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At the beginning of second period, in PC, a bunch of students are crowded around a table looking at the newspaper. I squeeze in beside Conan. UPHOLD FAMILY VALUES PLEA is the headline on the front page of the Hamilton Heights Daily News. Pictured below are thirty or so picketers gathered in front of the school’s main entrance. Conan reads aloud:
A group calling itself Americans for Family Values (AFV) gathered at Hamilton High School to demand that the school’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) he immediately and permanently banned. AFV claims that GSA is a major factor in the “rising tide of perversion” on our city’s high school campus.
The demonstration was prompted by last night’s GSA meeting, which included club members, school advisors, and other concerned adults. Stanley Weiss, father of a Hamilton High School senior. . .
“Cool!” Brian says, giving Eric a high five. “Your dad hit the front page!”
Eric laughs. “I know. He sent me out to Kinko’s to get a hundred copies at 5:30 this morning.”
. . . and spokesperson for the demonstrators, stated that “GSA’s inclusion of a GLSEN (Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network) representative at tonight’s meeting shows their contempt for the values Americans hold dear.” Weiss also claimed that GLSEN blatantly promotes aberrant lifestyles, and recruits innocent youth into a life of sexual perversion.
“Oh my gosh! That’s so stupid!” I say.
Woodsy comes out of her office just as the bell rings.
“I swear, if any of those butt fuckers comes near m . . . ”
“Eric!”
“Sorry, Ms. W. I meant to say hom-o-sex-u-al,” he says, dragging the word out in a sing-songy tone.
Brian and a few others, mostly boys, laugh.
“And I meant to say, go see Mr. Cordova,” Woodsy says, scribbling out a referral and handing it to Eric.
“Class hadn’t even started!” he whines.
“Go.”
Eric crumples the referral into his pocket and slams out the door.
“That’s cold,” Brian says.
“Read that sign, please,” Woodsy says, pointing to the rainbow sign.
Long pause.
Finally he reads, “NO ROOM FOR HOMOPHOBIA.”
“And this, too,” Woodsy says, pointing to the red and white sign over the other end of the chalkboard.
“NO PUT-DOWNS,” Brian reads.
“Thank you,” Woodsy says. “I want to remind you all of your promise to maintain confidentiality and to treat one another with respect. Are we together on this?” Woodsy asks.
There is a general murmur of assent.
“Conan?”
“I’m cool.”
“Steven?”
He nods.
“Tiffany?”
“Sure.”
“Brian?”
“Whatever.”
“Not good enough, Brian. Respect. Confidentiality. Got it?”
“Yeah. Okay,” he says, doodling in his notebook.
Woodsy picks up the paper, shows the headline and picture, then reads the article. The part Conan didn’t get to, before the bell rang, says:
GSA advisors Guy Reyes and Emily Saunders say the special meeting was called to explore ways of ensuring school safety for all students. Benny Foster, the GLSEN representative, labeled Mr. Weiss’ charges of recruitment “ludicrous.” As for upholding traditional American values, Ms. Foster stated, “Maybe AFV should go back to school and brush up on American traditions. Have they forgotten the right to freedom of assembly? Maybe they could revisit the First Amendment. Is the right to free speech not an American tradition?”
“Where’s the truth?” Woodsy asks.
“The part about recruitment into sexual perversion’s a total lie,”
I say.
“It is not!” Brian says, flashing an angry look my way. “Eric’s dad showed me a web site that . . .”
“Let’s stick to the article,” Woodsy says. “What are the major issues here? How does any of this affect life at Hamilton High?”
In spite of Woodsy’s call for respect and no put-downs, the discussion doesn’t quite live up to her guidelines. Here are some comments from period two PC:
GSA is cool.
Homosexuality is a sin.
Homosexuality is the perfect means of birth control.
GSA sucks.
There should be one school for homosexuals, so they won’t be trying to hit on normal people.
Homos breed AIDS.
GSA clubs shouldn’t be allowed.
Everyone has a right to be who they want to be.
Any pervert tries to touch me, he’s dead (this remark was brought to us courtesy of Brian Marsters).
What’s the big deal?
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I’ve only mentioned a few of the comments, but that’s enough for you to see that people are pretty opinionated when it comes to the whole gender identity thing.
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At the jock table, Eric’s passed around copies of the morning’s newspaper article.
“Hey Eric. Your ol’ man’s right. That pervert club should be banned!”
Justin supposedly yells his comment to Eric, but he’s looking at our table the whole time.
“My dad says it’s up to all of us normal people to stem the rising tide of perversion!” Eric yells.
“I’ll do my part!” Brian says.
They laugh their mean laughs.
“How about you, Robert?” Justin calls over to our table, where Robert and Holly sit eating their lunch.
