March 22, 1996 GAY PEOPle's ChroNICLE 23

BIG TIPS

I've fallen in love with my teacher, and I can't tell her

by M.T. "the Big Tipper" Martone

I have never been mistaken for a man. Unlike my companeras who've gotten the nasty fisheye from the self-appointed Police of Feminine Propriety for daring to take a leak in the appropriate bathroom, and despite occasional baldness, my hips and other womanly charms have been potent signifiers of my birth gender.

So last night when a handsome French Canadian boy stared pointedly at my butt, and asked me if I was taking female hormones, I was mystified.

"I'm a woman."

"Oh, I know that. But your hips are so big-so much wider than your shoulders. I know a man back home who's becoming a woman, and when he started taking hormones, his hips became almost as wide as yours. I thought you were doing it as body modification."

Hmm. Well, all you hippy trannies out there, repeat after me. “A womanly body is beautiful, especially if you've paid a lot of money for it."

Dear Ms. M,

Please help me! I've fallen for someone special and beautiful who I can't have. She's my government and politics teacher. The first day of my senior year in high school, I looked into her ocean-blue eyes and felt a burning passion. She's not my teacher any more, because it was only a semester class. Every time I think about this I cry, and my heart actually hurts. I've had lots of crushes, but not like this at all.

I'm 18 and she's 25. I came out to her and she was sensitive, and told me she has gay friends. It's worse than just a senior year

crush, though. You see, I'm moving out of state to college, and she may or may not be moving to the same area after she gets her degree. I'm afraid of losing her, and she doesn't even know my burning passion for her.

I'm not desperate. Not to brag, but it's easy for me to get a date. But I want her. I would give almost anything to have her, and if I did I would give her all my heart. I've had crushes, lusts and infatuations, but I've never loved like I love her. Please help me, since time is running short before I graduate.

Dear Student Body,

Crushed

What could feel more awful than being in love with someone you can't have? And a crush is a painfully real kind of love, even if it's not reciprocated. However, it would probably ring the professional death knell for your teacher's career if she had any type of romantic relationship with you while you're attending the school at which she teaches. You are 18, so technically you could ask her out after you graduate, but it also sounds like she might be straight-although she may have just felt it was inappropriate or unsafe to say she's a lesbian when you were coming out to her.

It makes sense that you have a crush on someone older, and with more power than you, because you're about to leave for the next stage of your life. You're ready for women who are bigger thinkers and lovers than those of your youth, and your teacher is just a tantalizing promise of all the fabulously interesting gals you'll be meeting soon. And who knows: she may end up in your college town, and if she does, I say go crazy and say whatever you want to her. By that

time, though, I'll think she'll have competition for your attentions.

That said, here's a tale of hope: A friend of mine (all right, he was my senior prom date, but we went as friends, okay?) got a job teaching at a small private high school. He'd been teaching for five or six years when a woman who had been a student of his finished college herself, and returned to teach there. They started going out, and she told him that she had had a crush on him since she was his student. This past summer, they got married. An unusual story, but it can happen, especially when you know the age difference between 22 and 27 is much less noticeable than between 17 and 22. Good luck, and congratulations on your graduation!

Dear Big Tipper,

My current boyfriend is the best thing that has ever happened to me. He's warm, considerate, and handsome, and comes without the emotional package so many of my former lovers and potential lovers have had.

He does, however, have a quirk that's eating at me. He has very specific ideas about gay sex roles and these ideas do not mesh with mine. He believes that one man should take the "masculine” role in a relationship, and the other man should take the "feminine" role. This concept works somewhat for us because I enjoy a domestic, caregiving role and my lover is very masculine in his attitudes.

However, I wish my lover was more elastic with the rules. For instance, I am always taking anal sex and giving oral sex. My boyfriend will not perform oral sex or receive anal sex. I would love to have a fuller sex life, but my boyfriend says that will confuse our relationship. Also, my boyfriend will not share the domestic chores (we live together). He will do "manly" things, like

grill and work on the car, but little else. Should I accept this relationship as good, but not perfect? Or should I throw it away? How about something in the middle? Help! The Wife

Dear Fry It Up in a Pan,

He may not be carrying a lot of emotional baggage, but he has more than his share of cultural carry-on, doesn't he? My intial reaction to your question was to ask what age he is, to see if he's grown up in a gay male culture that's more role-oriented. Then I realized he's just sexist.

In a couple there is certainly some sorting of jobs, just for efficiency's sake, and you both take on different roles at different times, depending on what your needs and bents are, but the traditionally "male" jobs tend to be more visible, praise-earning, and finite (throwing a steak on the barbeque), whereas "female" jobbies tend to fall into the repetitive and thankless category (grocery shopping, vacuuming). This is an observation Betty Friedan shocked the straight world with in The Feminine Mystique in the early '60s.

Your guy sounds like he's having the more dramatic and finite sex, too. Now, he's no more of a loser than all the straight men who thought they were doing right by their wives all along, but he is responsible for remedying a situation that's not satisfying or fair to both of you.

Does the new framework help you figure out how you need to talk to him? Go for it. ✔

Send queries or comments to M.T. Martone, care of the Chronicle, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland, 44101; or fax to 216-6311082; or e-mail ChronOhio@aol.com.

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