And I wanted to hold you

Before you made your escape

But now I should have told you

When your eyes were alive and awake

Always in life we all must make this mistake

And so I go it alone

And the pressure is great

- Neutral Milk Hotel, "You've Passed"

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

- Benjamin Disraeli

Last Sunday night, after a whirlwind weekend (ask me later), I put on a hoodie and some shorts and put in my iPod earbuds and went for a walk. It was a warm night, and my neighborhood with its changing leaves and beautiful old houses was bathed in the golden light of dusk. I passed an elementary school and its playground, and impulsively decided to swing. There's something magical, utterly freeing, about that rhythmic motion. Each time I swung forward I pushed myself slightly upwards, staring into the cloudless blue sky, over the top of the jungle gym, listening to the pounding keyboards of the National and the jangling guitars of Death Cab for Cutie. I felt like I was flying. And I needed that solitude and respite. And time to think, but also freedom from thinking about everything in my life. It was a moment of being.

Since then, as I returned to work and dealt with minor fallout from the weekend's events, I keep resolving to return to that swing. The weather has continued to be beautiful, and I've relished my walks to and from the bus stop and around downtown on my lunch break. Tonight I finally made it over there. And that exhilaration and refreshing solitude were still lovely. But it was different--later, for one, so it got dark soon after I began swinging. People pulled in and out of the school parking lot, several feet from where I was. I started worrying about the potential folly of being out after dark, even in a well-lit, semi-upscale area just a few blocks from my apartment. Those fears weren't exactly eased as I endured a few catcalls on my way home. And when I arrived back at my place, I discovered that the swing had left large welts on the backs of my thighs, wounds I somehow didn't suffer the other night.

I guess you can't ever fully recreate those moments of perfection. They just sort of unfold, even if you feel like you're consciously creating them. And the world intrudes. Though of course safety issues are nothing new for me and other young women, I feel like the story of Tyler Clementi obliquely influenced my unease tonight. His story, which has been all over the Internet today, is one of the more detailed and therefore disturbing of the recent horrifying spate of teens who have committed suicide after enduring homophobic bullying. While the rest of the boys that took their own lives this month were in junior high or high school, Tyler was a college freshman; he'd just started at Rutgers. And while those boys apparently suffered months or years of torment, the incident that supposedly drove him to suicide was specific and very recent. His roommate saw him kissing a man from another dorm room via webcam, posted about it on Twitter, and then threatened to broadcast video of a second encounter between Tyler and the guy. That roommate and a girl are being charged with invasion of privacy and could face jail time, though many supporters of Tyler want them to be charged with manslaughter.

It terrifies me how much hatred there is in the world, and how much of it is casual and socially acceptable. Part of me is inclined to feel at least a little bad for the students responsible, if only because they're young and were just goofing around in the self-centered, insensitive way of lots of teens. And even if the cruelty was a contributing factor in Tyler's suicide, he almost certainly had other, pre-existing issues. But goddamnit, this is 2010 and they're college freshmen and they invaded someone's privacy in a callous, clearly homophobic manner. Maybe one of the reasons this particular story hurts is that just a week ago, Dan Savage of the sex column Savage Love launched his response to these young suicides, "It Gets Better." The video project aims to promise teens that despite the awful treatment and lack of acceptance they face in high school, it does get better, often immediately after graduation. But Tyler's suicide shows that even after high school, even at a huge public university in the Northeast, hatred can still rear its ugly head.

Anyway, I've got a lot going on in my life right now, personally and professionally (I just got offered an editorial internship with the Twin Cities office of The A.V. Club, so I'll be taking that on in addition to my Mpls.St.Paul Magazine workload), but I feel a strong but unfortunately unfocused desire to act. I feel so deeply that this issue, even more than marriage equality or Don't Ask Don't Tell, is crucial and urgent.

Maybe it seems sketchy or self-centered to draw a line from homophobic bullying-induced suicide to fearing for my safety as a woman. But a glance at the Facebook pages that have been set up to condemn Tyler's Rutgers roommate and his accomplice show that not everyone gets the connection between types of tolerance. The pages are full of violent threats (including calls for them to get the death penalty) and racial slurs. I don't understand how people can condemn homophobia and personal cruelty and then turn around and advocate violence, or be casually racist. I don't understand why people don't see that it's all connected, that tolerance for one group should mean tolerance for all.