I was an LGBTSGL Youth Coordinator. I got the job because the middle School I worked for was down the block. I’d found the men’s group online and went to their meetings in Greenwich Village—-it was about 6 months before I understood their main office was two blocks away form the school I worked at. So I went there and particularly regularly on Thursdays after work, for a men’s group. After a year I felt having done a 6 week training about safe sex and HIV and such that——-looking around the room, there was no chance of romance—-and the meeting topics were getting repetitive. Then the facilitator asked would I consider guest teaching. I did a few times, it went well and then he actually said I inspired him to follow his Life’s Purpose, to be a Pastor, so he quit. (I’m that effective of a teacher! lol)
At the middle school we had several children's with sexual issues/expressions——the kids were eventually having sex parties at 2 to 14 years old so we did in-services from the Dept. of Health with them but several were committed to non-heterosexuality. The Administration asked if I could take one of the oldest to the gay org down the block that had a youth program. We went and it was sort of iffy so I told the student he didn’t have to feel pressure t return and we chatted. he was a Pisces—-he’s married now—-but he had a penchant for picking out the cutest boys and girls. I even once had to push them into a cab to take them to his boyfriends mother’s job across town as they were about to get into a fight with other teenagers.
And the Pisces—-DayDay could fight—-he was about to whop some ass for the homophobia. (I was in my suede boots and it was snowy and icy, so I would have, if a fight broke out and I fell, I would have taken off my boots and whopped some kid-teen ass, so to save us all ending up at the precinct, I hailed a cab.)
Then the Executive Director of the gay org said if I left the school to give him a employment shot at me. Turns out a few months later, my boss was interviewing to leave after her doctorate so I started interviewing and was about to go back knot securities litigation——but I dropped by the gay org and the Youth Coordinator had up and quit, taking all of his depression teen/young adult youth who had been crusty with me and DayDay, with him.
I was hired on the spot and tasked with completing their summer cookout—-all this food had been bought so I journeyed to the Bronx (which I rarely, rarely ever do) to the garden spot with supplies.
The former Youth Coordinator and his desultory gay youth all mean mugged me projecting that I was a representative of the gay org (technically now getting his paycheck)—-I told them it was the Bronx, they were depressing, it was hot—-there was no need for me to be there, so I gave them the groceries and went home.
That Monday I had a serious talk with the ED—-what the hell had happened and why send me to new Viet Nam with them hoodrats who if it hadn’t of been daylight might have gone for my wallet?
After a lot of who shot John, we cleared up it had been the coordinator’s issues/immaturity that led to his quitting. I made it clear to stay on I would start from scratch, recruiting and programmatic design.
I have one youth member those first few days—-and technically he was 27, for a program designed by grants to service 14 to 27 year old's. lol
I started getting creative—-since I was already facilitating the Thursday all ages men’s group, I was able to pull some under 27s from there and then talk to them about recruitment.
I specifically, much to the consternation of the Program Director and ED, would not replicate what the previous coordinator had done.
- No full Fridays and Saturdays of PlayStation and movies.
- Turns out a lot of the older members were chickenhawking - trying to fuck the youth so the world AROUND THE CITY was to avoid the program.
- 90% of the budget was my salary.
I made it clear that first you feed boys and girls ,so there was always plenty of food and beverages, a good hot meal for at least 20 of them Fridays and Saturdays, all day, all night. The few that came/stayed, I made a deal with them—-you give me 1 hour each weekend day to do some sort of educational programming and then you can design the rest of the time but it will not be vegging out on video games and popcorn and movies. Something constructive must occur.
(That first meeting one of the old youth members went off on me in the meeting—-so I threw him out. I made it clear that I was the benevolent dictator who would love to entertain their ideas and democracy but there would not be disrespecting of me, each other, sexuality, race or that funny looking short kid in the corner. I’m your de facto teacher, your friend, but we’re not total equals. I am an adult and I require you to act like one too. This was a safe space.)
(As the old coordinator had to scramble for a job, he couldn’t immaturely enmesh with the youth, so several came back. It was never clear why he quit, what the supervisors had done, what the grumbling youth were upset about—-I think it boiled down to he didn’t know how to move them along in life so they mired in teen misery and funked up their office with semen stench and body odor and poverty.)
