For National Coming Out Day: My Beginnings

Hi folks, and happy National Coming Out Day!  I thought it might be an appropriate time to share one of my coming out stories, so I'm going back to the beginning.

Picture it:  East Texas, 1989.  A young TMWA (before being called TMWA) is close to graduating high school.  A young, gay, TMWA, who is not yet out to anyone, but who has known he was gay for quite some time.  (Seriously, how hard is to figure out who you're attracted to at that age? Although maybe with all the hormones, the trees probably start to look good to some people. But I digress.)

I remember being up on stage in the auditorium of my high school.  (No, I didn't come out on stage in front of the whole school. Stay with me.)  We were having some sort of rehearsal for an honors assembly, and I think the National Honor Society were all sitting on stage at that point.  I was next to my good friend Romola, and we were chatting while everyone was getting sorted out.  She was talking about a guy she had a major crush on, and she asked, "Isn't it terrible when you really like someone but you can't tell them?"  Since I also had a major crush on a guy I knew, and certain social inhibitions were definitely keeping me from telling him, I said, "I know what you mean."

Well Romola was sharp enough to zero in on that answer, so I got an immediate, "Ohh--so who is it?"  I gave that a minute's thought.  I hadn't come out to anyone yet, but I was kind of ready to, because it's really hard to constantly pretend not to be yourself.  Frankly, I was dying to tell someone at that point, and Romola seemed reasonably safe.  Granted, coming out to anyone in that place and time carried some risks, but I thought it might be worth it.  So I said I would tell her who my crush was, but that I wanted to do it in private sometime, because I didn't want anyone else to know.

So for about the next week, every time Romola saw me at school, she immediately opened with "So who is it?"  Usually in the midst of an enormous group of people, like the lunch room, which led me to defer.  "When we get a chance alone.  I'm not telling anyone else," I'd tell her.  "But these are just your friends--they won't care," she'd respond.  Oh, but they might, I thought.  Some of them liked to complain about "faggots", although I actually voiced objections when they did.  It does tend to put a crimp on how comfortable I really felt around people.  Of course, that's part of why I really wanted to tell someone: It would be nice to have at least one person I could be honest with.

Looking for an opportunity to have some time alone with Romola, I arranged to give her a ride after school one day when we were off to a gathering. I figured she would remember and ask me about my mystery person again as soon as we left.  (I wasn't quite able to just bring up the topic myself yet.  Hey, it was my first time coming out, and still pretty scary.)  But that day her mind must have been elsewhere, and she wasn't asking even 'though we were alone and I was (nervously) ready to answer.  I cast around in my head for a way to steer the conversation in the right way, and finally said something about her romantic interest.  That worked: She almost immediately remembered and asked again who I had the crush on.

Now even then I had a hard time answering.  I ended up hinting around a bit, and confirming the right person, all of which ended up with her saying, "Wait, I'm confused."  (Actually, she understood perfectly, she just wasn't expecting mystery person to be a guy.)  I did by this point recognize one flaw in telling her in the car: I was driving, so I never got to actually see her reaction when she realized who I meant, and that it was not a woman.  But I did get to hear her reaction.  I got some repeated variations of "John?", "John?!?", "JOHN?!" with varying degrees of questioning or surprise at various points, mixed in with (thankfully) statements that she was OK with this, even 'though it came as kind of a shock.

Actually, the surprise was a little surprising to me.  I kind of figured, particularly since I never dated any women, didn't really bother to try to try to "butch up", and was actually a vocal supporter of gay rights, that more than a few people probably had some shrewd guesses, but maybe not.  I think several of my friends just thought I was hopelessly naive on the issue of gays, and that maybe I only supported equal rights and fair treatment because I'd never had a chance to meet any gay people to discover how terrible they really were.  Irony, thy name is adolescence.

