Every year at Wakefield High is another adventure. You meet new people and learn about them and their personal lives. This year during our fall production I was acquainted with a girl named Dee. She’s a nice African girl, very pretty and has a mean mouth at times. That day I found out that she was a lesbian and it was surprising but I had no problem with it, besides I’m bisexual. However there were these two boys who were listening to our conversation (she was naming the girls that she was attracted to) and one of them, a sophomore, said, “Why do you like girls?” and she replied, “Well don’t you like guys?”
And his answer was, “Because I’m a dude, ew, naw I couldn’t do that.”
Now while this was going on, I kept thinking “Make him shutup, please make him shutup or I will.”
Ignorant comments like that make my blood boil, it was rude and disrespectful.
So anyway, one day after rehearsal we get into this conversation about her dealings with one of the teachers at our school. My theater teacher is standing there listening to our conversation with open ears, she says, “Yeah you know Ms. S, she was watching my friend Yolanda because she didn’t like how she was hanging out with a gay girl. They walk down the hall holding hands and they were really close, so she emails my Yolanda’s parents and lays everything out on the table. She tells them that Yolanda is gay and they didn’t know, she was planning on telling them later. She also emailed the gay girl’s parents, but they already new. Then a month later they kicked the gay girl out because apparently her grades weren’t good enough, but we all know it was all about her sexuality.”
My reaction was not good; I wanted to go straight to the principal about this. Our school is very diverse and we even have a Gay Straight Alliance Club, we also have many staff members who are openly gay. My theater who is gay and married said, “Well, you can’t change her, she won’t stop and she won’t let it go. You can’t change how people think just like you can’t change how I am.” We all nodded our heads in agreement. I still wasn’t happy about it; I’m someone who wants justice. However trying to get her fired or suspended will not change her personal preference, it won’t do much justice for me or Dee or anyone else. Plus now that a lot of people know that she’s gay, she’s afraid her family will find out. Someone said in the hallway, “She’s too pretty to be gay.” She said to me that she was afraid that if her family found out that they would disown her or something terrible along those lines.
I don’t know about all this, I mean how do you handle such a thing in an environment where you’re supposed to feel comfortable, especially one like ours? We are one of the most diverse schools in Virginia and we have so many different kinds of people.
My theater teacher left us with this, “Even if your family disowns you, you’ll always have that family of friends that will be there to hold your hand, give you a hug and tell you that everything will be fine, because with them, things are always fine.”