Barricading those Doors

In January/February, Kathy, a director at Breakthrough, phone interviewed me for my return to Breakthrough, and we had a pretty casual conversation. I knew her and she knew me, so things were comfortable. Until she brought up my “partner.”

Her words were something like, “So I hear your partner might be working with us this summer.”

And I was confused for like three seconds. In those three seconds I sifted through my head for what kind of partner she could’ve meant: My literature teaching partner from last summer? My humanities partner? My French partner? My partner in crime? OH, my boyfriend. Apparently, partner is the politically correct (=boring) term. I admit that I have trouble calling Trung my own boyfriend, but I would NEVER call him my partner. If I didn’t acknowledge his gender, then I might as well be in denial still.

Anyway, after Kathy mentioned my “partner,” the phone conversation got really awkward and went down hill from there. She said that we didn’t need to “open any doors” for the middle school students, and I reassured her that Trung and I had already discussed staying totally professional for the summer.

But, as I’ve said before, the students probably already suspect something.

In December, there was a Breakthrough union at the ice rink. When I was skating with Grace, another teacher, one of my writing students Victor* skated up to me and asked if I was dated her. Grace and I laughed, and I answered, “Nah.” (*Students names have been changed and will be changed again for all of this summer.)

And out of the blue, he asked me, “Are you dating Trung?”

I nearly slipped. “What? No. What made you think that?”

After some more denying, I escaped by skating away.

Apparently, even on my third time around setting up my privacy options on Facebook, I still missed a spot where my Breakthrough students could see incriminating evidence of my relationship. It was my relationship status under my basic info. Oops. I had hidden my notes, my videos, my wall, tagged photos of myself, and my photo albums, but not my basic info. Damn.

Basic info wasn’t the only thing I forgot. A few weeks after Breakthrough ended, I got a facebook comment from my student Gerry. It was a comment on a photo from one of my photo albums. My senior ball photo album. He commented on a photo of me very clearly holding Trung up against me. What did his comment say? “It’s little Brian!” Nothing else.

Last summer, sometime during the last few weeks of Breakthrough, Trung visited to observe Breakthrough in action. All the students totally tripped out because of our likeness. Trung and I further messed with everyone by wearing the same shirt. Students had to double take to make sure that he wasn’t really just me walking on my knees (okay Trung’s not that short). By the end of the day, he had become known as “Little Brian.”

One of my students, Liana, would later ask Trung on Facebook (actually, I can’t remember if it was through Facebook, AIM, or even in person on the day he visited), “Are you Brian’s boyfriend?” I know Trung didn’t say yes, that’s for sure.

As for Gerry, he would later post (several) videos of “Protect Marriage: Vote Yes on Prop 8” on his MySpace. They have since been replaced by ghetto gangsta images, so let’s hope he has learned. If not, he still has about five years.

Middle school students are pretty young, but they are amazing. Last summer, their experience made me think back to my old middle school days. Each day teaching them was like me reliving another day of middle school as a seventh or eighth grader. And now, I get to do it again for another six weeks. I CAN’T WAIT FOR MONDAY.