HAPPY PRIDE MONTH LGBTs
Another disclaimer:
I didn’t post last week because I was moving, sorry about that! I also haven’t been streaming because I need to get some new equipment in my new house, but as soon as I’m set up I will be back!
I felt a little weird this week, especially since my last post felt like such an ~ending~. Like I’ve said, I might do something more creative with that story/ that chapter of my life, but for now…I’d like to see this project through to completion. SO no real romance in this chapter, I’m just sort of setting the scene for what is to come. I can promise plenty of drama, coming soon.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this sort of silly one.
*****
I started 10th grade a little bit bitter and a little bit heartbroken.
Solaria and I “dated” for the remainder of summer break, but when her school year started, she met a boy named Tom. I knew Tom would be my competition as soon as soon as she started talking about him. He was tall, he could cook, and he looked like Justin Bieber. I wanted him dead, but there was nothing I could do about it from across the country. When she left me for him, I was devastated, but not surprised. Either way, we went no contact and only communicated through passive-aggressive posts on tumblr.com and vent.com.
I had other things to deal with anyway. My life was in the midst of another great upheaval. My father took my sister back to South Carolina, but I was convinced she wasn’t going to stay. As for me, I was sent to live with my paternal grandparents, Marge and Homer, and my dad’s sister, Aunt Nikana. This was the court’s decision, along with several other strict rules and stipulations about how many phone calls I was to have with each parent per week and which parent I was to spend which holiday breaks with.
I was enrolled last minute at Denver South High School, the family alma mater. It was the school Marge graduated from, and my mother. It was the first school my father and grandfather were both expelled from. A good deal of the kids I knew from elementary school were also enrolled there; it promised a unique “new kid” experience. In South Carolina, each time I was the new kid I got to re-invent myself. The fact that there would be people who knew me (or knew me four years prior), felt comforting in some ways and restrictive in others.
Romance was on the mind, per usual (I couldn’t help it). Ironically, one of the only people I’d kept in touch with from elementary school was Hannah Smith. In elementary school, Hannah was the closest thing I had to a frenemy. She and I played often after school, though we would always find ourselves in mindless little squabbles over the made-up rules of whatever game we were playing. Partially, we were both tiny control freaks, but the real root of our bickering was one Jake Puuwai-Puuwai. At the time, I believed that Jake was my one true love due to his superior skills in mathematics and his athletic prowess (the fastest kid in the school), but Jake’s best friend was Hank Smith, and so his heart belonged rightfully to Hannah.
I was over my crush on Jake by fourth grade, so by middle school there was very little for Hannah and I to argue about. She and I had shared a few pleasant sleepovers over the course of my holiday visits home. We camped in her backyard, and she updated me on the lives of my estranged classmates. Sometimes we would go to the park or to Elitch Gardens and Hank would join us, bringing Jake.
I liked seeing Jake on these visits, not because I still harbored any feelings for him (none that I would have admitted to anyone), but because I felt like I looked much more beautiful by thirteen than I did throughout elementary school. My hair was longer, and my glasses were gone; my clothes sort of fit. I would always imagine that Jake was amazed by how grown up I looked, even though he never gave even the slightest indication of being interested or noticing a change in my appearance. That was fine.
I was slightly more interested in Hank’s attention by then anyway. From kindergarten to fifth grade, we were locked in at the same height, but while I stopped growing by the end of 7th grade, he always seemed to get taller and taller. I hadn’t given his looks much thought until I showed a picture of him to Annapolis Maryland at school and she gasped. Until that point, he just looked like every other boy to me, but Annapolis pointed to his pouty lips and his jaw and his soft eyes and called him a certifiable hotty. She had a point, and for a short period of time I pretended at school that maybe there was something between Hank Smith and I back home, a small charade probably played to make Blaize Huckabee jealous. The truth was, Hank didn’t look twice when I entered the room either. By 9th grade, I’d pretty much forgotten about him entirely too.
He was the first person from elementary school I ran into after moving in with my grandmother. It was the Friday before the first day of school, the sun was setting, and I was on an angsty walk. My grandmother’s house was just a couple blocks from the school, so I was doing a lap around the campus. I wasn’t specifically trying to run into anyone; for all I knew, no one was there, but I also wasn’t not trying to run into anyone. Hank was just getting off of cross country practice.
