A friend approached me recently. He said he had an important
story to tell and he wanted my help putting it into words. It's a story about
sexuality, identity, culture, even addiction and it deserves to be heard.
Before I begin I want to say that everything about this story is true except a minor detail, one that I will clear up by the end of this piece, one that needs to wait to be cleared up because of issues of privacy and issues related to judgment, issues that not coincidentally are part of the reason this story needs telling.
My friend, to put it out there bluntly, might be considered "bisexual". But when he is asked about this he gives a rather long answer, one that might not be satisfactory to either extremes of opinion about this issue of sexuality. But this is exactly, he tells me, the reason he feels deeply compelled to share his story after years of only trusted friends and professionals having heard it, in all its important detail. It's precisely these details, he explains, that he feels get lost in the highly politicized climate that surrounds the issue of "homosexuality".
So let's go back a little into his past as a way of beginning. This friend tells me he always liked girls, loved them in fact, he tells me a story about him being only 5 or 6 years old and playing with his friends a game where they were telling each other little fantasies they had or wishes actually, they went around a circle and each said something they wished for. He doesn't quite remember what his friends' wishes were, but he imagines they were either fantastic or mundane, the ability to climb a wall like Spider-man or a new Huffy bike. His wish, on the other hand, appears quite precocious in retrospect. He wished to have a "girlfriend" by his next birthday. He says he remembered feeling a sense of disappointment; that he kind of knew that he wouldn't get a girlfriend and not because he was only 6 and it wasn't even feasible - I mean what would they do in terms of "dates”? It would be a relationship in name only. He says that he felt he wasn't good enough to have one, that a girl would never like him, though he admits he may have imposed this feeling onto the memory subsequent times he remembered it, so that the remembering of the event coalesced emotionally with the event. That in other words, he may have felt this rejection later in life, maybe say when he was 12 or 13, and thought back on his earliest desires and now remembering both the original memory and the memory of remembering it later, the whole original event has had later feelings imposed on it.
He then tells me how when he moved from one town to a larger city that he first came into contact with the idea of a homosexual. He hadn't even known what one was before this move, one that occurred around age 8. Perhaps this is a testament to the secrecy and repression that surrounded sexuality only two decades or so ago. But in this new area he was quickly introduced to the idea, and it was in a wholly negative way. The words “faggot" and "queer" and "pussy" were all thrown around lightly and he didn't quite understand them and sadly they were thrown at him more than others because he was a little different, a little more sensitive and full of energy and life.
He remembers remembering (once again that strange thing where the past has layers and isn't this distinct thing but alters each time it is recalled) something from his old neighborhood, something that happened to him before moving. He remembers remembering this while standing on the black top of his elementary school playground as the words "homo" and "queer" were being causally flung about. He remembers remembering how an older kid maybe 10 or 11 had touched him and got my friend to touch him, while both were naked in a closet, when my friend was 6 or 7.
Now despite him having been too small to have a girlfriend when he first wished for one, and thinking he wouldn't get one, my friend relates to me that there were actually instances of sexual contact with other female children that had occurred. He had tried to engage in what his other little friends had told him was "humping" with other girls his age - his friends were present with him along with the two girls their age at one of the incidents. Now this, he learned later, is called "sex play" and though it should be discouraged by parents, most experts say it is normal and just curiosity. But what is interesting, my friend says, is that at age 10 in his new town when he reflected on having been touched by an older boy (and having touched the older boy too upon the older boy's urging ) he thought nothing of these other incidents with opposite sex children his own age . Was it that my friend knew that because the older boy was older than him that it was more problematic this incident, that it was more an instance of abuse or molestation rather than relatively benign sex play between children more closer in age to each other? No. My friend's ten year old self didn't see this same sex incident differently because he had been victimized; he saw it differently because it had been with another boy and that made him a "faggot", a "queer", in the eyes of his new peers.
He didn't think about that same sex incident again for ten years. He grew slowly and navigated adolescence awkwardly, growing taller but voice remaining child-like in its tenor, as shorter boys sprouted muscles and hair and shouted with suddenly deep voices. He remembers feeling ugly and weird, and this is hardly a unique experience among teenagers, but he looks back and sees subtle abuse coming from many directions. As I talked to him, he sort of anticipated the common more conservative and right wing response to tales of bullying and he is quick to tell me that he didn't shrink from competition or even outright combat during this time in his life. In fact, he became a sports obsessed boy, quickly putting away his fantasy novels and toy soldiers and replacing them with the equipment of every season's sport, beginning around the age of 12. No, he tells me, it wasn't that he just couldn't handle the normal and natural boyish scrapping and scraping, it was the behavior of much bigger kids and even adults that to him qualified as abuse and had long lasting psychological effects on him, including affecting his later sexuality.
