Mr. Grope just told us:
Your yearbook may not mean anything to you now, but believe me, in ten years it will. You will look back on this time and wonder how life could ever have been so easy.
He was a fox of a man—and not in the good sense—with greasy brown hair and a pointy snout. His tie hung several inches shy of his belt, and the knot strangling his thin neck was so large it was like a time warp back to the 70s.
He surveyed his class of high-school students. Many of the boys slouched downwards in their chairs, legs extended outwards, ball caps worn at strange angles. The girls tended to lean forward, giving in to the weight of newfound breasts, elbows on their desks, jeans so tight they’d need a shoehorn to get into or out of them.
A few, like Greg, actually paid attention, just in case Mr. Grope stopped giving sermons and actually started teaching calculus. “Of course most of you will look back at the hairstyles you’ve got now, the ones you think are so cool, and wonder what you were thinking.”
Mr. Grope stared straight at Greg as he said this. Greg’s hair was shaggy, long in the back. His moment of ridicule was there and gone in a heartbeat, but from the way Jeff, a handsome senior with a buzzcut and surprisingly little attitude, glanced at Greg, he knew he hadn’t just imagined it. Jeff wasn’t exactly a friend, but they had sat next to each other all year, and both wanted to be architects. In the year leading up to university, that suddenly counted for something.
Unfortunately, Jeff was not the only one to notice the teacher’s lingering gaze. The two pretty girls who sat behind him, Diane and Vanessa, leaned forward and whispered to Greg: “Fag boy.”
Jeff shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Greg’s shoulders tensed but otherwise he showed no emotion, and now two overweight girls in front of him tittered at the insult. It struck him as ironic that he was the target of homophobia even though he was still in the closet, and worse still, it was girls harassing him instead of potentially thuggish, wet dream jocks like Jeff.
He figured Diane and Vanessa’s attitude sort of made sense, because they were pretty, and to him that made them [predictably] a couple of bitches. They’d likely get over their homophobia once they could afford high-end salons employing the best gay hairdressers, who I’m sure would recruit them as fag hags. April and Janet, however, were fat. Who were they to make fun of anyone?
“Cherish this time of innocence, because out there,” Mr. Grope prattled on, pointing to the window, which faced onto a courtyard. “Out there, you will be the decision makers, the lawyers, the surgeons, the architects…”
Greg began to doodle. He drew quick sketches of a bird of fire, over and over again. He’d prefer to draw young muscle boys, but didn’t want Jeff [or anyone else] to catch him. Besides, they never turned out the way he imagined in his head, somehow sleek and bulging all at the same time.
The usual tickle started in his pubescent pants just as the bell rang. Everyone got up in a hurry, stuffing their books and pencil cases into their knapsacks and hurrying for the door.
“Greg,” Mr. Grope said, “I understand you’ve made a submission to the yearbook.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s an interesting drawing.”
“Uhm…thank you.”
Mr. Grope pursed his lips. “Yes, it’s interesting, but I’m not sure it’s entirely appropriate.”
Greg said nothing, shocked into silence. Since when did a math teacher have anything to say about the yearbook? Then again, when did this math teacher not have something to say about just about anything?
“The school exploding as a bird made of fire bursts out of it?”
“It’s a phoenix.”
“Yes, I’m sure. And the caption. From the ashes of hell, there comes creation.”
“Well, yes. I’m just saying that even though high school’s hell, we can grow from it and make something that’s our own once we get out.”
“Hell is a very strong word.”
“So are my feelings towards high school.”
“Then save it for your diary. The yearbook is a public forum, and you can’t just say what you want in it.”
“It’s a student forum, and the yearbook editor loved the picture and the caption.”
“Well the principal doesn’t. Either you take the word hell out of the text, or the picture doesn’t go in.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I can’t, but the principal can. And he will. And you should rethink your attitude. As a white, healthy male I really don’t see what you have to complain about. Try being a woman. Or black. Or handicapped,” he continued.
Where did this jackass get off talking like that? He was the epitome of the white, sexist male. This freak needed to take a political correctness workshop.
