To the teacher I ignored at church

Did you stand up for me? Did you go "omg lol" and perpetuate it further?

It was only when you spun around that I recognized you. Your hair hasn't changed, still long and gathered together neatly in a low ponytail even though it was Sunday and we were at church and you weren’t subject to school rules anymore. You were allowed to have your hair down. I stared at you for a bit too long even though I recalled your name instantly. I think you saw me too?

I glanced away.

I started some semblance of small talk with my brother, hoping to look at anything, anyone, but you.

If this had happened two years ago, I would have said, “Hi”, said, "Wow, it's been fifteen years since I was last in your class! I still hate biology, by the way. No use for ‘mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’." But something happened two years ago.

In November of 2022, I was named an LGBTQ+ role model. Suddenly, people had proof to back the rumours about my sexuality. A history teacher texted my mom, saying that this link spread in the teachers’ group chat. My mom bombarded me with messages, screenshotting that text and adding: “What is this :( / It went viral here / Who wrote this / Who made this / My heart racing very fast now / I need to take meds / R u trying to kill me???”. I cut her off for two years.

In the week following The Big Gossip Moment, a few teachers from our very Indonesian, very Catholic school messaged me with variations of the following: “Hi, how are you? I’m part of the LGBT support network at church. Are you free to chat?”. I blocked all of their numbers. I wasn’t interested in a conversion conversation.

Since then, I have ridiculed the hypocrisy of the school I grew up in. What kind of educational figures preach “God loves and accepts everyone” and then spread gossip about their gay students? What kind of teacher feigns innocence and asks a parent if their children was indeed gay and makes them feel shame? I spent twelve years believing that those teachers were parental figures who raised me. I would spend the rest of my life questioning their sincerity.

I saw you turn toward my direction, not towards me necessarily, but towards the church's exit because the mass had ended. You walked back up the aisle the same way you used to graze the space between our desks in class — slowly, steadily. And I, hastily, slid out through the other side of the pew. I think we may have locked eyes again. I don’t know. I know for sure I immediately looked away.

Because the truth is, even though I'm comfortable with my sexuality, I didn’t know if you were. Were you a part of that group chat? Did you stand up for me? Did you stay silent? Did you go "omg lol" and perpetuate it further? In Indonesia, I've learned to assume people are homophobic until proven otherwise.

And we were in a Catholic church. The same one my parents have been taking me to since I was born. The same one I got my first communion in. You were probably there because the school organized the first communion ceremony for students. The same one I had to keep coming back to, to prove that I attended church every week to be eligible for my confirmation.

I also didn't feel like talking about anything else with you. Would you, like every other Indonesian, ask if I was dating, if I was getting married soon? Or would you, like the nosy Hong Kongers I’ve gotten accustomed to, notice the engagement ring on my left hand and congratulate me? Or would you, like all my family members, see that as a confirmation of the rumours and shy away from asking about it at all? Would you see me as just another update for that teachers' group chat? Another former student gone astray because she got corrupted by Western media? I imagined my name popping up in green bubbles between lesson plans and other school gossip, my identity reduced to something between scandal and cautionary tale.

I couldn't handle having that conversation. Not then, at my neighbor's wedding mass. Not there, at church.

Because the truth is, I had a crush on you in seventh grade, six years before I knew I could be attracted to girls. I read the textbooks ahead of class so I could raise my hand when you drew out diagrams, white chalk against a faded chalkboard. I kept aiming for good grades in biology when I kept mixing up my taxonomies. You had a blog about your obsession with "green", your favourite colour, so I named my blog "blueaholic", my favourite colour.

But all of these fears were just presumptions, ghosts l conjured from a group chat I heard about two years ago. The group chat that broke the already-fractured relationship I had with my family into pieces that required kintsugi to assemble back together.

The next day, I texted you, "Was it you that I spotted on Sunday?" The message sits there, unread.

I still don’t know if we would have had a conversation. Maybe you would have just said hi, gave a polite smile to my parents and me, and moved on with your day. And I wouldn't spend the next week just counting down the days till I fly off so I don’t have to chance upon any other high school teachers.

Thank you to friends who approached this piece with tenderness:

Tahsin Khan

,

Claire Coley

, and

Josh Ponelat

.

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Update log:

• 📖 Reading Goodnight, Melancholy by Xia Jia (translated by Ken Liu in the contemporary Chinese science fiction anthology Broken Stars). I read it to escape reality and was instead confronted by homophobia experienced by Alan Turing... Touché

• 🧊 Listed out the food I have in the freezer with peel-able labels on the side. This way, I can see what food I have in a glance.

• 🎵 Looping Lin-Manuel Miranda’s latest musical concept album, Warriors. I obsess over anything this man makes. Ah-she-ca! Ah-ah-she-ca!

• 😂 Another obsession: Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, and Jon Chu discussing the “holding space” viral meme clip. Nobody knows what’s going on and that makes it even funnier.

• ✍🏼 Bite-Sized Creativity updates:

  • Asked

    Camilo Moreno-Salamanca
    to be my book editor. He said yes!

  • Asked a graphic designer friend to design the book cover. She also said yes!

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