I'm From Driftwood

by Nicole Parker

I was that girl. I still am. One of the few kids excited to return to classes because it meant that I got to go back-to-school shopping. Oh, the decisions it involved! Pick warmer clothes so that I could sport a new wardrobe in late October, or get the leftover summer items, ensuring a grand entrance on the first day of classes.

Not much has changed. I draw inspiration from those around me, internally tweaking other people’s outfits, deciding how I would wear them (better). Thinking about patterns – which ones push the lines of couture, and which simply clash. While many people love shopping or clothes, I rarely find others who share this passion with me – someone who goes back and forth between a black and brown belt in the morning – “Do I match my shoes? Or live on the edge and combine the two colors!”

I work at a university, and needless to say, the staff doesn’t really push the edge on fashion trends. At least that’s what I thought.

One day while walking into my office with a coworker, I looked up the stairs to see a gorgeous man. The subtlety of the red undershirt he used. The printed belt. It was one of those outfits that could completely go overlooked. Brilliance. And my coworker knows him! We were introduced, although I felt an odd sense of recognition. “I think I know you. Did you go here for undergrad?” He did. “What was your major?” It was dance. “I was always the only guy in the dance classes,” he replied. I guess that should have been my first warning sign.

We became quick friends through our daily run-ins in the hallway between our offices. It started as general compliments on our outfits – we both share this love of clothing – but turned into more personal subjects. We talked about our jobs, families, travel plans for the holidays. He would come in to visit my coworker, and end up chatting with me. I was so excited. Going through a breakup is so much easier when you have eye candy to admire.

My infatuation continued for the next month or so, but something was off. Oh no. My poor taste usually involves choosing assholes, not… yes, it was confirmed. Brian is gay. Could he see my heart skip a beat when he mentioned a breakup with his boyfriend? Half disappointed, but half hoping he realized his heart ached for women.

I brought my infatuation up to my coworker. “Nicole. You need to stop this. It is not healthy.” I responded, “No, have you seen the way he looks at me? I think it’s going to happen.” I always follow this sentiment with a, “Just kidding,” but we all know I’m not. The odd thing is, knowing I can never have him, has made me more outgoing with my affection. We all win. And the best part is, our friendship has continued to grow.

Everyone knows about my feelings for Brian, but instead of creating an awkward situation, it has become a fun joke. I was looking at a friend’s engagement pictures with my coworker, and without thinking, exclaimed, “Omigosh! Brian and I would be so cute in these! Think about the outfits we could create!” In an effort to embarrass me, he notified Brian, and instead of denying this fact, Brian agreed, and decided that in addition to the engagement photos, we could actually get married, and find a situation that worked for both of us. Such a tease. But one can always hope!

Our path to friendship hasn’t taken the most direct path, but has led to a unique understanding of each other. He is one of those people that can lift you up when you’re down. An impromptu bottle of wine paired with a cheese plate can turn the evening around as we turn our misfortunes in love into laughable matters. A brief visit to his office can turn into a 20 minute gab fest about the books we are reading. And a hug on a bad day can turn everything around.

See? It’s the little things too. He’s perfect.

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by Gay Lynn Costa

When my son, Kyle, was fourteen years old, I asked him point-blank if he was gay. He admitted to me tearfully that he was. We hugged and cried together, and I let him know in no uncertain terms that it made no difference to me whatsoever. We began an adventure together that day, mother and son, that has been wonderful and heartbreaking, joyful and painful. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

From that day forward Kyle never saw any reason to hide from the rest of the world. Admittedly, I worried from time to time that he may have come a bit too far out of that safe closet, but I didn’t ever want to make him feel ashamed of who he was by asking him to “be more discrete.” I didn’t want to shove even one of his toes back into the darkness.

In the small, predominately Mormon town of Kaysville, Utah, Kyle confidently made his way through junior high and into high school. His outgoing personality and sense of humor won him a lot of friends, and all seemed to be going well. So when the principal called me one afternoon to tell me Kyle had been “mobbed” by a group of guys after school, the world as I knew it was turned upside down.

I raced to the school with tears streaming down my face. The flood of emotions that was surging through me is difficult to describe. I wanted to find the little mother fucker who had instigated this and beat the shit out of him myself.

