COLLEGE
One Hand Band
Chad Coarsey, member of FAU’s LGBT community, stands up for students
By Dylan Bouscher
Photo Courtesey of Ryan Murphy
Chad Coarsey is wedging a chunk of clay in Florida Atlantic University’s ceramics workshop — with his only hand. As he pounds it into the warped wooden table, he evens out the clay’s texture and removes any remaining air pockets. The 23 year-old biology major is unleashing a week-long build up of stress on his clay, enjoying a Sunday afternoon crafting a tea cup and a bowl. “It’s a nice way to vent,” Coarsey said. Coarsey was born without his left hand, which he’s been told by doctors is from
chad coarsey, a 23 year-old biology major at florida Atlantic university, is a one-handed chemist and ceramist
neurodegenerative disorder. There is no name for his condition, according to him. Coarsey is also openly gay, and living with his boyfriend Ryan Chadwick. “I’m the housewife, I do his laundry, I cook, I clean, and a taxi service,” Chadwick told SFGN. Chadwick finished moving into Coarsey’s apartment in Boca Raton the day before Coarsey worked on his new tea cups. The couple started dating back in May. “I worked at American Eagle, he came in there, and I was like one of their lead salesmen,” Coarsey said. “We had one pair of skinny jeans left, he just felt like the guy
who would wear a pair of skinny jeans, and they turned out to be 3 sizes too big for him.” Eventually Coarsey helped Chadwick score a job at American Eagle and the two started working together. But the first time Coarsey felt something for another man in a mall, things turned out different. He was attending the Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg, Va. after his parents shipped him off there. “I was building all this tension because I couldn’t act on it, because no one else in my town was gay, unless they were really gay,” Coarsey said of his home town, Statesville, N.C. Coarsey’s school took him and his class to the Lynchburg mall. He remembers his first experience. “[He was] this like skinny-toothpickblonde-hair-twink that drove his mom’s minivan, and we fucked in a mall bathroom,” Coarsey said. The Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg, Va. was one of the many places Coarsey’s parents would send their son. Others included an isolated farm in Boise, Idaho, the Crooked Creek ranch in Colorado, his grandfather’s house in Cordele, Ga. and the Oakley therapeutic residence school near Park City, Utah. “I was basically conned into going to a therapeutic boarding school,” Coarsey said. “My parents basically sent me there because they knew I was gay, they found my gay porn, I couldn’t come to terms with it.” While Coarsey was in Colorado, he accepted his sexuality and reconciled with his parents. “Going out to Colorado, that experience, brought things home for me,” Coarsey said. “It took me to this neutral place and I felt naturally at home, and peaceful. I thought about all the stuff I did to my parents and ready to admit to them that I had wronged them.” It was at the Oakley school, however, that Coarsey met the teacher who would cultivate his pottery skills. But his creative spark came from within. “My mom’s very creative and resourceful and influential and that’s where I get that from,” Coarsey said. “I made a statue of my nub once...It’s not a knob, it’s not a fist, it’s a nub.” He claims the objective, chemist aspects of his character come from his dad, who is a doctor.
November 7, 2012 • SouthFloridaGayNews.com
“I really enjoy biochemistry, I really enjoy how stuff works. Though now I don’t see that much as a career, because I want to see how this political thing works out,” Coarsey said. “I would really like to research neurodegenerative disorders, researching different pathways that haven’t been sought out. I think that’s interesting.” Despite his interest in science, and his growing up a gay man in the Christian church, he remains firm in his beliefs. “What I believe is, there’s no way we can be perfect. We can strive to be perfect,” Coarsey said. “Jesus Christ is more of a metaphor to me. Because I’m a scientist, and I see it more as a metaphor. I relate back to the bible.” His favorite verse from the Bible is Romans 8:38-39 — “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This semester Coarsey is taking a chemistry lab for the fourth time, while being in the Student Government House of Representatives for his first time. The first bill he wrote — about the crosswalks on campus being unsafe for students with disabilities — inspired administrators to attend the House meeting. “It’s that passion to do the right thing, because my core integrity is what I stick to,” Coarsey said. “Hopefully I’m inspiring people to do the right thing and change things that need to be changed.” Back in the ceramics workshop, Coarsey is at the potter’s wheel, shaping the spinning clay. As it twists violently and changes shapes, he uses his nub and presses the clay against his other hand to mold it.
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