My Own Gay Body

I'm not entirely sure when I realized that I was a homogay. Sure, there were intensely clear hints as I grew up: playing gynecologist with female friends, thieving my brother's baggy grunge clothing (wish I'd gone the Angela Chase grunge-route instead), awkwardly dependent relationships with a few female teachers, running through boyfriends more out of boredom than excitement. I developed a massive, heart-tripping crush on a female manager at my first job (I was 17), and that carried me through a handful of boys that tried, in vain, to get my undeterred attention. She must have been my catalyst, as she was the first woman I confessed those churning feelings to; the letdown was gentle and unbelievably kind. (I am still not convinced she is not of my female persuasion, but alas, I imagine I may never know.)

I didn't come out (via a letter I left in my parents' bedroom before I went to work) officially until I had my first girlfriend, and while my mom definitely cried (she says because I wouldn't have a wedding, etc), it just... was. No fight, no disownment, no challenge, no beg for reconsideration. My brother cited that we could now check out girls together. My mom had actually, it turns out, been planning on taking me to lunch and asking me if I was gay. I think she was relieved I headed her off and eliminated the need for that. AND HOW AWKWARD WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN.

I came out at the age of 20. It was a good age for realization and personal gay growth: slightly too young to abscond into the darkness and carnival-esque nightlife of young homogays, and two years past high school, where I never would have emerged as gay. At 20, I was mostly free. I could pick whom I wanted to tell, and deliberately avoid conversations with people that didn't need to know. I wasn't wearing rainbows, wasn't sporting any kind of alternative lifestyle haircut (I waited till I moved to FL before I took the axe to my long hair), wore men's jeans simply for comfort, and had, like, a Phish sticker on my black 1995  VW Jetta. I was gay, I was okay, and the world was still spinning on its axis.

That was 10 years ago. A lot has happened since then: one move to FL and back, a handful of serious relationships, some not so much, a well-rounded trail of heartbreak, completion of my bachelor's degree, getting a Real Job Teaching, meeting the woman of my dreams, lusting after the woman of my dreams for 3 mostly silent years, capturing the woman of my dreams, completing my Master's degree, continuing to Teach.

And to cut through my long-winded chase, that's where all of this is going. The Teaching. To be exact, we're going back to high school.

Why, you ask? Why did I choose to teach high school? Simply, I like teenagers. I truly do. I could not teach elementary level because I am not skilled at math and I don't know what to do with little kids, and I really, wholly do not want to teach middle school because I loathed my own middle school experience and cannot fathom purposely or intentionally going back. Also, I dislike clinginess, and middle schoolers are clingy.

So, high school. I guess, in some ways, I became a high school teacher because I would have loved to have myself as a teacher. I know, ego, but some of that is the gay element. I did not have a single out gay teacher in all my years of public schooling. I also somehow eclipsed this in two different colleges. Wait, that's a lie: one gay male professor as an undergrad. I knew who the lesbian professor was in the English department, but never had her. Oh, I lied again. I did have an out lesbian professor in grad school. But that's generally far more common than in high school, or middle school.

IN FACT. I did have a gay teacher in high school, two perhaps, but they were absolutely, concretely, definitively closeted. So much so that one married a (gay) man. I mean, really.

So here I am -- the gaymo high school English teacher. My first year, I had very, very short hair. I ended up growing it out over three years only to cut it off again last year. While I very rarely outright announce my sexuality (I say "rarely" and mean "practically never"), kids do pick up on it. I am not overtly feminine. I do not wear skirts/dresses/very trendy clothing. I look cute, practical, comfortable, sometimes quite gay. My mannerisms in the classroom are sarcastic, pot-stirring, entertaining, slightly off-the-wall. I am a hardass in the sense that I have high expectations and stick to them. I am learning to use high support with the high control. But I have always been soft on the inside. I will not be manipulated, but I pay attention, and I know when my kids are off. Because of some rough experiences and lessons learned my first two years of teaching, I have a hard time being That Person for my students. I can't be the counselor. A) It's not my job, and B) It's too draining to balance that with teaching. But I do care. It takes a close look to see it, but I do. And they know it. Okay, fine: some of them know it.

