I walked in and all activity stopped. The talking trickled down to a general, quiet susurration. Everyone’s attention in Room 218 refocused from its various focal points around the room to various focal points around my body in a general up and down wave pattern. Only the club supervisor seemed nonplussed and motioned for me to come in.
One of the kids said, “Hey, are you looking for the Junior Statesmen of America? They meet on the same day as the Gay-Straight Alliance club. Sometimes we get confused with them. They’re in the math hallway, room ten-something.”
That was my big welcome. Hi, Jahnavi Patel. You’re clearly not in the right place.
Sorry to disappoint, kids, but I’m here for good. Where should I unpack my bags?
The supervisor introduced herself and when everyone else saw that, no, really, I did mean to be there, they offered me conciliatory nods and waves.
Jason, a classmate in my science class this year, walked up to me and gave a small introduction about the GSA meetings. They met regularly in this room, they showed movies and had themed discussions, they sometimes brought in speakers, and there were usually some snacks and some sort of crafts projects if anyone didn’t feel like participating in the planned activity but wanted to stick around.
I said, “That sounds great, yeah. Sign me up.”
“Today we’re making pins to sell for World AIDS Day and raise funds we’re going to donate to a nonprofit working to stop it,” Jason said. “It’s coming up on December first, so we’re hoping to have these ready for then. We’ll be selling them in school all week.”
“Cool. Uh, how do I help?”
Someone introducing herself as Yim waved me over to the table with a bunch of red ribbons and pins. She showed me how to cut the ribbon and fold them over so they mad that simple ribbon pin shape I see a lot as car magnets and such.
“It sounds easy enough,” I said.
Yim smiled. “It is. So, it’s your first time at a GSA meeting. What brings you here?”
“Well, I haven’t been able to go before because I had family stuff and other club meetings I had to attend. But I knew you have these regularly and really wanted to come by, so here I am.”
“That’s awesome.” Yim nodded. “We can always use more allies here.”
“I guess so… Wait, no, uh, I’m not here as an ally! I mean, yeah, I obviously am in support or I wouldn’t be here, but that’s not why I’m here.”
Someone overheard me at the nearby table and decided to jump in.
Alan or Alvin, whatever his name was, piped in, “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
Suddenly I was just as interesting a specimen to the group as I was during my entrance.
“Yeah, I do. He’s pretty great.”
The looks on their faces was like the ones I saw during math tournaments, only this time they were puzzling me out, solving for J.
“So you like him?” Yim asked, “But you’re not straight?”
World AIDS Day would be in shambles if this continued for much longer. I didn’t like all the scrutiny, either.
“Right,” I said. “Yeah, I’m bisexual. I’m attracted to him, I like guys, I like girls. Not that it matters either way as I’d still have to keep it from my parents. They’re not as bad as some but they’re still traditional Indian parents. If it were up to them, I’d be a nun until my twenties.”
Just then, the club supervisor suggested we keep making the ribbons. Yim and I focused again on making them nice and neat without pricking our fingers too many times. It wasn’t exactly the welcome I was looking for but, hey, at least they didn’t kick me out.
~*~
A couple of months later when I made it back to the GSA, it was a bit better. It was February and the club was having a movie night with popcorn and cocoa the supervisor was heating up for everyone in the teacher’s lounge microwave. Someone from Drama Club suggested RENT so we got to see that.
I liked the music enough and it was a decent movie but during the discussion afterward, I had my moment to rant.
“I hated Maureen!” I practically snarled, “She’s supposed to be a bi character and she’s mean and flirts with everyone and left one partner for another. That’s such a bad stereotype. It’s awful! I mean, I’m in a relationship and it’s exclusive. We like each other and he respects who I am, and I respect him. Dating him doesn’t make me straight. Being in love with a woman wouldn’t make me gay. I don’t magically stop being attracted to women if I’m in love with or dating a man!”
Adam (not Alvin as I thought earlier) replied, “Come on, it’s just a movie.”
I had to silently count to ten before replying.