In any case, Romola kept my secret in high school.  (She and my parents were the only people I told before I got to college.)  We stayed friends and kept in touch.  It took only about a semester at Oberlin College (which I recall Newsweek once called a "gay mecca", to our great amusement) before I was fully out to everyone I met, and was fortunate enough to find hosts of other people who didn't care.  It was nice to finally have a group of friends--straight, gay, and bi--with whom I could feel close, and not have to feel like I had to lie and hide part of myself.  But the first did come in high school, even in east Texas in 1989, and that turned out pretty well.

Morning scene

The garbage truck is outside rumbling and beeping, and I squint ferociously enough to make out the time on my alarm clock.

I realize I have one hour of summer vacation left. The sheets are still comfortably cool, and soft from yesterday's laundry, so I doze a bit. The window is open to make the most of a cool night, and light is sneaking past the mostly closed blind.

Roll over. *squint* I have half an hour of summer vacation left. I could reset the alarm a bit later, but I have things to do. Stuff. Stuff starts today. What did I get finished last night and what's still waiting for me? I should have enough time to get the last syllabus copied this morning and check over everything. What the heck is the deal with the new online course system, anyway? I have no idea what the students are going to actually see on that thing....

I have fifteen minutes of summer vacation left.

Sleep is a long gone specter, but I can at least enjoy the idea that I don't have to get up yet. Not really. Not yet. Summer isn't over until I actually get up. What happened to the summer, anyway? They just slip past faster and faster, and I've finished not a tenth of what I'd hoped to.

I have ten minutes of---$*@# it, I'm getting up.

Retrospective

Well that's it. This marks the end of National Blog Posting Month (which I mentioned earlier), or at least my participation. So what have the results been?

• It turns out that over the course of November I wrote about 10,000 words for my blog. That's fully 1/5th of the goal for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so who knows, maybe someday I'll try that too. I can finally write my novel about the smart, hip, jet-setting, handsome mathematician who has men fawning all over him. (Hey, this is my Mary Sue, right?)
• I started this blog August 2005, which is about 4 years and 4 months ago, or 52 months. At the start of November, I had 162 public posts. That means I was averaging around 3 posts a month, until this month when I produced ten times as many. Or, over the course of this month, I've increased by almost 1/5th my total postings.
• Sometimes I faced some writer's block of course, but usually once I picked a topic, I found I had things to say.
• I've written about an enormous variety of things. I've talked about students and teaching (including the good, the bad, and the ugly), holidays, dreams, visiting a conference, and random musings of my own mind. Some days I wish I had a more interesting life, but often I like it fine.
• Not everything I've written has been a gem. But I've definitely written things I've liked, and some of them seem to have inspired other people to chime in. It does definitely convince me that I should write more often. Having an explicit (and public) goal definitely spurs some creative work. I'm not sure if I'll participate again in the project or not in any sort of semi-official way. (As I noted, I wasn't doing anything official this time; I just thought I'd try it.) For the moment, 'though, I may take a pause before I write again.

Well, a good night to all, and a happy upcoming December. Be seeing you!

Hibernation

I don't care for the cold. (I don't know what I think I'm doing up here. Who am I, Nanook?) But I do like burying myself under a heavy pile of blankets to go to sleep at night when it's cold. Flannel sheets, a big artificial down comforter, maybe a quilt, 'til I'm nice and toasty, and trying not to let any part of me poke outside my nest. It's wonderful. The only problem is that it's still cold in the morning when I wake up and have to get out of bed. I think bears are onto something. If I could just sleep through the winter and wake up again when it's spring, I'd be all set.

Or I just need to live someplace warmer.