Within my caring, I shield myself from them. I have often lied and spun stories about how I am married to a man who lives in another state because of his job. That was the general story for my first two years because so many kids asked, and I didn't know how to deflect. Part of me still believes that these kids don't need to know anything about me, but I falter with that when it comes to the kids who need a good role model: gay or not. Why lie? To protect them? Weird/maybe/I don't know. To protect myself? From what?

From parents. Parents are my biggest fear. I can handle rumors and lies, mostly, but parents are an entirely different game, and one I really, really, really hate playing. I have a lot of fear regarding the stories kids spin to their parents, and that alone often pushes me back into the book-filled closet in my classroom. Now, I have no doubt that most parents, upon meeting me, pick up on my gayness, as most moderately open-minded adults do. That I can't hide, and don't care to. It's the in-between, the kids knowing and disliking/not understanding/fearing, that scares the living shit out of me. I worry about how that translates to their parents, particularly those who are not open-minded.

I'm not saying I should walk in to class on the first day and say, "Hi, I'm Ms. ______, and I'm a homogay." That's not what I'm angling for; do heterosexuals do that? Obvs not. I shouldn't ever have to announce my sexuality because it is not the determining factor in who I am, nor is it something anyone needs to be concerned about. And yet, sometimes, I want kids to know because I want them to see that it doesn't matter. Over the past two years, I have been called out by some of my students. And I have not had a negative response or reaction. When they call me out, and there's a certain comfort level already established, I don't back down, and I don't lie. Consistently, it is my "minority" or "low class" or "already gay" students that call me out -- and they do not care. They'll actually ask me about my girlfriend. It is completely normal, and dammit, it's cute.

Not cute, however, are the words that have recently been thrown around my classroom. Among these are: Homo, Fag, Gay, He-She. And when referring to my beloved Rachel Maddow READ poster: Lez-be-real and Lez-be-honest.

I do not, cannot, let this fly unnoticed. I notice, and I face head first. I will not have an unsafe classroom environment. The response has largely been (feigned) innocence that translates quickly into (purposeful) ignorance. The culprits are all boys, save one girl with the "He-She." The boys have been troublesome. Their ignorance is cutting me in new ways. It's too early in the year for them to have picked up on me being gay unless they picked up on it via one of my former in-the-know students. And none of the comments were directed toward me. Had they been, I would not be writing this as it would have been handled in a very different way. Does that sound ominous? Yeah, good, because I seriously don't know how I would have handled it. Anyway.

Some may view these words as meaningless, insignificant, not harming anyone because they weren't directed at anyone, necessarily, they were just tossed around without thinking about the possible effects on an innocent bystander/listener. I don't. I don't think that, believe that, or ever will. For all intensive purposes, I was the silent gay kid in high school, completely unprepared to come out. I heard those words. They were not directed at me (at least never to my knowledge; I put up a damn good hetero front), but I heard them, and must have felt them in some way. I don't _ever_ recall any teacher standing up against the language. Believe me, I know what I'm dealing with here: ignorant 14 and 15 year old boys who are terrified of anyone thinking they're gay, so they super deflect by using the words in a derogatory way so that everyone knows they don't like gay people, and therefore could not be gay themselves. I get that, I absolutely do. I was the girl in middle school that started a rumor that another girl was a lesbian because I didn't want anyone thinking I was the lesbian (funny how that worked out, of course, seeing as I am the lesbian, and that girl definitely is not). I get the deflection, the self-protection, especially when there's an internal fear that you might be the gay one.

But the difference between me and the teachers of my past is that I won't stand for it. I won't hear the language and ignore it. I will meet it head-on and take it down, vowel by vowel, disarming its power and working everyone back into an environment, even just for 90 minutes a day, where it's safe to be  who you are, even if you don't know exactly who that is just yet.

and then, there was:

what happened to passion

what happened to my desire to do this thing well,

this thing that pays,

that keeps me moving m-f,

that puts me in the direct line of fight

sometimes fire

i end up so exposed

and raw to the bone.

and passion (when outside these walls

wild and full and pure beauty)

is a misnomer

or i just haven't found it

here.

yesterday my girlfriend

(because she is secretly a lawyer)

made me see sides i didn't want to see

or think about

because obviously of course

she asked me questions

i've already asked myself.

i don't have the answers, really

now or ever

but really

i don't remember why i chose this

other than for my love of language

words

stories

hypotheses

theories

long-winded tall-tongued whirl-shake discussion.

