Chapter Three-Mad World
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me
Tears for Fears
I had a plan.
It was a plan of startling cunning and sophistication. The plan had turns and shadows that most people might have missed, but I knew better. I was prepared, I was forewarned.
I had a plan.
Now try to remember I was 13 at the time, inches away from that strange but wonderful time of hormones we all go through. I knew that I was perhaps months away from having my judgement completely screwed by puberty, but I wasn’t that worried. In my time I had found little use in being a child, I was never carefree or spastic. I didn’t find much humor in fart jokes and I didn’t find any joke that much practical. I didn’t understand other kids and the more I was with them the less I wanted to. I never took to being a kid and never felt like I missed out on anything. So in my head I had already felt that being a teenager was equally a waste of my time as well. I wasn’t going to get moody and withdrawn just to obsess over some silly little thing that in the end would turn out to be something I blew out of proportion. I wasn’t going to find myself stumbling over girls with a stupid look on my face as I randomly grabbed for words in my head. I wasn't going to stand there shuffling my feet as my voice cracked and wished the ground would swallow me up whole. No chance on that. I was going to just skip past that whole part and move straight to adult. Adults seemed cool. They had cars, jobs, places to live and friends that didn’t see too intrusive. Adult looked like a good place to hang my hat if not just outright retire. And if not adult mildly grown up would work cause lord knew, kids were nuts. So with all this in mind I had made a plan.
A plan of great cunning and sophistication in case you forgot.
I shared my plan with no one. I was my own confidant. My grandparents were clueless to my true designs that summer as I took my bike and surveyed the town and all its belongings. I knew that any war was won and lost on the battlefield in which it was fought, so I was making sure I was going to know this terran. I pedaled my way down the main street of the town, aptly named First street. I moved past the huge fountain marking the center of the town, the small, almost abandoned looking movie theater whose only speciality seemed to be showing 6 month old movies. I saw the strange no windowed adult book store that seemed oddly placed two doors down from the video arcade that seemed perpetually filled with swarms and swarms of kids every day. I found all of this as I prepared myself for the end of this season and the beginning of another.
As the days of endless sun and carelessness drew to a close I was filled with a great feeling of anticipation of what was next. I knew I was the only junior high student that was looking forward to the new school year and I damned well knew I was the only one who had a plan. I watched these kids, saw how they interacted with each, how they laughed, hung out, how they dressed, everything. I just watched and recorded. They had no idea but I was already preparing my next life.
My grandparents, newly broke from paying off my mother, didn’t have a ton of money for things like school clothes and such, but since I hadn’t stayed in the same school for over a year since I was 6 I wasn’t too clear on how important personal appearance was. But since I was an intelligent person and could grasp the simple fact that how someone looks is rarely an indication of their inner worth, I was sure that the other teenagers would get that as well. Perhaps they would see my lack of wardrobe as a sign, an indication of my plight and even bring me newfound friends in search of someone to help.
Makes you cringe at what my estimation of cunning and sophisticated was doesn’t it ?
With what little money I had I instead bought school supplies. My thought was if I couldn’t be well dressed, I would be well prepared and liked for that. I went after the shiniest, newest school supplies I could find. I bought a brand new, bright red Trapper Keeper. Which was basically a thee ring binder that holds folders. A folder that holds other folders. But in the 80’s trust me, it was HUGE. There was only one color for the main trapper but the folders….well the folders was where you could go all out.
They had three whole colors, red, blue and green. Which was a step up from those vaugely orange things with odd drawings of what someone in 1950 must have thought high school was like. Guys with lettermen jackets and weird basketball players. Frankly those folders creeped me the hell out so I was happy to have the sleek and modern looking trapper folders. Since I had folders of three different colors I had to have pens of the same color picked out for each class. Math was blue, English green, Social Studies Red. I searched the office supply isles of many a store to find pens just the right shade so that they would compliment my folders perfectly. I purchased a pencil box that had a built in ruler that slid out from its lid. I put glue, scissors and various other school sundries inside. I had a packet of graph paper and another box full of such useful items like a mathematical compass and another pair of scissors. I was fully stocked. I put all of this in a blue canvas duffel bag roughly the size of Kansas. In it I put ever more improbable things such as a flashlight, a can of sardines and a hand held video game.
It might be possible that I did not understand the definition of the words cunning and sophistication when I was 13.
All of this I gathered together in my bag that I named….Bag. It’s important to note that the bag had a name, even if at the time I was the only one who knew it. It was important to me because as far as I was concerned the only thing on my side was Bag so I made sure he had every conceivable thing that may aid me in the coming year.
In the end it wasn’t Bag that failed me. As always it was simple human nature.
My plan had two points, each as important as the other. A deadly approach that was almost guaranteed a quick and decisive victory, the first in a series of conquests I was planning. Mastering junior high school was the start, followed by walking across a room without my head down and being able to sit alone in my room and not obsess over every little sound outside my door being next on my list. This was important, it was my first stage, My booster rocket, my first victory that would undoubtedly gain me a ton of friends that would follow me into high school and ensure the next 5 years of my life would be just like that of every other high school teenager.
