About Me

I live in Hollywood, but teach on the East side of Los Angeles. I'm in my 40s - and still wonder how that happened

Biographical Information: the salient features

1) Pastor’s son – Not only that, but the eldest of six. Dad is an ordained minister in a small conservative splinter Presbyterian group. They like to pride themselves in being the bearers of John Calvin’s mantel, but nobody is a 16th century Calvinist. Every time you turn on a light switch you validate the results of the 18th century Enlightenment. They are probably closest to what the Presbyterian Church was perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago. My formative years were spent in Wilmington Delaware.

2) Gay male – Gee, can you think of better set-up for internal conflict? What can I say? There was a line from a movie that said it all, “You don’t tell your [male member] what it likes, it tells you what it likes.” The only choice is what to do about this fact once you discover it. I discovered it as soon as I hit puberty. I delayed actually dealing with it internally until I hit high school.

3) History, English, Linguistics – in that order. I went to a Christian Liberal Arts college in Tennessee. I majored in History and minored in English. It was a beautiful campus up on a mountain. Most everything else about it I would like to either forget or relive differently. I studied linguistics as preparation for ESL instruction at U.C. Davis.

4) Seminary – I never seriously considered going into the ministry, but I had loads of questions burning me up inside that I wanted to research, mull over in my mind, and bounce off of authority figures. I’m glad I went for two years.

5) Lymphoma – I survived it. I survived the chemotherapy, the bureaucracy, the loss of a place in society, the life spent in Mom and Dad’s house while in my 30s. My stem cells are sitting in a freezer at the City of Hope Medical Center. I decided to wait and not have the bone marrow procedure done. That was a wise decision. The Lymphoma never came back.

6) Episcopalian – Maybe it was the sense of historical distance in the liturgical worship I experienced, but I was confirmed and joined the church while a grad student at Davis. I’ve never regretted it. The church is flexible when appropriate yet maintains its traditional core. In the Los Angeles area (where I live now) I would be labeled as a conservative in this denomination, a thought that amuses me terribly.

7) High School English Teacher – a hard job, especially in the LA Unified system. It’s almost a daily immersion in the nastiest aspects of human nature. The kids are most often the least of the problem. When it is rewarding however, it is tremendously rewarding. I’m not sure how long I can tolerate the day to day crap. I’m doing my best.