Ripping Off the Bandage

I teach high school in a rural community of approximately 7,500 people. My own graduating class alone had more students in it than this entire high school's four grades combined. I came here with a "single story" of rural communities, thinking that I would be encountering nothing but hicks, hunters, and NASCAR enthusiasts. I was correct, in part, but I was so very wrong in my prejudging of them and in my limiting of them into those small categories. This small school is every bit as diverse as the school I went to. I have grown to love my students--rich and poor, farmer kid and doctor kid alike--and to care deeply for them and their unique stories and backgrounds, and I will dearly miss their humor and their blunt honesty when I move in a few weeks.

Being such a small (and very conservative) community, I have always been very afraid of my students finding out about my sexuality. Last year, however, they found a picture on my Facebook account--one that had somehow slipped under the radar and had been made public (I'm very careful about making everything private)--and discovered me joking about being gay in a comment under it. No one said a word to me, and I never would have known anything was amiss until one student with whom I am particularly close told me that "basically everyone" knows about it and that "it [was] no big deal."

I found myself looking around and wondering who knew and who didn't. I feared getting angry emails from parents. I feared getting called down to the office for a closed-door meeting with the principal and the district superintendent.

I knew, through conversations I had overheard on several occasions, that my students didn't view sexuality the way students did when I was in high school. Once, a group of five or six guys were asking each other how they felt about same-sex marriage, and every single one of them said that it was no big deal, it didn't affect them, and that everyone should be able to marry the person they love. I was stunned and amazed. I also found out a few months ago that a girl I've had in my class since her sophomore year is a lesbian. When I expressed surprise, I was almost chastised. I was told that everyone in the school knows about it, and how could I possibly not know about it? If teens in this farm and factory community were this blasé about sexuality, what might that say about teens in more "enlightened" areas and bigger cities?

I knew that I should just be honest about who I am. But there were still kids who jokingly asked me about girlfriends. I just didn't know what to do.

But then, as a final assignment, I asked my AP Literature students to write speeches. I told them that they were to be "Valedictorian-esque" with the common theme, "What I'm taking with me, and what I'm leaving behind." With only a few weeks left in the year, this group of seniors practically staged a rebellion. In the end they said that if they had to write and give a speech, then I should have to do the same. In the spirit of fairness, I agreed. I even said I'd go first.

This is the speech I gave:

"When I was at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, I took a class called 'Space, Form, and Materials.' One of the assignments for the class was to create an installation piece that represented our personal “Survival Kit.” As was usually the case with assignments given at an art school, not much direction was given: they always wanted us to interpret the problem or prompt ourselves and come up something based on our own perspectives and interpretations. I found myself completely unable to come up with an idea for my survival kit that went even the slightest bit beyond a surface level. My finished product had a backpack turned on its side and spilling out of it were things I loved: a couple novels, a journal, several pieces of sheet music, a blanket that I had made with my mom in grade school. But that was as deep as I was able to go. At 29 years old, I was still too scared to really look or really see, to know what was most important to me, what was essential for my survival.

But last June, almost exactly one year ago, my older brother, John, passed away. His death started a chain of events that would finally allow me to understand what was most important to keep with me at all times, and what needed to be set aside or thrown away.

In tenth grade, I took a shop class called “Plastics and Energy.” Despite being the least manly human on the planet, I do enjoy building things, working with my hands, measuring, cutting, and sanding. As much as I enjoyed making something from nothing, I knew that any shop class was a war zone for people like me. Shop class was riddled with jocks, hicks, and dudes. I was surrounded by guys who had an uncanny ability to zero in on my differentness, to smell my fear, to catch on their radar the one person in the room whose voice was the slightest bit higher than theirs. The room was set up much like many shop classrooms, long wooden tables in the middle surrounded by tools and machines of every kind around the perimeter. As usual, I stood down at the far end of one of the tables, separated by a good eight feet from a group of students to my left. I was busy sanding a block of clear plastic, slowly working my way down to finer and finer grains of sandpaper. 'Hey! Hey you!' I heard someone yell on my left. I knew that it was directed at me, but I knew, having been through this sort of thing before, that if I just continued what I was doing and ignored them, they would get bored and move on. 'Hey, I'm talking to you!' The ring leader lowered his voice and asked one of his minions what my name was. 'Hey! Justin! Man, are you gay? Justin, are you gay? Are you??' He wasn't going to let up, so I did the only thing an awkward, shy, self-conscious, gay teenager could do. I lifted my head from my work and turned to look at him. With a look on my face like he had just asked the most ridiculous question ever uttered, and with an edge to my voice that sounded like I couldn't believe he would ask such a stupid thing, I said, 'No. I'm not.' And I turned back to my work. They all laughed. 'Yeah, right,' I heard them saying to each other. 'Homo,' several of them said under their breaths. 'Frickin’ Fag.'

