She nods. “I try.” A pause. “But it’s not without effort.”

It occurs to me: if this is her first year teaching, that means I probably know whoever came out to her. Was it Chaz?

She doesn’t say any more, and I know I can’t ask who it was, so we’re both quiet. When we’re nearly back to campus, she takes a left that leads us through cornfields and away from school.

She pulls into a gravel lot that has an even better view than the bleachers at school, taking in the whole campus, the fields in one direction, the thick woods in the other, and a full panorama of the shining lake beyond. “Antic Springs may be more, what’s your word, welcoming in the future, but this is 1985. If a student’s homosexuality were to be well known here and now, it’d only be a matter of time before he got beaten up by classmates—or Townies. And if he survived that, what would happen? The school would kick him out.”

Oh my god. This is the same woman who will later let me write my junior research paper, Art in the Aftermath of AIDS, and give me an A for it. She really does sound like my mom—which makes sense because my mom was her student when she was still this person.

“Did you not at all consider how you might look to the others if you wear a brooch to prom at First Secondary? Add that jacket, and you might as well be David Bowie.”

“David Bowie is an icon. And he’s bisexual, for the record.”

“That does not help you. You’re setting yourself up to be a target for Gordo and his crew.”

Seriously, will there ever be a time when people aren’t using queer people’s safety as a reason to tell them to be less queer? How about telling everyone else to be less dangerous? “Um, maybe the problem is the weapon? No target ever shot itself.”

She mulls this. She has always been good at hearing students out, even when we’re melodramatic or reactionary. I don’t think I’m being either here and by the look on her face, I see that she’d agree with me on this. But she also knows the world we’re currently in better than I do. “It’s unfair. I know that. You just want to be yourself. But I am telling you: pay attention to your context.” She flutters her fingertips lightly on the steering wheel, a wave-like pattern from hand to hand as if rolling scales on the piano. “We need to get you back home.”