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- STONE
-
- July 25th, 1989
-
- He sat in a field with 5,000 Americans. There were families with
- laughing children. There were couples with that "look" in their
- eyes sitting on blankets under that beautiful Georgia starlit sky.
- There were rednecks laughing about some football game they had
- watched that day. There were even the capitalists ambling through
- the chess board of blankets and grass peddling tacky little
- souvenirs for whomever was a fool enough to think he was getting a
- bargain.
-
- But he felt alone that nite as he sat there with his companion.
-
- He felt alone in this field of 5000 because he chose to love his
- companion. (Who just happened to be male)
-
- The isolation he felt amongst all those human beings made him feel
- as if his heart would turn to stone, if not as big a stone as the
- one that these 5000 had come to look at on this nite. He had seen
- hate and anger directed towards his kind too many times. He never
- could understand how someone could hate someone that loved. It made
- him bitter that he couldn't reach out and put his arm around the
- one he loved to express his emotion; JUST the same way that the man
- and woman on the blanket in front of him had just done. It was only
- another priveledge that he didn't have because he was gay.
-
- The laser show started with loud music and a dazzling array of
- lazers that painted beauty in his mind as they bounced and danced
- off of Stone Mountain. The show was in several themes, each having
- its own music and pattern of light. He was in awe and had forgotten
- his bitterness, if not just for that moment. He could only think of
- beautiful images, images of love.
-
- It was then that the finale started and he watched as the music
- went to American themes and the lazers played out fireworks and
- images of war and pain and the American flag. He was shocked as
- uncontrollable tears fell down his cheeks and his throat was choked
- up with emotion. He felt a TOTALLY new emotion just then. And that
- emotion was an ease on the bitterness that he had felt earlier. For
- he realized that he was NOT isolated from the 5000 people that sat
- there. Each and every one of those Americans had the same tears in
- their eyes. And he was probably the only one that realized what
- made him as one with them. He was proud to be an American. He cried
- with his heart full of American pride and at the same time wondered
- how such an emotion could have remained hidden from him for so
- long.
-
- He secretly wished that everyone there in the grass understood the
- revelation that he had just undergone. Perhaps they would
- understand him then. Perhaps thats all they had to do; UNDERSTAND.
- Perhaps he was just a bit idealistic. Perhaps. But he knew ONE
- thing with a certain clarity; He was going to do everything he
- could to make others understand that he lives, loves, hates, thinks
- and feels the SAME emotions that every one of those 5000 assorted
- Americans did that night under the stars, that he was just another
- one of them; A Human.
-
- And that is why he shares that experiance with you now. "We hate
- what we do not understand......"
-
- Gregory Frankin Gooden
-