“Maybe a Maybe Probably is really a Probably Maybe.”
While this may on the surface appear to be part of a conversation taking place at a high school keg party, what seems like gibberish greased by the intoxicants of brewed hops and barley is really a sort of coded language between two students who are not entirely sure of their sexual preference. Terry the best friend of the protagonist of the novel, Jamie, and both are fairly certain they are homosexual, but not entirely certain. Thus, they are at a stage in which they move uneasily but flexibly between maybe being gay and probably being gay without being quite ready to make that leap to definitely being gay. This book was published at the end of the 20th century so the notable lack of a bisexual option existing within the spatial landscape of their secret code should not be hit too hard by critics.
From this month on, Wilson High School will make condoms available in the nurse’s office every Friday afternoon to any student who wants them, Principal Ralph Bartholomew announced at a school committee meeting on Wednesday. In September, the distribution was the subject of an editorial in the school’s newspaper, the Wilson High Telegraph, and subsequent letters to the editor in that paper showed widespread support for the distribution among the students.
While the issue of sexual preference is an underlying element of the book, the central narrative spine of the story follows the conflict created from the decision to distribute condoms in the clinic of the high school. This police change in turn encourages Jamie—the editor of the school newspaper—to craft the op/ed piece referenced in the quote above. Jamie’s not-quite-open but also not-quite-secret sexual identity issues combined with her liberal attitude to raise the ire of all the usual suspects: church leaders and right-wing political figures like newly elected school board member Lisa Buel. The showdown between progressive values and traditional fears forms the centerpiece of the story.
“I don’t like him!...Not anymore. He—he’s … I just don’t. And you shouldn’t either, Jamie… Because…because he—he’s a—a faggot, and faggots do things to little kids…To boys especially …”
Ronnie is Jamie’s nine-year-old little brother. The “him” that Ronnie is shouting he doesn’t like anymore is Terry. The same Terry who has been Jamie’s best friend practically throughout his entire short life. The same Terry that Ronnie has never once had a problem with before. But suddenly, in the wake the controversy over the condom distribution and his big sister’s editorial and all the other stuff which the focus on those issues by the defenders of that very liquid and flexible thing known as Christian morality has brought to the surface and out into the open, Ronnie is spouting words he half-understands and subscribing to an ideology not rooted in any known factual evidence he understands even less. The book does not shy away from the ugly words that opponents of progressive thought steeped in critical thinking and scientific research use to overcome logic and rational cognitive processing. Why? Because for many people, what they were wrongly taught when they were nine becomes a fact never changes even if they live to see ninety.
