One in Every Crowd (13 page)

I HAVE BEEN A ROAD DOG LATELY. Festivals, theatres, conferences, planes, boats, rental cars, road and road and then some more road. And schools. I have been doing a lot of high school gigs too. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I get the opportunity to see the insides and the guts of more high schools, and shake hands with more students, and stumble through more uncomfortable introductions to more principals, and cover more territory, span more provinces and borders and districts and countries, even, than almost anyone working in our education system today. Sure, it’s quick and I am there and then gone in a little under two hours, mostly, but still. You get a sense of a place, a taste of it, anyway, and more and more I am sampling the smorgasbord of our school system, and where it best serves our students, and where it is still falling short. I do a one-hour show, designed to fit in between bells, forty-five minutes or so of storytelling, followed by a ten- to fifteen-minute question-and-answer and hopefully discussion period. I don’t say the word queer or gay or lesbian during this show, nor do I talk about sexuality at all. I just tell stories. Stories about me, my little sister, and my two little cousins, Dan and Christopher. Christopher was an awkward, clumsy kid who was mercilessly teased and picked on all throughout school, right from the beginning. I tell stories about the four of us, stuff we used to do when we were young, stupid broke-ass bored small-town kid stuff. I tell the story about how Christopher had gigantic feet for his age, size thirteen by the time he was eight years old, and about how we all got second-hand roller skates this one summer, all of us except Christopher, who could not cram his gigantic feet into the cool roller skates, so we had to buy him those crappy old-fashioned kind that you had to buckle up over your own shoes, and anyway long story short, he wipes out and craps his pants. Of course, all of us love a good poop-your-pants story, right? It’s a classic, I believe, the great leveler. We all pooped our pants when we were babies, and then accidentally here and there throughout our lives, and of course every single one of us is gonna shit ourselves again at some point on our way out of this world, unless it happens very quickly and we never see it coming, so in this way pooping yourself is one of those things that makes us all human, together. Needless to say this story goes over well with the kids, and I achieve my primary objective, which is to get them all to identify somehow with my clumsy and unlucky little cousin, to invest in him somehow, to care about him, to sympathize. Hopefully we laugh together. Then I sit back and wait for the question, which almost always comes. Almost every show some kid puts up their hand and asks me where is Christopher now? Where is Christopher now? I tell them that I know what they want me to tell them. I tell them I really wish I could tell them what I know they want to hear. I say how much I wish I could tell them that my little clumsy cousin Christopher grew into his gigantic feet and eventually became a tall and handsome man, who would one day marry a tall handsome woman and they had two tall handsome children and now he lives happily in a suburb somewhere and works at his successful and fulfilling job in the IT industry, and that they have a little brown dog and a white picket fence, but I can’t. I can’t tell them that because Christopher died on Christmas Eve in his twenty-first year of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, and that is why I come into high schools. That I want them all to know that someone cares about them, and that they have a right to access their public education without threat of physical, emotional, or spiritual violence. Then we talk about bullying, and what we can all do to work towards building a safe and respectful learning environment for each and every one of them. Recently I was in St. John’s, Newfoundland for a storytelling festival. This festival has historically asked all of their performers do a few school gigs while they are in town. But a couple of weeks ago the festival director called me up to inform me that six St. John’s schools had turned down my show, even though the festival was going to pay my fee and it would have cost these schools nothing. She was a little embarrassed about the whole situation. Said this had never happened before. Said the principals were concerned that I might upset certain parents, that perhaps I was … not appropriate, somehow, for a high school environment. So. I ended up doing only two school shows in St. John’s, the only two schools that would have me, which were the Catholic school, ironically, and an alternative school for kids who had dropped out of the public school system altogether, many of whom had been bullied right out of an education, and/or battled learning disabilities or other challenges. Both shows were amazing, full of good discussions and intelligent questions. It was a great way to spend a Thursday. But that very same Thursday night in St. John’s, the unthinkable happened. One of the students from a school that had turned down my anti-bullying show took his own life. I don’t know him, never had the chance to meet him. I don’t know if he was gay, or even if he was bullied, and now I will never know. But obviously something was going on for him. There is no way to know if a one-hour