Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo: The Blog @4thgradelesbo - Tumblr Blog

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And class is dismissed for the final time for Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo. Thank you everyone who has joined us, at the theater or here on the blog!

The blog archive will remain online – if you want to see show photos, they can be found here: http://4thgradelesbo.tumblr.com/tagged/photo

And all the personal stories we’ve shared can be found here: http://4thgradelesbo.tumblr.com/tagged/personal-story

#4th grade lesbo #photo #farewell

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo by Gina Young is directed by Mariagrazia LaFauci and will be performed March 11 - 26, 2016 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts Black Box Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #photo #production photos #production stills

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #photo #production photos #production stills

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #production photos #photo #production stills

Today’s blog post is by dancer and actress Katharine Braun-Levine. Katharine plays Pink Triangle Girl, Eebie, and Ann in Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo.

So my best friend when I was in the third grade was a little girl in my neighborhood with REALLY red hair. And our favorite pretend game was The Little Mermaid (Disney version). We played it all the time. Except she never let me be Ariel. Since SHE had the right color hair to be Ariel, I always got stuck being Prince Eric.

(Years later, my husband’s response to this story: “Is that why you’re so girly? Are you still making up for Brianna Murphy (not her real name) making you be the boy in third grade?” But I don’t think so. Family lore has it I’ve been this girly since I was old enough to wrap my toy cars in blankies and rock them like babies; to the great confusion of my feminist, egalitarian mother, I might add.)

When we played Little Mermaid at school, sometimes I’d get to be a sister mermaid or the goofy Scuttle instead, but when we were alone, I was always Prince Eric, because of course, the MOST important thing we had to act out was the kissing. Actually, we kissed even when we weren’t playing Little Mermaid. We called it “practice kissing” but it was full mouth-to-mouth, hiding under our jackets on the school bus kissing. I don’t remember feeling any shame about it when it was happening, but like Gina says in her opening monologue, we knew it was something we had better hide.

And then one day we just stopped. I don’t remember the circumstances, and I barely thought about this friend once she went to private school in sixth grade. But then one day in high school, I saw her in the Shaw’s parking lot, and it all came flooding back to me. I didn’t say hi. I got in my car and drove away and forgot about it for another decade. But then THIS SHOW! I read the script and saw it written down, all the Small Dark Spaces and ostracism and excitement and “practice.” And I remembered. And I thought, I guess we all did that.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #actor blog post #personal story #katharine braun levine #childhood #the little mermaid

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #photo #production stills #production photos

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #production stills #production photos #photo

To the naked eye I’m sure these seemed like normal tween girl activities, but knowing what I know now, I know therein lie the roots of my particular queerness. It was the molding of a queer high femme. I had a huge collection of lip glosses organized by brand and color. – Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #photo

Presented by Flat Earth Theatre Written by Gina Young Directed by Mariagrazia LaFauci March 11-26, 2016 Arsenal Center for the Arts Flat Earth Theatre on Facebook Review by Travis Manni (Watertown,…

It is femme, it is butch, it is lesbian motherfucking feminism, and it is a beautifully hilarious thing.

Glowing praise from The New England Theatre Geek!

#4th grade lesbo #review #new england theatre geek #press

4thgradelesbo

Peek

The author of today’s blog post prefers to remain anonymous.

“Let’s go peek,” he shouted to us all. “The girls are changing.”

My 5th grade, buck-toothed, bespectacled face flushed with embarrassment and my stomach churned with disgust. This was not how I wanted to start my Monday. It was bad enough we just had P.E. and I couldn’t catch the ball to save my life, but now this? Another sparkling chance to prove my apparent non-existent masculinity in a place other than the schoolyard? Lovely.

Amidst the snickers and hushed exclamations of virile male pride, my squeaky voice piped up with a weakened, “But won’t we get in trouble?” An immediate pang of regret flooded my body. Why? Why did I have to be such a nerd? I mean, truth be told, I really didn’t care that much about getting in trouble. I was never one to cause any. It was that I was constantly concerned that this secret embedded deep in my soul would be ripped out and my bubble would be popped.

And in the next instant, it was.