But by then I’d been shaking my Rolodex and making connections to programs—-for GEDs, jobs, counseling, housing—-and designing pamphlets to pass out—-I would go down to Chelsea Piers where I’d hung out as a LGBTSGL teen, and literally passed out thousands of pamphlets throughout the night, luckily I lived like 10 blocks across town so it was an easy walk home—-but more importantly made it clear that I was the Coordinator and on my honor, they would be safe there——oh, and I had food and MetroCards—-”just sign right there and I’ll spot you some of these MetroCards I have in hand—-come uptown Friday or Saturday.”
It took about a year’s time but I had a rotation of about 80 youth, 14 to 27, coming in for counseling, job info, shelter-apartment advice referrals, food, fun, friends, with the ones over 21 I even did workshops in nightclubs to teach them how to responsibly drink and chat folk up.
I was available mentor—-and harangued the agency for computers for my large office space and then Citibank came in to set them up with checking accounts and then when the agency fucked up a co-grant of $75k with Visiting Nurse Services—-me and the VNS staff did an end run around our bosses—-who wanted the money/.their bosses needed the youth—-and they would sit across the street with platters of food, social workers and gift cards—-watch my bosses leave them come upstairs to the Friday/Saturday programming. I eventually got other non=profits involved to hire students, to have programming at their sites, to essentially offset my program having no money.
What did I tell them, the youth?
That you MUSTN’T stay here. Literally or figuratively.
This is at best a waystation. You must become bigger, better, broader than your sexuality. All that I need to teach you about safe sex I can cover in a few sessions. I can teach you relationship and negotiative skills. Financial skills. But the hard truth is that the world will not be going away, you must build yourself in order to get out there and deal with it.
“I am here to teach you resilience and smarts and capabilities. Your sexuality is neither new nor fascinating with the lint in your navel you need to be obsessed about. you must become something more than the capabilities of your crotch.”
Years later, I was coming back from one of my day long stays at the beach, and tired of the hour long train ride, got off to sit in the cool 7pm eve of Prospect Park, have an ice cream cone.
And one of my youth, ten years out, strolled on over to me and we started talking.
He’d continued working, was considering further education, was HIV- and told me that he could now reflectively understand what I tell all of my students—-”What I am saying to you, teaching you, you may not even hear for 10 years.”
What had stuck with him in his travels, work, school, etc. was that during a workshop I’d talked about coming out, my own experiences—-I being uniquely a sensible, non-sexualizing of them (as most of the staff did) Black man who’d been out and about and educated since he was a teen. That one comes out constantly, over and over and over, to each person, to new people—-it is normal as there is a heterosexual assumption.
(I personally did not remember saying that specifically but when you run 30 hours of programming, workshops and counseling, bluntly you say A LOT to help, entertain, teach, move along——it sounded like my logic. lol)
He’d taken that nugget and run with it, lived it, seen it, learned to expand his life.
Another youth who was in his first relationship with one of the other teens who was a ne’er do well, I bluntly told him, as my mother told me, he was from a single mother household but nerdy, super smart, in college—-”Stop fucking down, fuck UP.” He finally got the hint, saw the messed up youth clearer and is now an executive in Europe!
- Several I got into the beginning paraprofessional teaching program of City Year—-salary, MetroCards, uniforms, college tuition money. A couple of them have gone on to continue in education.
- A couple are dead due to mental illness, drugs, etc..
- One chose to purposefully become HIV+ to stabilize his life as he had no family and was hooking to survive.
- More went to college, got their GEDs, enrolled into college.
- Became productive, thoughtful, working men.
- I became close with a big contributor, Van Amerigen, because he so loved what i was doing, he gave nice chunks of cash.
- You cannot save everyone—I tell my students that people die every day—-emotionally, psychically, spiritually, physically—-I cannot save anyone. But I can teach you how to save your self.
There was a lot of coworker pushback—-how could I possibly want lil’ Black and brown gay chilluns to become something? How could I not allow them to be sexualized by the older men?
In truth, after seeing how deeply corrupt the agency was, they’re shutdown now, a few years after I quit/was laid off (on the same day that I’d accepted a position teaching with Gay Men’s Health Crisis at TWICE the salary!)
I make it clear, my mantra to put students of all ages on a timer and to remind myself the difference between chosen work and a blind vocation—-I will not be available to them forever. Don’t waste my fucking time. If you stay in any of my programs, you just become something, do something, try something. You ain’t cute enough to sit here and chew gum and waste oxygen.
