Pride 2021: A Little Kindness on a Bad Day

The last few weeks, as I’ve approached the third anniversary of my coming out (which was yesterday!) I've been reflecting on a story from my first year as an out bi man, one that brings me a lot of comfort and makes me feel better about the future. It’s a story about kindness from unexpected places and how no bad feeling lasts forever. This year, in lieu of my annual Pride blogs, I want to share this story with you.

My first six months serving as the Campus Monitor at Thurston High School were tough, verging on brutal. I was not an especially welcomed presence on campus, which in retrospect shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, the nature of my job was essentially to be a narc, to tattle. No matter how friendly I tried to be, at the end of the day I was there to enforce the rules. Which is an important function, don’t get me wrong, but it was not one particularly well-suited to my personality. I’m not a rules guy, per se. Still, I wanted to perform the job to the best of my ability, especially considering how it represented a fresh start for me.

My coming out had been such a source of scandal for the church I attended at the time that I had all but given up on the possibility of doing youth ministry for a living. I loved working with kids, and I loved preaching the Gospel, but the rejection of my faith community had convinced me I was disqualified from doing both at the same time.

Discouraged but determined to find some way forward, I pivoted to a career field adjacent to, but distinct from youth ministry, one in which I could still work with the sort of kids I had always connected with best, albeit in a different context. I applied for classified (non-teaching) positions at both of the high schools in my hometown: my own alma mater and our cross-town rival. After interviewing for both jobs, I accepted the Campus Monitor position at Thurston. There was some trepidation around working for “the enemy” (Springfield and Thurston are bitter rivals to this day), but my years in youth work and ministry have taught me that kids are kids no matter where you go.

I went in with all the best intentions, but none of it could have prepared me for how turbulent the job would be, to supervise 1400-plus students, to make sure everyone was following the rules at all times, to confront rule-breakers and insist they improve their behavior or else deal with "serious consequences." The position required me to be confrontational, unyielding, and authoritative in demeanor. If you know me even a little bit, you can probably guess how that went. Eventually I would learn how to build trust with students, convince them I was there for the right reasons and that I cared more about their well-being than the rules, but that was a tough sell to begin with. They essentially hazed me until they were sure I could be trusted.

I remember a moment in my supervisor’s office, the day before students returned from winter break. We were debriefing my first semester on the job, and I voiced my concern that I had a “likeability problem.” That would soon change, but not before things got a little worse.

A few weeks later I was sitting in the cafeteria resting my feet after one of my dozen-or-so daily patrols around campus. My phone buzzed so I unlocked it to find an Instagram notification. Someone was following me, a name I didn’t recognize at first. I stared at it for a moment before realizing it was a student’s, one I had caught skipping class once or twice, nothing too serious but he certainly wasn’t a fan of mine. Heart racing a little, I looked up from my phone to see the same student sitting fifteen or so feet in front of me at another table.

As I walked over to him I silently admonished myself for assuming that because I used a different name on social media I would be safe from this sort of prying into my personal life. I reached the young man’s table, expecting to gently remind him that I can’t have students following me on social media (per district policy), but instead he looked up at me, smirking, and said, “I’m gonna make you famous.”

Soon dozens of notifications came flooding in, other students following me on Instagram, Facebook, even my old Youtube account I’d used for video diaries during grad school. In a panic I switched all my accounts to private, deleted from my friends list all the students who'd already followed me, and tried to go about my day. Follow requests kept pouring in, and as I walked through the halls, students who had once avoided me began confronting me, demanding I let them follow me on insta. Each time I played it cool, laughed it off, but all the while my brain kept flashing back to the scandal at my church, how everyone was suddenly talking about me, how rumors and innuendo had very nearly ruined my life.

By the next day, about 80 Instagram accounts corresponding with Thurston students sat in my follow requests. I had to actively fight off a panic attack when I got a text from my cousin, who had graduated from the school two or three years prior, warning me that a screenshot of my Instagram account was circulating on her friends’ snapchat stories. I was going viral. 

All I could do was try and ignore it, go about my daily business, even while most of my interactions with students steered toward the topic of my social media accounts. My thoughts spiraled around one question in particular: did the first few students who found my Instagram see the posts referencing my orientation before I managed to go private? If so, would I be outed at work? How would folks respond to the knowledge, particularly at a school known for its country culture?