Random thoughts

Random thoughts for today:

• I ended up with leftovers of everything but turkey yesterday, since I supplemented the contents of a frozen dinner for my Thanksgiving feast. So I may have been the only person in the world to go out and buy frozen turkey dinners today, so I can use up the rest of the stuff.
• From the "Things I wish my Students Knew" file: You cannot tell which of x or -x is negative without knowing something about x. (Of course, if x = 0, neither is. But I'm not looking to completely blow their minds.)
• Two more weeks of classes to go. The end is in sight. But the spring semester is too near. There is a monster at the end of the semester!
• The weather is finally turning cold. My fingers are getting cold while I'm at home. I've noticed I have more of a problem with my "mousing" hand while I'm at the computer, I think because it's the one I can never put in a pocket for a while.
• There are occasional television shows that I keep up with a little because I think I'm hopeful the show will get better. The premise is interesting, and there's cool stuff going on, but the writing is pretty mediocre. Often the writing never improves. I find myself wishing some particular episode had a better writer, because I often walk away disappointed.

Another Thanksgiving

I'm doing it again. I was originally going down to see my partner, but everyone down there is still sick with flu, so I had to give up and just fake Thanksgiving here. Pretty much just like last year, when we were having snow. Frozen turkey dinner again this year, although I actually purchased both a can of yams and cranberry sauce for the occasion. I also decided last night while shopping in the Medium City (I can't seriously call it the Big City, but it's decent and only half an hour away) that I would go ahead and make a pumpkin mousse pie, which was fairly traditional when I was growing up. I decided to wait until I got home and looked up the recipe, so I could go to the local grocery store to get needed ingredients. I also thought I might already have most of the necessities for my green bean casserole at home.

Back at home I made my list, and discovered I did indeed have the green beans, french fried onions, and cream of mushroom soup, so one less set of stuff I needed. But I found last night that the local grocery was out of pumpkin pie spice (perhaps temporarily), and out of canned pumpkin (perhaps not so temporarily). Did you know there was apparently a pumpkin shortage this year? I hadn't heard anything about it, but I figured I'd make one more attempt this morning to see what I could find.

I stopped at the local grocery on the way out and found at least the spice was restocked, but no canned pumpkin. The store did have pre-made pies and pumpkin bread kits, but I didn't want those. So back to visit Wegmans in the Medium City again. Wegmans was out of most of their pumpkin, but did have plenty of cans of organic pumpkin from a brand I hadn't heard of, so I found what I needed and headed home.

I started setting up the casserole in the afternoon. Let's see, green beans, casserole dish, cream of mushroom soup... hmm, the soup is how old now? Oops, it seems to have a 2003 expiration date. Maybe it's OK? Hmm, no it looks kind of funny. Well, off to the local store one last time for soup. Thankfully they were still open for another hour. For not having done much in the way of cooking, my Thanksgiving turned out almost as hectic as a traditional meal would, complete with multiple grocery trips for missing and forgotten ingredients.

In any case, the meal turned out fine, and I've spent the rest of the day watching my recently arrived Netflix DVDs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. So it was a fairly supernatural Thanksgiving, but that's what I like, so it was good in its own way. I just wish I could have gotten down to Kentucky, too.

Winding down

We've stopped briefly for Thanksgiving break. To no great surprise of mine, a number of students were missing in both my Monday and Tuesday classes, since we are off on Wednesday through Friday of this week. We'll be back for two weeks, and then finals, then graduation, then we're hitting the Christmas break, and soon enough I'm traveling again.

I usually like the brief periods of "down time" around a break or between sessions, when most of the students are gone. In the past, I remember spending a lot of time around my office around finals or the last day before a break, getting things done. It's a good time to get last grading done, file, organize my grades, respond to e-mails, and the like. And since nothing in particular is due immediately, the air can be almost festive. It's also a good day to take off for a nice lunch with colleagues. But today for some reason, I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I guess I'm just run down this semester for some reason. So I ran up to town for some brief shopping and dinner after my class (it turns out I teach one on Tuesdays), and I'm looking forward to sleeping in for a few days.

I'm glad for the break. I'm also ready for the semester to be over.

