On Teaching, Poetry, Queerness, and "Dawson’s Creek"

I wasn’t an avid watcher of "Dawson’s Creek" during my teenage years, but I remember a few episodes. The character of Jack stands out mainly because he was “the gay character” at a time when there were few gay teenage characters. I have found that seeing a limited number of queer representations growing up has shaped who I have become as a teacher and maker of curriculum.

The two episodes of "Dawson’s Creek" that I remember most bring together queerness, poetry, and teaching. They aired in 1999 and straddled Valentine’s Day. When I first saw these episodes, I was 13 — bookish and an awkward maelstrom of feelings and anxieties. Partly, this was because I had an idea that I was gay but also because I was a Southern Baptist. I struggled with two realities: that I was gay; and that if I were gay and also believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible, I had a one-way ticket to eternal damnation.

 

Seeing someone on TV struggle to come to terms with his sexuality took my own considerations out of the church sanctuary and into my home, my body. Being gay was not merely conceptual; I could attach the identity to a character (yes, a fictional one) — with a face, a story, feelings, and friends.

At the beginning of one episode, the main character Dawson says to Jack that writing is about opening up a part of oneself that would otherwise remain private. Their English teacher, Mr. Peterson, had assigned them to write a poem about something critical to who they were.

In one memorable exchange, Mr. Peterson demands Jack stand to read his poem to the class. Jack asks not to read and notes that Mr. Peterson said the poems would be confidential. But Mr. Peterson doesn’t back down, and Jack must comply. As he begins reading his poem, “Today,” he mentions being afraid before describing a striking image of a male. It’s not overly erotic, but charged with more than a neutral description. When he gets to this point in the poem, he breaks off, starts crying, and leaves the room. Infuriated, Jack’s friend Pacey tries to defend Jack and calls out Mr. Peterson’s abusive approach; Mr. Peterson continues to assert his authority and stands his ground.

 

As I see it, fundamentally, Mr. Peterson broke a critical contract with Jack. He asked students to write under the pretense of an audience of one; Jack, trusting his teacher, exposed a more private part of himself than he would have had he known he would read to his whole class. And even when Pacey noted Mr. Peterson’s abuse of power, Peterson lacked the humility to acknowledge his wrong. He refused to be human even when demanding that of his students.

As a result of Jack’s reading, rumors about his sexuality spread and lead to several awkward conversations for him. But Jack maintains that he is straight.

When I was 13 and first watched this episode, I saw school as an unsafe place to be gay. But this portrayal of hostility toward gay people was consistent with my own experience: “That’s so gay,” “fag,” and “queer” were the ultimate insults peers bandied about in hallways, classrooms, locker rooms, courts, and fields. For one’s sexuality to be questioned was to blacklisted, marked as unworthy, uncool. To be smart and gay was not an option — in fiction for Jack or in my real life in Jackson, Mississippi.

When I did start to come to terms with being gay — years after seeing these episodes of "Dawson’s Creek" — like Jack, I turned to poetry. I read poem after poem, book after book about the experience of gay people. I even wrote my honors thesis in college on the AIDS-related poetry of Thom Gunn, Mark Doty, and Paul Monette; it was my way of finding kinship even if so much of it was through loss and elegy. I loved learning about Federico Garcia Lorca, revered him as a martyr for queerness and art. Tim Dlugos, Frank O’Hara, and countless others showed me that daily queer life was worthy of poetry. Through poetry and books, I soon connected in real life to other gay writers.

Like Jack, I saw poetry as an opportunity to give shape to what I feared about myself, as if doing so would be cathartic. In some ways, it was. Through reading and writing poetry about the queer experience, I developed a community and uncovered the history of the queer community. When I read my poems in workshops, I didn’t have an experience like Jack did with Mr. Peterson. My teachers and fellow classmates were more interested in helping me make my queer little poems as strong as they possibly could be. For that, I will always be grateful.

When I think of what happened to Jack and Mr. Peterson in the follow-up episode, it seems obvious: Jack comes out as gay; Mr. Peterson “retires early” under pressure from backlash for his treatment of Jack. So in 1999, at a closeted 13, I saw that someone could come out while a teenager and that a teacher’s authority was not absolute.

When I run workshops now and ask my students to write about themselves and give them assignments that require introspection and self-reflection, I work hard to establish a community of trust so that students will feel free to put themselves on the page. To create that, everyone must buy in to one most important rule: confidentiality. It’s not an easy rule to follow; teenagers (like adults) love to talk about each other. Personal essays can be filled with information that someone might not otherwise know. I remind my students that knowledge may be power, but that power cannot jeopardize the community of trust we’re building.

When students come out to me, I wonder what my life would look like if I had been as brave as Jack or as my students. But that wasn’t my experience. Instead, I know that being an openly gay teacher in the classroom affirms queer energies in my school. Since I believe in reading and writing’s power to help shape the self and in schooling’s power to be constructive or destructive for students, I choose the classroom as my front line for a queerer, richer, fuller world.

These two episodes of "Dawson’s Creek" make reference to Hamlet. Jack is not as conflicted about who he is or what he needs to do as Prince Hamlet is: He is conflicted about how to navigate a homophobic world as a young gay man when even your English teacher actively oppresses you and poetry is both your salvation and your menace.

 

Although it took me some years after watching those "Dawson’s Creek" episodes to work through my own identity and expression of queerness, I moved beyond the anxieties of eternal damnation and looked at the classroom as a stage for authentic narratives — the telling and the hearing. And I realize I am at my best, my most joyful, when I read the fruits of that community of trust.