Kashif Andrew Graham
See also: The author’s 2023 Pride Essay, “Notes on [Jeremy] Camp.”
I.
It is April 3, 2024. The downtown Nashville traffic is finally clearing. I gun the Jeep, but my relief is broken by the activation of a pedestrian crossing. Red lights flash as a lone Nashlorette prances into the street. I sigh and my gaze falls to the opposite sidewalk. I first see the chestnut head of spikes. And then he comes into full view. Jeremy Camp is a little shorter than I imagined, flanked by his wife and kids. He pulls open a restaurant door, and he enters with his family. I’m going to lose him. I honk. His head whips to look up the street, but not at me. He’s gone — into the restaurant a moment later.
II.
Essa Noche’s final number at Brooklyn Pride ends with an Ice Spice wig and confetti. Through the raining pink squares, I talk to a guy from Alabama. Tennessee, I point to myself. His friends call out to him, against my silent wishes. He goes. I leave BK Pride listening to Jeremy’s “This Man,” because it’s what I have always done.
III.
There are two songs titled “Stay” in my iTunes catalog. They are both songs for the leaving kind. The first is Camp’s “Stay,” the titular song from his debut album. Here, he takes on an intercessory role, pleading with the listener to remain in the light. The other is from Destiny’s Child’s 1999 album The Writing’s on the Wall. Here, the speaker wonders if finally granting her lover sexual gratification will ensure that he remains. In both songs, seemingly written from completely opposite vantages, there is that ache of uncertainty. Camp implores, “Come on now, won’t you stay?” Destiny’s Child asks, “Would you stay, stay?”
IV.
In a 2004 article for CCM Magazine, David Jenison describes Stay as a heartfelt tribute to Camp’s late wife, Melissa Henning. I find no evidence to corroborate this claim in the album’s liner notes. But if taken as true, Stay becomes a reflection on mortality. Stay — on this side of heaven.
V.
Baltimore is a great city for thinking. It is with a postcoital clarity in the midtown area that I plot my return to Nashville. I know that I am returning to parties full of red lights and white men. My stomach is a stone fruit as I buy tickets to several Pride parties. I have a feeling I will cry at these events. But I hope that my friends’ love can be enough to overpower the feelings of romantic emptiness that Pride often brings.
VI.
There are two things I would have asked Jeremy that day. First: Had he read my first essay, “Notes on [Jeremy] Camp,” from last year’s Scene Pride issue? Second: What happened to his friendship with Trey Pearson? In a July 2020 Twitter post, Pearson writes of his coming-out experience: “Some of the big Christian rockstars that were super close friends of mine won’t even talk to me anymore (cough cough Jeremy Camp). So much Christian love.”
VII.
I have found only one article that refers to Camp as a contemporary Christian music heartthrob: a 2004 review on allmusic.com. In reflection, the mechanics of the Christian music heartthrob are similar to your average heartthrob, except you aren’t supposed to identify them as such. Beauty, muscles and whiteness still help sell albums. Women want to be with them. Men tell themselves that they want to be like them, or be liked by them. I write about the Christian music heartthrob because I belong to the latter category, and I am still bereft.
VIII.
There is something homoerotic about the men who take pictures with Camp, hand on his flexed bicep. At the very least, it is about spectacle. But the obsession with Camp’s arms finds its way to the online forum Tapatalk. In a thread titled “Young Meaty Christian Rock Star,” presumably gay men advise each other on which performances to watch for the best display of Camp’s physique. They confess to not knowing who he is but purchasing his album Carried Me after glimpsing his muscle-bound portrait on the cover. “Kaching$$ one extra sale due to muscle!” user SwoleBoi writes. I find their honesty refreshing, and I am envious.
IX.
I have wondered for some time now how long the South could keep me. It’s like I am the leaving lover, and the South is singing stay to me. And I am saying yes, but under certain conditions. Once, I looked for a Jeremy-like figure — I wanted to be the apple of his eye. No more. I will stay if I can find a place where the sunlight is like gold leaf on the surface of the water. I sit on a rock. I flex my toes. Beside me, a boy with golden-brown skin brings a burger to his mouth and makes the music of culinary approval. A few more of my friends come to sit, balancing charred offerings on Styrofoam plates. Someone snaps photos. A kite flies. Feet and hips follow each other in the way that they do when you are learning a new dance. A playful punch meets my shoulder. The girls are laughing at something sweet — “Chile, his head always in the clouds.”
Meeting this year’s Pride Parade grand marshals, highlighting the best of the Nashville Pride Festival and more