I would have a group of friends, we would be quirky but normal. We would all say very funny things and get into a series of escapades that would in the end show us how much we needed each other and how important it was to surround yourself with real friends. We would have a hang out and even have a theme song if we could all agree on one type of music. We would hang out in the lunch room and not go to class very much, instead opting to sit around and be…well cool. I had seen this type of behavior before on television and in the movies, so I was sure that high school was just like it.
It is hard to get across how very wrong I was on that thought.
By the time summer had played its last hand I was sure I knew what teenage life was like. I had done my research and done the leg work. I was sure I knew how this was going to fall down. After all…
I had a plan.
The night before school started I was a small bundle of nervous contradictions. I was hopeful yet terrified. I was anxious yet absolute in my victory. I was exhausted yet could not sleep. I was all things and nothing as I sat there looking up at the darkened ceiling of my room. I heard the freight trains that ran behind the school echo into the night and counted the minutes. The last minutes of my life left. I counted minutes as other people counted sheep and waited…
Waited for the first day of my next life.
I envisioned the next day down to the tiniest detail. I saw the kids watch me, wondering who the new kid was. I saw them, awash in their own nervousness wonder if I was going to be one of the cool kids or one of the other ones. I saw myself, the deciding factor in the school rivalry, the last number needed to end the stalemate of Greasers and Soc’s or whatever gangs they had. I saw myself being welcomed by the gang, knowing my smarts and preparedness would come in handy. I saw all this and more as I drifted off into sleep. I saw it all and was sure my life was going to start tomorrow.
I saw everything but Kelly Ayers.
It took Kelly less than two minutes to peg me as the weakest link and less than 4 minutes to bring me to tears. By 3rd period I was already home in tears with my grandparents trying to deduce exactly when the train went flying off the tracks.
Turned out it was Bag.
Kelly, being the alpha bully he was took one look at my duffel bag, reasoned it was just a purse in disguise and then took it from me and emptied its contents out in the middle of school. Prompting anyone who was passing by at the time to burst into hysterics at the massive amount of junk that had been thrown into it and then brought to school. A few years later when I saw Breakfast Club and Ally Sheedy dumps her purse onto the table I cringed inside. I never knew how much of a crackpot I looked until that moment.
Well of course the name Bag Boy was passed along pretty fast and by 2nd period the contents of Bag had somehow evolved into sexual devices and so on. In 3rd period the story had gotten back to the teacher who asked me to open my bag so she could see what was inside.
Like a 12 year old girl who had her first period in white jeans I ran home so fast.
My grandparents were torn between that I had been attacked or possibly shot someone. When the school called and told them there was an incident they understood, things had gone very, very wrong. I was curled on my bed, knowing that once again I had died and this time there was no one but my own stupid lameness to blame. Though the thought that if she had left me in the same school for more than 4 days I would be better prepared but it didn’t take.
I knew this was my fault and I knew the reason why too. The truth was catching up to me and I was no better than that idiot blond girl who tries to run in heels at getting away from it. I was a freak and nothing was going to change that. No plan, no school supplies nothing was going to alter the fact….I wasn’t going to be one of them. It was at that point I knew I was stuck with myself. There wasn’t a mask large enough or crafted well enough to hide the truth of what I really was. By the time my grandfather came in to try to cheep me up I had resigned myself to the rest of my life to be like this. Always apart and always alone. No matter how many people were around, I was going to be alone.
I am sure my grandfather said some fine things that day. I bet he told me how unfair kids were and that for as long as kids had gone to school there had always been bullies and there have always been kids who get picked on. He probably went on about how there was nothing you could do but put up with it and not let them get you down. How I should go to a teacher he if started again and how things would get better. How things had to get better. How things weren’t always going to be this bad.
I wouldn’t know as I didn’t hear a thing he said.
I was already alone.
The next year passed in about the same manner.
I would get to school and be ignored. I was a marked target and everyone knew it. If I wasn’t attacked before classes then it left a whole day for me to fret like a caffeine addicted cat in a room full of hungry rottweilers. I would lurk from class to class in constant terror that I was going to get hit from behind, a water balloon thrown at me, shaving cream applied all over or just the good old fashioned shove that would send me sprawling all limbs out like the turtle stuck in his shell I was. And even if I had been hit during the day, there was nothing that said I wasn’t going to get hit after classes. The second the bell rang it was a mad dash down the quarter block to my grandparents place. Each night I had a whole eight hours to dream about the inevitable fact it was going to happen all over again. IN fact the only thing that kept me from diving into traffic or jumping the next boxcar to anywhere but here was 4th period.
4th period was PE and PE meant Shayne.
Before we go on you have to understand, it didn't used to be this way.
Before there was gay, but it was over somewhere else. No one ever saw gay up close, it was always someone’s friend or someone’s nephew. But never face to face, never living and breathing gay. It was like if I said there was a fire in Outer Mongolia or a plane crash in the Sudan, you'd know what I was talking about but odds are you've never seen it with your own eyes. Real gay was always over there. Growing up gay people weren't even gay. Paul Lynn on Bewitched was colorful, never gay. Jim J Bullock on Too Close for Comfort was spastic, but never gay. The Village People were...no they were gay and that was the problem. The only gay you ever saw was that gay.
