My 25th high school reunion is coming up next month.
It was the mid-1980s, the era of Miami Vice and Culture Club, a neon-colored haze of shoulder pads, thin ties, and Nagel prints. Reagan was president and LGBT issues were revolved around one issue: AIDS. The transgender community at the time was largely closeted, and transgender issues were all-but-unvoiced. This was not the era of pioneers like Christine Jorgensen, but that of "Bond Girl" Caroline Cossey, a transgender woman outed by the press and since faded back into obscurity.
There was gender transgression, don't get me wrong. As well as Boy George, you had Pete Burns of the band Dead or Alive and Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics pushing boundaries. New Romantics and Hair Metal both pushed the boundaries on how much makeup, hairspray, and Spandex was acceptable for males.
Yet things were different in my neck of the woods. At my high school you were not out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Kids were beaten for less in my neighborhood. This was the edge of East Los Angeles, California, and I lived in a lower-middle class neighborhood that was largely populated by the dingy light industrial quonset huts that dotted the city, churning out cheap furniture and plastic fingernails. It also consisted of territory claimed by three rival gangs.
My high school was, in retrospect, fairly conservative. Fans of Ronald Reagan and George Bush – the H.W. variety, not the W. – outweighed those of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro. We had a Christian club nestled amongst the stage crew and debate team. In spite of our largely working class roots, I think many fancied themselves in the mold of Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties.
Cross gender behavior only showed up once in my high school years, during the now-archaic "Slave Day" when female students were encouraged to "buy" one of the males for a day – and 90 percent of the guys would end up in a dress. It was a one-day lark, fodder for the yearbook and little else. Looking over that album, it appears that every "joke" is about doing the worst drag presentation ever.
I hid out that day, avoiding any possibility that I might be "bought." To say I was in the closet then simply does not seem strong enough. Though I had a good inkling of my transgender nature many years prior to high school, I felt that there was simply no way I could address such. I suspect I was right then, too.
I doubt I'll be traveling to my 25th class reunion, any more than I did my 10th back in the earliest days of my transition. I might if I was in the area, but it's not something I have a great desire to attend. The handful of friends I have kept from those days are as close as my e-mail inbox or a "poke" on Facebook, and those who I've not kept in touch with, well, perhaps there's a good reason for it.
I do wonder what they might think, though, if I walked in the room, inhabiting a gender different than the one I presented as when I received my diploma. I doubt it would truly shock them, given that word spread about my transition years ago, but maybe a few would. I'm not sure my high school prom date knows, or the woman I marched with at the graduation ceremony.
Still, to what end would that serve, and would I really want to go back to a place and time that was at the heart so painful for me?
In the course of looking up information about my 25th high school reunion, though, I learned something else. My alma mater, all these years later, has a gay-straight alliance.
That's a lot for me to absorb. I cannot fathom, even 25 years on, that my high school would have a GSA. It amazes me, given how some who were even perceived as gay were treated, that attitudes have changed there enough to allow for such. Yet they clearly have.
This is what I'd like to see. Rather than seeing those I graduated with all those years ago, and stirring up the old ghosts of a life long left behind, I can't help but imagine what it might be like to meet with those who are going there now, who are strong enough to meet in an actual school club – but might yet be able to take the history and knowledge of someone who once walked those 1940s-era Works Progress Administration halls of my old school.
Indeed, it seems like there's two distinct options: one can look back, with a veneer of civility and the weight of years, and participate in the class reunion rituals. We can talk about what we've done, and compliment each other on how little we've aged beyond our gawky, acne-riddle teenage years, or one can look ahead. We could help those who are there now have a bit more than we had then, even if it is only giving them the experiences of an old graduate who learned to survive beyond my teens, 20s, and even 30s.
What I am reminded is that there is a whole new generation out there, those who have grown up in a different world, that where transgender issues are not necessarily more prevalent than they were in the era of shoulder pads and leg warmers – but where we have more rights to be who we are, and where two and a half decades of education and advocacy have reshaped this world.
This is the lesson: look back or look forward – and I'd rather shape a better world than dwell on the past.
Gwen Smith did not invent Post-It notes. You can find her online at www.gwensmith.com.