WHY THE BOYS RUN: ONE INTIMATE ANSWER guest post by @JustinBog
My guest today is writer Justin Bogdanovitch. His writing is seamless, skilled, heartbreaking. I hope you enjoy this powerful piece about his past where he discusses the burden of secrets.
WHY THE BOYS RUN: ONE INTIMATE ANSWER
Justin is Zippy's lapdog
Rachel, I thank you very much for allowing me to be a guest on your blog. This is my first foray into autobiographical writing. Facing down my hidden fears and looking at them with new eyes helps me change bad habits and made me realize that what I was so fearful of in the past is no longer a haunt.
Do gay men, as opposed to straight men, treat women all that differently?
I say, yes? What about when we were younger, playing kickball at recess with little Charity, Amber, Staury, Dee, Jane, and Dionne? I was always picked last with the girls, and didn't mind at all, but how did I treat girls? Women? Very nicely, but if they wanted to really get to know me, I ran away, and kept running away for quite a long time. From my adult vantage point, I can look back to when I was a kid and imagine myself running to beat records, sprinting across fields, down roads, chased by hordes of girls, who will grow up into hordes of women I can't allow to learn my shamed-by-society secret. In my youth this was the case, and thankfully, now, incrementally, it's getting just a bit better.
I was a fast runner. Bullies couldn't catch me either and if they came close I stood up to them (only twice, folks). I won these two physical fights I was baited to be a part of in fifth grade, and we were dragged into the Vice Principal's office. They didn't pick fights with me after that because I fought back.
I come from a family of jocks (tennis player still, and darn frustrating to hit against because of my style of play, or so I hear). I was — and still view myself as — one of the many nerds in our town pack, a four-eyed square. The chasing began with a girl who wanted to kiss me in 3rd-grade (loved to plant kisses on any of the boys). A couple days in a row, she chased me, and if she caught me that would've been my first kiss — she somehow looked past my awkward geek aura. She would eventually end up catching a slow-running somebody in high school and drop out because she got pregnant. I continued to be chased at all the disco-era, Amii Stewart's-Knock On Wood-junior high dances by a friend, a classmate who was nice, but I still felt compelled to run, and then I became the My-Pal-Friday to a wonderful girl in my high school class, and lived vicariously through her exploits. Once in high school, I didn't go to Proms.
None of my classmates, friends, or family members, ever realized I was gay or put it together, not exactly, and I don't go back to reunions after the 5-year reunion where there wasn't anything better to do and, besides, I was stuck in my Ohio town that summer. I finally bought contact lenses and I had filled out from years of running, a stint on the University of Michigan Crew Team, and eventual preparation to compete in triathlons — yes, there are gay jocks, kids.
At the reunion, my junior high pursuer came up to me and said: "I had the biggest crush on you."
And I said: "I know." But in a kind way. I thought: Now, I find it flattering. (I never let her catch me, but treated her and everyone as well-mannered as I could — stood up for anyone, and continue to do so — fight for the underdog.)
All throughout high school, the most disturbing bully, a verbal-abuse bully, would call me a 'faggot' or 'fag', whisper it as an insidious threat (the good thing was that our paths seldom crossed - we were on different college-planning tracks). He approached me at the 5-year reunion, I recognized his presence immediately, and I physically flinched away from him. He saw my reaction and I could guess from his tightened facial expression he was hurting, that what he had done was eating away at him, or had been for some time. He apologized to me during this quiet moment, said he was sorry for being a jerk, short and sweet. I looked him in the eye and said, "Thank you." He left my air space. I was still in the closet at this reunion, and even then, no one knew, except for this nightmare bully figure; somehow, it was obvious to him, but my changed appearance at the reunion made him believe he'd been wrong about his assumption.
It is strange to look back and realize that for half of my life I internalized such a huge secret. In college, the girls continued to pursue me, and, I, to push them away. I kept myself busy, worked two jobs, filled up my days so tightly there wasn't time to romance anyone. See? I have to work. In this era began the onset of AIDS, and, in my senior year of high school, I heard that anyone gay was going to get a mysterious fatal disease and die, that some people were cheering because of this. I was bad; I was gay; I was going to get sick and die — people knew very little. Early on, the experts even called it GRID: Gay Related Immune Deficiency. This threw me into a life a monk would be envious of for a very long time, and definitely throughout my college years. I had another thing, a dark thing, chasing me besides girls. Keep busy. Who had time for girls? Who had time to be gay? Run faster.