Robert smiles nervously, and keeps eating. We all try to ignore the other table, but it’s not easy. Before the bell rings, the jocks gather up their trash and walk past our table. As Brian and Eric walk past Frankie, they “accidentally” spill stuff on his head and neck—leftover milk, from Eric, and bits of catsup soaked lettuce from Brian.
“Oooooh, I’m tho thorry,” Brian lisps in a phony high-pitched voice. He strikes a limp-wristed pose, then licks his pinky and runs it across an eyebrow, all to the great amusement of Justin, Eric and Anthony. The four of them strut across the quad, laughing, showing off. Hardly anyone else is laughing, but no one is saying what jerks they are, either.
Frankie sits, unmoving, and I remember what he told us that night under the tree—about how when things were really awful for
him, he turned himself to stone.
Kit stands and starts picking pieces of lettuce from Frankie’s hair, wiping the catsup off, one strand of hair at a time.
Conan brings a bottle of water and a handful of fresh napkins back from the lunch counter.
“They’re pond scum,” Kit says. “Don’t let them get to you.”
She takes a dampened napkin from Conan and wipes carefully around Frankie’s ears and at the back of his neck. Conan gives her a fresh napkin and she works on his hair again. All of this time, Frankie looks straight ahead, stony.
Across from Frankie, Caitlin watches, teary eyed. Dr. Kit thinks Frankie reminds Caitlin of her brother. That’s why it’s doubly upsetting to her when anyone picks on him.
The bell rings. We all gather our stuff to go to class, but Frankie sits there, immobile.
Caitlin and Nora stand waiting. So do the rest of us. My guess is that none of us wants to leave Frankie out here alone.
“C’mon, man,” Conan says. “I’ll walk with you.”
Pause.
Finally, Frankie looks up at Conan. “It’s okay,” he says. “They’ve had their fun for the day.”
“We’ll walk together anyway,” Conan says.
Conan, Kit, Nora, Caitlin, Holly, Nicole and I, with Frankie in the very middle, walk to choir. Douglas and Brian are talking near the door to the choir room. Brian points to Frankie and says something to Douglas that gets a big laugh. Brian and Conan, the saviors of the Hamilton High football team, exchange angry glances.
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Once inside the door, Frankie becomes his old, pre-trashed self. He gets the girls lined up to practice a new piece of choreography, and Mr. Michaels works on specific sections with the boys. I’m leaning against the back wall, waiting for my turn to practice with Frankie, when I get a glimpse of movement from Douglas, down close to the piano. He’s standing out of Mr. Michaels’ line of vision, but where the other singers can see him. He nods in Frankie’s direction, then does the pinky licking, eyebrow smoothing thing
that pond scum use as a gay stereotype.
Mr. Michaels turns his head just in time to see Douglas’s gesture. Practice stops.
“Mr. West, show us that again, please,” Mr. Michaels says.
Douglas turns red.
“Lost your nerve, have you?”
Mr. Michaels is an awesome choir teacher. But he’s not what you’d call big on anger control. And when he starts addressing students as Mr. or Miss . . . watch out. We’re all attentive now, eagerly anticipating the coming drama.
“Sneakiness does not become you, Mr. West.”
Douglas says nothing.
Mr. Michaels makes a theatrical sweep of his arm, pointing to the sign, which I suppose means we’re getting another impromptu lesson on the homophobia theme. Cool.
“DO YOU SEE THAT?” Mr. Michaels yells out in his best, operatic style.
Douglas nods, the red of his face now nearly purple.
“BELIEVE IT,. MR. WEST! THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HOMOPHOBIA IN CHOIR! GET OUT!”
Mr. Michaels turns so that his outstretched arm now points to the door. Douglas gathers his things and leaves. Any other teacher would write up a referral, but Mr. Michaels never bothers with paper work when the need to banish a student arises. Once he sent a girl out for chewing gum. Where shall I go, she’d asked. To the fiery place for all I care had been his answer.
“Anyone else suffering from an incapacity to control their homophobic impulses?”
He makes eye contact with everyone in the room, one at a time.
“Choir is about making music together, from our purest hearts and from our purest souls. If disrespect exists among us, then we can’t do justice to music.”
Pause.
“All right. Boys.”
He raises his arms, gives the downbeat, and proceeds with the rehearsal.
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Since there is no rainbow-homophobia sign in Miss Banks room, we should be free of that particular focus.
I mean, I appreciate that Woodsy and Mr. Michaels are paying attention, and demanding respect. But right now, I’m sort of tired of the subject.
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After school I make a quick trip to the library, to return The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart. It was okay, but I didn’t love it the way I loved The Color Purple.
Kit is standing at a table with books spread out all over it. She’s putting little rainbow triangle stickers on the spines.
“What’s that for?” I ask.
