Lady Work Crush, 2010: A Story of Cultural (In)competence (Part Three)

            I took a few days off and lay in bed with a cat sitting on me, deciding what to do. I went into the afterschool classroom in the in the middle of the day when no one was there, gathered up my stuff and left a note. I ran into one of the kids on the way in and the guilt just killed me. I felt like I was abandoning the children I’d been there to serve, because I was. Despite LWC’s perception that I was mean, the kids really did love me a lot, they always do, and I loved them so much too.

            I’d already written to the C.E.O. and other higher-ups during one of the witch-hunty meetings over the summer, and I wrote to them again at the end. This is one of those shitty experiences you hope has a good effect in the long run.

            A nice friend who worked at another school made me a card and had everyone sign it at the all-site meeting. It was sad but I hoped that future LGBTQ AmeriCorps members would be treated more hospitably.

            When I look back on the whole situation, I feel pretty humbled and mortified. Though homophobia was certainly a thread that ran through the whole experience, unwanted workplace advances DO need to be taken seriously, and she certainly deserved to be free of them. But at the same time, I never deserved to be treated with that much suspicion, that much distrust. Though the distrust was understandable in some ways, and I should have been much more willing to take time earning people’s trust, it still hurt, it still did damage, as did kind of having a car aimed at me.

            As I went deeper into the education field, the distrust factor got deeper and drownier. I found it very hard to stay in touch with my best qualities when people kept assuming the worst, and by the end, I was a threat to kids, I was part of a racist system and solidly part of the problem. I have to take responsibility for that and keep trying to bridge the gaps that separate me from African American people, from men, from straight people. The things that separate us hurt so much, and I know I can only do little things to fix the broken connections.

            If I were to run into LWC now, I would apologize for sending her the poem, for making her uncomfortable, for letting my frustration and loneliness impact her job. She probably wouldn’t apologize for aiming a car at me. Straight privilege seems insurmountable sometimes, and I am really, really sick of it.

            All of this informed my not-quite-love story with Mr. Makeout Music—the fear of meetings, the self-consciousness, the worrying about coercion, the general feeling like I might be the bad guy. But I’m gratified to say, this is a wholly different workplace (Well, it’s also a hetero attraction, but still.) Everyone on his team has been cordial and sweet and my own department head has been a patient, encouraging listener. Yesterday as the kids and I made a kindness chain for Christmastime, I felt things shift back into their normal, loving work ways.

I’m sorry it took me this long to realize I’m not back in the scary LWC situation. For all of my getting upset about Mr. Makeout Music greeting me with fear, I brought my own mess to the table too—fear of meetings, fear of oppressing him, fear of being too much and too many. As I revel in the space we’re giving each other and the freedom to grieve the lost connection, I feel aglow in the kind and accepting workplace I helped create.

Lady Work Crush, 2010: A Story of Cultural (In)competence (Part Two)

            At the time, Sweetie was working an hour and a half from home, on a good traffic day. It was a sacrifice she’d made so we could move to our new city, a sacrifice which my mother reminded me semi-daily was my fault and mine to correct.  Sweetie and I usually talked on the phone during her long commute, but the guilt and all of the dinners alone, combined with my insufficiently examined white lady issues, added up to a toxic soup of guilt and loneliness.

            While I was feeling this emptiness and longing to connect, Lady Work Crush developed a deep connection with the Mean Boss Girl, and they started to call each other sisters. Of course I would never want to begrudge anyone friend- or sister-love, but their bond made me feel even more alone, especially since their friendship included the detailed reiterating of SVU plots and I had to ask them to tone it down, to their great annoyance.

            We had a long series of snow days that February, during which my AmeriCorps hours got hopelessly behind and during which I wrote a love poem about Lady Work Crush. I mentioned it in passing and she said that she would love to read it. I hemmed and hawed and then sent it via facebook. I cringe every time I think about that decision, how it made things uncomfortable for her and unsafe for me.

