course as a means to pick a fight with my boss, but somehow that was the message that had been received. Of course, I couldn’t confirm Tim’s question without sinking even deeper into the mire of employment uncertainty.
“That’s right,” I told him.
“Look, I appreciate you taking an interest and everything, but really, I don’t want you to get into any more trouble.”
“Any more trouble?”
“I think you know what I mean.” I did. My employers had scarcely forgiven me for my role in defending a colleague who had been accused of inappropriate conduct with a student. Both he and the student had ended up dead, and my academic career had nearly died with them. Of course, so had I. “Mr. Patrick. You’re new here. The students like you, but I’m not so sure you’ve made the best impression on the principal and vice-principals. They’d be looking for any excuse to get rid of you. I’ll survive without bringing Van to the dance.”
“Look. Don’t worry about me. I don’t think you should just roll over with your boyfriend here.” I honestly hadn’t meant to introduce such obvious double entendre, but my juvenile tendencies must have been playing havoc with my subconscious. Tim, unfortunately, was one of my brighter students, and there was no way the comment would have gotten by him. He smiled instead of taking offence.
“Oh my god,” he laughed.
“I just meant that …”
“I know what you meant,” he interrupted, still trying to stifle laughter. He held open the door to the exit stairway for me, and we passed into the relative privacy of the echo chamber that was the stairwell. As the door clanked shut behind us, he stopped at the top of the stairs and turned to face me. “Seriously, though. I want you to know how much this means to me.”
“Tim, all I’ve said we’d do is look into it.”
“No, I mean your attitude … your … uhm … acceptance. Not everyone is as accepting. My dad hasn’t talked to me in months. It’s good to know that someone cares.” It didn’t feel like I could say nothing any longer, so I reached into the depths of my experience of watching sappy moments in television sitcoms and responded.
“I do care, Tim.” As soon as I said it, a sudden panic flash overtook me, and I worried that Tim might actually hug me, always a risky act when it involves a student.
“Man, I think we just had a moment.”
“I’m going home,” I told him, walking past him and beginning my descent of the stairs.
“Okay, seriously though,” he continued, following along behind me, “what options do we have?”
“Not a whole hell of a lot,” I admitted. “I think that the best thing we can do is open up a conversation with the powers that be and see first of all if we can’t negotiate our way to an understanding both parties can be satisfied with.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“Attorney-speak. Why don’t you just talk in Latin?”
“Once a lawyer, always a lawyer.” We opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, turned right, and continued down the hallway towards the exit. “Tim, before we go much further, I think it’s important that you do consider something very carefully.”
“What’s that?”
“The larger a brouhaha we make out of this, the less discretion about your, uhm, relationship we’re going to be able to keep. Do you know what I mean?”
“Not entirely.”
“I just mean that, not everyone is as tolerant as your immediate friends. Not all teenagers are known for their empathy and kind words.”
“Oh. Now I see.”
“I don’t want to get too personal here or anything, but do you think people in the school — I mean, beyond your close friends — know that you’re gay?” I turned to look at Tim, but he had stopped walking a few paces behind me. He was staring silently, ahead and to the left, his teeth clenched and the colour draining from his face. I turned back to see what had caught his attention. Just ahead of me, one of the lockers was adorned with “FAG” in bold black spray paint. I stopped too and looked back at my student. “I guess that answers my question.”
“Well, holy shit!” Bill Owen’s bellowing baritone could be heard all the way up the hall. It wasn’t the most professional response to the situation, but to be fair, it did convey the general mood in the school hallway. By now a small crowd of educators and a handful of kids had gathered and were staring at the offending language on Tim’s locker. Someone had thought to fetch one of the janitors, who had already gone in search of some paint to at least visually eradicate the slur. Tim was standing next to me, saying nothing. I would have joined the teachers to discuss the educational meaning of the act — which meant gossiping about which student we thought was the graffiti artist — but I felt leaving Tim alone to engage in speculative student character assassination might be a little insensitive.
The vice-principal proceeded towards us. “Are you happy now?” he barked as his presence filled my field of vision.
“Not especially, no,” I replied casually. “Is there any reason that childish pranks perpetrated by imbeciles against targets selected on the basis of sexual preference should bring delight to my life?” As a general rule, the longer I’m in the building past three, the bitchier I get.
“You’ve just got to stop getting yourself in so much hot water.” Tim finally spoke up for the first time since discovering the attack on his locker.
“Any guesses?” I asked him.
“How many people are there in the school?”
“About sixteen hundred.”
“That narrows it down to about fifteen hundred and ninety-nine.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” We paused to stare some more at Tim’s defaced locker. Although there are many areas within the teaching profession in which I consider myself to be lacking, making small talk with students during awkward moments is chief among them. If they covered it during teacher training at Simon Fraser University, from which I had graduated less than a year before, I must have been sleeping. This event would certainly qualify as awkward. “But you can’t think of anyone in particular who has a beef with you?”
“Only every homophobe who’s convinced they’ve ‘outed’ me.”
“I guess they have,” I said, nodding towards his locker, now being covered with a fresh coat of paint. The locker now stood out from every other in the hallway in that it had received a coat of paint sometime during this decade. By this time, Principal McFadden was approaching us, and I silently vowed not to be sarcastic and snippy with him. I needed some reserves for the inevitable follow-up conversation with his direct underling.
“Tim, I’m really sorry about what’s happened,” he began earnestly enough.
“It’s not your fault, Mr. McFadden,” Tim replied with a sigh.
“Still, no one should have to experience something like this, especially
