Openly Straight--[Insert tagline here]

Title:  Openly Straight

Author:  Bill Konigsberg


What it’s about (in 75 words or fewer): Rafe has lived his last few years as "the gay kid," and he's tired of being defined by his sexuality.  So when he transfers to an all-boys boarding school, Rafe decides to "openly straight"--not necessarily going back into the closet, just letting people assume he's a straight jock, just "one of the guys."  Rafe's plan seems to be working, until he falls in love with one of his friends, who has no idea Rafe's gay.


What I think (This will definitely be more than 250 words): I set up perimeters for this blog for a reason:  I wanted to keep the reviews short and sweet, so that I will choose my words carefully, only write what's important, and not overwhelm myself by thinking I have to write a lot about each book.  That being said, I have already reviewed a few books where I just had to write over 250 words.

Oh well, I made the rules, I get to break 'em 😉.

When I am reading a book that I plan to review, I usually put a few post-it notes in it:  marking memorable quotes, moments that stand out, figuring out what my "angle" will be when I write, etc. I don't usually go full-on-English-teacher-literary-analysis mode, but when I read Openly Straight:

As you can see, I used more than a just a few post-its. I couldn't figure out what direction I was going to go with the writing; I couldn't even come up with a tagline to go with the title.  Soooooooo:

Here be spoilers.

Potential Tagline #1:  "Check your privilege, Rafe!"

I admit that this is the first tagline I came up with, and I kept it on the draft of this post until I was at least halfway through the book because I was ANGRY.  I read the book blurb on the inside front cover, which describes Rafe's plan to be "openly straight," and as I began reading, I became even more annoyed. 

"Finally, here it was:  my chance for a do-over.  Here at Natick, I could just be Rafe.  Not crazy Gavin and Opal Goldberg's colorful son.  Not the 'different' guy on the soccer team.  Not the openly gay kid who had it all figured out'" (Konigsburg, 2013, p. 2).  Rafe says he his reasons "would have been hard to explain to, let's say, the president of Boulder's Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays" (p. 4) who happens to be his mother.

Um, yeah, these reasons would be hard to explain to his mother the PFLAG president.  Help, my parents are too supportive of my sexuality, I have to get away!  I come across as too well-adjusted; life is so HARD for me!!

To be fair, I can understand wanting to reinvent yourself.  It's healthy and fun to have a nice, starting-over phase.  I remember when I went to the public school after seven years of Catholic school and being so glad that I was starting over in a place where no one knew me the nonathletic nerd with glasses who liked to read. 

However, there are certain parts of yourself that you can re-invent and parts that you cannot. I would have loved to reinvent my self as a popular, blond, beautiful cheerleader who is super outgoing and plays volleyball, but I could not, no matter how hard I tried.  I was still the same person as I had been in elementary school, and I was much happier when I met new friends who were like me.  

Don't get me wrong--I am NOT comparing being gay to a lack of athletic ability; that would be ridiculous.  My point is I could not pass as the person I thought I wanted to be.  Rafe could pass.  He could pass as the straight, jerky, sometimes-casually-homophobic jock.  Unlike the kids who are obviously different (the incredibly effeminate gay guy, the super masculine lesbian, the flamboyant gender-fluid person), Rafe could pretend to be another person.  And being able to pass is privilege.  

I went to high school with and worked as a teacher with students who could not pass as hetero-normative no matter how much they wanted to. The school I worked in was deep in Amish country (literally, half of the students at my school were Amish and only attended until 8th grade) and anything other than white-man-working-women-staying-home dynamics, heck an Amish child going through high school was considered super scandalous.  

The Amish students who defied their parents and went to high school often had to sneak out and were many times kicked out of their homes.  This was seen as normal; it was "just something the Amish do," and no one interfered. We as teachers were not even allowed to encourage the Amish kids to pursue high school because if the Amish bishops complained that we were corrupting the youth, we teachers would be in danger of losing our jobs.

Were there any LGBTQ youth among those Amish kids?  Of course.  Not everyone can pass as straight.  And some?  I could see it in their eyes when they heard kids talking in the hallway. They weren't allowed to use casual homophobic language in my class, but in other classes, teachers turned deaf ears because (and I'm quoting one of my former colleagues), "these are the values of our community."  

