Every week, I reserve my Tuesday morning for the homeschool QSA, never knowing how many kids are going to show up.
Sometimes no one comes at all. I’ll sit for a while, reading a book or writing something, just hanging out, keeping the space open. Then I’ll go home and have an early lunch.
Sometimes it’s just me and one other kid. Sometimes, that kid really needs to talk and we stay for the full 2 hours. Sometimes, it’s been awkward, because that kid would much rather be interacting with peers and we don’t stay much over 30 minutes.
Today, I thought it might be me and one kid, and I told him that two people can change the world. Another kid showed up, and I said three people can do even more to stir things up. We got started by looking at a 1971 copy of Life magazine that was kicking around, and I talked about how gay rights have changed since that time, which led to a discussion about liberal lip service, “just like you” folks, the isolation of not knowing about queer history and having to reinvent the wheel all the time as well as assuming homophobia is just your own personal hell because Americans like to think everything is about the individual instead of looking at systemic oppression. We talked about how some of their peers feel that the era of GSAs is over, thinking themselves too cool or too sophisticated to ever darken the doors of such a passé group. We talked about queer space and why it’s important. We got to talking about how a radical queer movement has a lot to teach the straight mainstream population, for example, about sexuality and gender norms. Another kid showed up, kind of late, and we talked about liberal lip service again, something she is just beginning to explore and understand.
We also planned our next meeting, which will be open to younger kids, a Junior QSA, and we planned the upcoming GSA Summit we’re co-sponsoring with Queer Mystic: “Combating Lethargy in Your GSA”.
Yesterday, Monday, after a miserable 2 ½ hours at the assisted living place trying to comfort my sad and lonely mother, talking to the administrators about some communication problems and the fact that said sad and lonely mother had pressed her call button Sunday night and no one came to check on her until 3 hours later, I drove off feeling pretty rough. Panicking about where Tex and I will be when we’re old, how we can prepare. Feeling old and lonely right then. Feeling very “what is the point?”.
As we meandered through our discussion this morning at the QSA, we got onto the topic of paths not taken, and I mentioned my little fantasy of what if I had gone to live in San Francisco with the super-radical queers. One of the kids said, “But maybe you’re more needed here, and you’re making more of a difference here than you would out there. Maybe the work that you’re meant to do is here.”
Every Tuesday morning I make the commitment to spend two hours with members of the homeschool QSA. Can I get an amen?
The Total Femme 