It was a Mr. Roper with his eyelashes batting and his wrist limp, it was someone dressed up in woman’s clothing singing some god awful love song. It was never just someone who was gay and that was it. It was always a larger than life character. A stereotype that defined all others. No one ever saw real gay, it was always that gay. Before Queer as Folk, The L Word and The Real World, the closest we got to a gay character was that guy from Melrose Place. You know the one who never had a boyfriend, never mentioned his sexuality but nonetheless got beaten up like a three-day drunk's wife every season. So if gay was always over there, it was never here.
I always knew I was different, most gay guys know they are different growing up, but I never thought I was gay. Not until Shayne.
I remember I wanted a 12" Luke Skywalker figure when I was 7. Now this was the figure that was roughly the size of a Barbie with a lightsaber and that cool rope thing on his belt so when he swung across that thing in the Death Star. I wanted it more than any other toy I had gotten to date. This thing was tall, movable and above all else...tall. It was the coolest and way better than The Six Million Dollar man who had to have like 85% of his body burned off in a rocket accident before he got super powers so you always knew, Steve wasn't the guy who wished you were when you grew up. Luke was way cool. he was blond, cute, whiney and had a special destiny waiting for him right outside his door. In fact he didn't even need to go do something to get the cool sword thing, it was given to him at sight. Talk about the guy you wanted to be.
My grandfather bring an old school male did not understand that desire at all. He was the never crying, never smiling, depression era, put your money under your mattress before a bank and never trust a Republican type of guy. He didn't get me and he knew it. He knew I was smart, he knew that I could read and he knew at a very young age, I was moving past him in gathered intelligence. My grandfather would always be smarter than I would, but he never got past the 4th grade and he was catching on that I was going to break that record. So my request for the ultra cool Luke Skywalker came in the middle of his growing anxiety that I was soon going to be discussing things he had no idea ofSince the position of dad had never been filled he had taken that place in my life as the masculine role model in charge. So when I said I wanted an ultra cool Luke Skywalker action figure with swinging action. All he heard was..
I wanted a doll.
Now of course it could be argued that Luke was in fact a doll, but since I was a boy he was an action figure in the same vein of GI Joe and his action kung fu grip. No one asked what GI Joe did on leave. No one bothered to get background information on Shipwreck and his off-hours activity. For all we knew GI Joe had a liberal Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, so the mega butch figures were in fact nancy dolls that were spreading the gay vibe everywhere they went. No one ever asked that. But here my grandfather was asking questions about Luke. And that was uncool for one very real fact.
Luke was a Jedi.
We knew Luke was a straight shooter, I mean he was so hard up he kissed his own sister. And yeah, looking back there was some tension between him and Han and even though they covered it with their rivalry for Leia, I could see...no. Luke was straight. Period. End of debate. So Luke couldn't be a doll, he was an action figure. And that was that.
That was so not that with my grandfather.
My grandfather knew I was off but he was starting to wonder if it was the wrong kind of off. Most blamed my mom for the damage since I was raised as the last scion of hippie culture. People usually just smiled and thought, what an odd child in that vague and non judgmental way people have with things they can’t identify. But my grandfather, like most men, knew something was off. I wasn't aggressive enough, I didn't compete enough, I was more sensitive that most boys my age and I didn't much like teasing girls. All of this plus male intuition, trust me we do have it, all of it added up to not right and not in a he’s just an odd child so let’s let things slide way. And now I was asking for a doll. Well it was end of the world time.
Words were spoken and then yelled and finally screamed. In the end I was crying, he was livid and I was still Lukeless.
The problem was, I never even thought I was gay. Gay was over there so couldn't be here. I had no problem with gay. My mom had gay friends, none of which I can remember. We lived spitting distance from San Francisco so I have seen gay before. But I knew I wasn't gay. In retrospect I never really thought I was straight, but how many people have THAT conversation ? You think guys sit back in their bed going, Am I straight ? Do I like girls ? What if my mom finds out ? No they never think about it so it never gets brought up. I was the same way, I was simply me and I sure wasn't gay.
And then I was.
I mean it was like that quick.
PE was the first time in my life I ever had to change around other kids. In fact it was the first time I changed in front of anyone. Though as a younger child I had gone nude in the commune I grew up in I had learned when you pout on clothes, you took them off in private. A 8th grade PE locker room was the most unprivate place in the world. For those girls who might not know what one looks like, let me explain. Just like yours except it smelled and no matter how far the lockers were from each other, they were too close. Guys cannot stand to be that close to each other no matter what. The normal comfort zone guys have in relation to other people doubles with guys and triples when they are nude. So the room could have been the size of a football field and still too small. Changing into other clothes meant disrobing in some way in front of other kids and that was worse than anything Kelly Ayers could come up with. I hated it with a passion that I haven’t been able to summon up since. I tried to get around, fake it, wore shorts under my pants, even went as far to fake injury before my gym coach caught on that I might just not be on the level. So finally I was forced to change with other guys.
And wham I was gay.