storytelling show and discussion might have changed this terrible outcome for this boy, and his family, and his friends and fellow students, who will all carry his death now for the rest of their lives. How do I know this? Because I carry my cousin’s, it is right here with me now. I don’t know that my show would have changed anything. I don’t know that. But what really haunts me is that I don’t know that it wouldn’t have helped him, either. I send my compassion and love out to his family and classmates. What will it take for school administrations to realize that providing a safe school environment for all is more important than catering to the bigotries of the few? I want to share part of an article that my friend Matt Pearson, an Ottawa writer and journalist, published, called “The Arithmetic of Shame.” Matthew writes: “You may have read or seen on the news recently that a teenage boy in Ottawa took his own life after struggling for some time with depression and the challenges of being the only openly gay student at his suburban high school. I covered the tragic story as a reporter for a daily newspaper and have remained troubled by it for days afterward. “I did not know this child. But what I do know, at least in part, was the depth of despair he too often felt. It mirrored what I felt more than 15 years ago as a confused and pimply teen growing up in Woodstock, Ontario. “At my Catholic elementary school, I was called names on the playground years before understanding the full and hurtful meaning of them. I was made to feel different—and not in a good way—because I preferred drama, hung out mostly with girls and didn’t like rough-and-tumble competitive sports. I soon became isolated. I developed a deep sense that even if I didn’t quite know what those words meant, it must have been something pretty awful, judging by the way some boys I had known for years spit them at me. “I started bringing candy and bubble gum to school to give out freely on the playground at recess. Later, I became one of those chauffeur teens, always glad to give someone a ride somewhere, even if it was way out of my way. “This is the arithmetic of shame. The subconscious calculations I made in hopes people could find in me enough good things to compensate for the one unspeakably ugly part. “I switched to the public school system for high school and hoped my troubles were behind me, as most of my classmates continued on to the Catholic high school. “But it only got worse. I know now, years later, that high school sucks for just about everyone, but back then, I thought it was my own private hell. The verbal harassment was almost unbearable and came from people—often boys, but sometimes girls, too—who I’d never even seen before. How could they know something about me that I was only beginning to understand? “I was never physically beaten up, which is a good thing because far too many young people are victims of assault. But while it may seem masochistic, I often wished I was because then perhaps my teachers and fellow students would see for themselves the black eyes and bruises of hate. “There were hallways, nooks and crannies in that school where I never dared to go, especially on my own. And this was a school where my father—a kind man who has loved and supported me unconditionally since the day I came out a dozen years ago—was principal. I know it still pains him that he could not protect me.”

Last year I had a gig in a Vancouver area high school. It was for the Dare to Stand Out conference, a gathering of LGBTQ students and their queer or ally teachers. Even though I was in a high school for an explicitly homo positive event, I still had the familiar heart-pound-mouth-dry-watch-my-back feeling descend upon me as I entered through the double glass doors and past the school office, and followed the rainbow signs that led me into the gymnasium. I was an adult, and I was about to speak to a bunch of queer kids and teachers. I had officially been out of school for longer than I was ever in school, but still, my body’s memory took over, and took me back. Back to my own sixteen-year-old self. How do I know that I still need to work to make schools safer for all kids? Because I am still afraid of entering a high school, to this day, even now, even for something like this. My nerves quickly disappeared when I walked into the gym and saw the sixteen-year-old pretty boy with the Mohawk and the eyeliner who was setting up the mikes. Not to mention the awesome kick-ass young woman behind the soundboard, whose nametag read Darth Vader, and her sidekick, dubbed Stormtrooper, of course. Our next generation. I love them all, just on principle, and feel fiercely, almost irrationally protective of them. I want everything to be so much different for them than it was for us. I want them to be able to be unapologetically out and safe in their schools, and I want them to feel nothing but memories of joy and triumph should they ever return to a high school for any reason twenty some years from now. I know, what a dreamer, right? But why not? Why not imagine building a safe, respectful environment for all kids to be educated in right now? Why expect anything less, and why settle? Because we had to? That is simply not good enough. The fact that so many of us, queer or fat or nerdy or smart or slow or brown or from somewhere that is not here, still can’t imagine school without the accompanying torment or hassle or trauma is a sign to me of just how much