For gay teens, growing pains hit harder

WHEN I WAS 13, I was a goggle-eyed skinny-minny in love with Kevin Jessup. When I couldn't get Kevin to notice me, I turned my attention to a pen pal I'd known in elementary school, someone who I'll call "Bobby."

"Bobby still remembers me!" I wrote in my diary on Oct. 20, 1973. "My cousin wrote and told me and sent me his address. I can't wait for him to answer!"

I sprayed the letter with lemon-scented perfume and waited for a reply.

"Jan. 18, 1974: I got a letter AND a picture from Bobby! Yeah! He said that he had written two before, but they came back."

Feeling out of place

I'd forgotten how important it is for teens to discover that they can be loved by someone other than their parents. But when I read Clifford Chase's anthology, "Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay Writers Recall Seventh Grade," (Weisbach Books 1998, $24) I realized how hard it is for those young and gay.

One story in the collection was Doug Jones' "1976." When he was a kid, he wrote fiction stories in his diary. One story bears chilling parallels to events in today's headlines:

"Scott just didn't fit into the school," wrote Jones. "There were the 'cowboys,' which he really despised, and the jocks, which he just plain wasn't. During exercises, he wished there was a group for the cultured, the Learned, the 'smart' people ...but that was wishful thinking."

The story then tells of Scott's torment, especially by a kid named Jimmy. One day, Jimmy tackled Scott so viciously that Scott hit his head and fell into a coma.

For me, that account mirrored the Trench Coat Mafia at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. I recalled initial witness reports that the ostracized boys had been taunted with epithets against gays. I wondered if the violence could have stemmed, at least in part, from that.

"I don't know if the kids at Columbine were gay or not," says Diane Rae Kavanagh, director of a youth program at Ferndale-based Affirmations, an organization serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community. "But their stories echo what I hear every day from kids in our program. Many kids go through torture at that age -- whether it's because they're overweight or they have odd tastes. But for kids who are homosexual, it's just one more reason to get picked on."

As a result, many of the teens she sees weekly are angry, self-destructive or suicidal. Indeed, a study published in the journal Pediatrics last year found that gay, lesbian and bisexual teens are three times more likely to have attempted suicide, nearly five times more likely to have missed school for safety concerns and more than four times as likely to have been threatened with a weapon at school than their heterosexual counterparts.

Later, the truth

In college, I learned that Bobby is gay. After reading "Queer 13," I wondered if he knew it even at 13, and had delayed responding to my lemon-scented letter as he struggled with how to do it.
In the end, he played along, perhaps finding it easier to escape taunting if he could profess a long-distance girlfriend who sent him perfumed letters. I hope his teen years didn't dash his ability to love himself. And I hope that as an adult, he has found a wonderful man who can return his love.

For more information about Affirmations' youth services, call 1-248-398-7105, or their hot line at 1-800-398-GAYS.
To leave a message for DESIREE COOPER, call 1-313-222-6625 or E-mail her at cooper@freepress.com.

Return to P.E.R.S.O.N. Project Home Page