Ok not that fast, but close. One minute I was throwing my jeans off as quickly as humanly possible and the next I was stunned by a patch of tan thigh and white underwear. His name was Shayne and I was in love. I mean it, love. Not even kidding you how far and how fast I fell. One second, weird kid that was a bit different. Next moment, gay. I somehow got entirely dressed watching him slip on a red pair of gym trunks out of the corner of my eye. And in an insane moment of serendipity he looked at me. Our eyes met and in the most un-junior high school boyish way smiled. And that smile combined with the still after images of his upper thigh made my heart jump out of my chest and then promptly spin over and die.
And I was gay.
And I wasn't happy. All I thought about was Shayne. I wandered home that day in a daze, oblivious to whatever evil machinations Kelly had for me. I was in love and it was with a guy. And I was gay. Things were not going according to the plan.
After that all I went to school for was to see Shayne, My entire year could be summed up in the various body parts I saw of Shayne and the various reactions my body made to them. I was always in Shayne’s group, I was always on his team in class. I did whatever I could in the name of Team Shayne, even though we only had two conversations.
The first was one of the few times Kelly had caught me out during PE which fell on his open lunch period. The temptation of doing me bodily harm in front of a live auidence of a PE class was jut too much for him. Waiting for the coach to vanish as he always did around this time he made his way towards me, the worst of humanity’s tortures on the tip of his tongue. I never knew what he had planned but I do know Shayne’s, Hey Ayers what’s your damage now ?, caused me to spin around in time to escape injury. Now Kelly was a solid boy, but he wasn’t my Shayne. My Shayne was tall, strong and carved like a Greek god. As he strode towards him I could see the sunlight beam around him, the march of some kind of manly opera playing behind him. Kelly looked like he wanted to bolt but he had realized the same thing I did when faced from running from a superior foe.
He was going to catch you anyway, so why die tired ?
What’s your malfunction, he started grabbing him by the shirt with one hand, holding a basketball palm side up in the other. It was obvious the basketball was at some point in this conversation going to be used as punctuation, most likely a period on Kelly’s face. I was far from the only person Kelly had tortured during the year so the chance to see him dealt a little humble pie brought the freaks and nerds out like…well like nerds to a bully beating.
W-what are you talking about, Kelly rattled off, looking around the crowd as if one of us was going to defend him. The fact that he thought there was someone still capable of not wishing bodily harm on him was insane.
You go around being an asshole, what the fuck he do to you, and Shayne nodded towards me.
He actually nodded at me. I was somewhere between passing out and becoming a real man if you catch my drift. Up to this point in our torrid love affair Shayne hadn’t even acknowledged me in any way, shape or form if you discount the one telepathic smile he gave me the first day which of course meant we were soul mates destined to be together.
It was a hell of a smile, trust me.
He’s a freak, Kelly said with undiluted rage and once again I felt the pit of my stomach fall. My common sense came back to me right about then and I understood, this wasn’t a good thing. In fact this was a very, very bad thing. He blamed this on me and unless Shayne killed him right here and now….I was going to have to pay for every word said right now. He’s a freak and everyone knows it. Why the hell would you care ?
It was a fair question. One I thought I knew the answer to. Of course he was in love with me also. He was taken by my collection of trapper folders, still in mint condition and with our one meaningful look he had fallen in love as well. So of course he was coming to my defense. He couldn't help himself, after all we are all just prisoners here of our own heart. Love was our master and we could do nothing but do its bidding. Shayne and I were objects of fate thrown together to stand against the tyranny of a world devoid of everything pure. We were two of the same kind. He HAD to care.
I don’t give a damn, I just think it’s a little childish to pick on a nerd to make yourself seem cooler than you are, Shayne said, fists clenched at his sides.
Wow that didn’t sound like my answer at all.
I know it couldn’t sound like my answer as my answer wouldn’t have garnered the bursts of laughter than seemed to pour in around me as the assembled crowd went wild in hilarity. I was sure it wasn’t like my answer as I didn’t refer to myself as a nerd in it and the final clue was his follow remark to Kelly before walking away.
Look Kelly, you think ripping on the weird kid makes you a bigger man then go for it, he said as he gestured towards me, Go ahead and do it while we all watch and see how cool you are.
Kelly said something back and Shayne responded but I never did catch the rest of the conversation. All I got were some weird noises that sounded more like the Peanuts teacher than real language. I might have walked away, I might have stood there in shock, I might still be standing there right now, I couldn’t rightfully tell you. All I knew was that Shayne Michael Fuller wasn’t in love with me and I was the weird nerd kid.
In the end, the plan sucked and I spent the rest of the year thinking about high school and how things could be. I thought about what I had done wrong and where the plan had failed me. By the end of the month I had ceased to care about junior high school, since I was only going to be here another few months it didn’t matter to me. I always looked at Shayne as my lost love, though the last conversation I had with him was the last day of school where he asked me to sneak in some cans of shaving cream in my bag,
He didn’t even know my name.
By the time summer rolled around I knew what I had done wrong and had formulated a new plan.
A better plan.
A plan full of startling sophistication and cunning.
This time I knew better and knew what I had to do.
