Two open bottles were leaning against my door Friday morning. When I opened the door, they spilled inside. So I picked them up and placed them on the ground -- a WaWa apple juice bottle and a Nestea bottle. It was too early to really think about why someone had done this, until I started cleaning it up and realized that it wasn't juice or tea. It was piss.
The police asked if I thought it was a random prank. But somehow I doubted that anyone would piss into two empty bottles made for piss-colored liquid and lean them carefully against my door at random. I explained that I'm gay, and that I've taken many opportunities to say so publicly. I explained how some people don't like me very much, how some people use The Daily Pennsylvanian's online message board to call me a "faggot" and insult my "fudge-packing ways." I explained that if someone had a problem with my people, I'm the most visible target.
I was not shaken. I've experienced worse.
Piss is disgusting, but it doesn't hurt. Neither do words anymore. I get angry frequently and frustrated constantly, but not sad, not scared. Fear stopped when I came out. Fear stopped when I started being proud of who I am. Fear stopped when I walked into high school wearing a girl's pink sweater, and the jocks were too petrified to look me in the eye. Fear stopped when I realized that I'm scarier to them than they are to me.
So when someone told me I shouldn't mention this in my column, so that these cowards "wouldn't know they got to me," I was startled, because the thought never crossed my mind. After all, they didn't get to me. They got piss on my floor, but the gentlemen from maintenance cleaned it all up.
I wouldn't dream of keeping this a secret -- people need to know. People need to know that this kind of thing still happens, that our corner of the world is not free from ignorance or cowardice.
I get a lot of critics saying that I whine, implying that my life isn't really so bad, that gay people aren't really so oppressed, that I should just shut up and keep to myself. Well, things really are bad. This is a campus where someone went out of his way to get piss on some gay guy's rug. That's pathetic -- it's a disgrace.
The point of college, and the point of The Daily Pennsylvanian, is to encourage dialogue and mutual education. That's worked for me. I've had actual dialogues here before. Some people do it better than others -- some people understand what it means to have a conversation. And the more I write about my life, the more they tell me about theirs. They see me not as a wall to scream against, but as a person they can talk to. That's heartening, because it means that Penn isn't just a wall I'm screaming against -- it's made of people I'm talking to.
Just recently, after I wrote a response to one of Bob Warring's columns, a Wharton student e-mailed Bob and me, along with an entire listserv of other Wharton students with his thoughts. A lot of people read that. A lot of people saw his point of view. He didn't let his opinions boil over -- he articulated and disseminated.
In the past year, I've seen this happen over and over again with thrilling results -- people using the forums that surround and saturate them, forcing their own outlooks back onto the media that so often colonize their minds.
At their best, they specifically request reactions. At my best, I request theirs.
Piss, however, doesn't request anything. At most, it requests that I cease to exist. That is not a conversation. That is not why we're paying obscene amounts of money to come to this school. If your idea of dialogue is human waste, then you've stolen a spot at this university from someone mature enough to meet their opponents face to face and not run around in darkness, carrying bottles of piss.
Your facelessness is a sign of your fear, and your fear is a sign of your overwhelming weakness. And I know weakness. I know what it means to hide -- to equate your own visibility with your own demise. I know the strength it takes to reveal yourself, to shout until the world shouts back. So, let's see if you're strong enough. Beyond piss, let's hear what you have to say.
Dan Fishback is a junior American Identities major from Olney, Md.
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