#john schwartz

Book Review

Mr. Schwartz takes an interesting look at the less obvious challenges of coming out in the age of “It Gets Better” videos. Things are vastly better, unquestionably, but for youngsters like Joe, it can also mean losing “the ability to hide in the ignorance of others” during the sensitive years leading up to the decision to come out. (I can relate. As a closeted 14-year-old in Scranton, Pa., I sang a song from “Miss Saigon” in a school talent show; my friends thought I was a tenor and kind of pitchy, not gay.)

One night we're in a sushi restaurant in our town, and Joe was telling me about how, as the 7th-grade year was nearing an end, he was freaking out the other kids a little bit. He was saying in school to another boy, 'Does Bill know just how attractive he is?' And he said that this would freak out the kids a little bit, and the kid would say, 'Well, Joe, are you gay?' And I said, 'Well, Joe, what did you tell him?' He said, 'Oh, I don't say anything. I just let them wonder.' I said, 'Okay, but are you telling me you're gay? Because you can leave them wondering, but unlike them, I'm not an idiot, I'm gonna pick up on this.' And he said, 'Well, I might be.' And so we had a little more food, and I said 'This thing that you're not telling me, is it all right if I tell your mom?' And he said, 'Okay.' And he was out.

Kids were picking on Joe in second and third grade and giving him a pretty hard time. The kids would grab him after school, they would hide his sweatshirt. They would call him names, and he was getting increasingly frustrated with that. The hardest part was that by fourth grade, one of the teachers was actually bullying him — and this teacher was a fellow who would pick out one or two kids every year, and they'd be the goat. Those kids would be the ones who would get the discipline; those were the ones who would get corrected on everything, and the other kids in the class would have a great time because the goats were over here and the other kids were doing so great. One of the kids who'd had this teacher said, 'I had a great time with him but there were a couple kids in that class who were so bad.' And he just painted them as bad. And that year, Joe was one of the goats.