Free True You by Janet Jackson Page A

sounds like a good answer. That sounds like you want to be serious about her before you have sex.”
    “She says that the only reason I’m hesitating is because maybe I’m gay.”
    “Is that true?”
    “Maybe.”
    A long silence followed before either of us said anything. Then Todd began to speak about his older brother, who had come out to his parents two years before. His parents had flipped out and disowned him. They were religious fundamentalists and convinced that their son would burn in hell. I remember Todd saying, “I don’t know which is the right move.”
    We kept walking and I waited a minute or so before saying, “Maybe it isn’t a move at all. Maybe it’s just you being you. You need to take your time and figure out how you feel.”
    “I feel a lot of different things,” he said.
    “We all do.”
    “And it’s hard to decide. It’s hard to say.”
    “You don’t have to decide and you don’t have to say. It’s not like you have to make a declaration, especially since you aren’t sure. It’s complicated, and maybe it’s okay just to live with the complications the way they are. I know that’s uncomfortable.”
    “Janet, I’m really afraid of what my girlfriend will say if I keep putting her off. And I’m also real scared of what my parents will say if I tell them I have these mixed-up feelings.”
    “Sometimes parents are the right people to discuss our mixed-up feelings with, and sometimes they aren’t.”
    “But I love my parents.”
    “That still doesn’t mean that they’re the right people to hear what’s in your heart right now. They come from a different place and time.”
    “I don’t want to disappoint them,” said Todd. “And I don’t want to disappoint my girlfriend.”
    “I understand.”
    “So what do you think I should do?”
    We stopped walking and stood in front of a big department store. The mall was bustling. Everyone was in a hurry.
    “I don’t know, Todd,” I said. “Maybe the best thing is just to wait awhile.”
    The actual song on
Control
—“Let’s Wait Awhile”—was recorded before I met Todd. It’s a song that I wrote with no particular person in mind. But after that discussion, I connected that song to Todd and millions of young people who might need encouragement to think rather than act, to pause rather than move. This album was the first time I got to really put so many emotions and feelings into words. It was very personal. And people could feel that when they listened to it.
    Around the time of
Control
, when I was breaking off my professional relationship with Joseph, I received a letter from a girl who had liked
Janet Jackson
and
Dream Street
.
    Dear Janet,
    I think of us as friends, even though I know we’re not. You’re an imaginary friend, and that’s good enough for me. We have a lot in common. We’re about the same age
and we both have older brothers who made big successes of themselves. One of my brothers is a heart surgeon; another is a professional athlete; and another runs a bank. There’s a twelve-year gap between them and me. I’m the baby of the family. Our father is a military man and, as a child, we’ve lived all over the world—Japan, Germany, England, and about six different American cities. Living on an army base is strange, and living with a military dad is even stranger. It isn’t that he doesn’t love his children. He does. He loves us all very much. But he sees us as soldiers. He’s our commander. He gives instructions that we must follow to the letter. If we don’t, the penalties are really severe. He even treats Mom that way. Sometimes I wish she would disobey him—just so I could see what would happen—but she never does. She’s afraid. So am I. And so are my brothers. They’re all doing exactly what he told them do. We all have to be the best at what we do—and that’s probably a good thing.
    Except that I don’t know what I’m really good at. My dad tells me I need to be a teacher and