work we still need to do in our schools for all kids, not just the queer ones. This is the gist of what I said to all those young and beautifully out-already faces that day: 1. Always remember that working to make your school safer for queer students, or bisexual students, or gender non-conforming students is not a selfish act. Creating a safe school for yourself will only lead to a safer school for everyone, and everyone deserves a safe place to learn in. Not feeling safe at school can seriously affect your ability to access your own education, which can impact your life for the rest of your life. When you work to make your school better for you, you are doing your school, and everyone in it, and everyone who will ever be in it in the future, a gigantic favour. Never forget that. 2. You deserve so much more than to just be tolerated. You deserve to be loved for exactly who and what you are right now. This is, of course, a double-edged sword. This also means you must return the favour. Learn about racism and sexism and ableism too. You unfortunately are probably already well aware of how much homophobia can hurt, inside and out. Learning more about how different kinds of oppression work and where they intersect will help you build better bridges with others and create a safe and respectful school culture for everyone. Bullies are almost always outnumbered by the bullied. We just need to organize. 3. Remember that not everyone is able to come out to everyone all of the time. Some of us cannot come out to our parents yet, or our employers, or our teammates, or even our friends. It is okay to know who you are and keep it ­private if your own safety requires it. This does not mean you are any less queer or radical or cool than the guy with the purple hair and the rainbow stockings. It just means that he has different circumstances than you do. 4. It does get better. Especially when you make it better. There are lots of us out there who care a whole lot about you, whether it feels like it sometimes or not. I am one of them, and I will never stop coming into high schools to meet kids just like you, until I stop feeling scared every freaking time I walk through those front doors, I will keep working to make all schools safer for all of us. I promise you that. And in the meantime, when I get home I will watch It Gets Better videos, not because they are any kind of a real solution, but because they make me, a comfortably out-for-almost-twenty-five-years adult, feel a whole lot better, so I can get up the next day and get to work, actually making it better. I really love the It Gets Better series—I know we need these stories, that they can be accessed from any public computer, and that kids need them. But now I want to hear from some from straight kids, adults, teachers­—vowing to grow up, step up and make it better. I want to hear stories about straight kids who have moved from fear to humanity and stood up to become allies, I want adult former haters to tell conversion stories. I want teachers who are finally so ashamed of pretending this isn’t a literacy issue to challenge other teachers by making their classrooms a place where ignorance and fear are met with information and compassion. I am sick of moving people to tears with stories of casualties from the warfare we let our children wage on each other. I am sick of young dead boys becoming icons of public compassion, and inspiring Rick Mercer rants we can share with each other on Facebook, while at the same time we continue to allow our principals and school administrators to cater to the conservative and religious right and pretend that our kids don’t all pay the price for their apathy and cowardice. Bullies grow up—their behaviour gets modified and sometimes their language gets slicked over with education—and they become the political, financial, and social arbiters of life as we know it. I bet you any money that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a bully in school, and don’t we all wish now that someone had nipped him in the bud before it was too late for Canada. It is time for us to write ourselves some new stories, people. So, let me tell you one. Last year I was invited to a high school on the west side of Vancouver. The rich part. It was an arts-enhanced school, and I had been asked to come in specifically because one of the students there was transitioning, in grade nine, and they were throwing him a birthday party. Not because it was his actual birthday, but because he was being reborn. The school threw him a party, and bought him a cake. They informed the entire student body of his new name, his pronoun preference, and that he would now be using the boy’s washroom. Amazing, right? I cried throughout most of that day. Hope, relief, and redemption, palpable, caught in my throat, pounding in my heart. Just because I got to see one good story, for a change. But what a change, indeed. What did the school spend to make that kid’s life so much better? The cost of one birthday cake, that is what they spent. And what did they save? Maybe his life, or maybe the lives of countless other kids who took heart and hope that maybe school and life doesn’t suck as hard as it did yesterday. Maybe school and life were worth sticking around for after all. Ask me now, how important it is for queer teachers and school staff to come out of the closet? How important it is for queer athletes and rock stars and radio hosts and storytellers? How much did