I burst through the doors of the school and into the principal’s office to find Kyle physically okay –a couple of scratches, but nothing major. The real damage came to light as the principal explained to me what had happened.

As Kyle was leaving school that day, a group of the football players followed him and began verbally assaulting him regarding his being gay. The terms they used were horrific, and the humiliation was beyond what anyone should have to endure. There was a physical scuffle as they surrounded him, but before they could throw many punches someone broke the crowd up.

The ring leader, I was told, was waiting in another room, and his mother was on her way.

I was in a fog of outrage and pain. Kyle sat next to me, quiet and sad. I was seething. It’s a good thing I didn’t know what room that kid was in.

The principal had called the police, and they showed up to investigate. They were calling this a “hate crime”, a term I’d hardly heard in 1996, and they were promising to prosecute. Good, I thought. Good for the principal and the police officers who took this as seriously as they should have.

Then the door opened and this kid’s mom walked in. Oh, my god. I knew her.

I had been an active member of the LDS church for many years, but because of my differing liberal opinions (regarding issues such as homosexuality) I had long been inactive. Julie Smith (not her real name) was the president of the Relief Society – the LDS women’s group for the ward. She had been to my house a couple of times, urging me to reconsider and come back to church. Each time I explained to her that I just didn’t believe the way they did, and would never be back.

Wow. Here she now stood, as stunned to see me as I was to see her. She sat in a chair near me and tearfully begged me not to press charges. “My son,” she said, “is not this kind of boy. Please don’t let this ruin his life”.

Her tears aroused sympathy in me, and for just a few seconds, I thought of how she must have felt, and considered her wishes. But I looked back at Kyle, and all the anger roared back into my heart and I looked her straight in the eye.

“Your son IS this kind of boy. He did do this.”

We sat there, the six of us in silence for the next couple of minutes. Two policemen, the principal, Julie, Kyle, and me. Then one of the officers asked me if there was anything else I’d like to say. All I could think of was that I wanted to talk to this kid. I wanted to see him. I wanted to try and understand.

He was brought into the room and my jaw was clenched. He was big – close to six feet tall, and quite husky. He was wearing a letter jacket and a sheepish look. I couldn’t tell if that look represented shame, or merely frustration at having been caught.

It took me a minute to collect my thoughts, but I finally spoke to him.

“You’re a good-looking kid. I’ll bet you are quite popular.” It came out as more of a question. He shook his head yes. “Lots of friends?” Again the head shook yes. “Good for you.”

“Let me tell you something. My son might be gay, but you’ll never be half the man he is.”

This caught his attention and he looked up at me, slightly startled that I would say such a thing. I continued.

“You are a coward. Kyle is not ashamed of who he is. I can only hope that you’re ashamed of who you are.”

It was one of my finer moments.

I mention the fact that this kid’s mother was heavily involved in the LDS church – not to disparage the church or its teachings. I mention it because, sadly, religion is often inexplicably a conduit for judgment and hatred. I have no doubt that “Julie Smith” would never have outwardly encouraged her son to do what he did. However, if you, as a religious, spiritual person, ever say, “we don’t believe in that” to your child (or congregation) without adding, “but we should never judge or criticize those who do”, then you are sending the wrong message.

It’s time to change that message.

Kyle survived the incident amazingly. I’m sure it left some scars, but he has continued these last several years without changing who he is. He inspires me.

The football player was charged with a hate crime. It was his senior year in high school and he wasn’t allowed to participate in any more sports, and spent six months on house arrest. I hope he learned something. I wonder.

-(Share your story with us!)

NOTE: Gay Lynn’s son, Kyle, recounts his version of this story in his video story with IFD. Check it out here.

by David Glick

“Why are you doing this? You’re not gay!” In the months since we announced our intentions to start GLBTQ Online High School, I’ve been asked this many times. I don’t mind the first part of the question; it’s the second half of that has always bothered me. Does one have to be from urban areas to want to create options for urban kids? Does one have to be homeless to have compassion for the homeless? Does one have to be queer to support safe, high quality education for queer kids? And why are they asking if I’m gay? Not a single person has ever asked if I’m bisexual or transgender. What biases does that reveal? However, for now, the “why” question is complicated enough.

