46 pages • 1 hour read
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
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Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Lie Detector”
During his time at Grambling, Blow is recruited by the CIA. All goes well until the lie detector test. The agent asks if he’s ever used drugs, to which he replies “No”—a true answer, but the needle wavers, causing Blow anxiety. Then he asks Blow if he’s ever had sex with a man. He answers “No,” and again the machine registers the response as a lie. Blow desperately tries to justify his answer, telling the agent about Chester’s abuse. He takes the test again, but even with a “Yes” to the same-sex question, the machine still registers a lie, as if it can intuit Blow’s confusion. He does not get the internship, and he gives up on a political career, convinced a “liar” can never be elected to public office. Furthermore, the images of men return.
With his junior year nearing its end and no definitive career goal in sight, Blow focuses on journalism, landing an internship at the Shreveport Times in the graphic arts department. His hard work and long hours pay off, and soon his boss sends him to news meetings. One morning, he visits a house in which a family dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. On his own, he gathers details, sketches a layout of the house, location of the bodies, and specifics of the generator that emitted the toxic gas. He compiles a diagram on the newsroom computer, and the Times runs it on their front page.
Meanwhile, his mother earns a master’s degree, and her improved income allows her to build a new house. His Uncle Paul slowly slips into mental illness, standing motionless in a field of tall weeds, staring at nothing. Blow passes his time distracting himself from his depression. He drinks at a local “juke joint” and has a sexual fling with a local girl. When he realizes that she’s falling in love, he ends the relationship, acknowledging that to him the sex was merely a diversion.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Just-in-Case Gun”
As Blow’s senior year begins, his life is roiled by conflict, including the unraveling of his fraternity, the end of his relationship with Greta, and the dashing of his political aspirations. On the positive side, however, the Shreveport Times offers him a part-time job. His journalism work and its accompanying commute, plus school, keeps him busy, “and busy was what I needed” (212), he writes. One day, Blow’s editor suggests he attend a job fair in Atlanta sponsored by the New York Times. Stopping for gas in Alabama, Blow sees a line of graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall that he finds both misogynistic and racist. It serves as a reminder that racists and misogynists still exist in the world, especially in places where the fragile détente between Black and white gives way to open hostility and mockery. It clarifies for him what the South really is, and he concludes that he needs to get away from it.
At the job fair, he interviews with every newspaper except the New York Times, because he failed to preregister. He politely waits for an opening. Six hours later, as the fair is winding down, they finally agree to interview him. While impressing the representatives with his vision of “visual journalism,” they can’t offer him an internship. The next day, however, the Times informs him that they are creating a graphics department, and he will be its first intern.
Shortly thereafter, immersed in work by day but haunted by “male apparitions” at night, Chester calls, and Blow speeds home intent on killing him. As he approaches the Grambling exit on the interstate, he takes it, driving past the campus, a visual reminder of his accomplishments. Killing Chester, he realizes, would be surrendering to a boy’s vision of the world rather than acknowledging his maturation and his ability to transcend his past. He returns to his apartment and calls a friend just to hear her voice. After the anger abates, he understands that Chester’s abuse does not define him, nor does he deserve to die because of it. He recognizes that solving problems at the point of a gun is a coward’s solution. He also finally acknowledges that he is attracted to both women and men, and that hiding that reality has largely been the cause of his depression. Despite the lies the world has told him, he is not broken or in need of fixing.
His early explorations of his gay identity are a steep learning curve. The first time he goes home with a man, he realizes he’s not prepared for it and ducks out the door with a slapdash excuse. Over time, he learns to loathe the term “bisexual” for its overly reductive simplicity. His same-sex attraction is not a toggle switch but a tide that ebbs in and out, out of his control, and his attempts at intimacy-on-demand with men often fail. His attraction to women simply outweighs his attraction to men. Shortly after college, he and Greta marry. They have three children but divorce after seven years.
After a series of internships at the Times and the Wilmington News Journal, Blow works for a year-and-a-half at the Detroit News before the New York Times hires him as a graphics editor. Soon after, he is hired to lead the entire graphics department. Over time, he writes “visual op-ed” pieces and rediscovers his love of writing. Meanwhile, Gibsland has become mostly a ghost town by now, and the stores Blow grew up with are mostly shuttered. His parents have reconciled, though not romantically; rather, they arrive at a truce, as the bond of common grandchildren links them and draws them closer. As his role at the Times evolves to include more writing and fewer graphics, he uses his platform to advocate for issues close to his heart: the dangers of guns, the toxicity of bullying and hazing, and support for the outliers and the different.
Chapters 11-12 Analysis
In his final chapters, Blow wrestles with his demons once and for all. After he fails a lie detector test, ending his chance for an important internship, he must choose a new career path: journalism. More importantly, he must confront his own fears. The sound of Chester’s voice after so many years of depression, isolation, and feelings of worthlessness triggers him into a homicidal rage. Speeding down the interstate with murder on his mind, Blow comes to a literal crossroads: stay on the interstate, drive to Gibsland, and kill Chester; or take the Grambling exit and avoid the whole bloody mess. It is fitting that Blow opens the book with this scene, given that it is charged with significance for his future self. It is no exaggeration to say his very life hangs on this moment; he faces a likely prison term versus literal and metaphorical freedom. Blow takes the exit. He slows down, letting his rage dissipate and replacing it with something else: awareness of his own accomplishments and the knowledge that a boy who always felt unseen and unworthy has achieved remarkable things. He reaches a level of honest self-reflection that only hindsight can bestow. With murder gone from his mind, he begins the hard work of self-examination and healing.
Much of that healing requires an honest look at his sexuality, the problem that has bedeviled him since he was a boy getting wary looks from the old men under the trees. The process takes years of trial and error, but Blow ultimately concludes that his sexual attractions exist on a continuum and defy easy categorization. His tastes fluctuate, but social norms demand hard-and-fast distinctions. While acknowledging “bisexual” as the closest label to describe his orientation, he concedes its connotations are too restrictive for what he feels.
Blow also ties up loose ends: His parents attain a workable coexistence, old homes are replaced with new ones, and Gibsland suffers the fate of so many small towns, withering away into practical nonexistence. Through these concluding observations, a singular truth emerges: Time and age provide perspective, smoothing the rough edges that seemed so vital in younger years. Blow’s mother Billie has forsaken much of her anger and achieved educational and career success. His father Spinner has given up his gambling and cheating. He spends his time atoning for his past neglect, even becoming a deacon in the local church. And Blow, who has devoted so much of his life to running, hiding, and then compensating for it by overachieving, finally finds peace with himself and with his life as it is. With political aspirations so firmly fixed on his horizon, he comes to terms with the fact the he will never go to law school and never be governor. He learns to focus instead of what he has: career achievements that would be the envy of any Ivy League graduate, an inner fortitude that has allowed him to overcome poverty, racism, and sexual abuse, and a life that has given him the platform to write about issues he cares deeply about. He has channeled the “fire shut up in [his] bones” into enormous personal and professional success.
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