Teachers Act Up!

Thank you for laughing at the same jokes.

Thank you for confiding you ran your high school’s canned food drive when the comic accused us: an audience of nerds.

Thank you for your handsome face.

Thank you for assuring me that “90% of all the Republican men” you work with on the Capitol are gay, that the religious freedom laws are “blown out of proportion” by the left.

Thank you for being so sure that what our President is doing is largely just what the last president has done and the president before him.

Thank you for telling me you’re 25 but not telling me your name.

Thank you for not helping me look you up after I watch you crowd into an oversized taxi with your buddies, wondering when you will run for office in your home state, North Carolina.

Thank you for pointing out just how many gay Republicans under 30 were in the audience tonight, all of us laughing about the 43 year old comic’s body, what he told us of his smug grocery cart full of peppers and kale.

Thank you for spilling your drink, for having two of them.

Thank you for the light touch to your lover’s knee, your lover from Georgia like I am from Georgia.

Thank you for your handsome knit sweater and your spikey blonde hair.

Thank you for asking why we can’t just respect the president three minutes before the room went dark.

Thank you for listening to my question about your flawed messenger.

Thank you for your grinning agreement, that he could have done “the rollout” better.

Thank you for not using words like chain migration or sin.

Thank you for telling me you are “out” on the hill with “of course” eyebrow body language.

Thank you for telling me the administration will uphold Obama’s order against anti-LGBT workplace discrimination.

Thank you for laughing, as if this were all a big joke, as if we’re all reading fake news, as if the comics are where we must turn to clink drinks, touch whomever wants to be touched under the table, shake hands and help each other take pictures, even feel each other’s young and older hearts beating with the rush of our after-show destinies out of the dark bar, onto the cold street.

Thank you for asking about my name tag, for learning that I’m a writer.

Thank you for letting my friend take my picture with you, to remember your face, that brief respite from grief.