Our school didn't even do the "mix-it-up at lunch" day sponsored by Teaching Tolerance because Teaching Tolerance is pro-gay.  No, this wasn't in the 1950s (I'm not that old, people!).  This was probably in 2010.

Very few non-Amish ("English") kids came out during high school, and no Amish that I was aware of. That would be literally suicide for some of them--the bishops would definitely not "spare the rod" in that situation. At best, they would be "sent away" to protect their siblings from their corrupt behavior.  I had a former student who was sent to Colorado because she had gotten pregnant at 17. She married the guy, and she still was sent away from her friends and family so that she would not be a "bad influence on their spiritual growth." 

The few English kids who were brave enough to come out while still in high school were usually relentlessly bullied, and my advice to the few who confided in me when I was the drama director was "for your own safety, wait until college."  And that is very sad.

I no longer work at that school anymore; I have no idea how I managed to work there so long.  I was eventually told that I "was not a good fit for the community" and encouraged to seek work elsewhere.  But from what my former students and colleagues tell me, nothing has changed.

The small Indiana town where I used to teach is NOT unique.  There are hundreds of small towns just like that scattered all over the United States, where it is not only unacceptable to be gay, it is dangerous.  I know so many teenagers who would have done anything to have supportive parents like Rafe's, to go to a school and community who were 100% affirming of their sexuality. And here's Rafe like, Oh boo-hoo, my parents threw me a PARTY when I came out; they are THE WORST, amirite?  GAH.

I tried to look at this through an educational psychology lens. Like most teenagers at some point, Rafe suffers from adolescent egocentrism, which is a fancy way of describing that "OMG EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT ME!!!" stage.  So yes, he is going to be self-centered and blind to his own privilege.  And:  it's completely normal.  I get that.  I like working with teenagers but they can be the absolute worst.  

Rafe's parents are so supportive and talk to him about everything, even all the embarrassing sex stuff that other parents avoided.  Rafe casually takes this for granted; in his defense, he doesn't know any differently, but then again:  PRIVILEGE.  Some parents do not or will not talk to their kids.  

Even though his mother is angry at him because of his plan to be "openly straight" (I love Rafe's mom; it doesn't help that she agrees with a lot of the points I've been writing), she and Rafe's dad still agree to support him. "Of course they'd be on my side, whether they understood or not.  That was just the kind of parents they were" (p. 181).  Yes Rafe, but what you don't realize is that you won the parental lottery. 

To be fair to Rafe (I feel like I am bagging on this poor clueless kid), he knows logically that he is lucky.  He mentions that went he came out of the closet, everything was okay, "There we were, a school with gays and straights, and no one died in the process" (p. 93).  

Rafe also wrote about how he had been speaking about sexuality as a guest speaker in schools and causally mentioned how lucky he was to have his parents.  A kid asks a question about a "friend" who would be disowned by his parents if he were gay.  "I could see it in his drawn, tired, sad face.  And I felt bad, suddenly, that I'd been acting like being gay isn't this big thing, when for a lot of kids, it totally is" (p. 138).  

Rafe also has a bit of self-reflection when thinking about Bryce, who was the only black kid at school and also suffered from depression and couldn't hide either of those things about himself, and Toby, who was the out gay student who may not be have bullied *that much* for being gay, but was depressed because he was quirky did not fit in with the other boys:  "Hearing about how even Toby felt depressed about being different made me realize that maybe it [coming out] was a bigger deal than I thought" (p. 113). 

I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Rafe, but then he had to think something asinine again that made me want to punch him (metaphorically, I wouldn't actually punch someone).  Ben, after experiencing a rather, um, explosive kiss with Rafe, says, "If I told my parents I was gay, they would probably throw me out of the house" (p. 242).  Ben's farmer father sounds like men I've met too many times. 

Does this make Rafe acknowledge his luck and privilege?  No, Rafe thinks "I imagined that happening, and how I would be there for him.  It would be me and Ben, against the world.  The fantasy made me tingle with excitement" (p. 242). WTF, Rafe?  Do you realize how traumatizing it would be to be rejected and kicked out by your family?  

