i don’t consider myself an expert on musician sufjan stevens. although he’s always existed on the periphery of my interests thanks to the recommendations of people i trust on such things, it wasn’t until a few years ago that i first made a concerted effort to pay attention to his work. i don’t remember exactly how it happened but i’m guessing a streaming service’s overeager algorithm served him up in the minute or so between the conclusion of one of my comfort albums and choosing another.

sufjan stevens released illinois — or, as it’s referred to on the album cover, sufjan stevens invites you to: come on feel the illinoise — in 2005. illinois was stevens‘ fifth LP and the second of his so-called “50 states project” after 2003’s michigan — cover title sufjan stevens presents… greetings from michigan, the great lake state — though he would eventually admit the promise of writing a record for every state was merely a promotional gimmick. i’ve never listened to illinois in full, perhaps as subconscious attempt at matching that cheeky energy. in fact, the vast majority of my return visits to the album are spent with just two tracks: “john wayne gacy, jr.” and “the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us!“

as the song title suggests, “john wayne gacy, jr.” alludes to the serial killer of the same name. gacy was convicted of 33 murders, many of them young boys he found while cruising, in 1980 and lived out the rest of his life on death row before being executed on may 10, 1984 via lethal injection. over the course of three minutes and 19 seconds, stevens recounts the rough details of gacy‘s life and crimes before reaching the track’s thesis in the outro, singing “and in my best behavior / i am really just like him / look beneath the floorboards / for the secrets i have hid” over a haunting marriage of acoustic guitar and piano. “john wayne gacy, jr.” ends with the sounds of stevens‘ heavy breathing.

one night while hanging out with my best friend and his most serious girlfriend during highschool, i ended a lull in conversation by announcing over the dining room table — after reiterating my hetero bonafides, of course — an openness to dating a man if asked. “so you’re bisexual,” one of them, i can’t remember which, said matter-of-factly. something about the word “bisexual” terrified me and i laughed it off. i’d grown up quite sheltered, my parents bouncing the family between christian denominations before settling down for much of my adolescence in the seventh-day adventist church. i’d gone along to get along, following the rituals without any real conviction. and while my folks never sat me down and said “you can’t be gay,” the teaching i received in the private, religious schools to which they sent me made those guardrails obvious. i was interested in girls and had a few, short-term relationships with female classmates, but i felt as much connected to heterosexuality as i did to god.

i find it very easy to draw parallels between my past uneasiness at being called bisexual and the introspection stevens performs as the finale of “john wayne gacy, jr.” it felt like a secret i could no longer hide from the ones i loved. the song’s lyrics speak of someone who, in their self-loathing, feels a sick sort of kinship with a serial killer who took advantage of teenagers before killing them. gacy was the perfect example of society’s propaganda image of the predatory gay man, whose homosexual desires led him through a gateway of sorts and towards the most disgusting crimes imaginable. “in a dark room on the bed / he kissed them all / he’d kill ten thousand people / with the sleight of his hand,” stevens almost cries as part of the second verse, equating the loving act of kissing someone of the same sex with the depravity of mass torture and murder. i was taught homosexuality wasn’t just a sin like theft or pride or even heterosexual lust. it was an abomination, something worthy of disgust, and i’m proof that kind of overwhelming hatred is enough to scare even a kid who just gets baptized to make his parents happy.

i was fascinated by “john wayne gacy, jr.” upon first discovery and used to play it on a loop on long, early morning drives into work, but these days, i try not to do that without skipping a few tracks further into illinois for at least one listen of “the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us!” where the former ends in despair, the latter explores stevens‘ sexual discovery at a methodist summer camp. in it, he describes falling for a friend and, eventually, “touching his back with my hand / i kiss him.” like most summer loves, the relationship doesn’t last upon returning to civilization, but it’s obvious stevens looks back on it as a formative and hopeful stage in his childhood development. the song is gentle, far from the horrific serial killer imagery of its antecedent in my playlist, and for over five minutes, stevens equates his young love to the beauty of the rural countryside. “gacy” may struggle with how the titular predator perverted homosexuality into a weapon for trapping vulnerable young men, but “predatory wasp” makes it clear that loving a man as a man should be considered as natural as the flowing waters of the palisades.

i struggle with personal labels. i hate myself, so maybe i don’t expect anyone else to care. i’ve never had sex with a man, so maybe i don’t feel legitimate somehow. i’m scared a lot, so maybe being honest with myself is just another bullet point on my list of fears. in any case, i enjoy the conversation between “john wayne gacy, jr.” and “the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us!” and how, in tandem, they speak to the breadth of the human experience, gay or straight or somewhere in-between. maybe someday i’ll sit down and really listen to the rest of illinois, but for now, i’m satisfied with these two tracks.