It’s 90 degrees out on October 11th and I’m halfway to the Leigh Street Bridge when I realize I’m crying, and haven’t even thought to turn on the AC.
It’s 90 degrees out on October 11th and I’m halfway to the Leigh Street Bridge when I realize I’m crying, and haven’t even thought to turn on the AC. I’ve been listening to stories of harassment, abuse, and suicide endured by the LGBTQ community on NPR, as part of their National Coming Out Day coverage, and heart-wrenching and emotive as they are, it isn’t really empathy that’s causing me to rub my eyes at every stoplight.
I’m a leftist, if you have to put a label on it. I have friends, some I would consider family, even, for every letter of LGBTQ. I don’t believe in the rigidity of our pervasive cultural understanding of sexuality and gender identity. I believe in love and the freedom to do so, in individuality and the freedom if its expression. I’ve been vocal, attended rallies, and been passionately supportive of the LGBTQ cause, because it seems to me to be a major frontier in the battle for universal human rights. It’s beautiful to see an intense outpouring of public support, to be a part of loosening the levies of taboo and protocol, to be helping to push open the arms of what is accepted as human nature so that they may more fully embrace the spectrum of diversity. But that’s not why I’m crying, either.
I’m crying because I hit a bump in the road and a memory came drifting up through the static between the words of the victimized and victorious on the radio. A vile, fuming memory I didn’t know existed.
It’s strange the way the fluorescent lights in my high school seem to illuminate recollections of internal conflicts as harshly as they did the faded and streaked linoleum tiles of our older hallways, how the lockers stood in aggressive formations with grave shadows under their eyes, spilling out crumpled posturing and a desperate lack of self acceptance. I don’t remember his name, the one flamboyantly gay student within the age range of my class to catch insults from my peers. It’s strange because I’d had casual conversations with him before, and remember thinking “who cares if he’s gay, he’s actually pretty cool.” In any case, he knew mine. But for some reason, one late spring afternoon, outside the journalism classroom, I was with a group of faceless, perceptibly cooler classmates I was intent on impressing, and plagued by a chronic sense of social worthlessness and depression, opportunities to interact without being the target of passive ridicule seemed to shimmer like a bad fake ID with deceptive potential.
“Woooo look at this faggot!” I remember one saying, as the aforementioned, blatantly “out” boy turned into the otherwise deserted hallway. The next to speak was louder. I don’t remember his words, just the curling of his lips and the way my stomach burned with the realization that if I didn’t say anything, I would be the next target. I could either be a fag, or I could harass one. One of them sauntered up easily to the kid, his voice escalating with proximity as though he were arguing with some silent force that justified his anger, some kind of righteous self-defense in the face of an advancing and evil adversary. But there was only the terrified countenance of a diminutive schoolboy, shrinking slightly away from the elevating velocity of some terrible shit with twice his size and every intention of using it. He reached out and slapped the books out of his hands. Horrible laughter. My ears awash with the static of shame and excitement, I caught the kid’s eyes, recognized his paralyzing fear as he looked around desperately for some type of ally, turned my head, and said the word. I said the word faggot. I called you a faggot.
Today is National Coming Out Day, and I am coming out as guilty of harassing someone based on their sexual orientation.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, I remember now the look on your face after I said that. And I’m not asking for forgiveness, there was no justification for what I did. I knew it was wrong when I said it, and I said it anyway, because I wanted to be accepted, and didn’t care enough to consider that you did too. I always understood that you were being more true to yourself than I was ever capable of being, and I respected that. I respected it more than I respected myself, and for that became what I least respect in the world.
And I am sorry.