It’s when the cruelest words regarding my sexuality were finally spoken by someone other than my own inner being. From across the room, a boy who I thought of once as a friend, in a split-second turned my world on its head…

“Fucking faggot!” echoed through the changing room. “Leave his gay ass here. He likes looking at me more than the chicks.”

I was stunned. My eyes became wet. My lip quivered. My soul shattered.

And the worst part? It was true.

It was too late to deny it. I just hung my head as low as I could as they all pushed by me laughing. And as they shut the classroom door in my face, I realized the scariest thought of all. It was in the open and now they knew. They all knew.

I did like looking at my male “friend” more than my female friends. He had more muscles. His bright blue eyes beamed brighter than anybody’s I had ever seen. His hair was nicely cropped. His smile was angelic. He made me feel things inside that I couldn’t control each and every time I saw him. I always tried to be stealthy while I secretly, silently, and quickly turned my gaze toward him in the changing room. I guess those glances were too long and not clandestine enough. I fucked it up. As I sat in my chair, alone, fumbling to get the rest of my own uniform on my trembling body and make sure my tear stains weren’t visible, I understood from that day on I’d have a long, arduous road ahead of me filled with bad dreams I may never wake up from.

One of those nightmares would be the relentless bullying from literally every single kid in my Catholic elementary school. I was now so low in the social ranks as the “queer faggot” that even the kindergarten students held more clout than I did. And being a pariah is a lonely role to play. Especially when it’s something you know you can’t control.

Which, of course, leads me to my other nightmare. My truth. Honestly, I knew I was gay at 6, maybe even earlier. But hearing it out loud that day at the age of 10 made it so fucking real. It was something engrained in my heart, brain, soul, and body. And apparently it was a well-known fact to others as well. I legitimately couldn’t help myself. There was no choice in this matter. I wanted to kiss the boys because they were handsome. No, I didn’t play with Barbies. I wasn’t overly feminine. It was just as simple as this: the boys were sexy and the girls weren’t appealing. I was innately different from the other members of my sex.

And I thought it was wrong. So very, very wrong.

I would pray for hours to God asking him to make me something other than this. That I would wake up a female and the male portion of my life would be erased; that he would turn my feelings for Jack and Chris into feelings for Christina and Jackie; that I could just start over; that I could be normal.

Fucking normal.

Because I knew they all saw me as abnormal. I was an abomination in their eyes. Every raw, true feeling I had about a boy was a slight to my upbringing and an affront to God.

But I knew it would never work out the way I wanted to. I knew my secret life was now everyone’s business and that school would be drastically different from here on.

So as the boys trickled back in, patting themselves on the back that their quest proved fruitful, I decided to live out each moment of the next two years like a timid little mouse. Staying as far under the radar as possible. Barely speaking. Living a life of shame rather than pride. Wishing I could fly far away from school and live with people like me or just wrap myself in a blanket and sleep until adulthood.

It was an awful time in my life. I had many dark moments from 5th to 12th grade. But I survived it, and it shaped who I am today. I can’t change it and I don’t want to. It did end up making me stronger. It even cushioned the blow when I was thrown out of my house at 17 for being gay. When you have to sleep on your best friend’s couch and you can’t speak to your family for months, you can credit those times in elementary school that made your skin as tough as leather. You can credit those times in elementary school that you were able to turn off your brain and let all the insults slurred at you in the hallways fall on semi-deaf ears. You can credit those times in elementary that made your official coming out to your supportive friends so much more uplifting. You can credit those times in elementary school that made writing this piece not as emotional as you first anticipated.

And then you can credit that one time in elementary school you didn’t peek at the girls, but peered into your own soul…and grew up.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#personal story reblog

4thgradelesbo

My Secret Recess

Today’s blog post is by Mal Malme, Co-Founder of Queer Soup Theater and Co-Creator of The Pineapple Project, an original theatre piece for children that explores the gender creativity in all of us.

When I was in elementary school, there was a small patch of woods, more like a few clumps of trees, in the corner of the playground, behind the swings and the slide. Once in a while, during recess, I would go there when I felt like being alone, when my mind needed to race more than my legs.

A sunny fall day, I was eight, in third grade, I had retreated to the mini forest. I wove in between each tree, feeling my hand scrape across the cool bark.

I was so lost in my head, a kick ball could have slammed into it, and I might not have noticed.

