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Later that night in the spring of 1993, I would learn, Aaron would hang himself in his dorm room in college. The young man I looked up to , that would always be good for a shot of emotional energy and positive spirit when I was feeling down, was struggling with a reality that he felt that he could never share with me. I felt a mixture of hurt, anger, confusion, and shock. A myriad of emotions swirled through my mind. This cannot be suicide, I thought. Someone must have taken his life, for some bizarre, stupefying, crazy and sick reason. It had to be murder. No way my homie would take his life like that.
When I received the phone call from another friend of ours in Chicago to tell me the news, I couldn’t sleep that night. Or the next night. For several nights after this tragedy, I would wander aimlessly around Tuskegee’s campus at night and sit near the famous statue of founder Booker T. Washington lifting the "Veil of Ignorance", wondering what I would do now that he was gone. I was furious on some selfish level that he would take his own life, when he knew that I needed him.
His energy and infectious laugh, coupled with his strict discipline and tireless dedication to study, helped me grow as a young man in that last year of his life by leaps and bounds. Just when I started learning how to stand up for myself, speak out for myself, thanks to him, he was now suddenly gone.
It’s very possible, from what I would later hear, that I was one of the last, if not the last person he spoke to before killing himself.
I had no clue, however, about the quiet “scandal” that was going on in Chicago at Nation Of Islam headquarters while I was at Tuskegee. Apparently, from what I was later told by several sources in the Mosque at the time, Aaron and “several other brothers” in the squad we belonged to, called the Task Force, [[we were called the “Task-Force“, because we were a squad of young men ages 16-25 being groomed to become the next leaders of the Nation of Islam. We considered ourselves to be the “elite”, the rising young guns, those next in line for potential leadership within the ranks of the nation Of Islam.)were having sexual relations with each other .
I was told by several sources that the highest ranking member of the squad, whom we shall call “Ali” had been allegedly caught by his own wife having sexual relations with ANOTHER brother in the same squad , “Marcus 12 X” . [[ In the Nation, when members were first entering the Nation they were given the last name “X”, to symbolize the unknown ancestral disconnect that slavery brought upon the Black community.).
While this fire-storm of controversy was swirling within the ranks of the Nation Of Islam behind the scenes, I was clueless as to any of the events that were transpiring. How ironic, that I was so scared to tell my own squad members that I think I might be gay, and then find out that SEVERAL of them were already gay and I never knew! Go figure, I thought. Why couldn’t Aaron feel free to tell me what was going on with him? What was he afraid of?