I couldn’t believe the odds. Of all the high schoolers to be around the school at 8 pm on a Friday, I didn’t really expect to see Hank. I wondered if he was surprised to see me. I thought he must have been. He seemed unfazed, but he smiled a kind smile at me and asked how I was doing.
I told him I was fine, and that I’d just moved back. I told him I was starting up at South.
“Oh, cool,” he said (uninterested), “do you know your classes yet?”
I listed them off for him. I had Choir first, AP World History second, Chemistry third, Music Theory fourth, Spanish II fifth, Algebra II sixth, and Intro to Lit (another thing I was bitter about— the guidance counselor not accepting my credit from 8th grade and placing me in freshman English) seventh. He told me we had AP World History together and so did Hannah.
I was grateful. Even if I was completely disillusioned of the idea of any potential romance between Hank Smith and I, I was glad that I had at least one friendly and familiar face I could count on touching base with on the first day. Seeing Hank did get me thinking about the other potential suitors the school had to offer as well.
Per usual, I was having a slight crisis of sexuality. Being with Solaria made me feel very gay, but being dumped by Solaria made me feel very…bummed. I wanted to find someone else as quickly as she did, and I was open to just about anyone taking the spot. The list was an object of the past, left in a jewelry box on a shelf at my dad’s house. It was too restrictive and too male-centered; I needed to turn a new leaf.
***
On the first day of school, I was wearing my favorite shirt I’d gotten at Goodwill over the summer, a gray blouse embroidered with different clack birds and wilting flowers, my coolest acid-washed high wasted skinny jeans, and my signature black Converse high-tops. I had my hair down, but my bangs pulled back with a black bow from Build-a-Bear Workshop. I was certain it was the most killer fit I’d ever thrown together and it would give the perfect impression: that I was cool, but didn’t try too hard, that I listened to good music and understood niche cultural references, that I had a tumblr account and sapphic tendencies.
In Choir class I didn’t make any new friends; we sang at the piano each individually to get our section assignments, and that experience was enough to drain my social battery for the next hour. Hannah was there in second period, as Hank promised she would be. She told me she was glad to see me and we hugged. Before class started, she asked me if I’d seen anyone else we knew around the halls yet. I told her I hadn’t, though I’d been on the lookout. She asked if there was anyone I wanted to know about. I went through the mental Rolodex of names. I asked about some of the girls, she told me what extracurriculars they were in and who their boyfriends were (if they had them). Politely, I nodded, though none of it was too surprising or interesting. Momentarily, my mind went to the curly-haired boy I’d been holding out for in 6th grade— Emerson Marsden was his name. I asked if he went to South.
“Oh yeah,” Hannah answered with disgust, “he’s a total weirdo now, all he does is skateboard around and smoke pot. He’s a total drug addict.”
“Interesting,” I answered. And it was vaguely interesting. The description reminded me of Jason Updog, and I wondered if I was interested enough to seek him out and make more trouble in my life. I made a mental note, then the teacher started handing out syllabi, and that was the end of our discussion. When we were done going over the syllabus, I asked Hannah which way she was going, and when she pointed opposite the direction of my Chemistry class, I was prepared to walk alone.
“Who are you?” the question came from a boy who seemingly materialized in front of me. I was immediately struck by how much he looked like a teenage Cory Feldman. The resemblance was uncanny; even his quaffed hair and glasses reminded me of the movie Stand By Me. I wanted to ask him if anyone had ever told him that he had a celebrity doppelganger, but he interrupted my train of thought with another question.
“Are you new?”
“Kind of.”
He raised his eyebrow and scoffed, “How can a person be kind of new?”
I looked at Hannah; she was giggling and offering me no aid at all. “I am new to this school, but I know a lot of people here. I’ve just been out of state for a few years.”
“You know Hannah?” he asked.
“Yeah, we went to elementary school together.”
He nodded gravely.
“What’s your name?”
It was the first time someone had asked me all day. I still wanted to be Didi, because it was a nice, inconspicuous name, but with Hannah and Hank standing so close to me, and so many other people from my childhood lurking around the corners, I decided it would be more work to explain the nickname than it would be to abandon it.
“Milkweed,” I answered.
“Milkweed?” he said the name like it was sour on his tongue. “I have never heard that name before.”