Now that the majority of states have statewide virtual schools and it’s very easy for any school district to get all sorts of commercial courses relatively inexpensively, the need for new all-purpose virtual schools is decreasing even while enrollments in such schools grows. As a result, new virtual schools are becoming increasingly focused and targeted on specific populations. There are Christian online schools, Native American online schools, and now an all-girls online school under development. The Catholic Archdiocese just announced their intent to start a nationwide Catholic online school to provide education to all of those students who lost the opportunity due to declining enrollments and resulting school closures. The virtual school world strives to provide educational opportunities that traditional schools have failed to provide and serve certain populations that traditional schools have failed to serve. Starting this school is merely a logical extension of my work with virtual schools and my understanding of the trends in the industry.

That’s one answer.

Over the last couple years, I’ve been reading about Chicago Public School’s efforts to start a bricks & mortar school for GLBTQ youth. They failed. Politics, homophobia, and splits even within the queer community led to that failure, and the kids that wanted or needed their own school in order to be among their peers were denied the opportunity. It was obvious to me that the time was right for an online school for queer kids. This school could serve not only the kids in urban areas like Chicago that have no such schools, but it could also serve kids in rural areas that have few local peers and no way to connect to other queer kids – at least not in a safe, academic environment. This school could even serve kids around the world in countries where homosexuality and queerness are crimes. It was also obvious that we would need to be independent of local politics and the whims of a school board. Anything that relied on tax dollars was subject to major objections, so creating an online private school was the obvious choice.

That’s another answer.

Since at least the sixth grade, I have memories of thinking homophobia made no sense. So what if that teacher was gay? Why do those kids always pick on the one they call “sissy?” In high school, if I knew I was straight and my girlfriend knew I was straight, what did I care if someone misinterpreted a comment I made and might think I was gay? “Accused of being gay.” Like that was a bad thing? When I was a young teacher and that brave young man requested to speak to the entire student body to come out and describe how that school’s environment was hostile to gay students, why did the head of the school refuse to attend the meeting? Why did some of that student’s teachers start making nasty comments in class? As a teacher in rural Minnesota when I witnessed some of the comments heard all too often in schools, I put a stop to it as best I could. Why did the kids respond by saying that none of the other teachers ever objected to that kind of language? When I worked for the Department of Education and someone put a box of Humans Unafraid of Gays (HUG) buttons out and available for staff, why did the department leaders take that box away within minutes? How would these incidents make me feel?

That’s another answer.

My first year of teaching in Minnesota was in a small, rural district. It was hell. Students and parents objected to my teaching to the high standards I had come to expect from my previous school. Teachers who had been in the district looked at me with suspicion because I didn’t always use the cookie-cutter approach promoted by the textbooks. And then, when it became known that I was (gasp!) Jewish, the real hell began. Swastikas on my chalkboard and carved into my desk. Taunting in the hallways. Ineffective disciplinary response from the administration. Public humiliation at the required-attendance Christmas assembly held during school. A school board who criticized me for being too sensitive. People who called themselves my friends asking, “Isn’t it like this everywhere?” or “Shouldn’t you just get used to it?” Or even trying to lighten the mood by telling Jewish jokes. The loneliness of isolation in the midst of a community I couldn’t call my own.

That’s another answer.

In the “old days” before the Internet, we were able to and required to live largely in our own neighborhoods. We may have been bused across town for school as I was, but that’s as far as we had to go. As kids, our options were limited by what and who was within the distance we could ride our bikes. We had three television stations. Relatively speaking, we were isolated by geography and limited in our contacts to the people we saw.

Now there’s Facebook and Twitter and virtual schools and a 24-hour news cycle and hundreds of television channels specializing in our every interest. We have more choices. Nowhere does anyone’s life have to revolve around just the limited people in their immediate vicinity. We have tools and techniques to connect on a world-wide basis with the entire range of humanity. We can create communities in which each and every individual can thrive.

So why create GLBTQ Online High School? Because it is needed and because we can.

And that’s the only answer we really need.

-(Share your story with us!)

NOTE: David Glick is the Executive Director of GLBTQ Online High School. IFD founder, Nathan, saw a post onTowleroad about the school and contacted David, who graciously took the time to write a story for IFD. You can find out more about David here as well as learn more about the school here. Students can enroll now and class will be in session starting January 2010.