Flu shot

The school just got H1N1 vaccine to offer to faculty, so I called this morning to make an appointment, then walked over to the bursar's office to pay for it. (The last thing I need is to get sick when in about a month I'll be flying all over the place on various trips. Plus, I get my flu shots on general principles anyway.)

When I got back to my office and got back to work, my arm felt a little achy, which is more or less what I always get with a flu shot. Then I remembered I hadn't actually gotten the flu shot, I had only paid for it. I'm taking it tomorrow morning. Talk about psychosomatic. Either that, or I'm developing an allergic reaction to spending money. But since I just booked a bunch of flights and hotels for my upcoming travels without batting an eye, I don't think that's it.

Dreams

Last night I dreamed I forgot I had a class Tuesday. It was apparently the elementary education majors class, and they were all sitting in the room with the big tables for the whole period waiting for me. (Yeah, like that would happen.) I finally remembered (for some reason) and was dashing around trying to get ready, when I remembered I had another class after the first one. Since the room was still full of my last class of students, the next class had gone to another classroom downstairs. I had a notion of trying to rush back and forth between the two classes, setting each one to various tasks as I went between them. (Never mind that this would imply I must have been scheduled for two classes at once.) I never got myself organized enough to actually start with either class, 'though, and I was pretty sure time must have run out on the first class by the end.

I don't usually have dreams like that mid-semester, although I certainly know the feeling of rushing around and getting nothing done. I do sometimes have similar dreams at the start of the semester. Usually those don't involve forgetting a class altogether. Pre-semester dreams tend to involve being fifteen minutes late for class and running around trying to photocopy my syllabus and get ready. I understand well the fear of not being ready for the semester. Apparently now I'm also afraid I'll forget classes altogether during the semester.

Of course, by the time I woke up, I had no idea whether I had classes on Tuesdays or, if so, how many. Thankfully I have 'til Tuesday to figure that out again.

Nighttime reading

There are certain books--only a few--that soothe me as a I read them. They're old familiar friends, and as the words and scenes start to flow around me, it's like slipping into a warm bath. I know the lines and cadences, I know the plot twists and the characters, and I'm not likely to find anything new, but I'm not really looking for it. It's a calming experience, almost like a trance. These books I read to enjoy but also to relax, unwind, and shed the cares of the world.

I finished one of these again just a bit ago. I own a copy now, but I found it first in our town library when I was growing up. I used to visit the library pretty much every weekend, walking out with a precarious pile of books every Saturday. I don't do as much reading anymore I guess, but I still enjoy it. In fact, I still enjoy some of the same books after all these years, those old familiar works that I track down to read again, which sweep me back to my childhood escape. I re-read books back then too, picking out the same books again and again from the library sometimes. Some old favorites haven't weathered time well; I recall them fondly, but don't much care to revisit them. But others form the core of my nighttime reading, the books I pull out when I need to relax, before I try to sleep.

Never mind

I mentioned recently that I was slightly panicked because I didn't see how I could finish everything in pre-calculus during the limited number of classes remaining. This week, I had to figure that out. I needed to put together the last assignment sheet that gets the class to the end of the semester.

So I sat down and did a major hatchet job over the weekend. Topics got pared down to almost bone. In the last chapter I cut all exposition and essentially covered two sections by just saying, "here's two equations, now use them." But I finally came up with a schedule that could (minimally) cover everything I needed to by the last day of classes, although I wasn't proud of what I was going to do.

To finish the schedule, I looked up our final exam time so I could put that on too. Then I... oh, look at that: We actually have two weeks after we get back from Thanksgiving break, not one. I can finish the chapter up in a reasonable way after all.

Never mind.

We are Borg now

I joined the ranks of the cell-phone enabled over the weekend. Sort of.

