Views
I Was A Gay High School Student
I Was A Gay High School Student
By Lee Lynch
A tiny article in my local paper announced that the National Education Association has encouraged schools to adopt policies that punish harassment and discrimination against homosexual students and teachers. “About time,” I grumbled over my breakfast muesli. Later I tried to remember what it had been like for me in high school.
I was a Gay High School Student. Sounds like a tabloid headline, but in reality, I had a great time. It wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, but I was a tough little dyke, at least I thought so, and I thrived on the adversity that came with being special.
At fifteen I barely knew what the word homosexual meant. At fifteen and a half, I knew I was one. This was in 1960. Don’t ask me how I came to be so proud of being gay. I agonized over the stigma for two weeks – and I clearly remember that it was two weeks – before I embraced being gay with a convert’s fervor. Many years later I reconnected with a friend from high school who came out as an adult. She told me that I’d always looked like I had a wonderful secret. I had a big crush on her at the time, so I imagine she saw an eagerness on my face to share that secret. I must have strutted along the hallways like a baby butch rooster, cruising for my kind.
If it was that hard for me to contain my ebullience back then, I can’t imagine the challenge for gay kids these days, some of whom may go from the high of a gay pride march on a Sunday to the downer of an early morning math class on a Monday.
It occurs to me that non-gay teens also move in an underground world. Sex, goth, drinking, whatever the current vices may be, drive all young people to hide their pleasures. Was I any worse off than the straight girl who needed birth control and feared to seek it out or the young guy who couldn’t speak his love for girl or boy because of raging acne on his face? It all feels the same at age fifteen.
Except straight kids had a support system. There were adults they could choose to talk to. It was okay to be in love with someone of the opposite sex, unrequited or not. Gay kids had no such luxury. Proud as I was, half of me was continuously, silently defending my life choices, my existence. The verbal slurs hurt. Standing upright under a crushing load of disapproval left its scars. Energy I could have used to write to my full potential or succeed in sports or to help others was wasted in strategizing to survive. If just one teacher or Girl Scout leader had reached out and said, “You’re okay, kid,” what a weight would have been lifted from me.
Other than that, I didn’t suffer much. I had one tormentor, a young man who I later learned had been dealing with his own sexuality issues. He called me names and did a lot of smirking and whispering with his friends. At the time I was terrified of him. The first rule the gay child learns is to protect her/his secret. Exposure was about the worst thing I could imagine. Better to die silent than live in shackles, no longer able to be my gay self.
As it was, I was banned for a period of time from seeing my girlfriend. My parents suspected ... I found out that closets are filled with lies; telling tales became a way of life. I’d jump on my bike, ride like a messenger on speed to a distant part of Queens for a brief spell of bubble gum kisses and heart to heart laughter. We were in love, but even better, we were outlaw lovers, making out in doorways, in elevators, basements, empty subway cars. We were like Macy’s Thanksgiving parade balloons, bigger than life, better than ordinary life, flying above the crowds.
And completely unprotected. What a nightmare if we had been caught. What we did was proscribed by law, by religion, by culture. We could have been locked in jails or mental hospitals. We could have been beaten or murdered. We could have been shunned by our classmates, punished by our teachers. We lucked out. Other kids didn’t. They were buried young – in dishonest marriages, in an avalanche of alcohol and drugs, in the ground.
What I fear for the kids whose peers and teachers get sensitivity training, is that more gay kids will dare to come out and be crucified for their trust. I fear there will be a backlash from straight kids, that conservative parents and teachers and preachers will intensify anti-gay training.
What I hope, is that by shining the light of day into the closets of gay youth, their spirits will be stronger. It was exciting to be defiant, but also a burden that took energy a growing mind sorely needed elsewhere. It was intoxicating to be young and gay, but I’ll never know what acceptance would have given me.
I’m glad gay kids will know the benefits of this greater acceptance. I’m glad a few of them will be able to take their puppy loves to the prom. I’m glad they’ll be able to grow up with the kind of support that will enable them to become the teachers and writers and leaders we need. It’s about time.
© Lee Lynch 2002
Lee Lynch is the author of eleven books including The Swashbuckler and the Morton River Valley Trilogy. She lives on the Oregon Coast, and comes from a New England family.