            The next day at work, I saw contempt flash across Mean Boss Girl’s face as she took a call from LWC. There was another meeting. LWC said I’d been “taking it out on” the kids because I was upset that she didn’t like me back. I didn’t think that was accurate but it still gives me so much shame just to type it. She stated and reiterated that she prefers men in a way that still looks a little bit like protesting too much.

            I said that I understood and accepted her rejection, but that I also felt like I wasn’t being treated fairly, that this wouldn’t have had to be a meeting if I were a man. I said I thought they were making me into the bad guy in a way that made me feel unsafe and unwelcome at work. I’m not sure if that was true or if I was just embarrassed and hurt and trying to diffuse the shame and rejection like I always do. Probably it was both.

            LWC was LIVID at the end of this conversation, and that work night ended with her getting in her car, turning up the radio all the way, and speeding in the direction of my closeted male coworker and myself. I don’t want to be too dramatic, she only KIND OF aimed the car at us.

            There was a meeting with the boss’s boss the next day, wherein I was asked to sign a paper saying that I wouldn’t make any more advances on LWC. Now that I’m thinking about it, I only made one advance and accepted her “no,” so it seems crazy that there was a paper. I said again that this wouldn’t be happening if I were a man, but I signed it. I also told the bosses that this was a homophobic workplace and I didn’t quite understand how to fit in there anymore.

Lady Work Crush, 2010: A Story of Cultural (In)competence (Part One)

First, an invitation—as I muddle my way through talking about race in this story, readers of color should please feel encouraged to push back on anything that bothers you. 9/10 of cultural competency is just being ready to say I’m sorry.

In 2008, I moved from a small city to a bigger one, and the new city felt more segregated to me, though I was probably just feeling the shock of a less white-centric existence. Though my defensiveness and self-righteousness wouldn’t have allowed to admit it at the time, I brought entitlement and racism in with me. I’m sure that that informs this story and I hope that I’ve made some progress in the intervening years.

As my AmeriCorps position brought me into situations where I was often the only white person, one thing that I had to get used to was people distrusting me based on my race. It was only a microscopic fraction of what people of color go through, but it hurt and felt frustrating nonetheless. People kept assuming I was a pushover, so I ended up coming across as meaner than I meant to, more forceful. I wanted insta-credit for living in the same neighborhood and for serving the kids—that’s entitlement. When the kids assumed I was voting for McCain over Obama, I was devastated, and I guess I’ve come a little way forward since then because I felt much more empathy and understanding this year when kids assumed I was voting for Trump.

As I was (often poorly) navigating being the only white person, I was also the only out LGBT person in most rooms. The new neighborhood was very religious, both Christian and Muslim, and was much more gender-normative than the hippie neighborhood I’d come from. My wife and I stopped holding hands as we walked down the street, and I don’t think I’ve ever fully acknowledged the loss in that.

The afterschool program I worked in was sexist and homophobic. My supervisor told me that he felt it was men’s duty to “correct” any boys they noticed “acting wrong.” (Meaning gay.) We walked the kids in from school in boy-girl lines. Though I loved leading my group with my sweet and sensitive male teaching partner, the supervisor put a more traditionally masculine man in charge of us because he thought “a male influence would give the kids more structure.” I quit in a blustery huff and moved to another site with a more progressive leader.

I’d only been working with kids for a couple of years at that point, but I’d already decided that it was my duty to be as out as I could with them. I wanted them to know that they knew at least one LGBT person and for any kids who were growing up queer to know they had at least one ally. Even under the progressive boss, I was always getting in trouble for this. There were meetings. When the progressive boss moved to another position, he was replaced by a mean young woman and things got worse.

Once, I showed the kids a picture on my phone of Sweetie and me having bagels with my niece. Meanwhile, my boss had an entire collage of her family life behind her desk for all to see. I was pulled aside at a training by my boss’s boss for a reprimand, and I pushed back against it, saying that I felt unwelcome and unsafe because of the double standard. I was proud that I’d stood up for myself and I hoped that maybe I was heard.

It was into this context that Lady Work Crush arrived. She was beautiful and I felt something spark between us, or at least spark in me. She came across as a little butch and she looked like a goddess to me. We became friends and my heart started to do the yearning thing.