Student CAMP

1999 was a banner year for me. March in particular—I was a junior at Cape Henlopen High School and had that particular sixteen-year-old mentality that is an amusing blend of invincibility, self-righteousness, and angst. I’d been dealing with being a lesbian since thirteen, and although everybody knew—family, friends, high school—nobody was handling it particularly well, especially me. All of that aside, life was reasonably decent—I was in the early stages of my first serious lesbian relationship, and I was relatively comfortable with most everything else in my life. It was then that I decided that I needed to inflict my voice upon the population at large—or at least the gay one—and asked Steve Elkins if he wanted a youth columnist. In what I’m never sure was a moment of wisdom or insanity he agreed, and I embarked on my career as A Gay Youth Columnist.

I have of late been looking back at past columns and reflecting on where I was in my life when I wrote them. I have written far too many angry columns sparked by suicide and death of my peers. There have been a fair amount of columns that my mother finds perfectly mortifying. And then there was the one column that had a few sentences about Buffy the Vampire Slayer that was posted all over the Internet that resulted in my receiving about 50 messages from rabid fans in the space of three days, many of which were much longer than the column itself. Good times, all.

This column has had a great influence in my life. It has gotten me in trouble with my family and at school, sparked some very interesting letters from all sorts of unlikely places, and gotten me a certain level of notoriety around town. (This I share with my parents, who get asked "if their daughter is the one who writes the column" with remarkable frequency.)

Growing up, Rehoboth was my refuge and sanity. As small as it may seem, hanging out in the CAMP courtyard and in Lambda Rising was one of the joys of my life. I hated every day of high school, for I was the dyke. I learned more about hate there then I ever did math, most of it via lunchroom and hallway dynamics. Never do the complex interactions between racism, classism, and other sundry forms of bigotry become more obvious then when observing who chooses to eat where. Cape hardly has the market on this, I should mention, and I am grateful for its proximity to Rehoboth, if nothing else. (There really should be an emergency car ride line for those poor queer kids out in Laurel.) Be that as it may, it is still the place where, almost four years after my graduation, kids still say "that’s so Kristen Foery" sometimes instead of "that’s so gay." I don’t know how I ended up being the legendary one, but I did.

I mention this by way of explanation. It’s one of the reasons why I went to school in New England, and it’s the big reason as to why I very rarely come home anymore. (I effectively moved to New Hampshire my sophomore year.) No offense meant to those of you who are moving there in droves, but Delaware was always a place to run away from to me. I got good grades and kept myself in line (well, except for the dyke thing) so that I could escape. And now, in my senior year of college, I find myself filling out applications for graduate schools that are out West.

The point is that when I started out writing this column it was designed to be the voice of a local gay youth. Gay is the only one I still have going for me, and as such I am stepping down.

I have a friend who does meet all of the aforementioned criteria. I am passing off the column to her, with hopes that she can carry on my fine tradition of lesbian teen angst. (She goes to Cape, where little has changed. How can she not?). I have the greatest of faith in her.

And with that I would like to thank you all. I would like to particularly thank my parents and brother for their infinite grace and patience with me, the Reverends P-B for guidance, Steve and Murray for putting up with my complete inability to make deadline and for sage advice, Jen, Travis, and Andi for most everything, various CAMP regulars that have come and gone over the years and written me interesting letters, Fay and Bonnie for inspiration, Jane and Leslie for sustained correspondence, and everyone who has worked at Lambda Rising, particularly Penny and Gretchen, for knowing that it’s important to let the kids who never buy anything hang out anyway. Thank you all. It’s been a privilege.