John Paul Brammer finds himself in a secret situationship | The Moth

What this episode is about

In a small Oklahoma town where early relationships are the norm, John Paul Brammer recalls a formative "situationship" with Corey, a charismatic and athletic Christian youth who captivated him despite their differing beliefs. Their clandestine connection navigates theology, identity, and burgeoning attraction, ultimately challenging Brammer's understanding of love and acceptance in a conservative environment.

Key takeaways

• In small-town America, love can read like an unorthodox theology: full of contradictions and secrets.
• Navigating identity in rural Oklahoma is like spelunking: dark, tight spaces with the occasional glimmer of hope.
• Clandestine relationships often thrive on the thrill of secrecy but can also become a soul's imprisonment.
• When friendship becomes something more, it's often a terrain littered with unspoken rules and emotional minefields.
• Love's true essence may lie in comfort and familiarity, even when defined by society's reluctant parameters.

Who speaks in this episode?

• John Paul Brammer (Host) · 12 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: John Paul St. Juan Diego Hernandez Bramer
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Witchaw Wildlife Refuge, John Paul St. Juan Diego Hernandez Bramer
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Elk Mountain, Witchaw Wildlife Refuge

Notable quotes from "John Paul Brammer finds himself in a secret situationship | The Moth"

• Town, was the bread winner of the family. He got used to being at my house. I got used to being at his. We would play Call of Duty, roam the aisles of Walmart, commit light…

  about Witchaw Wildlife Refuge · at 2:56

• Still rural Oklahoma. And I kind of thought I had enough stuff going on as it was. I was Mexican-American.

  about John Paul St. Juan Diego Hernandez Bramer · at 4:53

• One day in the summer, we took one of these hikes to Elk Mountain, about a three and a half mile trail that we' done probably dozens of times before.

  about Elk Mountain · at 6:28

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• John Paul St. Juan Diego Hernandez Bramer — Person · Narrator’s self-referential full name used for comedic/emphatic effect · 2 mentions · first at 2:30
  This appears to be the narrator referring to himself with an exaggerated, saint-studded Catholic-style name to underscore his Catholic conversion/confirmation and the intensity of his feelings ('had fallen deeply in love').

Places & events

• Elk Mountain — Place · Setting · 1 mention · first at 6:28
  The location where a pivotal event in the narrator's relationship with Corey occurs, leading to a significant emotional realization.
• Witchaw Wildlife Refuge — Place · Setting · 2 mentions · first at 3:08
  A natural area where the narrator and Corey spent time together, reflecting their relationship dynamics.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 People tend to pair up pretty early in Cash, the small town in Oklahoma where I'm from. My parents, for example, met as sophomores in high school. And I was around that age when I first met Corey. Blonde hair, blue eyes, big muscles, Christian fundamentalist, completely out of my league. Nevertheless, Corey took an interest in me, the shy, quiet kid. In Oklahoma, those are synonyms for homosexual. But I was deeply in the closet. Being gay in my neck of the woods just was not an option. I remember one kid got bullied for a week solid because he wore a Hollister logo shirt to school. And another kid was like, "You've got a bird on your shirt, like a girl."

0:49 Still, when Corey sat down next to me in first period chemistry, my heart fluttered. I'll never forget his first words to me. Yo, what's your relationship with Christ like?

1:06 I knew Corey was part of a weird Christian youth group, one of those hip non-denominational churches that's down with skateboarding and skinny jeans, but not women's suffrage. I meanwhile was very busy pursuing becoming a devout Catholic because it was something to do. I was in the expedited classes for the elderly and the dying for reasons that were never made apparent to me. But this is all to say Cory and I were starcrossed from the jump. And I was way too invested in my sacraments to deal with his Protestant nonsense.

1:42 But he was so cute and I was so desperate for male attention of any kind that I was willing to engage in theological debates to get it. And so I agreed to meet Corey halfway. I wouldn't go to his weird church, but I would meet him for lunch. And then we met for lunch again and again and again. We spent many a lunch hour in his parked car fighting over the nature of God and debating the concept of sin and exploring each other's bodies. And that last one really threw me for a loop as well, but I didn't want to question it.