I was immersed, sifting through the evidence. Trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

I had crushes on girls, like all the time. Right then, it was Mandy, who spoke funny and had just moved here from Florida. And of course, a huge crush on my teacher, Ms. Dougherty, whose shoes I had puked on during the first week of school. Crushes on girls were nothing new. I had had crushes on girls since kindergarten.

I hated girls clothes. Especially dresses and skirts, and anything frilly, or lacy. I begged, more like, cried my eyes out, to get my Mom to buy me Toughskin jeans from the boys’ department at Sears, because that’s what my brother got, and the girls’ colors were gross.

I liked the same toys as my brother. We choreographed many elaborate GI Joe adventures. When the newly designed GI Joes came out, their plastic bodies were all muscly under their combat fatigues. I remember thinking that I wanted to have muscles like that.

As I circled around the trees again and again, I convinced myself that I had the answer:

God had screwed up.

He made a mistake.

I was supposed to have been born a boy.

It was the only thing that made sense to me.

There was a brief moment of relief that I had figured it out. I had spent the entire recess thinking through it all. For a few seconds, I felt grounded. My feet solid on the earth, amidst my quiet clump of trees.

But then the weight of it hit me, the pressure in my chest began to build, the terror spread through me.

I had to keep it a secret. I couldn’t tell a soul. Or I would lose everything.

I would have to try hold it in. Try to fit in. Maybe even, try to change.

As I stood in line at the end of recess, waiting to go back inside, one of the kids scrunched up her face at me.

“Are you a boy or a girl?”

I’d spend the better part of my life trying to figure that out.

Even now, at the age of 50, the conversation continues.

“Mal looks like a boy,” my 6 year old niece said a couple of weeks ago, grinning at me from across the aisle, as the bus bumped along a city street.

“I look like me,” I said, smiling back.

We’ll have more information about The Pineapple Project in a later installment of the 4th Grade Lesbo Blog.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is directed by Mariagrazia LaFauci and will be performed March 11 - 26, 2016 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts Black Box Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#personal story reblog

4thgradelesbo

Today’s blog post is by J. Deschene, an actress, singer, and director in greater Boston. Her current project is a modernized version of Patience, or, Bunthorne’s Bride with the MIT Gillbert & Sullivan Players.

How The Little Mermaid Changed My Life

Say what you want about Disney as a company. They’ve certainly made a lot of iffy decisions over the years, but it can’t be denied that most of us grew up watching and loving their movies. For folks as old (or as young) as I am, The Little Mermaid may well have been the first movie we ever saw and, for many of us, the first we ever loved. The story of a young mermaid who gives up her tail to become human was already an established classic by 1989, when the film was released. Retelling after retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen tale has thrilled audience for a century. Naturally, it was no surprise that a new version from the company that produced dreams and wonders should completely capture its young viewers and remain a favorite for decades to follow. Looking back as an adult, I can see now that I was affected by the film on more than just the “Disney level.” I have to give it credit for doing nothing less than opening my eyes to my own truth, even if I wouldn’t have the proper words or knowledge to describe what I was feeling for several years to come. Basically, The Little Mermaid helped me realize I was trans.

In the mid-1980’s, I was born male into a working class family of European descent. Many of the people reading this will understand exactly what this means and require no further explanation. For those who didn’t experience this kind of upbringing, let me explain: I was raised in a very simple way, by very simple people. This does not mean that they were stupid—many of my family members are very intelligent—but there was and still is a definite tendency among them to see things in very black and white terms. For example, people with male parts were male, and nothing else. Males behaved and led their lives in a certain way, engaging in very specific kinds of activities. They liked superheroes, played sports, were responsible for taking care of and protecting women, grew up, got jobs, became daddies and provided for their families. From a very early point, it was clear to me, and to my often confused parents, that I had no interest in any of what this prescribed male life had to offer. As such, the stage was set and I was primed and ready for a story like The Little Mermaid to enter my consciousness and change my life.

