One in Every Crowd (11 page)

YESTERDAY I SPENT THE DAY IN A HIGH school in Burnaby, telling stories to the grade tens. I was surprised how nervous I was. I tell stories all over the place, often to people who in real life are much more intimidating than a couple hundred fifteen-year-old strangers should be, but right from the time the alarm went off it was there, the big ball of nervous. It hung there in my gut, between my ribs and my belly, all waxy and electric.

The face in the mirror looked pale and rumpled. “That’s just perfect,” I told my reflection. “A zit. Right in the middle of your chin. On the first day of school.”

It’s something about the hallways that does it to me, the way sounds are amplified by the polished tiles and painted lockers, all sharp edges and canned echoes. Just the sound of a high school makes me fifteen again.

It didn’t help much that all five of us poets and storytellers had to wait in the office for the English teacher to come and escort us to the auditorium. Lined up with our asses slouched in the plastic chairs outside the principal’s office, in between the photocopier and the water cooler, the rest of them joked and told anecdotes. I was the quiet one for once, trying to breathe around the inflatable lump in my throat and wondering why my toes were sweating so profusely.

The teacher that had organized the reading was cool; the kind of teacher who would think that poetry in high school was a good thing. Her classroom was the one with the beaded curtain, and the kids who were wrestling or kicking each other in the ass in the hallways didn’t straighten up or act like pretend angels when she came around the corner. She explained to us over her shoulder as we walked that the crowd for the lunch-hour show might be a little smaller than they had expected, because today the student council was auctioning off elves in the gymnasium, plus a representative from the community college was answering questions and handing out pamphlets outside the library. We had competition, she told us, but assured us we would have a good house for the afternoon sessions, when attendance was mandatory.

She took us into a place she called the dance room, which meant it looked like a small gym with mirrors lining the walls. She apologized for the fact that we were required to remove our shoes, because they marked up the floor. For some reason this made me uncomfortable. I was about to tell queer stories to a bunch of teenagers, and I wanted my shoes. My sock feet left little sweaty tracks behind if I stood in one place for too long. Two of the other poets were wearing odd socks, and this made me blush. We were here to prove that being a spoken word performer was a viable career option, and I felt that not owning a pair of socks that matched might undermine our position. Then I reminded myself that they had both just come off of a long tour, and I should be glad they were wearing any socks at all. The kids all had to take their shoes off too, which they did in an orderly fashion as they filed into the room. Quite a few of them had on odd socks as well. I changed my position on the matter immediately, thinking maybe it would be something we could bond with them over. Odd socks didn’t mean you were poor. Odd socks meant you were a non-conformist.

It turned out that the kids were great. They listened and laughed in all the right places, and asked really smart questions. One kid asked us what the meaning of life was, saying that he had read somewhere that if you asked enough people, one of them might just have an answer. Then he asked me what my favourite Led Zeppelin album was. I told him
Led Zeppelin IV
, and he nodded, like I had passed his invisible test.

Somewhere between classes I relaxed a bit and started to have fun. Sure, there were a couple of kids slouched along one side of the classroom at the back of the room who already could grow sideburns and snickered and rolled their eyes the whole time, but for the most part they were interested, and engaged. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t there to change the mind of the beefy guy in the back with the almost full goatee. I was there for the kid I couldn’t see yet, the kid who was seeing me for the first time. The kid who walked the edges of the hallways, one hand trailing the lockers and the walls, hoping they won’t be waiting for him at the bus stop today. The kid who hides his
Muscle and Fitness
magazines behind a ceiling tile in his closet, when his brothers can read them openly because they are not like him. For the girl who doesn’t know yet but her parents do. That was who I was there for.

The cool teacher escorted us through the woodworking shop in between classes to a patchy corner of lawn you couldn’t see from any windows in the school, so we could have a smoke. The shop was almost empty, because the bell hadn’t rung yet. There was a skinny boy with glasses screwing two bits of wood together with a cordless drill. He nodded at the cool teacher as we shuffled past.

“Hello, Vanessa,” the cool teacher nodded back at the kid, and I did a double take. The teacher winked at me, and I smiled. All day, I had been searching for signs that things were different than they were when I was in school, that things were getting easier for queer kids, that we really had come a long way, baby. I had overlooked the most obvious sign. Of course things were changing. I was here, wasn’t I?

