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One afternoon after a busy day at Neiman Marcus, I returned to my apartment and received a package with a porn video cassette and a set of Polaroids in the mail from my former high school Drama teacher. Larry Lane Bateman and I had kept contact over the years. Postcards and the occasional phone call. I held onto the belief he had been a good influence on me when I was a teenager, that he shepherded me out of the gay closet on Long Island, that our interactions had been special but normal nonetheless, even though the world would hardly be able to understand what we did together.
But the Polaroids, they really got my attention. The Polaroids were of me when I was Larry Lane Bateman’s 16-year-old student. Why did he send them? They were sexually explicit and part of a special “away-from-school” video project he arranged, a project I was supposed to keep secret, and had for over ten years. I thought he was my friend. He was vested in me believing so. I was vested in it to, because the alternative was too overwhelming to contemplate.
Another ongoing issues in therapy was Bateman’s porn collection that was still in my hands. What would I do? Go to the dumpster and be rid of it all and the teacher? Contact the police? And what about the teacher Larry Lane Bateman and the people in his life, especially his partner Hal Lynch who worked at Phillips Exeter Academy as well? Howard suggested I seek counsel from a local family attorney, and I did. After I told the attorney everything, she asked, “What do you want?”
“I want him removed from the education system,” I said. “I don’t want him to do to more boys what he did to me.”
“Okay,” the attorney replied, “Here’s how.”