He tells me of several instances of being viciously attacked by boys much bigger than him for no discernible reason. He wonders if some of it wasn't personal at all, if it was just that downhill slide of violence that must have originated in the home where perhaps alcoholic fathers were beating these boys and they were redeeming themselves, yet copying the same behaviors, by beating on others much smaller than they. My friend is at pains, it seems to me, to emphasize that he often fought back and "held his own" when feasible; that he wasn't always a little coward, Though he admits there were times when weary of fighting, he simply let himself be punched when confronted and attacked, or took different routes home to avoid the incessant assaults altogether.
When he tells me these caveats, insists on qualifying his stories I want to stop him and tell him "John (not his real name) you were a child! No one thinks you were a coward and even if you were hesitant to fight that is and was a good thing. As you told me, this violence was mostly senseless and pointless, and you hadn't had your natural humanity beaten out of you like these bullies had and were simply refusing to hurt or get hurt over nothing." Before I can say this however he wants to tell me how when fighting kids his own age or younger than him who attacked him he could and did "hold his own" and he even describes swinging on a much bigger kid first and getting a nice shot in before the kid beat him up.
Here I see exactly what he is describing. He was abused, it is very clear to me, and the physical violence he endured ( he counts at least 40 instances of violence in his first 20 years but hundreds of threats and almost fights or near fisticuffs ) was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Talking to this adult in his 30s, I realize that the child he describes who didn't want to fight, and often was clearly puzzled by the senseless violence he faced, was actually in many ways healthier and more humane and human than this adult sitting across from me talking about who "won" fights from 20 years earlier and alternating between shame and glee as he describes moments of passivity and moments of triumph when he fought bravely and even "beat his opponents". To this point, his favorite story involves his first year in this new neighborhood and how a piece of jewelry he wore got him called names every day and how four different times he punched classmates right in their eyes. This piece of jewelry, in an instant of ironic justice, actually caused more pain to these "homophobic and ignorant little bastards who were taunting me for being different and assuming they could begin physically hurting me, but were sent balling their eyes out to the teacher as the very thing I wore, a ring, had been smashed into their eye by my fist ".
Before I begin I want to say that everything about this story is true except a minor detail, one that I will clear up by the end of this piece, one that needs to wait to be cleared up because of issues of privacy and issues related to judgment, issues that not coincidentally are part of the reason this story needs telling.
My friend, to put it out there bluntly, might be considered "bisexual". But when he is asked about this he gives a rather long answer, one that might not be satisfactory to either extremes of opinion about this issue of sexuality. But this is exactly, he tells me, the reason he feels deeply compelled to share his story after years of only trusted friends and professionals having heard it, in all its important detail. It's precisely these details, he explains, that he feels get lost in the highly politicized climate that surrounds the issue of "homosexuality".
So let's go back a little into his past as a way of beginning. This friend tells me he always liked girls, loved them in fact, he tells me a story about him being only 5 or 6 years old and playing with his friends a game where they were telling each other little fantasies they had or wishes actually, they went around a circle and each said something they wished for. He doesn't quite remember what his friends' wishes were, but he imagines they were either fantastic or mundane, the ability to climb a wall like Spider-man or a new Huffy bike. His wish, on the other hand, appears quite precocious in retrospect. He wished to have a "girlfriend" by his next birthday. He says he remembered feeling a sense of disappointment; that he kind of knew that he wouldn't get a girlfriend and not because he was only 6 and it wasn't even feasible - I mean what would they do in terms of "dates”? It would be a relationship in name only. He says that he felt he wasn't good enough to have one, that a girl would never like him, though he admits he may have imposed this feeling onto the memory subsequent times he remembered it, so that the remembering of the event coalesced emotionally with the event. That in other words, he may have felt this rejection later in life, maybe say when he was 12 or 13, and thought back on his earliest desires and now remembering both the original memory and the memory of remembering it later, the whole original event has had later feelings imposed on it.
He then tells me how when he moved from one town to a larger city that he first came into contact with the idea of a homosexual. He hadn't even known what one was before this move, one that occurred around age 8. Perhaps this is a testament to the secrecy and repression that surrounded sexuality only two decades or so ago. But in this new area he was quickly introduced to the idea, and it was in a wholly negative way. The words “faggot" and "queer" and "pussy" were all thrown around lightly and he didn't quite understand them and sadly they were thrown at him more than others because he was a little different, a little more sensitive and full of energy and life.