First, from the second I saw Ariel, I wanted to be her. Again, say what you want about Disney. Their sexism track record certainly has some major blemishes, but in my young eyes, everything Ariel was I wanted to be. I remember wishing I had her hair. Girls were allowed to have long hair and you can bet I was jealous. I imagined what it would be like to recreate that glorious and now famous moment wherein she emerges from the water and tosses her head back. Thinking back, this may well be the reason I delight so much in tossing it even now. It wasn’t just hair, though. Her singing voice also charmed me. Men had deep and rough voices, like my uncles, I thought. Ariel’s singing and speaking voice were high, light, and sweet. I can remember mimicking the runs she sang as Ursula took her voice and being irritated when I couldn’t match the notes exactly. Perhaps most telling, however, was my desire to interest men the way Ariel did. Even at that young age, I found men to be more aesthetically pleasing them women. The idea of growing up and being like my father or my uncles filled me with dread, but I would have happily and gratefully been swept off my feet by a handsome prince. I’m well aware that sexual identity and orientation are not necessarily linked, but this was an important early realization for me to make. If I hadn’t realized this about myself, I may not have figured out the rest of my own story.

On a deeper level than these things, however, the theme of transformation in the film must have spoken to me as well. The Little Mermaid, in many ways, is a near-perfect analog of the trans experience. A young person realizes suddenly one day that they don’t have the necessary equipment to exist in the world the way they want to. This prompts them to embark on the path to changing that: a path which often involves steps that seem drastic, unhealthy, and frightening to others. Something inside me was drawn to these ideas, even at a very young age. I realized I had a vague sense that what I was wasn’t “right,” or at least it wasn’t right for me. Pretending became an outlet for me. I got much more enjoyment out of playtime when my friends would allow me to take on a female role in whatever we were doing. I learned quickly to keep this a secret from the adults in my life—another thing for which I give the film credit. That scene in which King Triton rages against Ariel was way too familiar for me. As time went on, I would find myself returning to the story over and over. Each step in my journey could be connected to a different piece of the Little Mermaid’s quest for humanity. Be it the Disney film or other forms the story has taken, it’s become a source of encouragement for me and a reminder of what’s at stake. I am transforming to try and fit into the world. I am also transforming so that I may live the life that carries the greatest sense of meaning for me. I have been extremely lucky to have The Little Mermaid in my life from such an early age. Without it, I might not be who I am now. My upbringing on its own would never have encouraged the kind of growth I’ve experienced. I was drawn in by the pretty character I wanted to be, and I stayed because of something much deeper than that. As such, I feel like I can only be thankful that Disney chose that moment in time to retell such a powerful tale.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is directed by Mariagrazia LaFauci and will be performed March 11 - 26, 2016 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts Black Box Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#personal story reblog

4thgradelesbo

Today’s blog post is by Flat Earth company member Coriana Hunt Swartz. Coriana is Flat Earth Theatre’s Social Media Manager and a freelance costume designer.

I remember very precisely the day I learned that “Oh, there’s a word for that.” I was sitting at the lunch table in the elementary school cafeteria with a group of other girls from my third grade class; we were new in town, I didn’t know anyone well yet. Someone made a comment about how someone else liked someone, another responded with the daring observation “She wants him to be her boyfriend” (no one in our class had ever had a boyfriend yet, it was a wildly adult thought), and I said – boldly, fiercely, as I said many things at that time, covering over my uncertainty (we were new in town) with desperate certainty – “I don’t like boys. Boyfriends are stupid. I only like my cat.” And another little girl, at the far end of the table, leaned toward me immediately, a four-foot-tall lawyer in an unexpected courtroom interrogation, and said “Is your cat a girl? Do you like girls? Are you a lesbian?” I knew plenty of gay people already. In the big city, where we came from, our next-door neighbors were a gay couple. They weren’t married, but my parents weren’t either. That was the major distinction between grown-up relationships in my head – married or not-married. I knew a lot of not-married grown-ups who lived together and loved each other, and some of them had kids and some of them had small dogs named Peaches. Some of them were women and some of them were men and some of them were one of each. My aunt’s girlfriend had died and she was very sad; no one had told me to put a different name to her sadness. I realized three things, in that moment, with that girl leaning toward me and all the eyes turned, bright and curious:

