I didn't come out at school. Not quite, anyway. As one of the two founders of my all-girls school's feminist discussion group, I was assumed to be gay by all and sundry before I'd given it much thought. They weren't wrong though. By the time I reached my final year of sixth form, I had girls dancing an everlasting, enchanting samba around my brain (in dungarees, natch). But I didn't come out.
Why didn't I? It was 1985. It would be several years before Section 28 hit the statute but talking about sexuality in school was already a big fat NO. We were lucky to have an out lesbian teacher on the staff; a brave woman who let us know that she lived with her female partner. But I don't remember there ever being a discussion in which it was suggested that any of us might be (or become) gay or bi.
Thanks to my "reputation" and my feminist activism, several girls came out to me, swearing me to secrecy each time. I heard about covert flings with fellow pupils, affairs with unsuitable older women. Nobody had any support.
When my friend Geeta and I founded the feminist group, the headmistress called us in to her office to ask exactly what we proposed. Our agenda (body image, media sexism, equal pay) seemed to reassure her and we were given the green light for lunchtime meetings every other week, but when a group of third years complained of sixth formers holding hands and kissing, we were yanked back in to explain ourselves. It wasn't us; we wouldn't have dared. The faux-lesbians turned out to be a trendy clique that liked to mock us for our perceived Puritanism and politics.
I left school after A-levels and promptly set off on a girl-hunt that eventually led me to meet young women who were out and proud and soon I was as well. Out of the wages of my first job I bought a selection of books about young lesbians and coming out, which I took back to school to donate to the library - book donations by old girls being a school custom. I made an appointment with the head to explain the reason for my choice of titles. I told her I wanted other girls like me to know that it was ok, that we were normal and had a right to be happy. I added a lecture about the iniquities of the closet. She listened and thanked me and said she'd discuss it with the librarian, but my books would probably be reserved for sixth-formers only. I accepted the compromise.
Two years later my sister called me up at college to tell me that the head had been outed after an affair with the recently-divorced biology teacher hit the school grapevine. She resigned. I felt rather stupid.
I still wonder about her; the threat that possible, potential out young lesbians like me posed to her tenuous position as head of a girls' school. The brave, out history teacher who was the only lesbian allowed in the school. The lesbophobia that poisoned our shared air.
I pass the school on the bus sometimes. I really hope it's different now.