My Facebook friend list is rife with people I have only known in high school. At first it seemed peculiar that these individuals would want to add me, considering our shared history. It just goes to show you that teen angst and self loathing ought to be skipped. I swear it's like Peggy Sue Got Married all over. "If I had known then, what I know now, I would have done a lot of things differently."
Dateline 1989--1991. I am sitting in the wings of C track math classes which is what my high school called classes reserved for the academic level right above Special Ed. No offense is meant for the angels in Special Ed but there is a stigma associated with what my sophomore math teacher called "bonehead math".
The type of students who frequented C track could be seen in after-school detention or in an off campus hideaway for cigarette smokers. Delinquents are prone to mischief.
There was a boy sitting two rows away from me for at least two years of bonehead math who used to instigate his cronies bedecked in baseball caps to taunt and make fun of my sensitive nature and artistic aesthetic of dress. That's another way of saying they were laughing at my faggotry. I hadn't yet learned how to laugh with them.
After all, as I pondered, just because I ordered my favorite clothes through the mail of the International Male catalogue and absolutely adored Broadway didn't necessarily mean I was gay. I didn't acknowledge that reality until I choked on it, so to speak, the first time I went home with a guy from a bar. That hunky barback wasn't even a twink in my eye at the time. Actually, the barback was 27 which would have made me the twink, but I digress.
Flash Fag Forward -2010
The boy from math class astounds me because he has grown up to be a gender studies person and apparently a reader of this site. Who knew?
I broached the elephant in the room with, "Hey, didn't you used to call me (blank) before I had more than an itsy-bitsy inkling... (well, it was a big inkling but I dared not speak its name) ...that I was Blank?"
He had no idea what I was talking about and we chalked up the issue to reflect a statement about appreciating having moved beyond those tortured teen years. Apparently, as it's been pointed out to me more than once since re-emerging from the cobwebs of the past through Facebook, I was liked in high school!!
I began to consider that I probably internalized my own self loathing and insecurity about my sexuality to reflect in my interpersonal relationships. If I was playing the tortured teen, how could I expect to be cast in any other role? Once again, I believe, Bette Davis said it best in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Turning to her sister Blanche, who lay dying on the beach after years of being tortured at her very own hand, Jane listens to her sister say something to the effect that the guy from math's statement had on me.
Jane realizes she has just wasted her entire life wallowing in a bitterness that she herself had swallowed. "You mean, all of this time, we could have been friends?" And the credits roll as the music plays over a scene of Jane dancing on the beach while the men in white coats try to approach her gingerly. Baby Jane went up the down staircase and lost it. It's a sad implied ending that I couldn't get out of my head after my communique with the guy from math. Without giving the past too much power, I must acknowledge it in the context of how grateful I am to be beyond it. If I had only dared to give credence to the possibility that my affinity for Broadway ought to be explored, I could have helped others open a dialogue about the love that dared not speak it's name and torn down those walls. (I am resisting the urge to do the line from Mommie Dearest, y' know...about the wall. Oh don't get me started on my quotable quip track.)
The point is that since we can only learn from the past by evolving and growing as human beings, I have a chance to pass on my experience to the younger generation.
I recently met a 17 year old kid on Facebook who is clearly gay and doesn't care who knows it with a take no prisoners kind of enthusiasm that I didn't adopt until the summer following my first year of college. He is a testament to how far we as a society have evolved with issues of sexuality as much as I have matured as an individual. We do live in a post Will and Grace era, no thanks to Sean Hayes. But that's another story.
Before Facebook, reunions as depicted in Peggy Sue were common. Nerds went down in history as nerds and became mired in an archaic image that was thrust upon them until they came to embody it. Now that Facebook has brought the past into the present, (I have to quote Edie Bouvier Beale from Grey Gardens
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Thanks for reading, Jack
