A: Flash: Pink peachy La-Z-Boy. Family room. The house I grew up in. Sometime in the mid-90s. Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. Jewel performs. Her first appearance on the show. She sings “Who Will Save Your Soul.” I search for the exact performance. Struggle to find it. What time of year was it? I do not remember. But I was home. Home in the morning on a weekday. Summer maybe. A school break. Or winter. It feels like it was winter. Maybe home sick. But I don’t remember being sick. Jewel did not sing faggot on the TV. That I do know. Faggot is in “Pieces of You.” The title track. A bold choice to name an album after a song that was going to be hard to perform or get radio play. Flash: Twenty-five years later. I watch Jewel perform on a livestream to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the album. I sit on the couch in the living room of my apartment in Harlem. We are deep in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is almost my birthday. November 2020. She makes a joke about how the faggot song would get her in trouble today. Which is something a lot of celebrities keep saying. It feels like a way to make them seem edgier than they are or were. A way to poke fun at “cancel culture,” which in reality cancels very little. But she sings the whole album anyway. Faggot included. Track two. “Pieces of You.” No one cancels her. Flash: I am a baby faggot who doesn’t yet want to admit said faggotry. I have bought Jewel’s Pieces of You. An album I will play over and over and over again on my stereo. In my bedroom. Alone. I will purchase every Jewel album for many years to come. But in this moment, I can’t yet accept her soft voice saying faggot. So I skip the song most of the time. Track two. Press skip. A faggot skipping the faggot song, how very faggot of me. Flash: Back to that pink peachy La-Z-Boy. Family room. Watching Jewel on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. Possibly winter. Possibly Christmas break. I am not alone in the memory. My soon-to-be brother-in-law is there. Already very much a family member. Flash: April 2003. I am in college. My faggotry is coming to light. I begin to tell people. I use the word gay. Not faggot. Not yet queer. It’s 2003 in Indiana, so gay it is. I am gay. The first family I tell is my older sister and brother-in-law. They are supportive. Provide help in telling the rest of the family. I do. Then I go to Europe for two months. England and Ireland. I bring my Discman. Play Jewel. Walking around cities. Pieces of You. Do I skip the faggot song? Track two. No, I don’t. I let faggot fill my faggot ears as I walk into my faggotry. Flash: I am standing on the subway platform in New York City with my husband and a friend who is visiting. It is October. Fall. My favorite season. It is 2023. I glance at my phone. A text. A text from my brother-in-law who never texts me. He has come out. Says I’m 100% gay. Not queer. Not faggot. Gay. 100%. Words leave me for a moment. My husband notices. My friend notices. What’s wrong? I just show them my phone. Flash: Pink peachy La-Z-Boy. Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. Jewel. Me. My soon-to-be brother-in-law. He says he likes the song. Not the faggot song. She can’t sing the faggot song on TV. “Who Will Save Your Soul.” He likes Jewel. I like Jewel. This gives me a strange comfort. This man—or this kind of man—eighteen or nineteen years old at the time, who is about to marry my sister, likes Jewel. Gives me permission to like Jewel too. Permission to be a closeted faggot with a high-pitched voice who likes Jewel. We continue to watch. We do not speak of the faggot song. Then or ever. We do not speak of faggots at all. We just watch Jewel. Her guitar. Her blonde hair. We listen to her voice. Maybe we wonder, who will save our souls?
