Saturday, October 25, 2003

Last night I went to a houseparty at one of my roomates fellow teachers house--let's call her Jackie, for the sake of anonymity. She is woman that I have met once before and I like her very much. She is a master story-teller and brings me to tears with her imitations of her kids- who are just about the age of mine. I think I have written of her before.

D and I drove up the prerequisite 25 miles through country roads to get to her house, only to be slammed by the smell of hogs when we got out of the car. Jackie lived in a really awesome, beautiful home...that happened to be situated right behind a hog farm. She said that you can hardly ever smell them, so we must have just gotten lucky. She also shared this fun fact with me:

"If you ever need to get rid of a dead body-- I mean, all of it, the fingernails, bones-- just feed it to hogs. They will eat the whole thing. They eat anything!"

We proceeded, with our new knowledge, to suck down more jello shots than any one person should. Anyway, all was fun and games until...

Jackie was telling a story about a woman when she said, "She is this ugly dyke-lookin' woman"

But wait- I didn't even mind that, so much. I expect it out here and I have been trying to seperate out the fact that I like people that say awful things. If I didn't, I would be friendless here in Rocky Mount. I was prepared to let it go. But as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she wheeled around to me in horror, grabbed my arm and said, "Oh, my god, Michele! I am so sorry! I didn't mean anything!"

The situation of this is, of course, the fact that I am closted here. I haven't told anyone that I am queer-- for safety reasons, for the knowledge that I could lose my job, etc. My roomate knows, though. Jackie's reaction made it clear that my roomate had outed me to this woman, whom I barely know. And, to make things worse, there was a guy there that I don't know at all, who saw the whole interaction, so I was outed to him, too. Suddenly, I was this weird queer girl at a party in the country.

My reaction to the whole things was a bit startling to me. I almost started to cry. D apologized when I confronted her, but it didn't feel like enough. I think one of the things that bothers me the most is that I haven't felt okay to tell people. It has been weighing on me so heavily and I haven't been able to talk to people about it. It feels like theft that D felt like she got to talk about it, when I can't.

I don't know really how to handle this. I feel so vulnerable, all of a sudden. And I also feel a bit like a coward- and have all of this time- that I haven't come out, already. I have been considering doing it. My kids ask me if I am gay all of the time because I am always yelling at them for saying "faggot" and the other teachers don't. I don't fear losing my job all that much; most days, I would consider that a blessing. But I do fear walking down the hallway while everyone stares at me with a disgusted look on their face.

But today, I have the house to myself. I am sick, so I will sleep. The car drama continues...maybe I will do laundry.... ¶ 6:15 AM