It’s amazing how many times I’ll be doing an interview and the spouse or friend of the person I’m profiling will exclaim, “I didn’t know that!” in response to one of their answers.
This week it was my turn. I’ve known this week’s subject for some time. My former neighbor, Crystal Cheatham, studied English at Andrews University in Michigan before attaining her MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. She has worked with churches and universities across the United States and joined Soulforce as a 2012 Equality Rider.
Cheatham has worked as a teacher and ghost writer and is the founder of The IDentity Kit — a program that allows at-risk LGBTQ teens to receive a free kit to guide them through coming out in religious spaces. (I’m the token atheist on the board.) A singer/songwriter, Cheatham’s jazzy vocal style has been compared to Norah Jones and Adele.
PGN: Start at the beginning. CC: I was born in Memphis, Tenn., but we moved around a lot. My mother was a nurse and my father was an artist/photographer. Shortly after I was born, we moved to Washington, D.C., then we moved again in the States and then they planned a missionary trip to Zambia, Africa, where my mom is from, and we moved to Zambia and lived there for a while.
PGN: When did you live there? CC: From ages 3 to 6. We have family there so I go back pretty often, though I haven’t been since 2007.
PGN: Something you remember? CC: There are these Army ants in Zambia that are incredibly dangerous. You have to vigilantly guard yourself against them. They march in a straight line unless you block their path with something and then they scatter. They’re organized and they’ll devour anything in their path. We had a garden and chickens on our land and one day we woke up and they had eaten all of our chickens! But the scariest time was right after my brother Abraham was born — he’s four years younger than me. I remember him waking up screaming and my mother ran into the room and there were Army ants under his blanket and all over him. She turned on the lights and they scattered everywhere. She had to get the vacuum and started sucking them up. She had to empty the bags into boiling pots of water. He was OK but it’s crazy to think my brother was almost devoured by pests! Another time we went to a petting zoo and my brother Oliver was walking around without a shirt on. When we were kids we all had outie bellybuttons, so when he went to feed peanuts to one of the monkeys, the monkey was more interested in his belly- button than the peanuts! It started chasing him around the enclosure and my dad had to rescue him. He wasn’t too happy about it, but we thought it was hysterical and we still tease him about it.
PGN: Before you terrify everyone, give me a pleasant memory from Africa. CC: No! It’s beautiful there! One of my favorite things was picking mangoes after the rainy season. Our neighbors had a giant mango tree that hung over our fence and we would just swipe the mangoes and eat them right there. During the rainy season we would have a blast. The front of our house had a small hill that turned into our own slip-and-slide. We would put on our bathing suits and have a great time in the mud!
PGN: How would you describe Zambia as an adult? CC: It’s incredibly modern, more than you would imagine. A booming metropolis, one of the most forward of the African cities. Zambia also shares the Victoria Falls with Zimbabwe and it’s a matter of pride who has the better view of the falls. [Laughs.] Of course we do! The natural wonders are amazing. They have incredible game parks and safaris. The last time I visited, we stayed in one and it was amazing. During the day there would be giraffes and elephants wandering the camp but at night they told us to stay inside because there were hippos wandering around. They are one of the most aggressive creatures in the world. If you really had to go, they suggested you use a chamberpot.
PGN: And what was little Crystal like? CC: I was really sensitive. I would cry over everything. [Laughs.] It was so ridiculous, my dad had to threaten me with punishment. We would have staring contests with my chin wobbling trying not to cry and my dad saying, “Don’t you dare!” I was such a goody-two-shoes, I would do everything by the book. If I even thought I may have done something wrong, I would start to cry. I could never lie, not even to cover for myself or my brothers.
PGN: When did you end up in Pennsylvania? CC: We were in Michigan for about four years and then moved to the Pottstown area, where my dad was the dean at Pine Forge Academy, a Seventh-Day Adventist school. Eventually they bought a house in Chester County — Cochranville — and that’s where I did most of my growing-up.
PGN: Were you raised Seventh-Day Adventists? CC: Very much so. The Adventists really pride themselves on being in the world but not of it. Yes, we live in the world with other people, but we don’t agree with or participate in a lot of their practices. It’s a very-standoffish way of socializing, as in, “I’m going to listen to you and treat you civilly but I’m going to translate whatever you say into my own religious rhetoric.”
PGN: Example? CC: Take Beyoncé. We might recognize that her lyrics may be fun but at the same time know that they are something we shouldn’t listen to. That she was hyper-sexualized. She would be treated like she was running around naked. We weren’t allowed to listen to any pop or secular music. [Laughs.] We were allowed to listen to gospel music and Boyz II Men because we liked the four-part harmonies.
PGN: Which segues nicely into … When did you start singing? CC: My family is very musical. I have a huge extended family — both my parents have six or seven siblings — and whenever we got together we would sing. My grandfather had a church and my grandmother would play the organ or piano. We’d do Handel’s “Messiah” every year at Christmas. So I started singing very young but I had horrible stage fright so I could never do any solos. If I was supposed to do one, I would chicken out and my cousin would have to step in at the last minute. Later, I went to Blue Mountain Academy and began to play the guitar and sing and really started to enjoy performing.
PGN: What was the biggest crowd you played for? CC: It was at the Oshkosh Festival in 2009. It’s a giant youth festival the Adventists put on for young people from all over the world. I performed in front of about 30,000 people.