I said, “Just a movie? It’s not like these portrayals are doing any wonders for how we’re seen. It’s hard enough finding people like me in media. The closest I’ve seen so far is Bend It Like Beckham. Even then, they just teased the idea of the two characters and their attractions. So when a bisexual character is shown, they often look like caricatures of the worst assumptions. Like on ‘House’ with Olivia Wilde’s character. The other doctors assume all sorts of things about her which were totally false!”
I could tell the group was surprised I was venting so much, but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to get it out. Where else would people let me rage like that?
“Maureen isn’t who I am,” I said. “And I’m not pretending. I’m not in the closet. I’m not a Katy Perry ‘I Kissed A Girl’ clone. It gets to be so frustrating! So if the only images you see of bi characters show them as confused or indiscriminate, that’s going to be what you assume I am. Also, it isn’t just about sexuality. I was born here. I lived in this town my whole life but in kindergarten kids still made fun of me in Apu’s accent from ‘The Simpsons.’ You say it’s just a movie, but it matters.”
Adam thought about it. He frowned. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. You’re not like that.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. If I had shot smoke from my nostrils, I wouldn’t have been surprised. “Thanks.”
We talked some more about the movie after that but I was feeling discouraged enough to mostly stay around until the after school buses came, then head home.
~*~
I attended some more of the club events and got closer with Jason and the others. Maybe my unintentional diatribe jolted them into paying attention. I think it also helped that they saw me there regularly after that and could get to know me. Whatever they might have thought about me during my first time, it definitely seemed like they’d accepted me.
My parents found out about my boyfriend, too, and while they were not particularly thrilled, they didn’t forbid me from seeing him either. They have far more of a live-and-let-live attitude than some of our family friends. So while they were strict about visitations and my father made no effort to not terrify him when he came over, James passed enough of the family grilling to be invited over for dinner on occasion. Maybe they were hoping he’d get sick of the dal with dhokla we served him. No such luck, maa!
As a peace offering, my parents said if I wanted to invite James to our Holi celebration I could. Somehow, I could not shake the thought that my father just wanted to pelt him with some powder in the face without any consequences.
I prepared James for what to expect as best as I could. For a kid into all sorts of sports the best analogy I could make was to paintball, only with no losing or winning teams, and the religious significance of the festival.
Now, I’ve always loved celebrating Holi. I love the joy and colors and glee as I pelt others and get covered myself in the various powders. It’s one of my favorite holidays, one that is so perfect at the start of spring. The liveliness, the dancing, the rampant mischief of being able to go up to your friends and family to cover them with color instead of snowballs; it’s the best.
It was at Holi, in fact, that I had a small revelation, a miniature light bulb moment. Towards the end, James and I were completely covered in various colors. My face and clothes were splotchy with reds, purples, greens, blues. We weren’t going to hug or kiss there in front of my family but we did exchange a lot of funny looks and laughter, taking care to smear more powder on top of previous layers. I was convinced you could make an art masterpiece by gently pressing a piece of paper to my face for a few seconds.
That’s when it hit me. No, not the powder, the realization of how wonderfully symbolic it all was. I defended myself to the kids in my school’s GSA until they understood why I belonged there, why it mattered to me to be included. Before I could defend myself to them, I had to defend myself to my friends, and even prior to that, to myself. Making sense of who I was took a little bit of time. Once I was sure, though, I was sure for good.
Standing there, celebrating a major festival from my culture with my truly awesome, ridiculously bespeckled boyfriend, I felt like myself. It wouldn’t matter who was there with me, what kind of partner I’d be including in the festivities now or years later. Covered in colors, my hair a mess, every inch of me was a different shade. It was like I was wearing my true colors on the outside; like everything I was as myself, immutably Jahnavi, showed through.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Aleks S. is too chipper to have the vaunted Russian soul, though he keeps trying. Hailing from lovely New Jersey hasn’t helped much over the years but it is a great source for story fodder (all names have been changed). He thinks that (aside from abstract noun answers of the love-friendship-beauty-justice variety) large fluffy cats, chosen family and ‘Xena: Warrior Princess‘ are what is best in life.