This time it would be different.
No one knew me
Tears for Fears
I had a plan.
It was a plan of startling cunning and sophistication. The plan had turns and shadows that most people might have missed, but I knew better. I was prepared, I was forewarned.
I had a plan.
Now try to remember I was 13 at the time, inches away from that strange but wonderful time of hormones we all go through. I knew that I was perhaps months away from having my judgement completely screwed by puberty, but I wasn’t that worried. In my time I had found little use in being a child, I was never carefree or spastic. I didn’t find much humor in fart jokes and I didn’t find any joke that much practical. I didn’t understand other kids and the more I was with them the less I wanted to. I never took to being a kid and never felt like I missed out on anything. So in my head I had already felt that being a teenager was equally a waste of my time as well. I wasn’t going to get moody and withdrawn just to obsess over some silly little thing that in the end would turn out to be something I blew out of proportion. I wasn’t going to find myself stumbling over girls with a stupid look on my face as I randomly grabbed for words in my head. I wasn't going to stand there shuffling my feet as my voice cracked and wished the ground would swallow me up whole. No chance on that. I was going to just skip past that whole part and move straight to adult. Adults seemed cool. They had cars, jobs, places to live and friends that didn’t see too intrusive. Adult looked like a good place to hang my hat if not just outright retire. And if not adult mildly grown up would work cause lord knew, kids were nuts. So with all this in mind I had made a plan.
A plan of great cunning and sophistication in case you forgot.
I shared my plan with no one. I was my own confidant. My grandparents were clueless to my true designs that summer as I took my bike and surveyed the town and all its belongings. I knew that any war was won and lost on the battlefield in which it was fought, so I was making sure I was going to know this terran. I pedaled my way down the main street of the town, aptly named First street. I moved past the huge fountain marking the center of the town, the small, almost abandoned looking movie theater whose only speciality seemed to be showing 6 month old movies. I saw the strange no windowed adult book store that seemed oddly placed two doors down from the video arcade that seemed perpetually filled with swarms and swarms of kids every day. I found all of this as I prepared myself for the end of this season and the beginning of another.
As the days of endless sun and carelessness drew to a close I was filled with a great feeling of anticipation of what was next. I knew I was the only junior high student that was looking forward to the new school year and I damned well knew I was the only one who had a plan. I watched these kids, saw how they interacted with each, how they laughed, hung out, how they dressed, everything. I just watched and recorded. They had no idea but I was already preparing my next life.
My grandparents, newly broke from paying off my mother, didn’t have a ton of money for things like school clothes and such, but since I hadn’t stayed in the same school for over a year since I was 6 I wasn’t too clear on how important personal appearance was. But since I was an intelligent person and could grasp the simple fact that how someone looks is rarely an indication of their inner worth, I was sure that the other teenagers would get that as well. Perhaps they would see my lack of wardrobe as a sign, an indication of my plight and even bring me newfound friends in search of someone to help.
Makes you cringe at what my estimation of cunning and sophisticated was doesn’t it ?
With what little money I had I instead bought school supplies. My thought was if I couldn’t be well dressed, I would be well prepared and liked for that. I went after the shiniest, newest school supplies I could find. I bought a brand new, bright red Trapper Keeper. Which was basically a thee ring binder that holds folders. A folder that holds other folders. But in the 80’s trust me, it was HUGE. There was only one color for the main trapper but the folders….well the folders was where you could go all out.
They had three whole colors, red, blue and green. Which was a step up from those vaugely orange things with odd drawings of what someone in 1950 must have thought high school was like. Guys with lettermen jackets and weird basketball players. Frankly those folders creeped me the hell out so I was happy to have the sleek and modern looking trapper folders. Since I had folders of three different colors I had to have pens of the same color picked out for each class. Math was blue, English green, Social Studies Red. I searched the office supply isles of many a store to find pens just the right shade so that they would compliment my folders perfectly. I purchased a pencil box that had a built in ruler that slid out from its lid. I put glue, scissors and various other school sundries inside. I had a packet of graph paper and another box full of such useful items like a mathematical compass and another pair of scissors. I was fully stocked. I put all of this in a blue canvas duffel bag roughly the size of Kansas. In it I put ever more improbable things such as a flashlight, a can of sardines and a hand held video game.
It might be possible that I did not understand the definition of the words cunning and sophistication when I was 13.
All of this I gathered together in my bag that I named….Bag. It’s important to note that the bag had a name, even if at the time I was the only one who knew it. It was important to me because as far as I was concerned the only thing on my side was Bag so I made sure he had every conceivable thing that may aid me in the coming year.
In the end it wasn’t Bag that failed me. As always it was simple human nature.
My plan had two points, each as important as the other. A deadly approach that was almost guaranteed a quick and decisive victory, the first in a series of conquests I was planning. Mastering junior high school was the start, followed by walking across a room without my head down and being able to sit alone in my room and not obsess over every little sound outside my door being next on my list. This was important, it was my first stage, My booster rocket, my first victory that would undoubtedly gain me a ton of friends that would follow me into high school and ensure the next 5 years of my life would be just like that of every other high school teenager.
