Dear Friend,
This week’s reading aligned almost perfectly with the end of Part One.
A good title reveals much without revealing anything, and “Broken Everythings” fits the bill. In the first few pages of this week’s reading, we rapidly shift between what looks like the budding of a beautiful romance, and a more confident Jonathan, to a scene littered with violence, racism, and homophobia. How quickly things can change.
Jonathan’s tried and true coping mechanisms also start to change at this point. Previously, when the bullying would get bad or when his emotions would get too overwhelming, he could drift off into his imagination and be safe up in outer space, drifting among the stars, or he could hide away in his secret room and talk to Ziggy. After the encounter with Scotty and his “apes,” however, it seems like those escapes are changing. When he fantasizes a safe space for himself and Web, it’s not in the stars, but lying there on Earth, looking up at them. And after he returns to the lake where the most significant moments in his life seem to keep happening, where he has a flashback to his first kiss and the trauma that followed, he races home to his room only to find that Ziggy doesn’t answer him this time.
So, what might all of this mean? I think there are two main shifts. First, Jonathan is still hyper-fixated on safety, but now it’s not just his own safety he’s worried about. He’s included Web, and to some extend Starla, in this as well. This is something that happens as we grow and begin to accept others in our lives; they become just as important to us as we are ourselves, which means our plans sometimes need to change to accommodate these extensions of ourselves. Jonathan can’t keep Web safe by hiding him away in his little secret room, so his methods–and fantasies–have to change.
I also think it’s a shift in him internally, though, and the way he sees himself or potentially his future. He’s starting to resist the effects of the shock therapy, which is a barbaric kind of “gay conversion therapy.” Jonathan is still obsessed with being fixed, with being “cured” and “healthy,” but he’s also starting to realize that he enjoys being with Web, and that even if it hurts to be touched by him, it’s worth it. On some level, though Jonathan still thinks there’s something wrong with himself, he’s beginning to recognize that it’s not the kind of something that can be changed. Perhaps that acceptance will eventually lead to the realization that it wasn’t a brokenness in the first place, just a difference.
So, while the romance builds between Jonathan and Web, Jonathan’s self-discovery begins to take shape as well. There’s an interesting question there, I think, about how much of our exterior experiences instigate our internal changes. Do we become who we are in solitude, or are we shaped by each experience we have?
In general, I’m inclined to believe that everything and everyone is interconnected, so that every encounter changes us and anyone else involved, to lesser or smaller degrees. In this way, I think it’s important that Jonathan is getting out into the world a bit more and that he’s having experiences that are new, with new people. Without these, it’s hard to believe he would ever leave the “safety” of his secret room, or to come down out of the stars.
That said, Jonathan’s moments of solitude allow him the time and space he needs to reflect and to process, and I wonder how much of that we gift ourselves.
Meditation
“I hope one day we’ll all see each other without these stupid labels and instead see each other for who we really are. Starfolk.” -James Brandon
Love,
~Adam
Contemplative Reading Project 
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