I’d been ignoring Facebook, because it’s bloated and buggy and doesn’t generate income – I hadn’t even bothered to go and turn email notifications off again after it decided to restore them all to my account without my consent.  Emails would arrive, I’d delete them unless they were really interesting.  Six friend requests came in and I ignored those too, because I assumed they were more of you lot i.e. groupies.  I jest, I jest!  To cut a tedious story short, when I got a message from my brother, I finally made the trek to the great Book of Faces and there was a message from a name I didn’t know, who turned out to be a high school friend.

High school was hell – it wasn’t the fault of high school, I was just an unhappy adolescent with Britain’s annual national consumption of chips on my shoulder.  This particular friend, let’s call her Sara, was a good friend and in hindsight, I suspect myself of having a secret, unrealised and unrequited crush on her.  She always had cool boyfriends though, the bitch.

Anyway, I added Sarah to my 347 close personal Facebook friends and went to prowl her profile.  The last time I remember seeing her was in 1987 and the last I’d heard of her was from another high school inmate I bumped into years ago who told me she thought Sarah had gone to the USA and got married.  I didn’t give her any thought after that – married and American is just too much treachery.

“Sarah Smith is in a relationship with Nina Jones” was the first thing that struck me, just after I’d gone “wow she hasn’t changed much,” at her photo.  My gob was well and truly smacked, Nina’s a female name, right?  So she’s a ... a lesbian?  I checked her info tab and sure enough, there it was in blue and white – interested in women.  Next step, the photos and there she was with Nina, looking blissful – a good looking couple too, I might add.  I commented on one, “I could have told you you were gay when you were 14!” and the reply was, “BITCH!  Double bitch!!”  She’s a cool chick.

It makes one wonder how many moffies and dykes grew out of the classrooms – Sarah identified one more for me and I bumped into two at a gay club in Durban some years back, but apart from Sarah, I have no contact with schoolmates at all.  Of course there was the camp drama teacher and my std 8 class teacher who was fired for being a lesbian and Michelle whatever her name was who looked like a boy, didn’t shave her legs and was alleged to have kissed girls in the toilets.  I kiss them in other places, personally.

Glory days?  No.  there wasn’t an environment less conducive to nurturing emerging deviants.  Not only were the kids typically bigoted bullies, the headmaster (allegedly an alcoholic) said to my class teacher, “Can’t you pretend?” when he gave her the boot and to her credit, she said no.  The queenly screaming drama teacher was allowed to stay though.  Not that he shouldn’t have, he was a fabulous teacher, but the iniquity is blatant.

(I’m looking for more coming out interviews ... there’s an online form and it won’t take long; please consider doing it – thank you)