i like symbolism, too.

and symbolically my presence here

is death, i think.

i am not fulfilled.

i am not moving forward.

i am entirely stagnant and impatient

save for those brilliant moments

the ones that re-root me

and answer "why?" with "yes."

when i get the urge to escape

wanting to run away

buy a farm

live in a tree

pack my cats (and my girl) and go

it's clear:

i need change.

so i dream of the west coast

of beginnings and continuations

of a slate unmarred by

a reign of unholy terror

sandwiched between attack dogs

and cannons too loose to trust.

i think maybe that is the worst part

that i have nowhere to go, here.

they have taught me to trust no one, not

a one of them.

largely because

they don't appear to trust me.

i have to be professional

in 45 small minutes

i have to buck up

slap a smile on

get my shit together

and be who i am

while being who they want me to be.

in a trickle of honesty

i don't know how i'm going to pull that off

it's too early in the year to cry

over such petty, bullshitty things.

or miscommunications.

or an intended-to-be helpful chat.

i tell my people

to suck it up

and move on.

they don't always listen

and apparently

neither do i.

Where do we go from here

One of my coworkers ran into me in the hall today. She was on the wrong floor; I rarely see her otherwise, but always, always enjoy our stream-of-consciousness conversations.

When she saw me today, and after she realized she'd gone up an extra flight of stairs, she said: "You know, you should really be on tv."

From there, we talked about vocabulary, lexicon-flexing, teaching English, expressions, immersion, Middlesex, homosexuality, ES classes, epiphanies, influence, change, growth, Dr. Ruth, and so on. I so thoroughly love those conversations, the kinds that spread over landscape and grey matter without effort. Complete ease, unsuspecting flow.

As we parted ways, she turned and called over her shoulder: "So what are you going to be when you grow up?"

Without hesitation (there may have been a slightly abashed shrug, because for as much as I like to talk about myself, I worry that people A) don't take me seriously, and B) see me differently than I see myself because, yes, I can be dense/a little slow on the uptake/silly-excited about the most minute things/and occasionally I think I don't show my intelligence simply because I don't want to) I said: "Finish my masters. Get my PhD. Go teach college level. From there... wherever it all takes me."

And write. Sometimes, all I want to do is write. It's just that the words get stuck on my ribs, stuck in my fingertips, smeared around my teeth and tongue and nothing comes out the way I expect it to. But, I write.

And I write because I generally can't form sense with my voice.

Part of this, all of this, is because of my dirty habit called Over-Thinking. I place too much value in not only the things that people say to me, but also the way that they say them. I pay more attention to tone than I do to body language. It's easier; I hear more than I see. Maybe I pay too much attention. Or maybe I don't pay enough.

love was- entire excellently steep

I do my best writing in the car. The road palmed flat before me, windows down rushing in the brink of fall air, words and sounds fleeing from the speakers: maybe it's because I feel free, there, untamed and entirely capable of going wherever, however I want. I rarely do, except for that one time in Florida.

My mind produces more thought than what should be humanly possible. I prefer it over mental stagnancy, but when I can't morph the thoughts into written sense, the struggle overwhelms itself. Today, I was thinking in linear bursts.

Tonight, I had a head-on collision with my filing cabinet.

I was looking for artifacts to take to grad class tomorrow night (stages of my literacy history: I chose my first book- written in Grade One, my second book- written in Grade Seven, though my About-The-Author states/lies that this is actually my fifth book [I lied a lot as a kid; I apologized to my mom about this tonight and she said: "Finally"], and a paper from my senior year of English, where I scored a 3 for writing and 5 for format). I wasn't looking for anything else- I never consciously am- but my hands soon grew heavy with Love & Memories and The Weight of It All.

The Weight of It All is everything non-romantic in my past. Featured, tonight, was The Master Poet, or: one of the most influential people that's ever been in my life, Len Roberts. He passed in the spring of 2007, but not before I was able to workshop with him for a handful of months. It was pure chance, that opportunity, and I still am not sure how I lucked into it. It was there and then that I met G.C. and happened into a few whirlwinds that would eventually reroute my life in ways that, at the time, I didn't imagine possible. I tugged the red folder from my filing cabinet, and out spilled marked and unmarked poems, an envelope, and a few packets. I once wrote a poem titled "Most Days," and I can't remember why it is so named, but Len's comments are what struck me tonight. Three years ago, it wouldn't have made sense to me. Tonight, I understand what he meant by writing "*Rimbaud" in the margin, and "surreal" near the top. Rimbaud. Rimbaud! That's fucking crazy! Now that I've studied Rimbaud, along with Baudelaire, I'm a little shocked/stoked that Len scrawled that very name in the margin of my poem.

