Excerpts - 1. Malleable

I wrote this five nights ago while lying in bed. Like much of my thoughts, though, like much of my stories it never made it to paper. It never left my head. And now I find myself scrambling to try to piece it back together, to organize it that same poetic way it all seemed to flow from me at that moment. That moment when I was both too focused on what I was thinking and too tired from trying to sleep that I just never seemed to get myself up to write it all down. So I start again. If I jump around a lot, I’m sorry. I find it hard to map out all the connecting thoughts into one coherent story. Everything seems to connect at too many places for me to pinpoint and before I know it I am back tracking and talking in circles. I’d like to share these thoughts, though. For some reason, they seem important to me; like little pieces of a puzzle that I need to examine in order to help make sense of myself. Perhaps these puzzle pieces do not fit with me, alone, though. Perhaps they help to piece us all together.

 

 

I was always a pretty athletic child. Hyperactive. Boyish. I ran everywhere, played in the woods, rode my bike, loved G.I. Joes and video games, and I was constantly climbing things. I’m not sure if I was ever really effeminate. Today, when I tell people that I’m gay, a lot of them have a hard time believing it. They say that they never would have guessed. They say how masculine I am. How I don’t fit the stereotype. But lately I’ve been wondering if I was always this way. Maybe I was different. Maybe when I was younger I was more “obvious”. I don’t know. I know I played with my sister’s Barbies from time to time. And sometimes I even let my sisters put make-up and dresses on me. But that might have just been typical territory for a boy being raised with older sisters. They really liked to torture me. But that torture was all in good fun. They loved me. And I could take it.

 

I think I was around five when I was introduced to another kind of torture: my first bully. His name was Chad. For three years he chased me around the playground, cornered me on the school bus, and basically harassed me at every chance he got. I was usually too fast for him to catch as long as I was in the open. I really enjoyed being fast. It almost made it a game for me; thinking that he could never catch me, always out maneuvering him, and taunting him with my witty remarks. But those times when he did catch me? Torture. One day I went home and had to show my mom the bruise around my penis and ball-sack from where he had kicked me. I was young, but I was old enough to feel embarrassed and ashamed at having my mom look at my privates. She was furious. I remember that. I don’t remember her doing anything about it, though. I assume it was coughed up to the old ‘boys will be boys’ mantra. When I was 8 and I actually became friends with Chad, she was completely beside herself. She could not understand why I would ever be friends with a boy that had caused me so much physical and emotional pain for so many years. I didn’t really understand it either.

 

When I was eight, a new kid moved to school and I quickly became best friends with him. Somehow, though, he became friends with Chad, too. Chad lived about a half mile down the road from me right next to my new best friend. I remember playing at my friend’s house when he suggested we go get Chad. I have no idea how things transpired from there. I know I was scared and I was pretty offended by the idea, but my friend insisted and somehow I ended up playing with the kid that had made my life a living hell.

 

Chad and I became pretty close, however. In junior high, he actually got into fight on my behalf. Some locker room jerk was picking on me for no apparent reason and Chad stepped in. The jerks friends held Chad down while the jerk beat the shit out of him. Chad ended up getting suspended. I felt incredibly guilty. While he was taking the punches that were originally intended for me, I just stood there too scared to make a move.

 

We stayed friends all the way up through high school. It was in high school that I realized that I didn’t really have a lot in common with Chad anymore, but that didn’t stop me from being his friend. We never really talk to each other, these days, but I still care a lot about him and I truly hope he is doing well.

 

It was a few years ago when I asked him, after all these years, why he had bullied me so much. He told me that it was because I called him fat. He told me that I had started it. That might have been the case. I really did have a big mouth on me. Usually, though, I didn’t tend to use my mouth unless I felt like I needed to defend myself. I’m positive that I would have used every witty comment I had against him if I felt he was trying to attack me. That was my only self-defense. But would I have been the one to instigate the attack? It really doesn’t feel like me, but I was five. There is a lot I don’t remember. For instance, I can’t seem to remember what I did to my next bully to make her want to harass me. And I don’t remember what I did to the one after that. Or the one after that.

 

That’s what I keep getting stuck on. Why did I have so many bullies? What the fuck was it about me that seemed to draw these people in? Lately, I have been wondering if maybe, just maybe, I was a little more effeminate than I remember being. What if I was? What if I had a completely different personality and being bullied caused me to work so hard at masking it that I became a completely different person?