I would have a group of friends, we would be quirky but normal. We would all say very funny things and get into a series of escapades that would in the end show us how much we needed each other and how important it was to surround yourself with real friends. We would have a hang out and even have a theme song if we could all agree on one type of music. We would hang out in the lunch room and not go to class very much, instead opting to sit around and be…well cool. I had seen this type of behavior before on television and in the movies, so I was sure that high school was just like it.
It is hard to get across how very wrong I was on that thought.
By the time summer had played its last hand I was sure I knew what teenage life was like. I had done my research and done the leg work. I was sure I knew how this was going to fall down. After all…
I had a plan.
The night before school started I was a small bundle of nervous contradictions. I was hopeful yet terrified. I was anxious yet absolute in my victory. I was exhausted yet could not sleep. I was all things and nothing as I sat there looking up at the darkened ceiling of my room. I heard the freight trains that ran behind the school echo into the night and counted the minutes. The last minutes of my life left. I counted minutes as other people counted sheep and waited…
Waited for the first day of my next life.
I envisioned the next day down to the tiniest detail. I saw the kids watch me, wondering who the new kid was. I saw them, awash in their own nervousness wonder if I was going to be one of the cool kids or one of the other ones. I saw myself, the deciding factor in the school rivalry, the last number needed to end the stalemate of Greasers and Soc’s or whatever gangs they had. I saw myself being welcomed by the gang, knowing my smarts and preparedness would come in handy. I saw all this and more as I drifted off into sleep. I saw it all and was sure my life was going to start tomorrow.
I saw everything but Kelly Ayers.
It took Kelly less than two minutes to peg me as the weakest link and less than 4 minutes to bring me to tears. By 3rd period I was already home in tears with my grandparents trying to deduce exactly when the train went flying off the tracks.
Turned out it was Bag.
Kelly, being the alpha bully he was took one look at my duffel bag, reasoned it was just a purse in disguise and then took it from me and emptied its contents out in the middle of school. Prompting anyone who was passing by at the time to burst into hysterics at the massive amount of junk that had been thrown into it and then brought to school. A few years later when I saw Breakfast Club and Ally Sheedy dumps her purse onto the table I cringed inside. I never knew how much of a crackpot I looked until that moment.
Well of course the name Bag Boy was passed along pretty fast and by 2nd period the contents of Bag had somehow evolved into sexual devices and so on. In 3rd period the story had gotten back to the teacher who asked me to open my bag so she could see what was inside.
Like a 12 year old girl who had her first period in white jeans I ran home so fast.
My grandparents were torn between that I had been attacked or possibly shot someone. When the school called and told them there was an incident they understood, things had gone very, very wrong. I was curled on my bed, knowing that once again I had died and this time there was no one but my own stupid lameness to blame. Though the thought that if she had left me in the same school for more than 4 days I would be better prepared but it didn’t take.
I knew this was my fault and I knew the reason why too. The truth was catching up to me and I was no better than that idiot blond girl who tries to run in heels at getting away from it. I was a freak and nothing was going to change that. No plan, no school supplies nothing was going to alter the fact….I wasn’t going to be one of them. It was at that point I knew I was stuck with myself. There wasn’t a mask large enough or crafted well enough to hide the truth of what I really was. By the time my grandfather came in to try to cheep me up I had resigned myself to the rest of my life to be like this. Always apart and always alone. No matter how many people were around, I was going to be alone.
I am sure my grandfather said some fine things that day. I bet he told me how unfair kids were and that for as long as kids had gone to school there had always been bullies and there have always been kids who get picked on. He probably went on about how there was nothing you could do but put up with it and not let them get you down. How I should go to a teacher he if started again and how things would get better. How things had to get better. How things weren’t always going to be this bad.
I wouldn’t know as I didn’t hear a thing he said.
I was already alone.
The next year passed in about the same manner.
I would get to school and be ignored. I was a marked target and everyone knew it. If I wasn’t attacked before classes then it left a whole day for me to fret like a caffeine addicted cat in a room full of hungry rottweilers. I would lurk from class to class in constant terror that I was going to get hit from behind, a water balloon thrown at me, shaving cream applied all over or just the good old fashioned shove that would send me sprawling all limbs out like the turtle stuck in his shell I was. And even if I had been hit during the day, there was nothing that said I wasn’t going to get hit after classes. The second the bell rang it was a mad dash down the quarter block to my grandparents place. Each night I had a whole eight hours to dream about the inevitable fact it was going to happen all over again. IN fact the only thing that kept me from diving into traffic or jumping the next boxcar to anywhere but here was 4th period.
4th period was PE and PE meant Shayne.
Before we go on you have to understand, it didn't used to be this way.
Before there was gay, but it was over somewhere else. No one ever saw gay up close, it was always someone’s friend or someone’s nephew. But never face to face, never living and breathing gay. It was like if I said there was a fire in Outer Mongolia or a plane crash in the Sudan, you'd know what I was talking about but odds are you've never seen it with your own eyes. Real gay was always over there. Growing up gay people weren't even gay. Paul Lynn on Bewitched was colorful, never gay. Jim J Bullock on Too Close for Comfort was spastic, but never gay. The Village People were...no they were gay and that was the problem. The only gay you ever saw was that gay.
