One Day We'll Look Back and Laugh...

I teach an evening  Adult Education Course at a local college.

When my partner and I were first going out, I used to send him emails and Facebook messages during my coffee breaks.  Being the instructor, my desktop was projected on a huge screen behind. So, I would always turn the projector off before sending my little love notes.

At that time, I wasn’t closeted, but I wasn’t standing at the head of the class with a megaphone announcing my sexuality. The only thing my students knew about me personally was that I had become a grandfather ten months previous. The inference was that I had sex with a woman, who bore my daughter, who then (I don't even want to think about it) had sex with a man and bore my granddaughter.

Okay... back to the story...

So, one particular fall evening it was coffee time.  The male students had left the room for coffee, while the females remained. They were chatting and one says to me, “How’s your granddaughter?”  I said, “She’s beautiful”.  At the risk of sounding sexist, the women, being women (and mothers) then started asking if I had any photo’s.

I didn’t have any in my wallet, but I did know how to access them: Facebook.  AND I could project her beautiful little face on the big screen behind my desk.  So, I logged into Facebook and opened the photo album with her pictures.  Just as I did that, my partner’s face popped up in a Facebook chat window in the middle of the screen with the message, “I love you”.  Being relatively new to Facebook, I didn’t know how to immediately close the window, so I kept minimizing it. Well, every time my granddaughter’s photo changed, the little chat window would pop up and display the face and the “I love you” message.  I did my best dumbfounded “what the heck is this?” while madly clicking away…  finally I got the chat window to close.

Not that I cared about my students knowing I was gay, I just wasn't going to give them the "I'm gay, deal with it bitches" speech.  While they never said a word, I sensed they figured it out from their knowing smiles…

When I got home, I phoned him and when he said, “I love you.” I responded, “I know… and so does everyone in my class”  They learned more than they paid for that night!