He remembers remembering (once again that strange thing where the past has layers and isn't this distinct thing but alters each time it is recalled) something from his old neighborhood, something that happened to him before moving. He remembers remembering this while standing on the black top of his elementary school playground as the words "homo" and "queer" were being causally flung about. He remembers remembering how an older kid maybe 10 or 11 had touched him and got my friend to touch him, while both were naked in a closet, when my friend was 6 or 7.
Now despite him having been too small to have a girlfriend when he first wished for one, and thinking he wouldn't get one, my friend relates to me that there were actually instances of sexual contact with other female children that had occurred. He had tried to engage in what his other little friends had told him was "humping" with other girls his age - his friends were present with him along with the two girls their age at one of the incidents. Now this, he learned later, is called "sex play" and though it should be discouraged by parents, most experts say it is normal and just curiosity. But what is interesting, my friend says, is that at age 10 in his new town when he reflected on having been touched by an older boy (and having touched the older boy too upon the older boy's urging ) he thought nothing of these other incidents with opposite sex children his own age . Was it that my friend knew that because the older boy was older than him that it was more problematic this incident, that it was more an instance of abuse or molestation rather than relatively benign sex play between children more closer in age to each other? No. My friend's ten year old self didn't see this same sex incident differently because he had been victimized; he saw it differently because it had been with another boy and that made him a "faggot", a "queer", in the eyes of his new peers.
He didn't think about that same sex incident again for ten years. He grew slowly and navigated adolescence awkwardly, growing taller but voice remaining child-like in its tenor, as shorter boys sprouted muscles and hair and shouted with suddenly deep voices. He remembers feeling ugly and weird, and this is hardly a unique experience among teenagers, but he looks back and sees subtle abuse coming from many directions. As I talked to him, he sort of anticipated the common more conservative and right wing response to tales of bullying and he is quick to tell me that he didn't shrink from competition or even outright combat during this time in his life. In fact, he became a sports obsessed boy, quickly putting away his fantasy novels and toy soldiers and replacing them with the equipment of every season's sport, beginning around the age of 12. No, he tells me, it wasn't that he just couldn't handle the normal and natural boyish scrapping and scraping, it was the behavior of much bigger kids and even adults that to him qualified as abuse and had long lasting psychological effects on him, including affecting his later sexuality.
He tells me of several instances of being viciously attacked by boys much bigger than him for no discernible reason. He wonders if some of it wasn't personal at all, if it was just that downhill slide of violence that must have originated in the home where perhaps alcoholic fathers were beating these boys and they were redeeming themselves, yet copying the same behaviors, by beating on others much smaller than they. My friend is at pains, it seems to me, to emphasize that he often fought back and "held his own" when feasible; that he wasn't always a little coward, Though he admits there were times when weary of fighting, he simply let himself be punched when confronted and attacked, or took different routes home to avoid the incessant assaults altogether.
When he tells me these caveats, insists on qualifying his stories I want to stop him and tell him "John (not his real name) you were a child! No one thinks you were a coward and even if you were hesitant to fight that is and was a good thing. As you told me, this violence was mostly senseless and pointless, and you hadn't had your natural humanity beaten out of you like these bullies had and were simply refusing to hurt or get hurt over nothing." Before I can say this however he wants to tell me how when fighting kids his own age or younger than him who attacked him he could and did "hold his own" and he even describes swinging on a much bigger kid first and getting a nice shot in before the kid beat him up.
Here I see exactly what he is describing. He was abused, it is very clear to me, and the physical violence he endured ( he counts at least 40 instances of violence in his first 20 years but hundreds of threats and almost fights or near fisticuffs ) was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Talking to this adult in his 30s, I realize that the child he describes who didn't want to fight, and often was clearly puzzled by the senseless violence he faced, was actually in many ways healthier and more humane and human than this adult sitting across from me talking about who "won" fights from 20 years earlier and alternating between shame and glee as he describes moments of passivity and moments of triumph when he fought bravely and even "beat his opponents". To this point, his favorite story involves his first year in this new neighborhood and how a piece of jewelry he wore got him called names every day and how four different times he punched classmates right in their eyes. This piece of jewelry, in an instant of ironic justice, actually caused more pain to these "homophobic and ignorant little bastards who were taunting me for being different and assuming they could begin physically hurting me, but were sent balling their eyes out to the teacher as the very thing I wore, a ring, had been smashed into their eye by my fist ".
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