“Your life is easy,” Grope concluded.
Words teased Greg’s throat and lips, loaded and ready to fire, ready to let it all out—what it felt like coming to class every day, being trapped between those four bitches, whispering fag boy. And their questions, like “so what do you like in a girl?” To which one of them would reply on his behalf: “her brother.”
The gay card was there, ready and waiting to be thrown right in this idiot’s face. Never mind that Greg’s parents didn’t know, that nobody, despite the teasing, actually knew it for truth. How dare this man tell him his life was easy when coming to this class was like preparing for battle, fists clenched, adrenaline pumping, waiting for the next round of insults from his fan club?
Greg’s mouth ran dry.
“I’m gay.”
He’d never said the words out loud. Was this how he wanted to do it? For this moron to be the first person to know? To use it as a weapon to get his way? And then what? Would Grope tell his parents? Would they care? He couldn’t handle it any more.
He picked up his bag.
“Cliques. AIDS. Teen pregnancy. Never getting asked out. Drug addiction. Divorce. Racism. Getting dumped. Failing a test. Fat boys with boobs who have to take their shirts off in gym class. Anorexia. Steroids. Guns at school. Acne. Secrets. Truths. That drawing, that caption, they weren’t just for me and what I’ve experienced. It was supposed to be a voice for what high school was like for all of us, not what it might have been like for you.”
Greg jerked his bag over one shoulder and walked out before his teacher could say another word. He slammed the door behind him and was instantly greeted by Diane, flanked by a couple of guys from the soccer team.
“Hey fag boy!” she shouted.
He walked right up to her, forcing her to take a step back.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
She said nothing, her look suddenly sullen. The soccer players made no move to step in. He let a few more heartbeats of her silence pass by, and then walked away.
He brushed past Jeff.
“Hey, you ok?”
He said nothing, just kept on pushing through the masses. Now it’s April and Janet.
“Hey fag boy,” they cried cheerily.
“Hey fatsos,” he replied loudly. “Good news. Whaling’s been outlawed, must be your lucky day. Why don’t you run along to McDonald’s and celebrate?”
Their mouths dropped and Janet gave him a hard punch in the chest. “Don’t talk to my friend like that.”
Classmates had, by now, stopped to stare, Jeff among them. Greg clenched his fingers into a fist and punched her hard in the boob. She stepped back, holding her breast where he’d hit her.
Now he’d done it. He’d hit a girl—a girl who outweighed him by 50lbs—but a girl nonetheless.
People saw. People stopped. Hands froze on half-open locker doors. Conversations dropped to murmurs.
“If you hit me again…” Janet started.
“No,” he replied, his voice hard yet sounding calm. “If you hit me again, I will hit you back, and I will hit harder.”
Heads craned over shoulders to get a better look. Eyes were spotlights, all pointed at him. He felt trickles of sweat under their heat. I’m so tired, he thought, wishing to be alone, lying on his bed, gazing up at the tilted ceiling of his attic room, posters of Porsches and bikini clad women that he’d put up in imitation of his older brother gazing down. There he could give in to the joy of solitary depression.
I can’t do this anymore, he thought. It’s too much.
And in that moment, as he readied for the universe to swallow him whole, it instead spat him right back out.
“Right on Greg!” Jeff shouted.
In amazement, Greg watched and listened as people cheered, especially the boys. A few even clapped him on the back. When had he crossed over into the Twilight Zone?
He looked around, wondering where these fuckers had been for the past four years of his life when he really needed a bit of support. They had, of course, been where they would be tomorrow—nowhere.
The hallway, temporarily frozen by the drama, sprung back to life. Greg watched the two girls trot away, giving him the finger as they rounded the corner.
From over the double doorway the school’s insignia glared at him, and he felt his shoulders deflate as he read the words engraved beneath.
Enter to learn, go forth to serve.
He thought of Grope and all that he’d said, and nodded slowly to himself.
I think I like my motto better:
From the Ashes of Hell
There Comes Creation.