My worst fears seemed confirmed when a student approached me and apologized for how some of the others were talking about me. I asked what he meant, color leaving my face, and he clarified that he’d heard a crew of girls joking about me, that their jokes were explicitly homophobic in flavor. I thanked him for his sympathy and walked away, tears lining the corners of my eyes.

Determined to remove myself from the crowds for a moment I rushed toward the office, but ran into two young men who had consistently given me grief as I patrolled the halls that year. Their joking was usually harmless enough but they didn’t take me all that seriously, and needed persistent, if not constant reminders to go back to class, to stay out of the bathrooms unless they actually needed to use one. In fact, they had called me by the wrong name for the first couple months of that year, for no reason other than to get under my skin.

I had made some headway winning their trust, first by buying the raffle tickets they sold to fundraise for wrestling, and then by attending all their wrestling meets to cheer them on. Those decisions, cultivated from years of youth ministry, helped convince these goofballs that I wasn’t so bad after all, that I genuinely cared about them and wanted to be a meaningful, positive presence in their lives. By this point, they would still poke fun at me but at the end of the day there was a hard-won respect between us. Most days.

On the day in question they greeted me in their typical fashion, with an irreverent joke or outrageous remark, but instead of chiding them or joking back I averted my eyes so they wouldn’t see the tears forming. “Sorry guys, I’m just having a bad day.” 

On a dime their tone and posture changed. “Wait, why? What’s wrong?” they said in unison, genuine concern in their voices. I couldn’t respond without crying so I just kept walking, through the office doors. I collected myself in the staff lounge and planned my next steps, figuring I'd have to come out to my supervisors, in case the homophobic joking caught on and I became the same source of scandal at my job that I had at my church.

I talked with one of my supervisors who encouraged me that I couldn't be fired for my orientation. He recommended I take a long walk around the periphery of the school, close enough if I was needed but far enough to breathe a little. I took his advice.

After walking around the school's external gates for forty-five minutes I returned to campus. Crossing the main courtyard I saw one of the wrestling boys again. He beelined toward me and asked what was wrong. At this point I’d had some time to stave off my panic attack so I could offer the vague-if-technically true response, “I don’t know, man. The social media stuff is just a little embarrassing.”

“I get that,” he responded gently, “but you know we only mess with you like this because we love you.”

“I hope that’s true,” I sighed, feeling a bit of the weight come off my shoulders. “But thanks for saying so anyway.”

I checked in with my supervisor again. He informed me that, while I was off campus the boys were so concerned for me they'd confronted him, demanding answers. He had tactfully and discreetly told them I was simply having a bad day, and could use a little encouragement.

Nothing really came of all that noise. As happens in a high school, the focus eventually shifted away from me to a new scandal, a different set of jokes and memes. I didn’t really get outed, or if I did I never heard about it. These days I’m less concerned about students knowing the truth. I won’t bring it up in conversation, as I still reserve the right to keep some space between my professional and personal lives, but I have assumed the role of GSA (Gender/Sexuality Alliance) advisor, a job I once avoided out of fear it would invite unwanted questions.

Once students realized I wouldn’t let them follow me on my socials they started creating fan accounts, taking candid pictures of me throughout the day and posting them with humorous captions. While I still felt somewhat exposed by the attention, I decided to roll with it rather than shutting it down, and in retrospect that openness and sense of humor seemed to endear me to the some of the students who had once disdained me. 

These days I love where I work more than ever. It helps that I’m doing a new job entirely. Instead of catching kids vaping in the bathroom, I get to meet with them to discuss obstacles to their success, connecting them with resources to overcome those obstacles. A better fit, you might say.

But my thoughts frequently drift back to that day, when the kindness of a few young men comforted me. In the panicked moments before that conversation I had even considered quitting, lest I scandalize another community. But their open-heartedness on my worst day kept me in the game a little longer.

I don’t think the next generation will wrestle with these issues in the same way past generations have. Things won’t change overnight, but I genuinely believe that the needle will keep moving in the right direction. The students I work with give me that hope.

So this is for them. Happy Pride everyone.

Jordan, 2021, proud Colt