2:23 Other than that, practically Bible study. Um, within the span of six months, Corey left his weird youth group. I was confirmed. John Paul St. Juan Diego Hernandez Bramer and I had fallen deeply in love. I got to know Corey like the back of my hand. I knew that he was deaf in his left ear from a fist fight he got into as a kid. So I always had to speak into his right. I knew that his dad was an out of work flooring guy who had been hit hard by the recession and that his mom, a secretary at the smoked meats company in town, was the bread winner of the family. He got used to being at my house. I got used to being at his. We would play Call of Duty, roam the aisles of Walmart, commit light theft, go on hikes in the Witchaw Wildlife Refuge. And when when we were certain we were alone and that we wouldn't get caught, we would fool around. And this was actually a perfect system for me, a person with no intention of ever coming

3:21 out as gay, but who still kind of wanted to do hand stuff. But Corey, for his part, made it abundantly clear that he wanted to be normal. We could fool around, but only when he wanted to. We should do our best to avoid being seen together too much in public and we should definitely never ever acknowledge that there was anything gay going on between us because to do so would be to bring the whole friendship to a close. These were good old-fashioned heterosexual hand jobs between best bros.

3:58 Thank you. Those were Cory's rules, and I abided by them, reluctantly at first, but then without even questioning them. Before I knew it, Corey was completely in the driver's seat. Literally, even when we were in my car, he didn't let me drive. I am a horrible driver, but I got used to it. I truly believed in my heart of hearts that this was as good as a closeted country kid was ever going to get, and I shouldn't do anything to mess it up. I mean, this was a guy who liked me, a guy who understood me, a guy who touched me now and then. That was more than I was used to. And I guess that's all I thought I could get.

4:43 I mean, where else was I going to find a situation like this without having to actually come out? And I was pretty sure that my family wouldn't care if I was gay. But to be honest with you, this was still rural Oklahoma. And I kind of thought I had enough stuff going on as it was. I was Mexican-American. I was left-handed. That is two things. I was and continue to be incredibly embarrassed to be alive. And I am really just trying to make it through this whole life thing without raising too much of a fuss and without taking up too much space. And that is definitely how I approached my relationship to Corey. I never wanted to ask for too much. And so my grand plan was we would continue being best friends until one of us died.

5:28 We could move to the big city where we would both get jobs and wives of course and we could be neighbors and I could survive off the scraps of affection that he sometimes offered me behind closed doors. And that to me was really dreaming big. A couple years like this went by and then came the summer after we graduated high school. I was going to OU about an hour and a half away and Corey was going to the community college in town. I didn't know how to tell him how terrified I was at the idea of being apart from him. I mean, I'd seen this guy almost every single day for the past two years of my life. I'd memorized all three of his orders at all three of the restaurants in our hometown.

6:10 We knew each other's deepest secrets. We were each other's deepest secret, but we didn't really have the language to talk about that sort of thing. So, we just didn't. We just kept doing what we always did. We kept hanging out. We kept fooling around. And we kept going on hikes. One day in the summer, we took one of these hikes to Elk Mountain, about a three and a half mile trail that we' done probably dozens of times before. And it was on that trail that day that we saw the cutest thing ever. First came the big wet nose, then two bulbous eyes, then the fuzzy reddish hair. a precious baby bison.

6:51 This, to be clear, was a death sentence. Some oy wisdom for you. Where there's a baby bison, there's a mama bison. Bro, was the last thing I heard before the mama bison came charging at us through the brush. We threw ourselves off the untamed side of the mountain. Ivy and rocks and branches scratching and scraping us the whole way down. And within a matter of seconds, we were far from the path that we just been on. But you know, we get up, we dust ourselves off, try to laugh at the situation. But then we go looking for the trail.

7:27 And we look and we look and we look. The thing about being lost in the woods is that it takes a while for your brain to accept. You kind of hold on to this delusional belief that life as you know it is just a couple steps that way. And then you go a couple steps that way. And it isn't. But, you know, we're being dudes about this. So, we're just like, "Yeah, yeah. We're we're fully in our delusion in more ways than one. We're like, dude, no. Things will be fine. The trail is that way. Bro, bro, bro, we came from that direction."

