LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Weekend Beach Bum |
by Eric Morrison |
"Like most gay people, just beneath my fabulous surface is a little boy, one who grew up feeling alone and freakish and desperate. Appearances are completely deceiving in my case. I don't see myself as this successful adult: I still feel the pain of rejection that I experienced growing up in rural North Carolina, taunted in school, with few friends, because I am a faggot."
With these words, author and activist Kevin Jennings exposes his own protective faade for the introduction to Telling Tales Out of School, a collection of memoirs documenting the queer high school experience. These short biographical essays are written by various authors, most of whom have dedicated at least part of their lives to improving the queer community. Jocks, geeks, softball dykes, farm boys, butch girls, and effeminate boys picked up pens and contributed to this colorful, candid collage of the queer adolescent experience. The book has lingered in my hands and heart lately. Jennings writes of gay people, "Most find that they are still trying to unlearn a basic lesson imparted by the educational system to homosexuals: Hate yourself." When I first read this statement, I wondered why Jennings was preaching to the converted. High school was hell for me, and none of my gay friends mistook it for a cocktail party. As I turn the pages of Jennings' book, my own repressed high school memories have rushed from the recesses to the forefront of my mind. They're not pretty, and they're not easy to process. I remember entering high school with a decidedly positive attitude. Junior high had been a tumultuous trip through Hades. Taunts and epithets colored my days throughout seventh and eighth grade. Luckily, I had developed a core group of close friendsalmost all female, of course. But they couldn't affirm my masculinity in the ways I so desperately craved, and I was sometimes subject to their teasing and ignorant cruelty as well. My brother had built a name for himself in high school. Maybe I could do the same. Despite my hopes for a happy high school experience, however, hormones and adolescent insecurities caused my classmates' taunts to escalate into threats, molding my high school experience into one of constant fear. Twice during high school, a fellow gay male moved to the area and joined my class. In both cases, much of my classmates' hatred shifted from me to them. In retrospect, I feel a bit guilty to admit it, but at the time, I felt nothing but relief. Dusty came from an affluent, though very dysfunctional family. Dusty was closeted, but his ubiquitous eye-rolling, lingering lisp, and colorful argyle socks made him an easy target for the jocks. Upon joining our class, we became fast friends. Although I committed my fair share of eye-rolling and fashion foibles, hanging around with Dusty made me feel butch. Most importantly, standing next to Dusty, I actually looked butch. My popularity grew as Dusty's self-confidence disintegrated. After even my friends starting picking on him, Dusty withdrew from me and from the school. The next year, another gay kid joined my class. Had he stayed, Dusty's machismo rating would have been bumped up the scale significantly by this kid's lanky effeminacy and manicured curls. His rebellious glam-rock look only escalated his ostracized status. Most importantly, he failed to do something that Dusty and I did constantly. He never came out of the closet, but he refused to deny his gayness. His response to taunts of "faggot" was a cool, confident calm. A few weeks into his glory days at Woodbridge High, some of my macho classmates held glam-rock kid out of a second story window by his heels. This kid could have been killed, but the teacher didn't even report the incident. Glam-rock kid moved on to another school, and his leaving reopened the dreaded faggot vacuum. My brief respite from fear was over, and anxiety rejoined me as my constant companion. I suppose I was an easy target for homophobia in high school. I played flute and piccolo in concert and marching bands. Despite many honors, including high chair positions in Sussex County Band, an annual place in the Delaware Blue/Gold Band, and a ranking in the top fifteen high school state flutists, my choice of a traditionally feminine musical instrument consistently overshadowed my talents, at least in the eyes of my classmates. A move to the percussion section was disastrous as the "good old boys" in the band quickly put me back in my place. Frustrated with my faggot flutist label, I channeled my energies into the drama club and student council, not realizing that these organizations were not viewed as bastions of masculinity, either. I never even tried sports. There were less than seventy people in my class, and the same jocks who filled my ears with "faggot" all day long played every sport my high school offered. Clearly, my role was to sit in the stands with the rest of the marching band, cheering Tony and Kevin and Brent, not down on the field, tossing the pigskin beside them. I wanted to run track in my junior year, but by then, others had defined my high school role. Showers after gym class were torturous enough. I couldn't imagine exposing myself to such horror as an extracurricular activity. Despite my Scorpion determination and my best friend Valerie's encouragement, I just couldn't bring myself to sign on the track roster when it passed through hands in homeroom. I'm not sure what hurt worst in high school. At the time, I longed mostly for acceptance and a feeling of belonging, two things any adolescent desperately desires but which is denied gay youngsters. Personality begins to gel in high school, and I suppose fear and anxiety were a large part of the recipe for me. My masculinity was nearly ripped from my being in high school and only now, in my mid-twenties, am I beginning to rediscover its archetypal powers. To this day I remain furious at cowardly adultsboth teachers and familyfor not standing up for me when I couldn't stand up for myself. They had the power and they had a choice, and I didn't. Aside from a few courageous adults who did as much as they probably could and to whom I remain eternally grateful, I resent the teachers and other adults who silently watched my self-esteem melt into the ground. I understand why Kevin Jennings is preaching to the converted. Many of us have come out to others, but very few of us have come out to ourselves. We must examine the bruises from the brutal beatings our self-esteems took in high school. Most of us flinch at the notion of examining the pages of our mental high school yearbooks, for the pain seems too great to relive. Like Kevin Jennings, I sometimes look in the mirror and see only the miserable reflection of my high school self. But in order to heal ourselves and become healthy persons, we must dive headfirst into the pool of that reflection, unlearn the lessons we were taught, and only then will our mirrors reflect the confident, caring, and whole persons we always were. Recently, Eric has been bravely examining his high school experience. He lives and works in Wilmington during the week, and Rehoboth Beach on the weekends. Eric can be reached at StarchildB612@gateway.net. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 11, August 10, 2001. |