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I had the same two voice and speech teachers throughout my years at Boston University. They were two of the most wonderful people you could ever meet. One was a serious vocal coach and actor with a strong baritone voice and credentials spanning 30 years, the other was a happy go lucky, short, flamboyant man who cared as much about your youthful happiness as he did about your training. They had also been life partners for over 20 years.
The door to my joyful and gay teacher was a revolving one. Student after student would go to his office for two reasons: To smoke cigarettes (which you could still do in 1988) while sitting on his comfy leather couch, and to come up for air. The outside world was so restrictive. You had to please your parents, your new teachers, your peers and yourself. At 16 years of age, I could talk to him about my homesickness and my feelings of guilt about being too tired to pick up the phone when my dad would call in the mornings. I could pour out my confusion about the looks I would get in class. Is it because I’m the only Puerto Rican here or is it because I’m from the Bronx?
“Dennis, don’t worry about whether others accept you. I think you’re pretty perfect.”
He treated everyone as uniquely perfect; especially those that were terrified over what to do about their attraction towards the same sex. These kids were hurting and needed to be reminded that they are perfect the way God made them. Everyone went to him and everyone felt better.
It is not easy to be a teenager in college. How can you accept yourself when everywhere you look, there is judgment, criticism and in worst cases- condemnation? When we find a portal that relieves us from believing that the path to fulfillment is through what other’s project as the socially acceptable you, you start to finally breathe. That simple reminder of our perfection nourishes the soul and helps us to carry on the search for our truth.
We have very few places in life where we can explore our truest selves; a place of non-judgment, with no requirements that you play any role. The most heart-breaking aspect is what happens to a life that does not find a place to come up for air. Feelings of anger at the injustice of not being allowed to be you start to bubble up. It is either expressed or suppressed, turning into guilt and self hatred for having to live a lie. All of our actions become colored by these feelings of discontent and we become depressed and frightened at the prospect of never finding our true life purpose because we have no recollection of who we truly are.
Then comes a book, a lover, a teacher, a minister or if we’re lucky a family member that cuts right through all of our undesired masks and only sees light. You start to see your own light reflected through their acceptance. Like attracts like so you run into others that are willing to accept all of you. You begin to accept yourself and to be happy again, so you decide the time has come for a coming out party.
My teacher told me during the spring of my first year in college: “When I was a kid Dennis, I used to love to play with fronds on Palm Sunday.”
I didn’t say anything but I was going to thank him for all he did for me by bringing him some fronds the following Monday after Palm Sunday. I brought him fronds every year while I was at the university and he would hang it up on his office wall until the following year.
In 2000, I received an email that he had passed away. I was able to get a hold of the email address of my other teacher, his partner and expressed my sorrow. His partner responded:
“You know Dennis, those fronds you gave him, he kept them all these years. It meant the world to him that you remembered to bring them.”
Fronds or palm branches are a symbol of triumph and divine kingship. I wonder if he ever knew how much his presence and the simple reminders of our kingship meant to all the students he touched.
“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another”- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
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