Then, as you probably would have predicted, Rafe gets to the point where he has lied himself into a corner (or into a closet, if you will) and does not see a way to come clean with people.  Then he starts to have romantic feelings for his best friend, Ben, who might reciprocate those feelings, and Rafe really starts ashamed about his "openly straight Rafe" persona.

There's a fantastic metaphor when he and Ben visit Boulder at Thanksgiving and they look at Rafe's family's suckling "tofu" pig, which looked like a real pig until you examined it up close: "I felt like that tofu pig, grotesque and in the spotlight and horrible, dishonest in a way that felt so basic that it hurt me behind my eyes to think of it" (p. 244). 

Eventually, Rafe does come out to his roommate, Albie, Toby, and lets the rumor mill do the rest, and joins the GSA again.  He quits hiding who he is, and of course, the jocks who were shallow jerks to him before--they were still jerks.  

But poor Ben is heartbroken and feels betrayed, and Rafe, even though he had come a long way and had started to redeem himself in my eyes, when Ben doesn't immediately accept his apology, says, "I could not have imagined he would get so angry over a simple omission" (p. 290).  Simple omission???  My head just exploded.  Here was my in-the-moment reaction:

I feel like I was really critical talking about privilege, but I think now that I've gotten all of that out of my system, I will be more positive.  Perchance.

On a completely unrelated note, I have read so many romance novels with heroes named Rafe.


Potential Tagline #2:  "Label, labels, everywhere."

Many of my sticky notes in the book had to do with labels (I was labeling sections about labels; how meta of me) and identity.  I was reminded of a discussion I would have with my students after we read the first two chapters of The Outsiders (a fantastic book) about stereotyping.  We would discuss the definition, students would complain about times they had been stereotyped, and then I would throw in the devil's advocate question: "When can stereotyping be a good thing?"  

No one ever really wanted to discuss that, but a few brave students would come up with the fact that stereotyping sometimes simplifies things and that some stereotypes are based on truth (then everyone would argue about that.  I love class discussions).  That's how I feel about labels, and in fact, labels are close to stereotypes, really.  

Nobody wants to be negatively labeled.  I hated being the nerd (I embrace it now!) but didn't much mind the theatre geek label.  I sort of wanted to be the rebel, but not really; I was seriously boringly straight-laced in school.  Rafe does not want to be the gay kid, and I could totally see how annoying that would be.

Rafe's mom calls the GSA advisor to tell him about Rafe, and I thought she was overstepping her boundaries a bit--and like Rafe in the book, I would have been horrified if my mom had done that to me! Rafe enjoys being labeled as the jock (and his internal monologue when Albie tries to give him the label of Republican was seriously hilarious!).  

Rafe also was expected by students at his old school to have opinions on all "gay issues" and speak on behalf of all "gay people" and couldn't even participate in the "dress as the opposite sex" day because when he dressed as a woman, it became a political statement. 

I get Rafe's frustration, even when he shouts at his parents, "I know I'm gay!  I'm your gay son!  But can you just give me a f***ing break for two minutes so I can just be me too?  God" (p. 176).  

Anyone who thinks teenage boys are not drama queens has not spent a lot of time around teenage boys.

Ben compares labels to lenses when talking about his friend Bryce, saying "he was double different, because he's a good sensitive guy and he's black.  So that's like two lenses . . . you see the world through.  They shift your perspective on everything you see.  They create what's real for you, and unlike glasses, you can never take them off and see what normal is to other people.  Bryce had two, and he said it was hard to relate to some of the students here, who seem to have none" (p. 220).  

To use the knowledge of Ben (who is one of my favorite characters ever), I think that Rafe's sexuality is a lens, not a label. Yes, labels are annoying, and sometimes they can be removed or changed.  But lenses:  those are a part of you and are irremovable.

Potential Tagline #3:  "To thine own self be true, OR: Can you really hide who you are?"

I think I just wanted to use a line from Hamlet for this one. I've covered this already, but just in case I was unclear:  NO.  You can't hide who you are.  You can try, but lies are a foundation made of sand:  highly collapsible.

Potential Tagline #4:  Celebrate, don't tolerate, try not to hate. 

This tagline is a play on the INXS song.  I admit it worked better in my head.  

Mr. Scarborough, the type of teacher I always strove to be like when I was in the classroom, leads a discussion in his class about the connotations of the words tolerate, accept, and celebrate that I just thought was fantastic.  

