YOU CAN’T FIND THIS IN PRINT.
EXCERPT From Brave Face by Shaun David Hutchinson.
The following excerpt from my memoir
Brave Face begins with a vocabulary
lesson. Specifically, the vocabulary of
hate. It wasn’t gay people I hated, how-
ever, it was myself. While I find the use
of that particular F-word offensive, I
used it in this selection to help readers
understand how gay people were com-
monly viewed when I was a teen, how I
viewed them, and how, therefore, I
viewed myself.VOCABULARY LESSON, PART 1Eighth Grade, 1991 to 1992
I KNEW WHAT IT MEANT TO BE
A FAGGOT, BUT NOT WHAT IT
meant to be gay.
I was thirteen, in eighth grade at St.
Mark’s Catholic School. Thankfully,
this wasn’t a building filled with nuns
who beat our knuckles with rulers.
Our science teacher and vice principal
was a woman with short hair who’d
served in the military, rode a Harley
to school, and taught us about both
puberty and evolution. We attended
daily religion class, which is where I
did my homework for my other
classes, and had mass once or twice a
month, but I didn’t mind.Despite not being Catholic, I liked
St. Mark’s. It was nothing like my pre-
vious school, where I’d been fre-
quently sent to the administrator’s
office for counseling with the vice
principal,who would beat my ass with
a sandal and then pray for my eternal
soul, which she made sure I knew she
believed was hell bound. I hated that
school so much that I faked fevers by
going to the bathroom and running
hot water against my forehead. I also
scraped a pencil eraser across the
crook of my arm until it bled and fre-
quently jumped from the top of a
metal geodesic dome on the play-
ground in an attempt to break my
ankle. My only friend was a boy who
once ate a spider during a firedrill.
My experience at St. Mark’s was
different. I learned how to cultivate
friendships, how to fit in without
being miserable, how to make people
laugh. And I learned some new
vocabulary words. In the mornings
before school, I sat in front of the
library, which was situated at the far
end of a parking lot between the main
school building and the church.
Younger kids chased one another
around or threw footballs, but I was
an eighth-grader and too cool for that.