 

Well . . . I seem to be a completely different person anyways don’t I? Maybe I don’t remember if I was a particularly “girly” child or not, but I do remember being happy. I do remember being confident. And they took that away from me, or, rather, I allowed them to. I allowed them to mold me into the type of man I am today.

 

After Chad, there was Pam. She was probably five years older than me. She played basketball with my sister on the team that my mom helped coach. I remember her holding me down and beating me on several occasions. Sometimes it seemed like she would purposely lure me away from the adults and just when I thought that she was being nice to me, she would change.

 

After Pam, there was Sam. He was on my church basketball team. I was actually really good at basketball. I wanted to be the next Michael Jordan. For whatever reason, Sam had decided that I was a worthy target. He was able to get some of the other kids in on the torture, as well, even the ones who were my friends. My mom was the coach of that team. She coached us to the state championship two years in row. All the while, her son was being constantly accosted by his teammates. At one point, she did pull me off the team and put me in the age group below. My new team sucked at basketball, while my old team got to go to state. As far as I remember, that might have been the only real effort she made to get the bullying to stop.

 

I made the school basketball team in junior high. Like, I said, I was good. That, however, introduced me to Courtney. Again, I have no idea what I ever did to this guy, but he really seemed to have it out for me. I remember being at away games waiting on the girls team to finish. I’d get up to go the bathroom or concession stand and he would be there to prevent my return to my seat. There are few things more embarrassing to a twelve year old than being assaulted by your own teammates while the other schools team walks by. How do you go out on the court and play after that? I know I was good at basketball. I played it every goddamn day. I could shoot free-throws blindfolded. I could make shots behind my back. I grew up on a basketball court. I would play grown men when I was ten and hold my own. I spent hours upon hours playing that game. It was my childhood dream to be in the NBA. But every single time the coach would put me in the game, I would fuck up. I think the coaches knew I was good. They kept me on the team year after year. I managed to make it to varsity. But I sat on the bench my whole career. I don’t think I scored more than eight points for the five years that I played school ball. When I went to the civic center and played with strangers, I dominated the game. Around my team, though, I didn’t have enough confidence to lift my head up, let alone the ball. And Courtney was there the whole way through. He is the only person I ever got into a real fight with. We mostly just shoved each other and wrestled around on the ground. He got in a few punches, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to hit him. I was more terrified of hitting him than I was of being hit. I tried to hit him a few times, but my hand would go limp. It was weird. I had so much anger in me that on occasion I would punch brick walls as hard as I could, but when it came to hitting another human being, I just couldn’t do it. At one point during the fight, we stopped, both of us being out of breath. He looked at me and said “Alright. How ‘bout we just call a truce.” I was exhausted and not really into it. Of course I agreed. Naively. He stuck out his hand and when I went to shake it he pulled back and punched me in the eye. All this took place in front of my friend, Chad, and Courtney’s older brother. The next day at school, Courtney bragged about how bad he kicked my ass to my fellow teammates. It is hard to argue the logistics of a fight when you have a huge black eye and the other guy doesn’t.

 

Sometimes I think about playing basketball. I think about going down to some local court and picking up a game. The game, itself, actually seems fun once again, but then I think about the people who play it. I don’t think I’d like to play with them very much, and that sucks. I’ve allowed these people to take something that I truly enjoyed and cause me to never want to play again.

 

I really don’t know what it was about me that attracted so many abusers. I think about the person that I would have been had these people not been there to mold me. What would I have been like? Perhaps I could have been happy. Maybe I could have been confident. Successful. What if I were straight? Would I have a better relationship with my father? Would society cherish the person I had become? I think about these things and I realize . . . maybe I am depressed often. Maybe I am lost and unsure of myself. But I know that I have become an extremely caring and compassionate person. I am extremely understanding. I have great empathy. I went to college and studied acting and directing. I have a great interest in art. I am curious about other cultures. I like traveling. I love reading. I have this ability to think outside the box. It scares me to think that if none of these “bad” things would have happened to me, then maybe I wouldn’t have developed the traits that I am most proud of. If I had been left ignorant of these things, I might have had a blissful life. I prefer knowing, though. Even if the absence of ignorance creates the burden of knowing, I’d rather face it head on. I’d rather be the understanding person I am, than a blissful bystander.