Thanks to their oversharing online I can keep track of about 90% of them because when I saw how corrupt the agency was socially, professionally, sexually—-one, you won’t find it on my resume or LinkedIn and two, I dismantled the program from the inside—-found them jobs, schools, volunteering—-they had to go. Year 1, I built up the program to 80+ revolving youth—-got them grant numbers up—-used Year 2 for program enhancements and problem solving, and then six months to get them all out of the program/agency. Like a circular weird movie/song—-the first youth, the 27 year old was the last one left right before I accepted the position at GMHC.
I recommend you tell them ways to survive, thrive, become more than their sexuality—-it’s what I tell straight folk….oooh, and my trans students and the skoliosexuals and the intersexed and the short funny looking kid in the corner…who wanted to start a (self) pitying party but I told him to get off the cross, we need the wood. And actualized folk, no matter their sexuality.
It’s kind of good. I was just laying in bed, cuddled with my wealth of pillows and comforters and thinking on what my next moves were going to be. Two books had arrived from the printer (of course there are minor corrections, but that’s to be expected.)
Rewind.
I was on the #5 bus headed up Broadway to the post office to pick up this box of books. And since it was just a short jaunt of a few blocks, I had my phablet and was listening to music but hadn’t brought along a book. So I was thinking.
I was thinking about a past relationship and as I am inclined to do—-getting a little steamed about the thought, person, argument. Replaying it in my head and looking at it from a new angle—-which was spurred by a spontaneous dinner with a colleague a few weeks ago and she’d asked me about my dating life, as we’d talked about hers. I laughingly told her a comment a guy had made, judgmental but complimentary, yet it had taken me a couple of years past the relationship, to realize he meant that he was intimidated by me. It didn’t help that my bus ride, weeks later, was to pick up a book that had included bits and pieces of that relationship, fictionalized.
This is why said gumball was rolling around at the back of my mind. I get to the post office——frightened there will be a long line in the middle of the afternoon—-no line! I wait maybe 30 seconds and hand my slip to the attendant and a minute later have this huge box in my tote bag. I open it in the park across the street and the books are brand new and sexy and pretty and heavy and smell good and when I page flip, the text is crisp and visible.
I start smiling and beaming, overjoyed.
I realized, running mentally through past classmates and friends and folk who wanted to be writers that I’m standing here with more of my books, adding to the passel selling around the world. I’m not just blooming with gratitude and joy, I’m grateful that I’m not living the tortured life of some other folk.
I made a decision over 10 years ago to step out of the matrix known as Corporate America——having done financial work, securities litigation work, a host of things, a strong resume——for education and then used my time to control my schedule and to simply write.
Write, I do.
When I was young, scoring 6,7,8 grades ahead of my own peers on Standardized tests and imagining what I might be interested in, I was writing. I never took my writing “business” seriously so after undergrad I went into companies because they were “serious business”. You get to go up in the elevator and you have a desk—-that one!—-and it’s yours and you decorate it. Eventually I didn’t decorate as much because I was consulting so there were time limits on how long I would be there. I made it a point to not get comfortable. To not make that part of my identity. For about 10 years or so I didn’t know what the alternative to that corporate identity was….because I liked business, liked the intricacy of it, had owned several businesses as a child/teenager.
I even had friends/schoolmates who sailed into CA, never to be heard from again…..until I saw FB pics or them on the street—-fatter, a lot less hair. I realized they had a desk and probably decorated it, perhaps even the Holy Grail——an office—-a room, a little room in a bigger office, that is yours, but not really yours.
But I get to—-write even this blog post—-write a novel most of my working time, my work now taking up about 5 hours of active working. The other 35 is my writing Kyle stuff. I’ve been offered several promotions, could get all ambitious and hungry, and play dirty games……but I can literally feel the days, the hours, when I write less at work. When work takes up too much of my attention away from my Life’s Purpose.
I’m living and creating my Life’s Purpose. Yes, I know when I die, but I often think about what happens if I die this year? To the books? The TV show? I then think in production plans and product plans, I have to make an Exit Strategy plan for me, in case of death.
I used to think my giftedness meant I could do anything, that I could simply focus and learn and master anything—-which I sort of can. Which for awhile provided a whole range of possibilities.
Then I found this one, good thing to do well, very well, and it all clicked.
I’m walking down Amsterdam, swinging my tote bag full of books I’ve written, good books, and I’m beaming like the sun. I start to think of the ex and friends, near and far, and how they’re going to that desk, maybe in an office, inside of a bigger office, and how I’ve made the conscious choice not to.
It’s not what I expected, but I am happier with myself, little ol’ me.
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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