Thanks to Nikki
By Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
Once, after participating in a panel discussion on sexuality and faith at a local university, I was approached by a student with the usual request to sign her copy of my book. But when she handed it over, I was shocked. The soft-cover bristled with post-it notes. Pages were dog-eared, the text striped with fluorescent highlighter, the margins crammed with handwriting, and the cover ripped. She might have run over it with her car.
That memoir was used.
My first reaction—How dare she treat my book so poorly!—swiftly morphed into amazement. This young woman had devoured my book. Unwittingly, she offered me a gift of such enormous proportions even in the moment I knew I couldn’t grasp the consequences. I was awed.
Swinging on the Garden Gate tells the story of how coming out bisexual reconfigured and revitalized my relationship with Christianity. After eight years of writing and dozens of rejections, I’d been lucky to have the Unitarian press pick it up, but you have to understand—as thrilled as I was to see my first book in print, I was also, as is often the case with authors, secretly disappointed. Publication was not what I’d anticipated. In the little niche Swinging filled (readers looking to reconcile faith with sexual identity), the book did very well. I spoke on a circuit of GLBTQA advocacy groups, preached from dozens of pulpits, and to this day Swinging is the best book out there exploring coming out as a metaphor for spiritual growth. But the first print run was 750 copies. The cover design was uninspired. No major publication reviewed it. At the time of that panel, my small book had been obliterated by a tidal wave of new publications.
Fierce longing had compelled me to write the memoir, and over those eight years of work the ache had only increased. I wanted…what? To be heard, recognized, known? To arrive? I assumed that launching my story into the public would satisfy that inner hunger.
But it didn’t. From the pulpits and panels and bookstore podiums I sensed myself straining for something that wasn’t forthcoming. Despair hovered at the edges of my days. What was the point of so much effort if, in the end, my longing wasn’t assuaged?
The young woman introduced herself as Nikki; she was a sophomore, raised Catholic, and my story had given her the courage to come out lesbian. She thanked me profusely. I scrawled something inadequate on the title page.
A few weeks later she turned up at the United Methodist Church where I was a member. Only slightly embarrassed, she admitted she’d sleuthed me out. So, I got to know Nikki well, and eventually learned that Swinging had awakened in her a call to ministry. She joined the United Methodist Church, a radical step for a born-and-bred Catholic; she attended seminary; she integrated her sexual identity and faith, living both openly and joyfully. She housesat for me when I was out of town, pampering my cat and neatly folding my dishtowels.
But Nikki’s greatest gift to me was the mutilated state of her book, the image of which imprinted itself on my psyche. I see it clearly today—evidence that she’d chewed and digested my story; a symbol that, to one woman, my memoir mattered.
Oh! The significance has taken years to penetrate. What I’ve always taken on faith, that my writing has value beyond the private sphere, Nikki confirmed with hard evidence. Her battered book was proof. I no longer need faith because now I know.
Stories knit themselves into the fabric of our lives, irrevocably re-creating us. That my story did this for Nikki seems a miracle, magnified by the unlikelihood of actually getting to know her and watch her grow into her own remarkable story, with my words receding in its margins. She flourished in seminary. She loved her pastoral internship. Then, at age 25, Nikki died suddenly from a rare infection from dental work that spread to her heart. I can’t stand that she’s not wearing high top sneakers while serving some hip Minneapolis congregation. She had been bouncy, big-hearted, smart as a whip, and all that potential ended with her death.
When I think of Nikki now, I’m amazed by what her too-short life gave me: A conviction that my stories, that all our stories, matter. They heal and transform individuals, in important and usually hidden ways. Unlike great sales figures or book reviews or opportunities to speak, unlike literary awards or writing residencies or second printings, Nikki eased my writerly ache. Now that she’s gone, in some mysterious manner I sense myself writing with her, our stories interweaving in mutually bolstering and liberating ways. By asking for my autograph, Nikki scrawled her signature on my creative process. What more could a writer want?
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the novel Hannah, Delivered; a collection of personal essays, On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness; and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, winner of the silver Nautilus Award; and The Release: Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done. She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice and hosts an online writing community. You can learn more about Elizabeth at www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com and www.spiritualmemoir.com.