As an adolescent, I was very different from the vast majority of my peers. I was never the least bit interested in sports of any kind. I wasn’t rough and tumble like other boys. I didn’t play with GI Joe guys or trucks and tanks. I discovered at a young age, though, that I could be praised for various things I did, and so I drew and sewed and cooked and played the piano. I put on magic shows and arranged neighborhood carnivals and talent shows. I also started dancing when I was nine, which I continued until I was 26. Nothing gets more praise than something done on stage in front of an audience. I knew, on some level, that as long as I was being praised, maybe people wouldn't hate me as much when they eventually, inevitably, found out who and what I really was. (Never mind that most of things I did pointed directly to that part of me I was trying to keep hidden.)

As I grew older, these behaviors, these “talents,” became a way of life. But they felt like a shirt that you have to borrow from a friend when you spend the night because you forgot a clean one: it fits just fine, but you know the whole time you're wearing it that it doesn't really belong to you. I kept a lot of different shirts with me at all times. My survival kit was stuffed full of them.

And it wasn’t until the weeks and months following my brother’s funeral that I remembered all these memories, lost in the debris that tends to collect at the bottom of a backpack or purse or in a wallet, those things you forget about but inadvertently collect, things that multiply and add increasing weight and bulk. And it’s strange to me because I always thought I was really good about cleaning out my survival kit. I was an intelligent person who was deep thinking and introspective. I was the guy who was always questioning his motives and trying to get to the root of his problems. But I realized--last summer--that it is impossible to solve problems just by cleaning out the stuff I can readily see. The problems lay in all the sediment, all the crap that had collected at the bottom. I knew it was there, I guess, but the more that I got, the more I tried to ignore it, always putting newer, fresher, shinier things on top of them.

I’ll never forget the night I took out those old memories, unfolded their crusty, crumpled pieces of paper, and looked at them, read them, took them in. I forced myself to give each its due, and each took me further and further back. It was one of those philosophical times when the further back I went the more I felt like I was moving forward. The pain of reliving some of those memories almost consumed me. But the amazing thing was that I was then able to throw them away. I got to throw away my need for praise because I finally understood where that need came from. My addiction to external validation got thrown away because I understood the reasons behind that addiction. A need to fight fierce battles in defense of myself got thrown away because I finally understood that it wasn’t others I was fighting; it was myself. My backpack was lighter and I was able to replace all that garbage with things that really mattered to my survival.

And that, my friends, is the most freeing thing, that knowledge that the things we carry with us don’t always have to be the same. It is okay to toss things out, swap this for that, add something new. So don’t be afraid to look at the dregs in the bottom. The things that hurt us the most, the things that keep us locked inside ourselves, just might be the very things that one day set us free."

I was shaking and terrified the whole time I was talking. I had no idea what to expect during or afterwards. Later in the day, I asked a student who had already known about me what she thought the reaction was. She said, "Everyone already knew. This just confirmed it. You never said anything about it, so neither did we." A couple students from that class thanked and complimented me in the hall after class. Another student actually mentioned my coming out in his own speech, saying how much more my bravery made him respect me. I'm not sure how much my speech has made the rounds outside my class, but I know how students talk, so I can only assume that Mr. Moore's confirmation of his sexuality has made its way through the pipeline. And yet, nothing at all has changed. The same students still come in early every morning to visit. The same students still spend their lunch in my classroom. The same students still tease and joke around with me. The same students, a rather large group, still high-five me as they enter my room or pass by me in the hall. Students are still giving me invitations to their grad parties. 

I wish I had done this earlier. The knowledge that I can be 100% authentic makes everything I say and do with my students more meaningful. Some people might argue that "other people don't need to know about my personal life." I don't agree with that. More often than not, that is something people say who are scared of others' reactions. I strive to build a community of learners in my classroom, a place where everyone feels safe talking and expressing himself or herself. This uptopic classroom requires trust. And building trust requires a little vulnerability. When students see me making myself a little vulnerable (or a lot in the case of my Coming Out Speech) they then feel safe to do the same. Imagine the conversations we could have had if I had done this earlier, especially considering they already knew anyway!

There are a great many things that frustrate and, frankly, scare me about my students' generation. But one thing is certain: they are lightyears beyond my own and older generations in the Embracing Diversity department; at least, as far as human sexuality goes. This gives me so much joy and so much hope for the future. Now if I could just get them to put down the phones, the video game controllers, and the Monster energy drinks.