“Emmy’s idea. Now it will be easy to find books that relate to sexual orientation and related stuff. . .”
I pick up a book and browse through it, then another.
“There’s a lot here,” I say, taking a sticker and putting it on the spine of the book I’m holding.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t do any good if people like me can’t find it.”
“Nobody’s going to know what these stickers mean,” I say.
“Yeah they will. Frankie’s making a flyer that’ll go on the checkout counter, and Emmy’s going to put an announcement in the bulletin.”
“I’m meeting Conan in about fifteen minutes,” I tell Kit. “Want a ride?”
“If I can get these books finished,” she says.
I take a sheet of stickers and start applying them to book spines. Kit picks up her pace and we finish with time to spare.
We get to the parking lot just as Conan is leaving the gym. The first thing I notice is how badly he’s limping. Then I see he’s holding an ice pack to his forehead. I walk to meet him.
“What happened?”
“Practice got a little rough today.” he says.
“Brian and Justin?”
“Yeah. And Anthony. And your old friend. Eric.” Conan laughs. “Having Eric attack you would be like Wilma fighting off burglars. Except that Eric wears cleats.”
Conan pulls up his pant leg and I see that his shin is scraped and raw.
“He kicked you?”
“More like jumped up and down on my leg.”
Kit walks over and takes a look.
“What’d Coach Ruggles say?”
“At one point Coach yelled at Justin to remember they wanted to save me for playoffs, but mostly he didn’t notice what they were doing.”
We get into Conan’s car for the ride home.
“I can’t drive holding this thing,” he says, handing me the ice pack. His forehead looks worse than his leg.
“What’s with them, anyway?” I ask.
“Like you can’t guess,” Kit says.
Conan nods. “It’s what I get for not laying low.”
“You mean because you eat lunch with us?”
“Yep, I eat lunch at the queer table,” he says. “And it got them riled when I walked to class with Frankie and everyone today.”
“Football players suck!” Kit says.
Conan stops the car.
“Want out?” he asks Kit. He’s smiling when he says it, though.
“Not you. I didn’t mean you!”
“So, who?”
“The rest of those guys,” she says.
“Who?”
“Aye! Get over it!” Kit says.
Conan’s still not moving.
“Okay! I get your point! Anthony, Brian, Eric, Justin, those football players suck. I don’t know for sure about the rest of them. Maybe not Robert.”
Conan puts the car back in gear and starts up again.
“How about, most football players suck?”
He stops.
“How about innocent before proven guilty?”
“I just get so mad. That thing with Frankie today was so stupid, and cruel! And the stuff at my locker? If there were an Academy
Award for assholes, they’d all have statues on their mantles!”
“But you can’t think that just because there are a few idiots in a group, everyone in the group is an idiot,” Conan says.
Kit sighs. “I know.”
Conan eases out into traffic.
I laugh. The psychologist just got a lesson in psychology. Or was it logic? I don’t know. Right now, my nursing impulses are taking over and I’m worried that Conan’s cuts and scrapes could get infected.
When we get to my house, I suggest Conan come in and let me work on his wounds.
He gets out of the car. “Work on me,” he smiles. “Never mind my wounds.”
Kit groans. “I’ll leave you two perverted heteros alone.”
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Inside, I lead Conan to the bathroom. He sits on the edge of the bathtub and I gently wash his leg and forehead with warm, soapy water. I use sterile cotton balls to swab all of the messed up areas with disinfectant.
“Aw! AWW! YOU’RE KILLING ME!!” he screams. “WHOA! ENOUGH! UNCLE! UNCLE!!”
Mom bursts through the door, looking as if she expects to see a murder in progress. She stops, takes in the scene, then sits beside Conan on the bathtub, laughing.
Later though, when we talk about the day, she warns us to take care, to stay alert.
“There are some very angry people out there. There’s a man at work who’s part of that Americans for Family Values group. He says they’ll do whatever it takes to rid schools of ‘perversion’.”
“What does he mean—whatever it takes?” I ask.
“I don’t know. But what you did today, walking to class as a group, is probably a good thing to do all of the time.”
“Don’t worry, Claire. I’ll watch out for Lynn,” Conan says, draping his arm around my shoulder.
“Small comfort,” Mom says, pointing to the ice pack Conan is holding against his forehead. “Look at the mess you’re in.”
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It is dark when I walk with Conan out to his car. I sit beside him in the front seat. We kiss and argue playfully about which one of us loves the other the most.
“I’m happiest when I’m with you,” I tell him.
“I want us to last, Lynnie. Forever.”
“Me, too,” I say. But I can’t help thinking forever is a long time to keep my existence a secret from his parents.
“Conan?”
“Ummmm,” he murmurs, contented.
“Oh, just . . . nothing,” I say. Why spoil a beautiful moment by asking why his family still doesn’t know we’re together?