonders, “Why would they have encouraged my crush
on J if they could have stopped it by telling me they have a crush on
each other?” |
| -
She discusses this with mom who tells her she doesn’t know if her
brother is gay and says it’s clear they (brother and J) love each other
and that dad doesn’t know. Mom suggested she talk to her brother. She
thinks, “It doesn’t matter if J and L are a couple. I will remain
totally in love with J no matter what.” |
| -
She talks to her brother and J about them being gay. Her brother gets
mad, says “I am not gay... J is gay. ..[he’s] slept with people. ..[he]
slams out of the apartment so hard that a picture frame shatters..” |
| -
She then has a shot with J. He says, “..I don’t think sex is the thing
that makes someone gay.” They have a conversation about this... “Was it
true [she asks].. Yes, I’ve slept with other people... men. Why never
with a girl [she asks] brain.. flooded with Sambuca.. 2 reasons. A girl
has never asked me and I never thought sleeping with a girl would annoy
your brother.” They have a long conversation where he says he “likes
girls” but “..just generic girls. That’s why I have no idea if I’m
gay.” |
| -
“A’s father is a faggot.. faggot is one of the many words.. used
instead of the pleasant sounding gay... queer, queen, fairy. How come I
know this awful list.. How can anyone’s father be gay.. I am not gay
[her brother says]..” |
| -
3-4 pages of her research and thoughts on being homosexual - “..not a
big deal. There’s AIDS.. getting attacked by a redneck, but that’s
about it...people who don’t know better still think it’s shameful or
wrong.. Not smart people.. [my brother’s] too smart to think [that]
like.. religious zealots and.. people who.. don’t know better.” |
| - “It’s a big deal.. J says. My parents make me see a shrink because they are worried I’m gay.” |
| -
Thinks her dad is wrong in not wanting her brother [L] to be gay:
“..has picked the wrong - the ignorant - laws to follow?” She thinks
that her brother is not admitting he is gay only because of the
influence of her dad. |
| - She decides to not talk to her dad about her brother being homosexual feeling it was her brothers place to do that. |
| -
J kisses her. “He looks at me as if to check whether I’m going to jerk
away from him. The way I imagine [my brother] has jerked away from J
many times.” |
| -
She has discussion with J about her brother. She learns the reason her
brother gave J as to why he shouldn’t going out with some guy and
“letting someone love me” was her. Her brother told J, “You have E
[her]. E loves you. ..We were never able to... um , express affection
[J says]. It freaked him out. he thought it was the same thing as
having sex. So I expressed it to you. And you let me... You shouldn’t
leave [my brother] for me [she says]... I can only hold [his] place
[she says].. ..how could I want [my brother’s] place long past when he
is ready to take it back. ..not [his] place.. J says. It’s mine to give
away.. isn’t this what you want?.. This is what I want I say, pulling
away [from kissing him]. But there’s all this stuff you want from [my
brother]. That he wants from you. ..So your not gay? [she asks].
..meaning compared to [my brother”] am I enough? ..I get that he thing
that matters to him is what he can have with somebody. Be it a girl, a
boy, a man, or a woman. Right now I am the someone he has. ..doesn’t
make him straight, doesn’t make him gay either.” |
| -
She imagines her brother and J kissing. She is “drunk from kissing” and
“reckless with affection. Physical affection. As if I can make up for
what my brother would not offer. ..J says he will not sleep with me.
