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Speaking of post-college, that's a terrifying thought, ain't it? I could cradle myself in the comforting womb of higher education all my life if they gave me a chance. I can even see myself at age forty-five, sitting in some huge lecture hall and lusting after a 19-year-old who won't even give me the time of day...hey, that sounds just like my life now! Just joking. Things always seem worse than they actually are, unless you've got seven pages of nothing floating around your room waiting to be filled. Icky gross.
Went in to Marist High School, my alma mater, for some speech coaching today. I spent a good part of the afternoon discussing homophobia with a couple of the guys on the team. All three claimed that they were NOT homophobic. One admitted that if a guy touched him on the leg, he got uncomfortable, but the others insisted that they were in no way afraid or nervous or hateful of gays.
I told them that they couldn't know what they thought of gays until they actually spent time with a gay person. I don't mean that in a weird way, like gays are oddities to be observed and scrutinized, but the south side of Chicago is hardly a haven for liberal thinking, and once you escape it there's a period of time where one must work hard at avoiding the programmed prejudices, biases, and bigotries that hammer away at one's emotions and reactions. For example, in high school the word "gay" meant "lame" or "this sucks." If I used it that way now, no one would really understand what I was saying. The cultural significance of just that one word and the idea behind it is completely different on the liberal college campus than the same word on the south side of Chicago.
What am I getting at here? Even if they seem to want it and if they're cute as all hell, NEVER date fourteen-year-olds. There's just a world of college experience that they don't understand. Plus, if you suck at sex, they'll say that you're "gay," and who needs that kind of pressure?