As I wrote in my memoir, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones”:

“Lawrence felt at ease coming to the shop and saying things there that he didn’t say elsewhere, the air always pregnant with a ‘maybe.’ Maybe he was flirting. Maybe not. If he went too far, maybe that would be okay. Maybe he was being mocked. Maybe he was being entertaining. Maybe, just maybe. He knew the things he was saying were dangerous, because just being himself was dangerous. He was operating outside the rules.”

Others like Lawrence hid more or lived in repression more.

“But not Lawrence. He wouldn’t pretend. He wouldn’t hide.”

In the book I called him Lawrence, but that was not his name. One of my mother’s only requests was that I change everyone’s names. She was expressly worried about publishing “Lawrence’s” name. I acquiesced.

You see, more than a decade after I remember him coming to the upholstery shop, he was found murdered — tied to a bed — in a neighboring town. The gossip was that his life had been taken because of the way he had lived it. To my knowledge, no one was ever charged with that murder. Such were the dangers of being both black and different.

In a 1984 interview, when my cousin and I both still lived in that small town, James Baldwin was asked about the roots of homophobia. He responded: “Terror, I suppose. Terror of the flesh.”