Not, repeat, not. ..too soon.” |
| -
“.. have turned into a girl who worries about sex. ..having it and not
having it.. J and I navigate around each other’s bodies.. There is, as
J said going to be weirdness with your brother.. No matter how far I
get away from the girl my parents know, I won’t be scared as long as I
am with J.” |
| -
“Let me guess, J asks [my brother]. [Your parents are] still afraid
your gay?.. Fear. Dad’s afraid L’s gay, and mom’s afraid dad will be or
already is handling it badly.. They can’t know anything for sure about
L. But the fear is everywhere. ..I love J for saying clearly and
fearlessly what is going on.” Her brother and J then talk about L’s
girlfriend. |
| - “Maybe [my brother’s] not gay, but he does love J. I wish that loving J made [my brother] as happy as it makes me.” |
| -
“Va te faire foutre L says.. first words I learned in French. [My
brother] and J taught them to me. ..not printable in a family
newspapers.” |
| - She complains to her dad that she had to read “Ethan Fromme” and the teacher never talked about “repressed sexual desire.” |
| -
“Michelangelo was gay... designed the Vatican where the Pope lives. The
pope, who has to make gay people feel bad as part of his job.” |
| -
She and her dad have a long conversation as to why so many “good
artists and writers and dancers are gay.” Her brother comes up in the
conversation. Her dad tells her why he doesn’t want her brother to be
gay. He mentions her brother's girlfriend and says “Let me have my
peace while [your brother] remains undecided. ..if it should ever come
to pass that you want to sleep with another girl, we can purse this
conversation further.” She implies she wants to sleep with J, not a
girl. “This vacillating affection appears to run in the family” her dad
says. |
| - “[My brother] didn’t love J enough to defy Dad’s wishes. To my father enough is what divides gay love from straight.” |
| -
She thinks about how J and her brother look the same, “..never thought
they looked different until after I had fallen totally madly in live
with J.” |
| - Two friends at school are convinced that because she is “an item” with J, that she is “no longer a virgin.” |
| -
“..there’s the little matter of an AIDS test. He [J] keeps meaning to
have one. When we close the door to his room, J always looks at my
hands, checking them for paper cuts or hang nails. ..safe-sex manuals.
about blood and bodily fluids.. turning deadly.. You are only 14 [he
says]. ..his reluctance and unease with where I very much want to go.
..sex is like drawing for me. When I touch J.. want to keep going until
it is finished.” Responding to his concern with her being 14 she says
“You’ll go to college.. There will be someone else.. waiting silly.
..You’re as likely to have someone else as I am, he says. ..more
reason, I say. I don’t want the first time to be with someone who isn’t
you. I don’t want your first time to be with someone who has never been
with a girl [he says]... the men he has been with.. make J reluctant.
..men he slept with.. to annoy [my brother]. I read in one of my books
on gay identity.. when you have sex with someone, you have sex with all
the people that person has slept with. ..J.. creeped out by the idea of
those men coming into contact with me when they were meant to help him
reach my brother. ..I ask J if he thinks I would prefer him sleeping
with another girl.. before he sleeps with me. I would.. he says.
..funny. The picture of us I will draw later. ..one of me and J in bed
with the 3 men he has slept with.” They talk about a man who works for
J’s dad that he slept with and how he cried when he found out J wasn’t
as old as he thought he was and how J’s shrink thinks it had nothing to
do with her brother but was about J’s dad. They talk about him talking
to her brother about his sex with this man. “If I had been older I
wouldn’t have slept with him J says. By now, I have other ways to deal
with my father. I.. try to think if Dad has any friends [my brother] or
I would sleep with.” |
| -
Her brother has a conversation with her dad and drops hints he might be
gay although he now has a girlfriend. She thinks: “If I were honest, I
would say that my brother’s unpredictable willingness to hint that he
is gay is the main reason behind my hurry to sleep with J.” |
| - “..all [my brother and I] have failed to say to each other since the night he called AC’s father a faggot.” |
| -
She learns J will be going overseas to college. They have sex: “I guess
what happens is because neither of us wants to say anything or cry...
It hurts a little but not as much as the books say. ..not even a
tearing feeling, more a feeling of oh, how unusual, until oh, this is
it.. I am here, finally here. ..And then it’s over. In .. 4 months I’ll
turn 15, but this will loom larger in my mind, I think. I’ll always be
first girl, I say. Jesus.. J says.. When’s your period due? he asks.. J
used a condom.. I recall his Wait, hang on, wait a minute.. [J’s]
mother destroyed his father’s first marriage when she got pregnant.. I
don’t know [when my periods due] I say. It shows up when it does. Start
keeping track, he says. My mother writes it down on a calendar... [J’s
mother] couldn’t have known that his dad would leave his wife for her
or that her missed period would become a boy... I see her.. Very
scared. More scared than J and I are now. What will we do if our being
careful wasn’t totally effective?.. I see a big black hole when I try
to imagine having sex with anyone else. But I see a lot of beautiful
men and women when I think of J’s future lovers. ..when he leaves for
school... we will fade from each other’s bodies as we seek new and
different company. ..when I reach for my skirt and blouse,.. I have
missed the family dinner hour” |
| -
“After I get out of college or art school, I might run into J at a
gallery.. I know I will be alone. A hand will touch my shoulder and it
will be J. Neither of us will have been touched by AIDS or pregnancy.
We won’t be particularly enmeshed with anyone else. It will be the
right time for us. And we will know each other again.” |
| From www.pabbis.com |