PGN: I understand you had a life-changing experience shortly after the concert. CC: Yes, at the festival I’d been asked to teach, doing songwriting and skits revolving around music. I was doing a special project videotaping kids around issues that were of concern for them. The church comes down very hard on kids when it comes to “sins.” They get demonized for feelings and things that come naturally with adolescence. Pastor Manny Cruz, who had a very large church in D.C., was interested in what I was doing. I thought he was incredible, an amazing man and a good mentor. I thought I wanted to go into youth ministry and he invited me to perform and speak at his church. It was a high point for me. I’d just put out my first CD and I decided to come out to him. At first it was cool and he asked me if I wanted to speak to his youth congregation about it before performing. It was as if a door had opened and there was a path for me to walk on for life. Before I got on stage, he pulled me aside and said, “I don’t want you to speak about your homosexuality or anything you’ve prepared. We have someone else who is going to talk, we just want you to sing.” I went on stage and did five or six songs and left. The next day, I asked him why he didn’t let me speak. He said, “Well, you’re a practicing homosexual and we’ve decided that it’s OK for you to sing, but we don’t want homosexuals leading the youth or sharing your story.” It was as if a brick wall had been put in front of me. I just started to cry. If I had known that was his reason the night before, I don’t know that I would’ve gotten up to sing. To let someone say, “We want some of your gifts, just not all of you” … PGN: How did you realize you were gay? CC: When I turned 13 we had a huge birthday party at my house. We were eating pizza and watching TV and I was zoned in on Julia Stiles in “10 Things I Hate about You.” After a while, I realized all conversation had stopped and everyone was looking at me. Out of the blue, one of the girls said, “Are you a lesbian?” It was just … I can’t even recall ever having heard the word or knowing what it meant, but for some reason it resonated as truth to me and I felt like this giant chasm opened up between them and me. In a split second I felt like an “other” and it was shaming and scary and something I didn’t want to be a part of. Right there, I made the decision to learn what it was that they had that I didn’t, to cast off any traces of this “lesbian” thing they saw in me. Up until that point I’d been a tomboy. I was the only girl and I’d beg my mom to let me take off my shirt so I could play with my brothers. We had lots of land so we would build things and erect tepees and have fun, but after that incident I knew I had to be more girly. When my father passed away when I was 15, there just wasn’t room to even care about it. I didn’t crush on boys, I didn’t think about anyone, I was too busy working through the grief. Then when I went to college, those feelings started to come up again and I thought, No, this can’t be! I dated guys and ignored it again. But in my last year, I fell in love with one of my roommates. I didn’t even realize it until she said, “You’re totally gay!” I thought, Shit! You’re right. I began to accept it and moved forward from there.
PGN: How did your father die? CC: He had brain cancer. He was diagnosed before we moved to Zambia. He had a huge mass that they operated on. Before they took him in, he was fervently praying, “Please don’t take my life. I have two kids and a wife and we have so many plans together.” They opened his head up and took the tumor out and there was not a trace of cancer, nothing. He had a huge scalpel-question mark on the side of his head for the rest of his life but he survived for several years before it came back again. He passed away on Dec. 23, 2000.
PGN: What are you up to these days? CC: I’m still doing some speaking engagements for IDK but for the most part that’s on the back burner. I’m a program manager with ArtWell, which is a nonprofit that provides art programs to schools and community centers and church groups. It was started after 9/11 when there was a lot of community unrest. They use art and poetry to help people build confidence and interact better with others. Part of their mission is to build literacy and enhance communication between different cultures and faiths, ultimately to reduce violence and create peace. I’m excited because we’re collaborating with The Attic to do a program on coming out. Young people don’t really get a chance to celebrate coming out or develop a story that they can share when people ask them about the deeply personal aspects of their life. A coming-out story is so important. We’re forced to come out to our parents and our families — sometimes three or four times before they get it — our friends, at school, at work and, if we change jobs, at work again. We work on maintaining our dignity without becoming defensive.
PGN: How did your family react? CC: I didn’t come out to my family until I was 23. I was finished undergrad and moved back home while I was applying to grad schools. I finally got the nerve to tell my mother and she was flabbergasted. I think she would have preferred it if I told her I was pregnant. She told me my father would roll over in his grave, which is the harshest thing my mother has ever said to me. But after three or four days of silence and mulling it over, she began to joke about it. She sent me a text, “I need you to go to the store and get some groceries … my gay daughter.” We started going out to lunch and I would answer her questions and she in turn came out to my extended family for me. [Laughs.] I think she just wanted to tell someone! It’s a mistake many of us make, to ask someone else to keep your secrets, to expect someone to stay in the closet for you. She called me and said, “Hey. This is spreading quickly, you need to tell your brothers before they hear it from someone else.” So I took Oliver out for dinner and before I even uttered a word he said, “You’re gay.” Then I told Abraham and he said, “Oh, OK, so anyway I was telling you about … ” It was pretty smooth. The only hiccup was my half-sister Faye, she’s still pretty devoutly Seventh-Day. She would send me Bible texts but she’s OK with it now too.
PGN: Nice. So what would be the title of your autobiography? CC: I’m actually working on my story right now and calling it “Hope Versus Reality and Bending the Laws of Gravity.”
PGN: Your favorite picture of yourself? CC: I have a picture of my brothers, Oliver and Anthony, and me in Zambia. We’re covered in mud, looking as if we’d just done something incredibly naughty, yet our faces look innocent.
PGN: If you could be the spokesperson for one product, what would you endorse? CC: Cat litter! Lesbians love their cats and everyone would be like, “Oh my God! You’re the lady from the cat litter commercial!” [Laughs.] I’d get a lot of action!
PGN: A celebrity encounter? CC: I’ve never had one. My cousin is the singer Brian McKnight, though.
PGN: What’s next? CC: I just released my newest CD and it was really hard to put together. So much of my music before came from faith and religion; now that I’ve moved on from that, it was incredibly difficult to find my place but I was able to do it. It’s available on www.crystalcheatham.com!
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