you need a role model when you were a kid? And did you really, truly have one? A couple of weeks ago a young butch friend of mine asked me if I would help her out with her art school homework. She said she was doing a photo project, taking pictures of older butches. You know, like, documenting her elders. Sure, I thought to myself, I know several older butches who I could hook her up with. A couple of them have moved to the sunshine coast like they do, but I could certainly track them down, no problem. It slowly dawned on me that she was referring to me. I was the older butch she wanted to document. At first this realization made me laugh, and then it made my right knee ache like it does. I am forty-three. She is twenty-one. I can’t help but do the math. I had been out of the closet for three years ­already by the time she was born. I was navigating my way through the gender binary blues when she was learning to do up the Velcro straps on her first-day-of-school shoes. She has probably never dialed a rotary phone. More and more at my shows, young butches and barely whiskered trans guys have been coming up and telling me that my books and stories helped them get through high school, or even junior high. They thank me for being a role model. This makes me feel simultaneously honoured and terrified. It makes my heart sing to know that they had what I didn’t even know I needed when I was a kid: someone they could imagine growing up to be like. It makes my heart pound to know that this means I now have to somehow be worthy of this kind of respect. How can I possibly be a role model, when I feel like I am just now starting to fit into my own skin? When I am still stretching and bending the space around me to make room for myself? How could I possibly give advice away when I just got my hands on it? I find it is way easier to imagine whispering any wisdom I may have gleaned from the last four decades into the ear of a younger me. If I could magically tell my younger self something I know now that I wish I had known then, what would that be? First of all, I would tell myself not to be too proud to ask for advice. Remember, you don’t have to take advice just because someone has given it. Of course, my twenty-one-year-old self may not have taken the time to listen to present day me, but I will continue, regardless. Dear younger self: floss your teeth. It turns out you will eventually be a working artist, just like you always dreamed. A man named Stephen Harper will one day rule this land, and he will care nothing for artists, or queers, or even health care. You need teeth, and you alone will be financially responsible for them. Floss is cheaper than even your commie pinko east end lesbian dentist will be. Quit smoking. Please see above. I am not going to say this again. Okay, I am. Quit smoking right now. Your mother is worried that no one will like you, or hire you, or even love you, if you look “like that.” She is wrong. This next bit is really important: she does not mean to intentionally do you harm, or cause you to fear who and what you truly are. She worries because she fears what the world might do to you, and because she doesn’t know any successful tattooed butch storytellers with biceps and a brush cut. Yet. But one day she will, and she is going to love the hell out of future you. Trust me on this one. Do not cave into the pressure from mainstream society to fit in. You do not, and will not ever fit in. One day you will realize you don’t even want to anymore, and that your difference is inherently tied to your beauty, and your bravery, and your giant, mystical, invisible brass balls. You will love these balls, and they will swing majestically between your ears, inside the head you will hold up proudly. Do not cave into the pressure from the queer community to fit in, either. Make your own decisions, and trust your own heart. Being butch is not just a bus stop on the highway to transitioning. You will learn to love your butch self. If you do ever decide to go on testosterone, build yourself into a good man. The last thing the world needs is another misogynist prick. Be the man your father accidentally taught you to be, even if it was only because you didn’t have a brother to help him out in the shop. Make and keep long-term friendships. You will need them, and they will need you. This is one of the most important things you will ever do in your entire life. Whenever possible, be polite. In the long run, your good manners will serve you better than even your most righteous rage. Find a tailor, and be good to them. Get your pants hemmed properly, and learn what it feels like to have your clothes really fit your body. People come in all shapes, clothes do not. This is a wrong that can be easily righted. The world is going to try to squeeze you into many things that do not fit you, but your clothes need not be one of them. Seek out a mentor. Listen to what they have to say, and then follow your own path. Keep a journal, because one day, someone is going to look up to you, and even ask you for advice, and you are going to wish you had taken better notes. So go. Find yourself a mentor, and be a role model. Be a leader. Be the change we need to see. Don’t wait for it to get better, make it better. Write us some better stories. Because somewhere, there is a kid out there who really needs your strength, and your courage. Someone out there needs you to be every bit of your brave, beautiful, fabulous, talented self.