Not fifteen minutes later, I found a box of school supplies from my first year of teaching. Sitting on top was a bright orange folder with a Dodge Poetry Festival, 2006 label on it. I have no recollection of receiving this folder; I went to the 2008 festival and have my red folder, but I wasn't at the 2006. I have no idea where I got the folder from, but: I opened it tonight, and the first handout on the right hand side of the folder is of Len Roberts, poems and bio. I had no idea (did I? I can't remember, now) that he read at Dodge that year, or ever. When I went to Dodge last fall, Len was heavy on my mind. I accredited to the simplistic connection of poetry-poet, but apparently the depth of thought runs deeper.

I also happened upon some Love & Memories tonight, and I felt nothing. I thought about removing the rubber band from the stack of France correspondence, but decided I didn't feel like rehashing all of that. I did read a piece of notebook paper littered with red pen that remarked on my traveling to see her, and how I meant "so very much" to her, and that she wasn't going to get mushy in the note; she would save that for the weekend. I don't know when it's from, but I'm thinking the winter of 2007, pre-2008, pre-first significant break-up. It doesn't matter. I read it and put it away.

I don't regret any of it, for the record.
It's become a part of what's happened in my life.
It just is.
Perhaps it just was.
I don't want love like that.

The Obscure Object jolted me out of... something... this weekend. She with the words- I love when it comes out of nowhere. I love when she comes out of nowhere (she always has). I love the taste of chance and happenstance and possibility. I very much like the idea of her finally starting to not just listen, but hear.

This picture

Sketch the walls first:

the slates of color washed about strips of blank

canvas, unburdened by what may lie in this past

and shielded from what may yet come.

My heart is not like that. It never

has been.

But the walls streamline the scatter of my life

within these boundaries- the flourish of self

locked down by expectations and qualifications.

It doesn't ever matter

because my mind flails like a squid thrown from home.

Space divided by time and conflict; sometimes

I'm glad you're not here.

what will you wake up and see

Booked my flight this morning. Still have to figure out where I'm staying, but I have an option to fall back on if nothing else pans out, so I'm not worried. And I have to rent a car, but again, not worried about that. The flight was the agent of nerves. I suck at planning, and in the middle of my tab-flipping this morning, I lost the perfect flight for the perfect price. But all's not lost because I ended up with a very similar flight for about $20 more. Whatev! It's done, and I'm getting a mini-vacation out of it since I've decided to fly down Thursday night and come back Monday evening. & the conference itself is Friday night-Sunday afternoon. So I'M EXCITED!

In this morning's madness of planning, I realized that I've managed to lose one of my credit cards, and I cannot figure out how this happened. It has a balance of zero, so clearly it's somewhere in the house, but it's not anywhere where it should be. Got a new account # already, whatever, I'm over it.

But as I was searching for the card, I found a fortune cookie fortune that makes the most fucking sense ever: "No one is standing in your way anymore, it is time to move forward."

HOW FUCKING PROPHETIC IS THAT. Other than how the , should be a ; -- I can look past that and realize that I needed to find this today. After I almost let my ex piss all over my happy fucking parade on Friday, I needed to read that fortune. She's not standing in my way anymore. She was, and I let her, but now... no one is there. The only person that could be in my way is myself, and I'm not willing to do that to myself any longer...

...hence the proactive nature of forward-thinking and planning for this relatively major event. I've obviously never done anything like this before, and it seems that everyone I talk to about it thinks it's a much bigger deal than I do, which is funny because I tend to exaggerate things, but it makes sense-- because if I allowed myself to realize how kind of huge this is, I'd be completely freaked out and I'd stand in my own way. See how I did that? That's what we call PROGRESS.