EVERY TIME I DO A STORYTELLING GIG at a public school, I swear to myself that I will never do it again. I promise myself that this is the last time, that the next time they ask me I will remember that I have decided to avoid attempting to entertain large groups of teenagers for health reasons, that breathing gymnasium air makes me dangerously dehydrated, that hallways lined with lockers can cause painful grade eight flashbacks. High schools remind me of high school, I can’t help it. I graduated twenty years ago, but all it takes is the sound of the first period buzzer going off or the smell of floor wax and it is 1985 all over again, when I am skinny and self-conscious. I hate my legs, my flat hair, my flat chest, my chipped front tooth. I am scared of change rooms and crowded cafeterias. I am scared of myself, of the secret heart inside me that doesn’t beat like it is supposed to and makes me different. I don’t know I’m queer yet, but I know what happens to kids who don’t fit in.

Every time I walk through the front doors of another high school, I remember what it was like to hide, to pretend, to practice not being different. I watch the kids, noticing the ones who avoid my eyes instead of staring. I am not here to change the minds of the many. I am here for the kids who think they are alone. The skinny boy with the long eyelashes who knew he was a fag even before they started calling him one in gym class. The Catholic girl who confesses only to her journal and prays that God will make it go away. The oldest daughter of a former beauty queen whose mother makes her see a shrink once a week ever since she got busted French kissing a girl named Marie on the couch in the rec room when they were supposed to be working on a three-dimensional model of a molecule. These are the kids I want to be seen by, the kids I want to stand in front of, unashamed and unafraid. I don’t say I’m queer, because I don’t need to. I wear cowboy shirts and big black boots and tell stories. I tell them that my writing pays all my bills, that I love my job, that they can be artists too, not just lawyers and dentists and assistant managers.

A couple of months ago, I got an email from an English teacher asking me to come and perform in a high school in Surrey, the conservative town situated southeast of Vancouver. Surrey, with a school board prone to banning books with titles like
Heather
Has Two Mommies
. Did I want to risk a gig in Surrey? Absolutely not. I was halfway through writing a polite letter saying that I was busy that day, when I stopped to consider what school must be like there for young homos. How could I turn my back on the queer kids who needed me most? How often was a gay storyteller even allowed inside a high school in Surrey? I said yes, and immediately started to stress out about it. I arranged to bring my friend the punk-rock cello player with me, for moral and musical support.

A couple of weeks before the gig, I got another email from the English teacher. He explained that one of the other teachers had done some research on me and had raised concerns about “inappropriate sexual content” in my work, and would I mind sending copies of all the stories I was planning to read so that the staff could make sure I wouldn’t say anything that might offend anyone? There would be a couple of Mormon kids in the audience, he added, and the school wanted to avoid any trouble.

I took a deep breath, smoked two cigarettes, and called him on the phone. I liked him, and I knew he meant well. I told him that the reason I do gigs in high schools is to show the kids that being an artist is a viable career option, to inspire them to believe that writing or painting or playing an instrument is just as important as algebra or volleyball. I told him that I would never do or say anything that would jeopardize the chance to bring other artists into his school, and that I was there to encourage creativity, not homosexuality. I told him that I wouldn’t say anything too gay, but that I looked queer and if looking queer was also against school rules then I could recommend another talented storyteller who also might offend the Mormon kids because he is from the Dogrib First Nation and believes in magic and different gods, but at least he was heterosexual.

So the cello player and I did two one-hour sets in a Surrey school last week. I told wholesome stories, and she swore once in one of her songs, but none of the teachers batted an eye, they were so relieved that we didn’t bring up how obviously queer we both were. The principal gave us each a mug and a matching pen, and a thank-you card with a cheque inside.

That night we both received MySpace messages from the girl with the purple brush-cut who sat in the front row during the afternoon set. She was smiling in her picture, her cheek pressed up against her girlfriend, who had orange hair and a nose ring. She was just writing to tell us how much she loved our show; that it was the best thing her school had ever seen. I clicked on her profile. It said she was sixteen, a lesbian, and an aspiring writer.

HE SHONE LIKE A BRAND NEW DIME, that first time. “I want you to meet my son,” she had told me. “I want him to meet more gay people. School has been hard on him these last couple of years.”