8:02 But as we're looking, it is dawning on me that people wouldn't even realize we were missing until nighttime at the earliest. And then the clouds gather, the sky darkens, starts to rain. But it wasn't until I heard a rattle by my feet that I realized we were in big trouble. A lot of things went through my mind as I looked down at that rattlesnake. Some of them made sense, like, I wonder if my mom knows I love her. Others were kind of silly, like I was not done watching Burn Notice. I back away slowly and when I'm somehow certain that I have survived this close encounter with a rattlesnake, I said what I should have said hours ago. I say, "Corey, we need to call the rangers."

8:50 My phone is dead because I'm me. And so I asked to borrow his. And he pulls it out of his pocket, but he hesitates. Can't do that, man. To which I respond, why not? He goes, "Bro, if we call the Rangers, they're going to send a helicopter, and if they send a helicopter, it's going to be on the news." To which I was like, "Who cares?" I was so unwilling to accept that my best friend, this guy that I knew so well, this guy that I was in love with, was acting like this right now. But it was because I knew him so well that I knew exactly what was going on in his brain.

9:33 There were rumors in town about me and Corey. People wondered why we hung out together so much and what we got up to offscreen. And I know that those rumors really bothered him. And so, as crazy as it might sound to you and me here today, I'm going to walk you through life according to Corey in that moment. And it goes something like this. We would call the Rangers. The Rangers would send a helicopter and them sending a helicopter would lead to a news story with a headline like two gays rescued from Brokeback Mountain with our pictures underneath it.

10:09 That is exactly what was going on in that little heterosexual brain of his. Heterosexual. But just because I could read his mind does not mean I liked what I saw. To tell you the truth, I was heartbroken. I didn't know that his shame of us, his shame of me went that deep. And then I did something out of character. I snatched the phone out of his hands. Unprecedented, shocking. And we both stared at each other in silence for a little bit because I don't think either of us knew that I had that in me. Because I think for the first time, I was choosing myself. I was letting him know I'm not going to keep sacrificing myself just to keep you comfortable.

10:54 And so I have his phone in my hands and then I call the Rangers and it rings and it rings and it rings and I do think that my little moment of triumph is going to be squandered and I am going to die on situationship mountain. But then the heaven's part, a voice on the other end of the line. Are you lost? So tender and so compassionate. I thought I was going to break down right then and there and say more than you know. To which in my mind she might have responded "Baby you're gay. Happy National Coming Out Day." Um anyway, I she directs me to a valley which will lead to a clearing which will then lead us to the parking lot. And as we're making our way down the valley, Corey is practically moping about being saved behind me. And I think he recognizes what I recognize, which is that we never would have found this way out on our own. So I have a real spring in my step. And we get to the clearing

12:09 and through the branches I can see the parking lot. And I can tell you right now, I've never been so happy to see a 2009 Honda Civic in my life. I go up to the car, I open the door, I slide into the driver's seat, thank you very much. And I am wet. I am scratched. I am itching. I am bleeding. But I'm also proud. The world seemed new and bigger now. Like it had a little more room for me than I thought. Thank you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "John Paul Brammer finds himself in a secret situationship | The Moth"?

John Paul Brammer (Host).

What is "John Paul Brammer finds himself in a secret situationship | The Moth" about?

In a small Oklahoma town where early relationships are the norm, John Paul Brammer recalls a formative "situationship" with Corey, a charismatic and athletic Christian youth who captivated him despite their differing beliefs. Their clandestine connection navigates theology, identity, and burgeoning attraction, ultimately challenging Brammer's understanding of love and acceptance in a…

What is mentioned in this The Moth episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Elk Mountain, Witchaw Wildlife Refuge, John Paul St. Juan Diego Hernandez Bramer. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "John Paul Brammer finds himself in a secret situationship | The Moth"?

The episode runs 13 min; the transcript is about 2,139 words in 18 timestamped sections.

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