By alpha climber and Bozeman High School (Bozeman, MT) senior Cole Janssen. This piece was originally published in Cole's school paper, Hawk Talk in February, 2018. Cole joined Alpha on our summer 2017 bouldering trip to Rocklands, South Africa.

It’s nearly the day that I am to send this story to my editors. They’ll transfer the story to the paper’s layout and make sure I’ve crossed my t’s and dotted my i’s, so to speak. Normally, I would never edit a story so drastically days before publication, but something happened to me today that have made edits critically necessary.

Walking past the locker room during lunch on Thursday, my stomach turned into an all-too-familiar knot as a student screamed “faggot” in my face. This kind of thing happens to me more often than I like to think about, and each time it happens it feels like the first time.

It triggers a tightness in my chest. My heart beats faster, and I feel a mixture of anger, shame, and fear that I wish I could outrun. It’s a tiny trauma every time. I scan the scene for danger and change my posture from its usual confident stance to one of defensiveness.

In that moment, I never know what to do. Afterwards, I run through several hypothetical scenes of what I should have done but, in that moment, was to afraid to do.

So yes: I deleted my entire original introduction to this piece—an altruistic description of compassion and acceptance—and replaced it with this painfully real instance that happened moments ago: something that happens in this town and even this very building every day in some shape or form.

Everyone sees life differently because of their past experiences and their personal identity: their nurture and nature. So, through the rest of this story, I invite you to look through my eyes.

Walking through my day, I see bright spots of danger and fear in situations which may not cause you to bat an eye. I’ve avoided the locker room for as long as I can remember. The homophobic and hyper-masculine words echoing off the bleak concrete floor and metal lockers have landed like boards on my bare body and left welts on my mind. In school, especially around male faculty members, I deepen my voice so I don’t sound too effeminate—whatever that means.

Growing up, I didn’t see anyone like myself in the television I watched or the books I read, and consequently, in a world of “us” and “them,” I always felt like “them.” These are only a few instances I feel comfortable publishing in a paper, but they are joined by innumerable instances of violence and hatred that will go unpublished.

Ever since I was a young child, situations like these pushed a certain message even further into my then-impressionable mind. In the worst cases, it’s a message that can drive queer kids to make permanent and tragic decisions. It’s a false and harmful message that keeps these folks in a state of fear and self loathing that is often inescapable: it’s the message that the way we live is wrong.

Bozeman is beautiful beyond words and overflowing with opportunity. I would argue, however, that this bountiful opportunity comes majorly from its homogeneous and wealthy population. Growing up here, queer kids often feel alone and afraid. They feel, at best, a novelty to the normal Bozeman crowd (i.e. the “gay friend”) and, at worst, completely alienated with no community or support system. Bozeman’s lack of diversity is nobody’s fault, but it is everyone’s problem.

Don’t be fooled—I do fit in here. I’m a rock climber and a musician. I love to hike and I am a bit of a coffee snob. I’m white and come from a well-off family. This is a story about identity discrimination, but it should be known that I am vastly accepted in many situations. If I am not, I can hide parts of my identity to be accepted—in fact, I do it often.

I am relatively masculine—a part of my identity that elicits responses like this: “Cole, I like you. You don’t shove your gayness down my throat,” or “I couldn’t even tell you were gay when I met you.”

Thanks?

In other words, I’m a palatable gay: the gay you want me to be. I am a gay man that doesn’t make you uncomfortable because of effeminate behaviors, different vernacular, skin color, legal status, or class.

Additionally, I’m just gay. People generally know what being gay means, but have a lower understanding of what being bisexual or transgender means. All of these factors contribute to my status as the queer person society wants me to be.

Much of the queer community is discriminated against in countless ways that I have never felt before. I can’t understand what that feels like, but I can be a fierce ally and try to empathetically hear their stories.

So what can you do? Start by setting aside your fear for people who aren’t like you.

To do this, listen very closely to those people who are experiencing pain and fear. Try to understand them with an open heart.

We all have pain, after all; some people have pain that is easier to see than others. Pain and fear prohibits us from succeeding. To make a true difference, we must allow for those around us to live their truthful selves without fear.

Be kind, BHS.

Who You Want Me to Be