Chapter Two
I wasn’t ready for that.
It wasn’t that I was homophobic. I consider myself to be a pretty hip and modern kind of guy, as I’ve made clear. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that at least some of my students wouldn’t at some time discover their homosexuality. But my guilt-laden Catholic upbringing somehow had me not really permitting myself to believe that any of the kids could possibly be gay. It was bound to happen that a young student would “out” himself to me during the course of my teaching career. Of course, it was only my first year. I had been prepared to wait for a while. “Oh,” was what I managed to muster. I had wanted to say something profound. The Prime Minister’s Award for outstanding Canadian teacher did not seem imminent. Tim, to his credit, appeared to find my discomfort comforting.
“You didn’t know?” he asked, barely suppressing a giggle. I tried hard not to think of his smothered giggle as girlish.
“No. I didn’t, I guess.”
“Oh, come on!” Nathan protested. “You didn’t realize Tim wasn’t straight? Are you blind?”
“Stop teasing me,” Tim mockingly complained, affecting an over-the-top lisp. In a sitcom, it would be during this La Cage aux Folles routine that a vice-principal would walk in and wonder why I was doing little to stop this politically incorrect behaviour. “Seriously,” he continued, dropping the stereotype, “I thought everyone knew.”
“Would it seem horribly insensitive of me if I told you that I really never gave it any thought?” That seemed to stymie them for a moment. Since they were grade twelves, I allowed a moment of unguarded levity to pass between us. “Generally speaking, teachers contemplating their students’ sexuality — whether hetero or homo — is sort of frowned upon by management.” They laughed. At least something in this conversation was going right.
Nathan could not resist. “Man, if you can’t pick out that Tim’s gay, I hope you don’t find yourself stuck in a gay bar downtown. You’ve got a seriously broken gay-dar.”
Tim mercifully intervened on my behalf. “Leave him alone, Nate. I wouldn’t expect Mr. Patrick to be checking me out.” He smirked playfully. “Besides, he’s not my type.”
I got up abruptly. “Okay. Now I’m dangerously uncomfortable. Nice talking with you.” Three minutes left on the clock.
“Mr. Patrick.” Sara actually reached out and grabbed my arm. “This is serious.”
“Sara, forget it,” Tim protested.
“Shhh,” she said. Tim was quickly becoming redundant in his own argument. “Really. It isn’t right. He has no right to tell Tim he can’t bring whoever he wants to grad.”
I stopped and looked at them. “What exactly did Mr. Owen say about your date?”
Tim looked reluctant to carry on but finally did. “He said that my date would not be appropriate for a school function.”
“He mentioned it was specifically because of your date’s gender?”
“Well, yeah, but he also tried to get around it by saying that my date was too old.”
A fresh wrench in the works. “How old is he?”
“He’s twenty, okay? And before you say anything, there’s nothing wrong with him going out with me. It’s less than three years difference.”
I tossed my arms in the air helplessly. “I didn’t make the rule. I’m not the bad guy here.” I paused to find a way to gently put the next phrase to my disgruntled charges. “It is possible that Mr. Owen feels that having a twenty-year-old come to a high school graduation is not appropriate.” My cool status was on the line.
“I call ‘bullshit,’” Sara said. She had a habit of periodically forgetting I was her teacher and speaking with me in the vernacular of her friends. The perils of teaching in East Vancouver, I guess. I didn’t bother to reproach her. She had already called me cool. I couldn’t risk it.
“I’m just saying that having adults at the grad dance as dates may have certain ramifications.”
“That’s crap,” Sara continued, “and Mr. Owen knows it. He doesn’t want Tim’s date to come because Van is gay.”
“Van?” I asked.
Tim looked up at me defiantly. “That’s my boyfriend.”
“Okay.” Quick glance at the clock — down to about ninety seconds. How much trouble would I get in if I just dismissed them early? “You’re sure this isn’t just about his age? This might have nothing to do with discrimination.”
“My boyfriend is twenty, and he’s on the approved guest list,” Sara told me. That this seventeen-year-old’s boyfriend was two years into adulthood was probably a conversation for another time, and by god, with another person. “What do you make of that?” Her tone was very demanding.
“It sounds like Mr. Owen is trying to avoid some potentially uncomfortable phone calls and complaints,” I began. Sara arched forward in her seat but stopped when I raised a hand. “And it sounds like he’s making that decision based on what could clearly be classed as a discriminatory perspective.” There was a pause while they digested the fact that I was agreeing with them. Finally, Nathan spoke to Sara and Tim.
“Did he just say what I think?”
“Yep,” Sara replied. “He agrees with us. Van should be allowed to come as Tim’s date.”
Tim looked up at me with a shy nod. “Thanks, Mr. Patrick. That does mean something to me knowing you’re okay with my being gay.”
“Oh, he’s more than okay with it. He’s gonna go talk to Owen for you.” She wore a smile large enough that it risked breaking out into full laughter. She’d had me as a teacher for nearly nine months, and she figured she could read me like a book. It appeared she was right.
“You are?” Tim asked a little sheepishly.
I looked up at the clock, one of the few pieces of equipment I had come across within the building that worked with stupendous accuracy. It showed that there were some twenty-five seconds before class ended. It would be too long to stand there saying nothing. I sighed. “Yes, I am.”
“Told you he was cool,” Sara declared. At least there was that. It was a sad statement about my life that I was placing so dear a value on Sara, Tim, and Nathan’s view of my coolness. The bell rang as she finished her proclamation. Standing, she patted me on the arm as she walked by. “I knew we could count on you.” She winked as she walked away. “Let me know how it goes.”
The rest of the class was filing out. Most of them never bothered to say goodbye. Clearly they did not share Sara’s view of my coolness, or they would not have dreamed of leaving without a closing salutation. Tim and Nathan stood beside me as I watched Sara recede from sight out into the river of teenagers flowing past my open door toward eighteen hours of academic reprieve.
“You don’t have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable,” Tim finally assured me.
I turned to face him. “What the hell kind of name is Van?” I asked.
He smiled for only the second time that afternoon. “I think it’s kind of sexy,” he replied with a coy grin.
“Go home,” I demanded. Nathan laughed uproariously at my discomfort and followed Tim out the door.
Chapter Three
Bill Owen was a big man.
He was about six foot three, and I shrank in comparison at my average barely six feet. He was also big-shouldered, enormously big-gutted, and big-voiced. He often