1) There was a word for that – a word just for girls who liked girls. 2) While it might have been okay in the big city, where we came from, here in our new small town it was strange, it was different, just as strange or even stranger as my parents being not-married. 3) If I ever did like a girl, I mean like-like a girl (and I really hadn’t liked anyone yet), I had better keep quiet about it. My parents got married a month later, because they didn’t want their kids to face the social stigma of having unmarried parents in a conservative small town. Within two years, I became a child with divorced parents, just like several of my classmates. In fifth grade I like-liked a girl, but I didn’t say anything about it. All through high school, I had a Very Public Crush on a Very Popular Boy, which allowed the rest of my crushes – on girls, and on some other boys – to fly under the radar. I didn’t date. There was a report that went around school that I was “saving myself” – for that popular boy, for marriage, for a different life somewhere else – and in some ways, I think it might have been true. It was safer, here, to fly under the radar – to save all that for later.

In the sort of strange twist of fate that often happens in small towns, that lawyer of the third-grade lunch table became, decades later, very briefly, my stepsister. One thing I learned during her father’s short marriage to my mother was that she, too, had a lesbian aunt – who had come out to her family when we were in elementary school, that year we were in third grade. So it may have had nothing to do with me at all, that confrontation I remember so distinctly. She may not have noticed my differentness, my shaking hands – she may not even have been looking at me at all, but only tasting that new word on her tongue, sounding it out, trying to figure out what it would mean to her and her family.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is directed by Mariagrazia LaFauci and will be performed March 11 - 26, 2016 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts Black Box Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#personal story reblog

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo – Production Photos by Jake Scaltreto

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #photo #production stills #production photos

The author of today’s blog post prefers to remain anonymous.

There was a particular incident that stands out for me, from when I was about five years old — there must have been other times, but this is the one that I remember. Growing up, my exclusive babysitters were my Grandparents, who lived just down the road. One day my Grampa came over to our house to watch me, and I had access to a wider range of dress-up clothes than at his place. I was running around the kitchen, dressed as Peter Pan, and this was probably the first time he'd seen this. He admonished me, saying I shouldn't be "dressing like a boy", and when I asked why, he replied in a huff, "Because it's NOT NICE!" Now, I had grown up seeing women portray Peter Pan, and thought of the character as solidly in-between a "boy" and a "girl", although I didn't have the words to explain it at the time. So although I did dress up as boy characters sometimes, it hadn't crossed my mind that this one would count. Being an attention-hungry child, I took my Grampa's reprimand as some sort of personal rejection, and the carefree delight I felt when "pretending to be" this confident, androgynous character was quickly buried as something shameful.

Throughout grade school and early adulthood, I went through many different explorations of identity, but this never included gender, and only included gender expression to a very limited degree. When my body started changing, I thought my discomfort was a case of feeling awkward as I grew into myself, which I was told was something everyone went through. Ever wanting to feel like I belonged, I ignored my discomfort and tried to be what I thought was right for me to be. I didn't notice it at the time, but I always found myself happiest when I wasn't trying to please others in order to fit in — just being myself and settling into a niche where I belonged was always associated with a less stressful and more fulfilling period of time. Even if I had to put up with some bullying, at least I wasn't constantly worrying about how my "friends" felt about me, because during those times, the friendships were genuine.

When I was 28, I had to stop working for medical reasons, and ended up bedridden for the better part of three years. Which gave me a lot of time to think! I began looking around the internet for things that had been bugging me in the back of my mind for a long time, and initially thought I had found the answer in the vlogs of transgender men. I knew I wanted to make some physical changes, and the idea of not having any set requirements to live up to was appealing and felt right, but I quickly found myself falling into the trap of trying to prove myself all over again (especially living in a small, conservative town, where I felt like I needed to overcompensate to be addressed as "he"), rather than paying attention to what felt right for me. Chest surgery felt right, and hormones didn't, which was something that my insurance and some doctors had trouble with, but luckily, surgery was eventually able to happen. Once I had healed, it truly hit home that my gender identity and the shape of my body didn't have to fit into anyone else's standards, and something was still waiting in the back of my head for me to address. The ultra-feminine had felt so wrong, and I had reacted by going to the ultra-masculine, all the while telling myself it was for safety, or to prevent being misgendered, and that's why I felt jittery all the time — quelling the social fear by following certain rules and presenting a certain way would take care of that. But it wasn't, and it didn't. "He" felt just as inaccurate as "she", and I had been nonbinary Peter Pan all along.