It was a Mr. Roper with his eyelashes batting and his wrist limp, it was someone dressed up in woman’s clothing singing some god awful love song. It was never just someone who was gay and that was it. It was always a larger than life character. A stereotype that defined all others. No one ever saw real gay, it was always that gay. Before Queer as Folk, The L Word and The Real World, the closest we got to a gay character was that guy from Melrose Place. You know the one who never had a boyfriend, never mentioned his sexuality but nonetheless got beaten up like a three-day drunk's wife every season. So if gay was always over there, it was never here.
I always knew I was different, most gay guys know they are different growing up, but I never thought I was gay. Not until Shayne.
I remember I wanted a 12" Luke Skywalker figure when I was 7. Now this was the figure that was roughly the size of a Barbie with a lightsaber and that cool rope thing on his belt so when he swung across that thing in the Death Star. I wanted it more than any other toy I had gotten to date. This thing was tall, movable and above all else...tall. It was the coolest and way better than The Six Million Dollar man who had to have like 85% of his body burned off in a rocket accident before he got super powers so you always knew, Steve wasn't the guy who wished you were when you grew up. Luke was way cool. he was blond, cute, whiney and had a special destiny waiting for him right outside his door. In fact he didn't even need to go do something to get the cool sword thing, it was given to him at sight. Talk about the guy you wanted to be.
My grandfather bring an old school male did not understand that desire at all. He was the never crying, never smiling, depression era, put your money under your mattress before a bank and never trust a Republican type of guy. He didn't get me and he knew it. He knew I was smart, he knew that I could read and he knew at a very young age, I was moving past him in gathered intelligence. My grandfather would always be smarter than I would, but he never got past the 4th grade and he was catching on that I was going to break that record. So my request for the ultra cool Luke Skywalker came in the middle of his growing anxiety that I was soon going to be discussing things he had no idea ofSince the position of dad had never been filled he had taken that place in my life as the masculine role model in charge. So when I said I wanted an ultra cool Luke Skywalker action figure with swinging action. All he heard was..
I wanted a doll.
Now of course it could be argued that Luke was in fact a doll, but since I was a boy he was an action figure in the same vein of GI Joe and his action kung fu grip. No one asked what GI Joe did on leave. No one bothered to get background information on Shipwreck and his off-hours activity. For all we knew GI Joe had a liberal Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, so the mega butch figures were in fact nancy dolls that were spreading the gay vibe everywhere they went. No one ever asked that. But here my grandfather was asking questions about Luke. And that was uncool for one very real fact.
Luke was a Jedi.
We knew Luke was a straight shooter, I mean he was so hard up he kissed his own sister. And yeah, looking back there was some tension between him and Han and even though they covered it with their rivalry for Leia, I could see...no. Luke was straight. Period. End of debate. So Luke couldn't be a doll, he was an action figure. And that was that.
That was so not that with my grandfather.
My grandfather knew I was off but he was starting to wonder if it was the wrong kind of off. Most blamed my mom for the damage since I was raised as the last scion of hippie culture. People usually just smiled and thought, what an odd child in that vague and non judgmental way people have with things they can’t identify. But my grandfather, like most men, knew something was off. I wasn't aggressive enough, I didn't compete enough, I was more sensitive that most boys my age and I didn't much like teasing girls. All of this plus male intuition, trust me we do have it, all of it added up to not right and not in a he’s just an odd child so let’s let things slide way. And now I was asking for a doll. Well it was end of the world time.
Words were spoken and then yelled and finally screamed. In the end I was crying, he was livid and I was still Lukeless.
The problem was, I never even thought I was gay. Gay was over there so couldn't be here. I had no problem with gay. My mom had gay friends, none of which I can remember. We lived spitting distance from San Francisco so I have seen gay before. But I knew I wasn't gay. In retrospect I never really thought I was straight, but how many people have THAT conversation ? You think guys sit back in their bed going, Am I straight ? Do I like girls ? What if my mom finds out ? No they never think about it so it never gets brought up. I was the same way, I was simply me and I sure wasn't gay.
And then I was.
I mean it was like that quick.
PE was the first time in my life I ever had to change around other kids. In fact it was the first time I changed in front of anyone. Though as a younger child I had gone nude in the commune I grew up in I had learned when you pout on clothes, you took them off in private. A 8th grade PE locker room was the most unprivate place in the world. For those girls who might not know what one looks like, let me explain. Just like yours except it smelled and no matter how far the lockers were from each other, they were too close. Guys cannot stand to be that close to each other no matter what. The normal comfort zone guys have in relation to other people doubles with guys and triples when they are nude. So the room could have been the size of a football field and still too small. Changing into other clothes meant disrobing in some way in front of other kids and that was worse than anything Kelly Ayers could come up with. I hated it with a passion that I haven’t been able to summon up since. I tried to get around, fake it, wore shorts under my pants, even went as far to fake injury before my gym coach caught on that I might just not be on the level. So finally I was forced to change with other guys.
And wham I was gay.
