New story about revenge: "GIRL, BYE!"

Sassy and sweet enough for ya?

I wrote this for a storytelling show with the theme “Girl, bye!” The story was not selected for the show, but I think it’s strong enough to post here.

Sometimes, the sweetest revenge is the least bitter . . . but that’s not quite my story.

I’ve never really fit into what gets called “the gay community.” I’m autistic and, to some, I seem straight–don’t ask me why, as others say things like, “Girrrrrrl, I always knew you were gay.”

But girrrrrrl, do I have some stories about revenge . . . the kind that make me say, “Girl, bye!”

In June 2006, I finished high school as the weird kid with a gigantic memory for music history facts, with no friends to show for it. Despite enjoying the highlight of my childhood at that school–a project with Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune rock critic–I couldn’t wait to get the hell out and move to college out of state. After graduation, I left that building practically skipping with glee.

But the thing that struck me the most from graduation day was a conversation with my advisor before the ceremony. She strongly encouraged me to learn from my rough experiences and not strive to align myself with the most popular students at college.

Well, a month after the ceremony, I realized how right that advisor had been about something else. During senior year, I had stepped onto a landmine when her boss–and apparent arch nemesis–urged me to drop his Advanced Placement course in a subject that was emphatically not my forte . . . because, frankly, I wasn’t doing the work. I never found out the source of their longstanding animosity towards each other, but my advisor somehow convinced me to stay in his class, saying, “I want you to knock him on his ass!” I got tutoring and stayed on to take the College Board exam in May. That boss strongly believed I would score a 1 out of 5.

When I got my exam scores a month after graduation, I was in for a shock. I was disappointed to get a 2 on a foreign language exam, but it made sense: we did almost no speaking exercises in that class. In some ways, the sweetest surprise was receiving a 4 on an AP English exam, after doing poorly on another AP English test and the essay portion of my SATs.

And then, I saw something even more unexpected. In that class where the teacher assumed I would get a 1 out of 5 . . . I got a 3. My advisor, who had fought tooth and nail for me when just about no one else cared, said it was “one of the most gleeful” days in her decades at that school–she “just wanted to rub it in [that boss’s] nose.” She told me later that she was not surprised, even though many kids scored 2’s and 1’s.

So, a month after graduating from high school, mentally I had one hell of a sweet “Girl, bye!” to that administrator and that school. However, that AP score was only the beginning. When I got to Earlham College, a small liberal arts school in eastern Indiana, I came out as gay during a New Student Orientation storytelling event . . . and coming out hadn’t exactly gone well in high school. My new best friend–a straight athlete whom I worried would hate me–said “that was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen in my fucking life.”

I remembered my high school advisor’s emphatic suggestion to not focus on associating with the most liked students. I made a conscious effort to not treat people the way I had been treated growing up. I reached out to a lot of different students and asked how they were doing, offering hugs, smiles, and, I hope, a listening ear.

My efforts were far from perfect–I could be extremely self-centered and full of caffeine, which meant blurting out many a non sequitur. But I somehow made it through college–and so far, all of adulthood–without touching alcohol or drugs once . . . and still gained friends. With medical issues, I knew that such substances only would’ve made my life a lot worse. I went to many parties depressed, quickly leaving, but people were still really happy to see me there. I had trouble believing it; I was used to feeling like a burden.

I also busted my ass on my writing after getting rare (to that point) negative feedback on an English paper my first semester. Eventually, after a long, revolving series of majors, I settled on English and became a section editor and columnist for the school newspaper. And in one of the apparently biggest risks of my life, I went from absorbing music history to writing and performing songs of my own.

As I discussed and played this song in my TEDx talk in 2020, I debuted my first song I had written that I was proud of for a big campus audience—and stole the show at a benefit concert where most people only came to hear the mediocre campus a cappella group that had rejected me and many others. I had written that song a couple years earlier about being autistic, which many didn’t know, and that night, at the end of the song, I added this loose quotation from a 1983 megahit:

Every breath I take, every move I make

Every smile I don’t fake, I was never wrong

Every single day, every word I say

Every game I don’t play, I was never

Wrong!

And after I said, “Thank you” and started to walk offstage with my guitar, the place blew up like a goddamn firecracker. I saw dozens and dozens of bodies rising in unison, whooping and cheering. And during the show’s intermission a few minutes later, many people told me that in addition to finding my song funny, they were in tears . . . and they could relate to my lyrics about how I’m better than all these things people had said about me growing up. So, while I was overwhelmed and, I’m told, extremely modest about what I had just done, playing what a friend who was there called “the bravest song I know,” that moment was a more spectacular example of me saying, “Girl, bye!” to bullies I had growing up . . . as well as the a cappella group that I had left in the dust, thank you very much.

But the “Girl, bye’s!” got still more astonishing. A year later, on college graduation day, I was hoping for a little applause when my name was called. However, when I walked on that stage, I stopped in my tracks as I heard a roar from the crowd, including my classmates: dozens of people standing up and cheering for me once again, soon turning to hundreds.

I was beyond stunned. I had no idea I was that appreciated; as I’m hyper-literal with my autism, I can’t “read” people if they don’t say anything. I had a gigantic smile, maybe the biggest I’ve ever had, and a lot of my classmates got choked up watching me be so shocked; someone told me later that my reaction was cute. That may be true, but my mom was in tears.

A big part of my disbelief was that four years earlier, I had no friends my age. I still can’t believe that my life changed that much in that time. But the best explanation I can give for why I got that standing ovation is simple: what goes around comes around. I had put a lot of love into that community, and it all came back to me. That was the ultimate affirmation of me being never wrong. “Girl, bye!” indeed–I’d never seen that much love for anyone. That was the greatest moment of my life.

A month after that ceremony, I went back to my high school and saw that advisor. All I had to say about how right she had been to encourage me to not worry about popularity was, “I got a standing ovation from my class at graduation.”

In high school, when I asked someone what was wrong, they replied, “You existed.” But I was never wrong, and the impact I made on my college community spoke volumes more than I could.

Well, I take that back: not just “Girl, bye,” but “Bitches, when you get a standing ovation for the way you treat people, you can tell me my existence is a problem.” Mic drop.