HATCH

A lot of us told our parents it was called “Houston Area Teen Crisis Hotline,” but it was HATCH- Houston Area Teen Coalition of Homosexuals. That is because in a lot of homes, hearing that your kid was a HATCH member was a deal-breaker. I’m sure in some homes, it still is. I didn’t join until I was 19, because my then-girlfriend had just moved to Fredericton, New Brunswick, and I didn’t have any gay friends anymore.

Yes, that’s right. At Clements High School, I only had one gay friend. And she was with me. Plus, the funny part is that she wasn’t gay when we met. I totally turned her gay. That’s real, you know. If you just put some of your gay DNA under someone’s pillow, they’ll sleep on it and it will change their brains overnight. It’s amazing how fast it works. You should try it.

HATCH was housed in a church near the Montrose, Houston’s largest gay area (or at least, it was in 1996). Because it was housed in a church, HATCH looked like every Methodist Youth Fellowship meeting I’d ever attended, complete with ratty carpet, the “Aunt Sally” furniture collection, and the kind of complete chaos that only fifty teenagers can cause.

There were several different meetings during the week, but I always went to Friday night. Friday night was the largest. We had guest speakers, as well as break-out sessions. The only break-out session I remember, because I went to it so often, is “How Was Your Week?”

I also occasionally went to Sunday nights, which was basically movie, popcorn, and chat. I saw some great films that way. I will never forget Brian’s Song, the only movie where it’s socially acceptable for straight men to cry.

As an adult, looking back, it had a very 12-Step feel. I have a few friends who are addicts/alcoholics/etc. and when they have big birthdays or they’re chairing a meeting, etc, I will go as moral support. It made my hindsight so much better- HATCH wasn’t trying to cure me so much as it was trying to heal the ills of being homosexual in the ’90s.

It was different, then. People had no shame about calling me names on the street. But one of the things HATCH gave me was perspective. In HATCH, I watched movies like Stonewall (Catch it if you can, even just to see Guillermo Diaz as a drag queen. You know, Guillermo from Weeds, Huck from Scandal, etc). Learning stories like that helped me to realize that I had gotten so lucky. I might get called names in the street, but I was unlikely to be arrested for what I was.

After I had been at HATCH for a while, I started being asked to speak at local churches about equality. One Sunday, it turned out that the church that asked me to speak was the one where my mom played piano. I got the gig completely independently of my mom, so I didn’t realize that it was her church at first. HATCH was in the middle of downtown, and this church was in Missouri City.

It wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be, and for that, I was very grateful. I spoke in the fellowship hall to the adult Sunday School classes. It is ironic that for people who are trying to educate, it often doesn’t feel that way. I kind of felt like an animal at a zoo- come see the real life LESBIAN (Do Not Feed)!

There was only one truly authentic moment that I remember about that particular day. The crowd was gathered around me, and one woman raised her hand. She said, “is it true that you can tell which people are gay? Like, um, gaydar?” My face tightened and I did not know what to say next. Looking into her eyes, she was not scared of knowing if there were gay people around her.

She was wondering whether people would be able to “sniff her out.” She was terrified. I did my best Lanagan Diplomacy Act and explained that for every person you can tell, there are ten more you can’t, blah blah blah.

I won a plaque from HATCH for all my work in public speaking. But I still see those eyes in my dreams.