I can’t picture Craig marrying Rhonda. Whenever I see them together at the pizza place where they work, he’s always trying to look down her shirt. If there’s any truth to the lectures Sister Catherine gives us, that’s not how men act around girls they want to marry.
Besides, are we really supposed to be thinking about marriage already? We’re sophomores in high school. I can’t imagine getting married ever.
“So what did you do last night?” Rhonda asked me. “Were you out with Kevin?”
“No. I…” I shut my mouth. I’d been about to tell her all about going to Castro Street and the march and seeing Harvey Milk…and then I remembered Peter.
I couldn’t tell anyone where I’d been, even Rhonda.
“I just watched the news with my mom,” I said instead. “Did you hear about this vote in Florida? It sounds as if it’s a really big deal.”
Rhonda had already turned to the mirror and started touching up her lipstick. “What about Florida?”
“You mean about homosexuality?” Jennifer called over the sound of the toilet flushing.
I blushed, which was ridiculous, since I was the one who’d brought this up. But I blush very, very easily. Rhonda knows that—everyone does—so hopefully she didn’t read much into it.
“What about homosexuality?” Diane asked.
Rhonda laughed. “Leave it to Sharon and Mrs. Hawkins to watch a report about homosexuality in Florida the night before the last day of school. Hey, you got another one of those?”
Diane rolled her eyes, but she held out her pack of cigarettes to Rhonda.
“You know how Anita Bryant’s on the news all the time lately?” Jennifer came out of the stall, and I slid over to make room for her at the sink. “She got them to pass a new law in Miami because homosexuals were trying to get teaching jobs.”
“Anita Bryant? Really?” Rhonda laughed and tried to sing Anita Bryant’s jingle from the orange juice commercials, the one about the Florida sunshine tree.
“Now let’s talk about homosexual-i-ty!” Diane sang back to the same tune, making us all laugh.
“Oh, man, do you remember when she came back and sang on Miss America when we were kids?” Jennifer shook her head. “It’s not fair she only came in third.”
“We weren’t even born when that happened,” I said. Rhonda and Diane were still singing jingles, but I kept talking anyway. “Look, Miami had a law that said it was illegal to discriminate against gay people, but Anita Bryant got them to vote to overturn it. So now it’ll be legal to discriminate again.”
Rhonda and Diane stopped singing, and now all three of them were looking at me. Rhonda put her lipstick back in her purse and tilted her head. “What do you mean, ‘discriminate’?”
“You know.” I tried to remember what Peter had said. “It’ll be legal now if someone wants to kick a gay person out of his apartment, or fire him from his job.”
“That wasn’t legal before?” Jennifer turned back to the mirror. “Is it legal here?”
“I…” I didn’t know.
“I don’t think it’s right for people to be that way.” Diane blew smoke out at the ceiling and started fishing around in her purse. “They know what the Bible says. Besides, it’s disgusting.”
“Can you imagine?” Rhonda started laughing again. “If you met one of those guys? He’d probably have on more makeup than you did!”
Jennifer and Diane laughed, too.
“My dad says gay guys all have pet poodles, and they wear high heels everywhere,” Diane said. “And when they drink they stick their pinky finger out to the side.”
“Hey, um…” I started to interrupt them, but I didn’t know what to say. How could I tell them to stop making fun of gay guys when I couldn’t say my own brother was gay?
And how did I never notice until today that my friends were just as boring and conventional as our stuck-in-the-fifties parents?
That was when the bell rang, and the door opened again.
“Do I smell smoke?” The voice was my mom’s. She’s the only teacher at our school who does that—calls