When I was living in Chicago circa 2006, I was waiting for a bus one evening after getting off work. I was sitting on the bench, minding my own business doing a Sudoku when I suddenly heard out a voice scream "faggot." I looked up, of course, because by this point I was in my early 30s and had gotten used to the fact that if someone nearby was muttering about faggots or doing mocking swishy movements or whatever other horrible thing, it was pretty safe to assume it was directed at me.
They were probably early 20s, in a convertible. And just as I looked up the light changed and they sped away, laughing at what they'd done. And what they'd done was make a grown man - someone older than them - feel like sh*t about who he was. A guy who had no beef with them, who wouldn't have even known they were there if they hadn't felt entitled to call him a faggot.
This was something that people had done to this man his entire life. It was reversed when he was a young boy - back then it was teachers and parents and other authority figures that made it clear that whatever the problem the world had with this boy, it was that boy's fault and no one else's.
If you wouldn't act like a goddamn sissy, they wouldn't treat you so bad. That man -
I sat at the bus stop, feeling shaken, mad at myself that after three decades of crap like this, it could still cut me to the core when I least expected. And in a city! Of course, I was once called faggot by car full of kids when I was in
San Francisco, so really, what should I have expected? Still, I couldn't even understand what
I could have done to provoked it, because as I said, all I was doing was waiting for a bus and doing a Sudoku.
And then at hit me. I was sitting with my legs crossed. Like a fag. And I knew better. I remember the first time I got taunted for sitting that way circa 1983.
Boys don't sit like that. You're not a boy! I could have prevented that feeling of dehumanization it would take me days to shake, if I'd only remembered not to cross my f*cking legs like a pansy.
I
have had have worked through am working on am aware of how profoundly this stuff has affected my life. I worked through forgiving my parents for not having the tools to understand that it was okay that I wanted to play with dolls, or put a tshirt bun on my head and sing Evita. I forgive the classmates who called me homophobic names from the time I was about 10 until I graduated in high school, including the kids who had me so upset and powerless (who wants to defend the faggot? It was 1991ish after, all) that I would leave the school bus in tears at least three times a week. I was almost
17. I forgive the teachers who saw what was going and ignored it. I forgive the teachers who saw what was going on and encouraged it.
But most of all, I forgive myself. I forgive myself for not having the tools to stand up for myself. I forgive myself for not being able to conceive that someday it actually would be better. I forgive myself for feeling ashamed of even writing about this on this board, because there's still a part of me that feels it's histrionic, that I'm not entitled to the feelings talking about this stuff brings up.
I forgive myself for mocking the other sissy kid in school, if only to get the heat off me for a couple of minutes. I forgive myself for still having to check myself every time I have to speak publicly, remembering years of people laughing every time I opened my mouth.
To misquote Joni Mitchell, "So Many Things I Could Have Done, But F*cking Institutionalized Homophobia Got In My Way."
I know, it's like Paul San Marco without the sexual abuse and the Jewel Box Revue.
Mostly,though, I'm incredulous at how much the world has changed in even twenty years' time. And I remember how there's always someone who has it worse. And I forgive myself for the times when I resent how much it has changed for kids in school now, when all I wanted to do was get through high school with just one day of not hearing myself being attacked or threatened for being someone who performed sexual acts I hadn't even yet performed. Or because I walked funny or talked funny or just wanted to giggle and spin around. Or play the girl's part in the play. I just wish that someone could have told me at 4 or 7 or 14 or 17 that regardless of what anyone told me - even those whose trust and investment in my well-being is supposed to be implicit - that this was not my fault.
Obligatory "I'm a mostly well-adjusted adult now" disclaimer.
Updated On: 2/5/14 at 01:32 AM
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