My family, even my Grampa, were are surprisingly supportive when I came out as a trans man, and while I have yet to explain to most of them how THAT isn't the accurate term for me either, I'm hopeful, and am thinking happy thoughts.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#4th grade lesbo #guest blog post #anonymous contributor #gender #gender identity #nonbinary #growing up #peter pan

4thgradelesbo

Today’s blog post is by Tasha K. Matthews, a freelance stage manager and theatre lover in greater Boston.

There is a wonderful book called “The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child” by Nancy Verrier. This was recommended to me by one of my theatre professors from my time at Middlesex Community College, who I later found out was adopted. How does this connect to me and my identity? To make a long story short, I was adopted at 10 ½ months. This was enough time, according to multiple therapy sessions, to wire my brain and have enough psychological awareness of the violence going on around me. When DCS (Department of Child Services) came into the picture when I was 2 months, by the time I had reached 10 months, I had gone through 12 foster homes as an infant, never really belonging anywhere. I was given pictures of all the families that I had been with during that time. I struggled through kindergarten… sobbing every time my favorite teacher or my mom left the room.

Growing up I didn’t make friends easily. I was never a small child, always had a bigger build and was called overweight by my pediatrician through middle school and was constantly teased about it. I look through pictures now and realized I loved the way I looked (see photo below). Once I hit 7th grade, I blossomed very quickly and caught the attention of boys who were going through their own stages of puberty and just wanted to cop a feel. Some memories I’ve omitted that are too hard to look back on, but it is making me realize how I have shaped my identity.

Fast forward to 8th grade: still having trouble making friends, 8th grade was when they joined the kids from Groton and Dunstable. I called one of my good friends, or so I thought, to see if she wanted to hang out with me at one of the “social” dances that was to be held in the school cafeteria. The next day I walked into school to laughter. In my face. One of the girls in her clique came up to me and asked if I was a lesbian. No one wanted to hear my side of the story and I spent most of that day, except for classes, in the bathroom or the nurse’s office. At lunch I found peace and comfort in the drama/music room. It was the only sanctuary I knew. Not even the guidance counselors believed that I was being teased and when I brought up concerns, “No one likes a tattle-tale” was the response I received. Progress reports had said that I imagined being teased and my teachers just didn’t see it happening EVEN WHEN I voiced my concerns in confidence to them. Instead, I was sent to have special testing done because apparently I was the problem. 1998: got the HELL out of that school.

Fast forward to 10th grade. Things don’t get much better! I have proverbial walls up all around me and friends? I can count them on one hand. I have lunch in the band room with a couple of my band friends and am well-liked by the upper class men/women due to my maturity. But I know they will be leaving to go to college soon….which is awesome for them, but once again I am feeling that abandonment. My two best guy friends, who I had major crushes on at the time, come out to me. It his like a lightning bolt and crushes my spirit. I’m upset, but at the same time I understand they feel safe to confide in me. I also attended my first Pride Parade and joined the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance). Pride was amazing. Though I didn’t fully understand it until my first year in college, it was wonderful to me seeing people being so happy together and not afraid to be themselves. I spent so much time with that group, I began to question myself. Is this why I don’t keep relationships or people just seem to be moving on from me?

College offered a wealth of opportunities for discovery. I was by myself a lot and talking to friends from home who had discovered themselves and I was just always afraid to admit it even when my mother would ask me if I had thoughts about being gay…. not something I could easily open up about and lived for years with a knot in my stomach. Always living in fear of what people might think of me. I really have to thank my therapist here. She helped me discover myself and conquer feelings and emotions that I just kept shoving deep down and led to an unhealthy amount of denial. I finally got the courage to sit down with my parents and explain what I was feeling - to my relief they were not surprised. For the first time in my life, I really felt like they listened to me. They understood but felt bad that I had been unable to confide in them…. I assured them I needed time and I didn’t want to do anything that would put me in a position to question myself. I was sure. I am certain. I am pansexual.

Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo is directed by Mariagrazia LaFauci and will be performed March 11 - 26, 2016 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts Black Box Theater in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Tickets – Info – Flat Earth Theatre – Gina Young

#personal story reblog

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