The conversation was about the elephant in the room, the fact that Bryce had left the school due to his depression.  "Oftentimes here at Natrick, we talk about being color-blind.  But I want, just for a minute, for you to think about what it might be like to be the only black person in the room.  Would color blindness then be a good thing, or a bad thing?" (p. 140).

I hate when people say they are "color-blind."  First of all, it's a literal lie.  Second, I feel like it's an attempt to pretend all people are the same, and "by default" assumes white culture is the only culture. So good on you, Mr. Scarborough, for saying this.

Of course, Steve, the super-jock guy, doesn't get it.  "We're a pretty tolerant place . . we accept people" (p. 141).  

"To tolerate seems to mean there is something negative to tolerate, doesn't it?  Acceptance though, what is that?" Mr. Scarborough is not intimidated by his students, which is great.

"Acceptance also has a bit of negative to it . . .  if you need to accept something, that means it's not like it should be, right?  Like you accept something as it is" (p. 141).  I was very proud of Rafe for coming up with this and annoyed at myself for never thinking of it like that.  

Scarborough continues, "It's hard to be different.  And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences or even accept them.  But to celebrate them.  Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated" (p. 142).  

I thought of my three kids, who each have something about them that makes them different.  My oldest has autism, depression, and anxiety; my middle child is transgender; my youngest has a speech and developmental delay.  They have been lucky so far to not have experienced bullying, but likely that won't always be the case.  

I want people to celebrate my children's differences, not just accept or tolerate them.  Sometimes, tolerance is all we can get from people.  But celebrating should be our goal.

Potential Tagline #5:  "Ben, the two of us need look no more!" 

Okay, this one is actually a line from an old Michael Jackson song, but it goes through my head when I read books about people named Ben.

I just love Ben, and I felt so very sad for him when he found out Rafe's secret.  Ben does not come from a place of privilege; he does not have the family Rafe has; Ben lost his friend Bryce; and now he's lost Rafe.  Poor Ben. 

I found out while reading this book that Bill Konigsberg had written a sequel from Ben's point of view!  I checked it out of the library immediately--I actually drove to the downtown library where I had to park in a parking garage instead of reserving it and having it sent to the closest library.  I love Ben so much I parked in the parking garage.  Believe me, I wouldn't do that for any book.

I'm 3/4 of the way through, and only have about four post-it notes, so I don't think I'm going to write quite as much about Honestly Ben.

P.S.  In case you think I'm super mature, I found this post-it note to prove you wrong.  I'm not going to spoil what I was laughing at; you'll have to read the book to find out.

This book is on the 2014 Rainbow Book List.

My grade: A!  Seriously, how could I give a book that inspired me to write so much earn anything but an A?

I don't consider it a WCTB or a TIBT book, but rather a discussion book. I taught Avi's Nothing but the Truth for years, and even though it wasn't one of my favorite books per se, it was one of my favorite books to teach because of the discussion it inspired.  Openly Straight is like Nothing but the Truth in discussion-merit. I need to come up with a new blog award.  Most discussion-able?  Most likely to yell out loud at characters?  Most literary analyze-able?


My favorite quotes:  

• "I'm pretty sure the East Coast is not really a place.  I think it's all a Republican plot to create this make-believe liberal place so that they can claim the rest of the country and be like, You have your place.  So given that it doesn't exist, I refuse to believe in state lines and artificial boundaries" (p. 59). 
    
• "I was like, Please tell me my mother didn't just give me a book about how to give a blow job.  But of course she did. Claire Olivia thought that was excellent.  She was like, 'This is so great, Shay Shay!  May one day you can send her pictures!'" (p. 80). 
    
• "'She reminded me of my grandmother,' Toby said wistfully.
  'Your grandmother was a crazy naked lady?'" I asked.
  'Well, yeah,' he said" (p. 89).
    
• "'Gee, what is it about me that attracts all the gays?  I'm like Lady Gaga or something.'
  'That's it.  That's exactly who you're like.  We're drawn to your persona and your frequent outfit changes.  Albie Gaga'" (p. 277).

Other reviews:  Kirkus Review and Queering the Mainstream.


This book is available in the Greensboro Public Library.