I guess I was a good actor. After college graduation, meeting my mate was a little over a year ahead in my future, and I was on a path to write write write away while working low-paying jobs in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and applying for MFA programs in Fiction Writing for a fall 1989 entrance. Secretive, I frequented the one dance club in Ann Arbor that had one gay night a week, going early so I wouldn't have to pay the cover charge, and leaving early because I had to get to work the next morning by 7:30, seldom speaking to anyone in the cigarette smoke-filled space, and never dancing, rarely letting anyone get close enough . . . I slowly came out of my shell, so to speak, met good people, enjoyed my life for the first time in ages and went to a pizza and game night.
My future mate was also there, playing Balderdash.
I was admitted into the Creative Writing programs at Emerson in Boston and Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Both were highly-praised smaller programs, and Emerson, in my mind, only because it was in Boston, was the more prestigious, but I decided on BGSU; it was only a 90-minute drive away from Ann Arbor, and that's where my mate lived. I met him on November 2nd, 1988, pizza night, and from the beginning I told him I was leaving next fall. If he still wanted to pursue me (thankfully, the last person to do so), I was going away, leaving for school, perhaps running away again, and if he wanted to get to know me better, he'd, we would, have to take that into consideration — by this time I was a pro at keeping people at arm's length.
Because I ran away so much, I didn't know how to date anyone either but we stumbled through the first year, breaking down invisible walls. My mate's experiences eerily coincided with my own, both our fathers had the same first name, both worked at Universities, and the socio-economic factors were identical as well. I wondered how many others there were out there exactly like us: plenty, and this made me happier. We talked a lot about long-distance relationships. My parents thought my mate was just a best friend, as did my four sisters and brothers.
I applied to the schools using my middle name: Justin. My parents named us five Bog kids well and they loved the first and middle names equally so when I told them I wanted to be called Justin from that moment on, in my 23rd year, they didn't mind the change. I started with that easy pitch, and then I told them I was gay, following up with a humdinger. They internalized my revelation, showed no real reaction, which was par for the course; my parents were liberal Democrats, and not religious, worried about societal problems. They accepted Chris into the family immediately, but did not fully accept the fact that one of their kids happened to be gay, wrestled with it for a long time, and much later told me that old chestnut: "society thinks it's abnormal" – that created drama is a different, long and twisting story and it was a strange family time for us . . . we got over it and tried to plow new dirt.
There were two family/friends with the name Gregory in my mate's close family circle and I would've been the 3rd, so I applied to grad school as Justin . . . it was such a breath of fresh air to be in a place where no one knew me as Gregory; I felt like a new person, like I had a clean slate, and could finally leave my childhood and college loner behind.
I've now been with my mate over half my life . . . the only person in my life I ever dated, and he was the one who caught me. He and I celebrate our 24th anniversary this coming November, and in our home state of Washington, the Governor recently signed her name to allow same-sex marriages. After such a very long engagement, I hope Kipling, my long coat German shepherd puppy, is ready to be a ring bearer.
Kipling channeling her inner Frodo
Justin Bogdanovitch grew up a voracious reader, movie fanatic, and music audiophile. He began to make up stories of his own, using an old typewriter he found dusting away in the attic.
He graduated with an English Degree at the University of Michigan — with several Creative Writing, Film and Music Appreciation classes — and later from Bowling Green State University with an MFA in Fiction Writing.
Currently residing in the San Juan Islands just north of Seattle, he has the opportunity to focus on his own novels and short stories, while contributing commentary and recommendations in Pop Culture as the Senior Contributor and Editor at In Classic Style .
This year he will release his first eBook short story collection: Sandcastle and Other Stories , and his first eBook novel, a psychological family drama, Wake Me Up .
You should subscribe to Justin's blog A Writer's Life & follow him on Twitter @JustinBog .
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