I purchased a cheap phone on a prepaid plan with no contract. For under $50, I got the phone plus three months of service and about 4 hours of airtime. I'm not sure I'll even use the four hours, but it's there for all the traveling that I'm doing over the next few months. Next weekend I'm off to help a colleague shepherd students to a conference in Ohio. After that, it's off to Kentucky to see my partner. A few weeks later and I'm off to Dallas to see my folks. Then in early January I'm off to California for the Joint Meetings of the AMS and MAA, plus some general happy sightseeing. There may be extra trips in there somewhere, but I hope not.

So I'll be glad to have the phone as an option when I'm traveling, and I'm sure there will be other occasionally uses for it. I'll probably keep it active. If I really like it, I may think about upgrading to something fancier. But for the moment basic functionality seems like plenty. After all, I got along this long without having one at all, and generally only had any possible use for one a few times a year. It's always seemed mostly unneeded to me, like just one more thing to have to keep track of and pay for. But I figured there was some point to having it while traveling, so it seemed like a time to give it a try.

Resistance is futile.

Sleep

Sleep is good. I never seem to get enough, but I like it. My computer has this menu option called "Sleep", and when I select that, the machine goes to sleep right away. I often find myself wishing I had that little menu option. "OK, go to sleep now." I tend to be a little bit of an insomniac. As much as I like sleep, sometimes I just have a hard time making myself actually do it. My mind needs a lot of time to wind down.

And sometimes I find myself having a hard time going to sleep because I'm too tired. I know that sounds crazy. I end up lying in bed, yawning, eyes watering, and essentially being to obsessed with being tired for a while to actually fall asleep.

On the good nights, when I can relax, I tend to think about pleasant things. Like imagining soaring over the world at night, flying on the winds, with lots of twinkly stars and people below sleeping. Or when I was little I used to imagine that my bed was a boat that would gently float down a river as I fell asleep. Then on some nights I would imagine I was paying extra for the "deluxe" sleep river that went through beautiful gardens. (I have no idea what I was paying extra with.) Yeah, I was a weird little kid, but it was a good fantasy.

Sleep is good. I think I'll go get some.

There's a pattern to this

It's that point in the semester. Too much is going on. I end up running from early morning to late at night, with stuff to do piling up during the week. Stacks of papers to grade, assignments to write, lessons to prepare, quizzes to write, meetings to attend, students to talk to, e-mails to respond to, and supposedly at some point I'll do some research, too.

And when my week finally ends (which is around 8 or so on Thursday night this semester), I feel worn down and can't stand to look at anything anymore. I usually have a light Friday (usually just a meeting or two, respond to a few e-mails, maybe grade or take care of some minor task), then consider Saturday "off". (Of course off time has it's own commitments, like the need to go to the grocery so I have something to eat, do dishes so I have something to eat off of, and do laundry so I don't stink while I teach the next week. But I still have free time, and I enjoy it.)

But then Sunday creeps up, and off we go again. OK, what do I have to have finished for Monday? Then of course Tuesday will come, and... how long until Thursday night again? Thursday nights are really good. At least this semester.

Happy Thursday!

November

November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to try to write a novel (50,000 words) by the end of November. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not really interested in trying to write a novel now. (I actually worked on a novel at one point in my life, but the idea is not really appealing to me now.)

However, there is also a parallel event inspired by NaNoWriMo, the NaBloPoMo, which (of course) is National Blog Posting Month. Here the goal is just to post to your blog every day for a month. (Actually, they now extend NaBloPoMo to every month, but originally it was based on NaNoWriMo.) I thought this sounded like a reasonable idea, so I decided I'd try it this November. (I'm not doing anything official, I'm just posting every day for a month.) It sounded interesting and I figured it would be good for me. And it might make me put together some postings. I'm now just past the one-third mark, so I figured it would be a good time to explain.

So this answers the question on a few people's minds about "Why has he started posting all the time?" Although maybe the answer is really just that I decided to do it.

