David Hill has never felt ashamed of writing a play that started with a boy he called Dan.
A very long while back when I was a secondary school teacher, I taught a boy whom I'll call Dan.
He was an excellent young guy: quiet, manly, focused. The sort of teenager you wish they'd clone to fill classes.
I taught Dan English. He was good at it. He read hugely - a rare and marvellous quality in adolescent males - and he was always borrowing books from me.
Terrible things were happening to him at home. Vile, manipulative things.
That decade's equivalent of CYF was trying to help.
But at school he was his own quiet, seemingly self-possessed self.
We felt that school was a sanctuary for him; that every day there helped him to endure what was happening in his home.
In the year I'm talking about, he was growing tall and handsome. Girls noticed him. He made the school cross-country team.
Hope began to gleam on the horizon.
A morning came when I'd had Dan's class for English.
They were leaving my room; the next class was entering.
I realised Dan was waiting there, presumably to borrow a book.
"Won't be a second," I told him and carried on board-cleaning.
When I turned back to him, the next class was seated and waiting.
"Want to come back later?" I asked Dan.
He nodded, said "No worries", and left.
He didn't come back later. He didn't come to school the next day.
Some time in the morning when nobody else was home, he killed himself.
I know - I KNOW - it wasn't because I'd put him off.
As I said, awful things were happening at home.
The inquest made it terribly clear where the cause lay.
But, of course, I've wondered for ever whether things would have turned out any different if we'd spoken that day.
A number of years later, I wrote a play for secondary schools about a boy driven by various pressures to consider suicide.
Consider it, but not commit it.
That play's been read or performed quite a lot throughout the country.
It also hasn't been read/performed quite a lot.
Some schools have decided not to use it.
Some have been advised against it by professionals in various fields.
Some have been encouraged to use it by other professionals in the same fields.
I respect each school's right to decide.
There are arguments for and against bringing the topic before the public.
Circumstances vary hugely from place to place and schools are the best judges of what's appropriate for their pupils.
If I'm asked, I say that I wrote the play as a tribute to a lovely young guy, that I have no expertise in the area of youth suicide, that I generally prefer bringing things out into the open rather than keeping them hidden, but that I have no right to comment on the school's or youth theatre's decision.
The play has been around for a while now.
Nearly every time it's staged, there are letters to the school, the paper, the publishers, sometimes to me, approving or disapproving.
The comments are nearly always sober and thoughtful.
But recently a letter reached me that wasn't.
I can't tell you who the writer is, or where he or she lives. Large circles in red pen marked where address and signature usually go.
Scary.
The anonymous writer thought my play was disgusting, horrible, evil. I should be ashamed of myself.
If the letter writer reads this, I'm sorry he/she found the work disgusting, etc.
If the topic is particularly painful for him/her, then I'm sorry for that, too.
But I'm not sorry I wrote the play.
I wrote it to honour someone who mattered to me.
That's the sort of impulse that starts many writers on many stories.
When you write a play/novel/whatever, you make a shape. It's a shape that implies you find something important; something moves you enough to make you want to understand it, to remember and acknowledge it.
That's how I feel about Dan.
If I hadn't written about him, it would have been like saying he didn't matter enough for me to spend time and effort on.
I can't accept that.
So no, I've never felt ashamed of writing my play that started with the boy I've called Dan.
David Hill is a Taranaki writer.