I cringed. “Well, now you have.”
I turned back to Hannah with a look of Can-you-believe-this-guy? in my eyes.
Giggling still, she said, “This is Able Maker.”
“I’ve never heard that name before,” I sneered.
I thought the sarcasm in my voice was clear, but his face went slack with genuine shock as he asked, “Really?”
He asked what class I was headed to, and was apparently delighted to find out we were both headed to Chemistry. “I can walk you!”
On our way down, he asked if I was planning on joining any clubs or teams. I told him I was interested in the play and he exploded in a fit of excited clapping.
“You should totally do the play,” he said. “I do the plays, and I think you would really fit in.”
By fourth period, I’d talked to a handful of people, but still had no direction in terms of who to eat lunch with. I hadn’t explicitly asked anyone if I could eat with them, and I couldn’t stand the idea of eating alone as I had on the first day of 9th grade. There was only one person in the whole music theory class who seemed like a worthy contender for a lunch buddy— the twink with a bright red mullet and a sleeveless MCR shirt.
When the lunch bell rang, I just about ran to grab him before he got out the door.
“Hey!” I gasped, “I love MCR.”
“Cool…” he looked startled.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I was just wondering if you would want to eat lunch together. I am new, and I don’t know who to eat with yet.”
His expression softened to understanding, if not still a little weirded out. “Sure,” he said, “I’m new too.”
Because everyone at South had lunch at the same time, students did not have to eat lunch in the Cafeteria. They didn’t even have to eat lunch on campus. This was freeing and exciting, but put additional pressure on Xander and me to find an acceptable location to eat at. We settled for a while on a courtyard where we sat in silence, eyeing our sandwiches. We were both too shy to carry on a meaningful conversation all on our own. We were eventually rescued by Xander’s friend Bill.
Bill was a year older than us, and Xander knew him from a place called “Rainbow Alley,” a meetinghouse for queer youth up on Colfax Ave. Bill gave Xander a firm handshake as a greeting, then he pointed at me and asked: “You gay?” I nodded yes, and Bill beckoned the two of us to follow him back through the school. He led us to an English classroom on the second floor belonging to a Mr. John O’Malley.
Mr. O’Malley was, as I quickly learned, the Gay Teacher of South High School. Though he was not the only gay teacher in the school, he was the de facto leader of queer students. I’d never seen a teacher like him or a classroom like his before. He was dressed like Hannah Hart in salmon Chinos, a patterned short-sleeve button-up shirt, and a big bow-tie. His hair was bright blond and gelled into a point on the top of his head. His classroom was covered in rainbows and signs declaring acceptance for all. A classroom like this would have never existed at West Ashley or any other school in South Carolina where the rule for teachers was essentially don’t ask, don’t tell. I was amazed.
“I bring fresh queers,” Bill announced as he ushered us into the room.
“Yay, fresh queers,” O’Malley said in a subdued tone.
“Fresh queers?” This question came more as a demand from a girl with the same cherry-red hair that Solaria had the year before, and that I’d had the year before that. She had on a gray drug-rug and baggy jeans, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since before middle school. She made her way over to us and introduced herself as Rosa Botticelli. She shook both our hands; I wondered why the queer people at the school all seemed to carry themselves like the businessmen from Mad Men.
She asked if we were auditioning for the play. Her aunt, she explained, was the director, and the main character of the play was a lesbian. She said they were specifically looking for queer students to audition. “Not that we usually have a problem with that sort of thing,” she winked.
Xander said he wasn’t into acting. “Stage fright,” he said, but he was interested in set designing or costuming.
“Right on,” Rosa nodded and gave him a high-five. “And you?” she turned to me.
I told her that I planned on auditioning, and before I knew it, she’d whisked me away to the classroom next door, her aunt’s classroom. There, I was introduced to all of Rosa’s friends. My people.
It was like a room full of Solarias and Wesleys in all different shapes and sizes. They all liked 80s movies and musical theater. I’d never before felt so immediately in-place and immediately accepted. The year was looking bright; I couldn’t believe my luck. I didn’t just have to fall back on Hannah and Hank; I didn’t have to go looking for trouble in Emerson Marsden, and the pain of my break-up was beginning to recede.
What could possibly go wrong?
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