And anyway. The whole thing makes me feel really fucking smart and, oh I don't know, progressive? Necessary? Validated. I'm still amazed.

drown out my wanting / drown out my fear

And it was all worth it- the blistering
toes and ankles, the sheen of sweat
veiling my skin, the untameable
flips of longer hair. My piloted sense
of authority twining my irrepressible
free spirit, that daunting, docile creature
twirling below an adopted look of astringency.
Seventy, ninety-odd bodies mashing
through, jonesing for the first breath of fresh air.
You passed to my left, your gaze flickering
across our paths, inches again- you sway so close to me-
and my eyes sought your summer's blue with some unfurled
awareness (proximity, seventh sense, the heart's
wanderings). I saw, you know.
I saw your first and second glances. The tripped-up
gentle whiplash of a moment passing too quickly,
a chance to impress an image into the curiousities
of your memory. One, two. Twice.
I smiled through both, wishing my mouth had a sense
to open on its own. And your beauty trailed me,
seeks me out several hours later. It compounds emotions
and mislabels wanderlust, because we both know and
because we both won't say.

What do I do with all these letters I wrote to myself

I know it's not a lost cause (you probably are, you know that?) but it is tangled. Weeds to cut through, sidestep the roots.

I'm having a hard time understanding that it's 7pm.

I slammed my car door shut today and caught a glance thru someone else's window. I thought it was you. Such a visceral thought, a synthetic jolt through my already tense body. The same nose, the same slips of hair shaping the chin. How could she have your nose? It's plagiarism, art-copy, motionless irreducible fallacy. Her hair was short, shaped differently. I've rationalized this in the several hours that have passed. It wasn't your car. It wasn't you. "Why don't you just grab her and kiss her?"

Tying your shoes is easy.

We spun NYC in the palms of our hands and somewhere in the spins of the park your teeth let go of my heart and I haven't seen it since. Off somewhere with my common sense, my practicality, my way of making life work. I Freudian slipped anyone for anyway and I told you this class was going to further instigate my natural inclination to think.too.much.

It's not an accident / you meant to touch me

I'm trying to get past this, you know. I'm trying to let go and forget and not meet your eyes (which is something I've never been good at- not even when it's the mystery of just us and four imposingly warm walls and a gloss of chatter running over, under, all through the mess of unspoken theories and hypothetical feelings). I gave word that I was tired of having these feelings. Sick of the absurd unrequited nature of the propelled-by-lack heart/swell I'd grown of you. And I am sick of it, I'm just not sick of you. I gave word. My word. And the very next day, you drew me back in with such a simple gesture, a natural movement that shouldn't have turned my insides to pulsing warm marbles. The original grip, the surprise gentle slide of a caress reserved for my picture perfect romance (the one where I keep putting you in the role of my Other, my mirror image, my like opposite). But there it was: that prized movement, you against me, so simple as we are but so unnervingly complex (as we are). And not moments later, that dead-lock eye to eye match of wit against authority. A moment tangled between reason and desire. My yen suffered the blow of time and place; my security won again.

It wasn't an accident.You meant to touch me.

IDR and I talked about it/you last night. We were covering Lacan in class, one of my favorites, and the idea of the Lack was at the front of our minds. IDR said my confused want for you is due to what I'm lacking in my life. Of course it is. I mean, it makes sense beyond sense. I don't have what I want, I have something that I thought I wanted and simply cannot handle, and I see in you, crazy maybe, what I want. Need? I don't want to need anything, especially you.

I can't get you out of my head.

We only ever do the same things twice

A slow waking. I wake to sleep and I take my waking slow.

There's no mystery anymore. We dissolved it months ago, put it all on the table and massaged away the ugly remnants of things that should have never been. And so now, the words lie evenly, surrender slowly. We make sense. I know you (how/ time // resolved fascination, and I just do). I like it just as it is.

A lazy day [productively lazy with laundry, grocery shopping, tying up of loose ends, filing taxes, going to read for class] restores the soul.

Our latest conversations sit sweetly in my brain. Nothing more, nothing less. It just is.

I stood my ground this week and was, somehow, subsequently rewarded. Thing is, I'm not a doormat. Maybe I was, in that stifling debilitating "former life," but I've outgrown those roots and settled into something less malleable. One of my whimsical fantasies came to life. Fantasy/wish. Semantics.

Day to day, I watch things fall apart around me. Lack of will, lack of want, overabundance of lack of care. A desire for destruction.

You may never change // I already have.