Ok not that fast, but close. One minute I was throwing my jeans off as quickly as humanly possible and the next I was stunned by a patch of tan thigh and white underwear. His name was Shayne and I was in love. I mean it, love. Not even kidding you how far and how fast I fell. One second, weird kid that was a bit different. Next moment, gay. I somehow got entirely dressed watching him slip on a red pair of gym trunks out of the corner of my eye. And in an insane moment of serendipity he looked at me. Our eyes met and in the most un-junior high school boyish way smiled. And that smile combined with the still after images of his upper thigh made my heart jump out of my chest and then promptly spin over and die.
And I was gay.
And I wasn't happy. All I thought about was Shayne. I wandered home that day in a daze, oblivious to whatever evil machinations Kelly had for me. I was in love and it was with a guy. And I was gay. Things were not going according to the plan.
After that all I went to school for was to see Shayne, My entire year could be summed up in the various body parts I saw of Shayne and the various reactions my body made to them. I was always in Shayne’s group, I was always on his team in class. I did whatever I could in the name of Team Shayne, even though we only had two conversations.
The first was one of the few times Kelly had caught me out during PE which fell on his open lunch period. The temptation of doing me bodily harm in front of a live auidence of a PE class was jut too much for him. Waiting for the coach to vanish as he always did around this time he made his way towards me, the worst of humanity’s tortures on the tip of his tongue. I never knew what he had planned but I do know Shayne’s, Hey Ayers what’s your damage now ?, caused me to spin around in time to escape injury. Now Kelly was a solid boy, but he wasn’t my Shayne. My Shayne was tall, strong and carved like a Greek god. As he strode towards him I could see the sunlight beam around him, the march of some kind of manly opera playing behind him. Kelly looked like he wanted to bolt but he had realized the same thing I did when faced from running from a superior foe.
He was going to catch you anyway, so why die tired ?
What’s your malfunction, he started grabbing him by the shirt with one hand, holding a basketball palm side up in the other. It was obvious the basketball was at some point in this conversation going to be used as punctuation, most likely a period on Kelly’s face. I was far from the only person Kelly had tortured during the year so the chance to see him dealt a little humble pie brought the freaks and nerds out like…well like nerds to a bully beating.
W-what are you talking about, Kelly rattled off, looking around the crowd as if one of us was going to defend him. The fact that he thought there was someone still capable of not wishing bodily harm on him was insane.
You go around being an asshole, what the fuck he do to you, and Shayne nodded towards me.
He actually nodded at me. I was somewhere between passing out and becoming a real man if you catch my drift. Up to this point in our torrid love affair Shayne hadn’t even acknowledged me in any way, shape or form if you discount the one telepathic smile he gave me the first day which of course meant we were soul mates destined to be together.
It was a hell of a smile, trust me.
He’s a freak, Kelly said with undiluted rage and once again I felt the pit of my stomach fall. My common sense came back to me right about then and I understood, this wasn’t a good thing. In fact this was a very, very bad thing. He blamed this on me and unless Shayne killed him right here and now….I was going to have to pay for every word said right now. He’s a freak and everyone knows it. Why the hell would you care ?
It was a fair question. One I thought I knew the answer to. Of course he was in love with me also. He was taken by my collection of trapper folders, still in mint condition and with our one meaningful look he had fallen in love as well. So of course he was coming to my defense. He couldn't help himself, after all we are all just prisoners here of our own heart. Love was our master and we could do nothing but do its bidding. Shayne and I were objects of fate thrown together to stand against the tyranny of a world devoid of everything pure. We were two of the same kind. He HAD to care.
I don’t give a damn, I just think it’s a little childish to pick on a nerd to make yourself seem cooler than you are, Shayne said, fists clenched at his sides.
Wow that didn’t sound like my answer at all.
I know it couldn’t sound like my answer as my answer wouldn’t have garnered the bursts of laughter than seemed to pour in around me as the assembled crowd went wild in hilarity. I was sure it wasn’t like my answer as I didn’t refer to myself as a nerd in it and the final clue was his follow remark to Kelly before walking away.
Look Kelly, you think ripping on the weird kid makes you a bigger man then go for it, he said as he gestured towards me, Go ahead and do it while we all watch and see how cool you are.
Kelly said something back and Shayne responded but I never did catch the rest of the conversation. All I got were some weird noises that sounded more like the Peanuts teacher than real language. I might have walked away, I might have stood there in shock, I might still be standing there right now, I couldn’t rightfully tell you. All I knew was that Shayne Michael Fuller wasn’t in love with me and I was the weird nerd kid.
In the end, the plan sucked and I spent the rest of the year thinking about high school and how things could be. I thought about what I had done wrong and where the plan had failed me. By the end of the month I had ceased to care about junior high school, since I was only going to be here another few months it didn’t matter to me. I always looked at Shayne as my lost love, though the last conversation I had with him was the last day of school where he asked me to sneak in some cans of shaving cream in my bag,
He didn’t even know my name.
By the time summer rolled around I knew what I had done wrong and had formulated a new plan.
A better plan.
A plan full of startling sophistication and cunning.
This time I knew better and knew what I had to do.
This time it would be different.
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