I was in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, on tour with a mismatched set of other storytellers. It was the first week of June, and the roof of the earth was gearing up for summer solstice. The midnight sun stretched the light so far and long that dusk was bent over backward enough to bump into the next day. The sun cooked the dirt into dust that got into everything, grinding between back teeth and turning my new black boots grey. We were a seven-hour drive by mostly gravel road to Yellowknife. A hell of a place to try to hide yourself. A hell of a place to have to repeat grade ten.

His mother was a solid, smiling Métis woman with a laugh you could hear from the other side of the lake. Her son stepped out of the car and onto the weary pavement of the parking lot outside of the only motel in town, which boasted a restaurant that served both Chinese and Italian cuisine, and I use the term loosely.

He was wearing brand new sneakers, so white they caught the sunlight and bounced it right back, bleaching the backs of my eyelids when I closed them. His tracksuit was also white, both pieces, and so was the singlet he had on underneath. All of his clothes were crisp and pristine, with a fresh-out-of-the-wrapper look that stood out stark and sudden against the frayed and aging backdrop of this little northern town.

He was sapling thin, with cover girl cheekbones and feather duster lashes. Easily one of the prettiest boys I had ever seen, all long fingers and fey hips and wrists. I could imagine him standing in a line-up on Davie Street in Vancouver, waiting to get into a club that would be pounding a dull bassline from inside, surrounded by his twinkie buddies in designer jeans and two-hundred-dollar t-shirts. That such a creature still breathed in a high school in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, seemed somehow unfathomable to me.

A mud-coloured pick-up pulled up beside us, its tires popping bits of loose gravel sideways. Our hiking guide jumped down from the driver’s seat, wearing sturdy boots and a grey beard. He led us on a meandering route past the old graveyard and down a well-worn path through the pines, wide shards of sunlight showing the dust and dandelion seeds floating in the air that smelled so much like home to me. I kept stealing looks at my friend’s fairy boy son, him in his immaculate threads and me in my now dirty new Fleuvog boots and vintage leather coat. I loved him at first sight, flying his flaming flag so fiercely, here, so far from a pride parade or leather bar or Mac counter. All of fifteen years old and fearless already.

Later, I pulled his mother aside and told her about a camp in Edmonton for gay youth where I was going to be artist-in-residence in a couple of weeks. It was probably too late for this year, I told her, but what the hell, send in an application, because you never know.

The last week in July, he sashayed through the door of the education centre in Edmonton. Sixty-five queer youth for four days. I wondered if he had ever been around more than one or two queer people at the same time before. I wondered if he felt as overwhelmed as I did. A place where faggot wasn’t a bad word anymore. A place where he could be one of many. A place where he could just be.

I got to work, teaching creative writing classes every morning and cajoling my group of youth to choreograph an a cappella synchronized dance number to “I Will Survive.” He was in my group, and I spent the better part of four days trying not to hug him too much in front of everybody else.

On Saturday night there was a talent show. One of the local kids organized a fashion show, and he modeled a gold lamé gown complete with fake breasts and walked the runway in heels like he was born in them. I felt like the homosexual version of a hockey dad whose son has just scored in overtime.

I watched him stand taller and smile bigger and swish wider every day. And then, of course, the inevitable came around.

Sunday night. There was a lot of crying, the kind of tears that could only be conjured up by a bunch of queer kids about to return to High River and Moose Jaw and some little town just north of Edmonton. Alone.

I couldn’t even look him in the eyes the last time I hugged him. I couldn’t tell him what I was thinking. I hoped that the new pride he held in his shoulders wasn’t going to be pounded out of him in gym class, or while he tried to learn trigonometry. I felt sad, but mostly I felt rage.

Rage that we are beginning the second decade of the twenty-first century in what is supposed to be one of the most liberal and progressive countries in the world and still we haven’t made our schools safe for kids like him. That something as vital to his future as his education happens in a culture of fear and under the threat of violence.

I reminded myself to be thankful that at least he has what a lot of queer kids don’t have: an amazing family behind him. I got an e-mail from his mom yesterday. She thanked me for getting him into camp, saying that he really needed this support, and that he seemed so much more confident and wiser since he came home.

The four days of relative safety and acceptance from his peers really did him some good. Now we just have to get to work on the other 361 days of the year. He still has grade ten to get through. Again.