Undecorating

I just took down the last of my Halloween decorations. It occurred to me when I took out the trash I should probably uproot the tombstones outside my apartment before the neighbors think I'm any weirder than they already do. Especially since it's been over a week since Halloween, and I didn't manage to put them out in the first place until the afternoon of October 31. (Does that make the lag taking stuff down better or worse?) Of course, that's just show for the neighbors. Everything is still sitting around my apartment waiting to be packed up.

At least I remembered to take the giant glowing skulls out of my upstairs windows. Plus it's been over three days since I took off my horns.

Feeding my neuroses with technology

First TiVo, then Netflix. There really is no better way to watch television series if you're a little OCD. Either pick a show and start recording, or (better yet), pick something out on DVD and get it. Then sit down and watch a bunch of episodes at once. Total immersion. It's the only way to watch. (Actually I subscribed to Netflix originally because my TiVo was missing a season of Smallville.) Thank goodness everything comes to DVD now. And if you're looking for more details about a series, there is no greater resource for all your pop-culture trivia than Wikipedia.

At the moment I'm "OCD"-ing Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, which are oddly enough pretty similar when you think of it. (Basically both featuring somewhat reluctant chosen ones with special powers fighting supernatural baddies of the week. And both featuring kick-ass women as the leads, come to think of it.) It's somehow just easier once you start on one thing to keep watching that one thing. And keep watching. Even previous obsessions drop by the wayside.

Thank goodness there are past shows that I like but didn't already watch.

Where does time dissapear to?

This week I had to get together another set of assignments for my pre-calculus class, and I'm really struggling to get to the end of the material. I keep trying to squeeze (and SQUEEZE) the schedule, cutting out more and more stuff, trying to make a mad dash to the end of the semester. And I'm realizing how little there is left. It's hard to find space for what's required.

It seems like everything drags, but somehow I'm more than halfway through the semester. This was a hell week anyway. I had a flu shot plus two meetings Monday, an academic club fair Tuesday afternoon then College Bowl all Tuesday night, meetings all week with students, plus all the usual stuff. I've started using my PDA again to keep track of stuff. I was glad to get to the end. But how will I get to the end of everything else?

I'm also now looking towards spring semester and trying to get planning done for new courses there. Plus a talk over break at the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the AMS and MAA which has to get done at some point.

Where does all the time get away to?

How old are my students again?

I have a group of students who seem to think it's very funny that one of them saw me having lunch with one of my colleagues a few times. This is not surprising, since she and I probably have lunch more days than not. (I'm reminded of an evaluation from a student years ago which said "I see him out eating all the time." I wondered if that one might have meant that I ate out way to often. Either that, or the student was stalking me.)

My students this semester like to ask how my date was and then giggle. I'm not sure if it's funny to think of their professor having a date at all, or that it's funny to suggest I'm going on a date when I'm not. I'm not sure why either would be that funny, actually. All I know is it baffles me and it feels very much like junior high (or earlier). But then students seem to get younger all the time. Why, every year it seems like the new first years are another year younger than me.

Come to think of it, by this point many of my students probably grew up with Harry Potter, which is in my recent memory. Ack, I just made myself feel old.

Nonetheless, my students' obsessions with my lunchtime habits are just plain weird.

College students can be less than adorable

I was unimpressed on Halloween night by the number of college students I found trick-or-treating at my door. (Seriously, college students? It's questionable by the time the kids are 13 or 14.) I'm thinking I might construct a more age-appropriate treat for college students next year, like a really interesting pamphlet on a cool math problem, and tell them it's their intellectual treat for the night. If they want candy, they (unlike the six year-olds) can drive down to the grocery store and buy some.

But today my math class for elementary education students was working on an activity involving adding and subtracting integers. It uses a cute little paper copy of a clown who walks forward and backward on a number line "tightrope". It's a nice activity. When I was cleaning up after class I found a left-behind clown that some student had taken upon themselves to add genitalia to and portray performing an obscene act. (These students want to teach grade school?)

I am not overwhelmed with the cuteness of my students at the moment.