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Growing up gay in a very small Midwestern town during the 60s and 70s was every bit the challenge you might imagine. However, even that long ago, it was clear that times were changing. This story is a case in point.
I knew from an early age that I was "different." By the age of five, I was a wisp with lisp and a love for classical music. While other boys my age were playing sports, I was seriously studying piano. I learned early on that my odd ways were beginning to make me a target. By the time I entered high school, I innately knew I was in serious risk of being bullied. I found many coping mechanisms, humor being chief among them. I learned that if I could keep my classmates laughing, it would make it difficult for them to then turn around and pummel me.
It worked for the most part. I even managed to become somewhat popular although I put up with my fair share of taunts and threats. I came to expect it from certain classmates and avoided these people at all costs. I was really good at that. Even though I was a bit of a clown, I was also an apt student. I payed attention, did the work and got very good grades. Most of my teachers liked me very well and those who didn't kept it to themselves.
Except for Mr. Bogit (name changed to an ironic pseudonym), the school's only biology teacher.
From the time I entered as a freshman, this man would glower at me when he would encounter me in the halls on the way to class. It didn't help my standing when later that year, my bad boy brother mouthed off to him. Mr. Bogit slammed him up against a locker so hard it bruised his shoulder. He then had the nerve to ask that my brother be suspended. It was an epic incident with my mother going ballistic in a meeting with administration. My brother was not suspended and, although I don't know this for sure, I suspect Mr. Bogit was issued a reprimand.
My sophomore year, I was required to take the only biology course offered from this man. I was terrified of him. I still remember the sick feeling I had in my stomach that first day of class. It started out well enough and I was relieved. Although I would catch him looking at me like he had spied a cockroach from time to time, for the most part, he ignored me. That was just fine with me.
An avid fan of our high school basketball and football teams, Mr. Bogit would often spend a few minutes at the beginning of class chatting about whatever game had taken place the night before. Small Midwestern towns are like that. He loved to make homophobic, denigrating remarks about our rival school's players. He would berate them, tossing out words such as fairy and pansy, glancing at me while he said them. He made it more and more obvious as the weeks rolled on that he found my effeminate, piano-playing ass loathsome.
On November 24th of that year, Dan White, a spurned former San Francisco City Supervisor, walked into San Francisco City Hall and shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Not since the Stonewall Riots had a singular event sent out such a societal shock wave of gravitas for the gay rights movement. Even my fully-engulfed homophobic father seemed appalled.
Mr. Bogit's biology class ran for two semesters and I hated each and every minute of it. I think it really cheesed him that I pulled an A my first semester. One Monday, Just a few weeks before our spring semester was to end, Mr. Bogit came into the class excited about a Beethoven piano concert he attended that weekend in Chicago. If he mentioned the pianist or Opus number I don't recall, but Mr. Bogit was stunned and moved by the performance.
He started his account by first glancing at me and the announcing he had always considered piano players to be pansies. My ears still burn red when I think of it. He went on to praise the musician, marveling at the dexterity and intelligence it took to master such complexity and raw power. At the time, I was so embarrassed I couldn't even meet his eyes. I have never wanted to be invisible more in my entire life.
In retrospect, it was an extraordinary moment for a man such as this. In his own way, he was publicly owning a misconception, a stereotype of his own making. If I weren't so young at the time and it didn't directly involve my own Id and ego, I would have realized what was happening. He was learning.
I like to think Mr. Bogit went on to become a better teacher for it. Or, at the very least, he went on to stop glowering at his gay students.
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October 18, 2014
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