When a bully beats you up at school, he usually provokes you with a specious reason for the attack; it almost always involves calling you a fag. But what if it's true? What if it's not? And what if you're too young to know? What's the difference?
Yet many "believe" the bully, possibly because it's easier than 
standing up for the victim. Some of them even join the bullying game. They snub you. Start rumors. Smash in your locker. Steal your lunch from under your desk and toss it around the class while the teacher isn't looking. He's a boring old coot anyhow. Let's have some fun.
When just getting from class to class (don't make eye contact) without being ridiculed (don't listen) or pushed around (pretend it's not happening) became impossible (go home and beat up the furniture), I tried to enlist grown-ups to help defend me. You can imagine how well that worked. The father of the bully who'd started the whole mess stonewalled the Vice Principal during an awkward conference with my parents: "There's nothing wrong here." (Denial.) "I don't see a problem." (Cuz I kick his ass at home – that's how he learned to do it at school.)
Boys will be boys, right?
Unless you're a faggot. Then you're … something else. Kind of non-human. Kind of without rights. Kind of like beat-up furniture. Totally uncool.
Real-life evil tends to be more banal than the Biblical version, the James Bond villain version, or even the suicide terrorist version. It doesn’t take a war to make people’s lives hell, especially a sensitive and impressionable twelve-year-old's.
I was a happy child who abhorred violence. No one ever told me to be a pacifist. It just made sense not to hit others. Good boys didn't do that. Dad never kicked my ass, but neither did he teach me how to fight, or explain that someday I might have to defend myself. So my being victimized for no good reason was a surprising and uncomfortable dilemma for all concerned. How uncool.
So let's examine playground politics, which is where kids begin to practice the politics of grown-ups. If the victim points fingers, does that mean the victim is crying wolf? Accusing the no-longer-innocent bystanders of a conspiracy? It's not cool to be uncool: Playground Rule #1. Also Liberal Rule #1. Yet liberals typically adore hysterical conspiracy theories, in which there is always a bully. Usually he's a James Bond villain. Mr. Big Oil, for instance. How hypocritical.
The only thing that worked, even a little, was to unleash my pent-up fury on an unsuspecting bully who was yet again blocking my path one morning before eighth-grade classes. Not the original bully, but one who wasn't quite as evil, some perennial loser who'd been kicked out of my Boy Scout troop for bad behavior. After a year and a half of routine abuse, I had finally had enough. It wasn't a conscious decision; I just found myself punching him back with all the rage, sorrow, and hatred that this fucked-up school had infected me with. I was not going to lose this time. So much for pacifism.
Once it became clear that I was winning the fight, suddenly I became "cool." Kids were cheering me on. But then I stopped it. A sharp feeling pierced me; it was roughly equal parts mercy, self-consciousness at being observed, self-disgust, and a sudden loathing and horror of humanity. In any case, totally uncool. And the crowd's howls of disapproval were chilling. I ran away, hid behind the P.E. building, and cried for an hour — not for myself, but for how lost we all were. How uncool.
Yet three days later, the bully approached me and apologized. That was a first. Lesson learned at last: If you're a punching bag, punch back. You'll be sore later anyway, so why be a sore loser?
Once you stop ignoring bullies, you can never really go back, though it can take years to stop smelling like a victim. I remember in college, in second semester acting class, the teacher gave us an exercise: to walk 
at random through the large black room and make eye contact with every other student we passed. After a few minutes, the instructor told all us kids to silently pick one person to gang up on. Quickly I was pushed around the black box by the collective glare.
But, hey, presence is what it takes to make a star, right? And attaining icon status usually entails starting out as an iconoclast. Playground politics 
never really change. Queers are cast out because we make others uncomfortably aware of their tenuous political condition through our iconoclastic presence. This doesn't mean we freaks won't be back later in life to take away their lunch money, once we're cool. Hey, we can even charge their kids admission to watch our bully pulpit antics. Queer guys for straight eyes. How cool is that?
We also tend to magnify any doubts they may have about their own identity. How uncool. Yet haven't we been kind to those who have claimed to be straight — even those who lashed out at us for what they refused to see as a mirror? That's icon tact.
Maybe this was the problem all along, then. Maybe, back in seventh grade, I held eye contact just a moment too long with that very first bully, and it all came tumbling down to this iconoclastic rap.
"You're too trusting," Mom used to tell me. "You care too much about others."
Or not. Maybe I'm too cool for that now. What's the difference?
So, hmm, stardom. I think I'll start my own journal for assault-victim outcasts. I've published magazines before. I'm sure I can find top writers who've been assaulted. The two are often inseparable. It's All For a Good Cause. They'll probably even work for free. Altruist suckers.
Bully-bashed assault victims, now with their own successful journal, appear on all the usual sob-story talk shows, run their own website with their own line of awareness-raising T-shirts and bumper-stickers. Coffee-mugs. Lip-gloss. Trendy. Cruelty-free. Or not. What's the difference? As long as it's cool.
Billboards. Celebrity commercial spots. Everyone waving their arms about "saving the kids," yet nothing changes back at the schoolyard. Hmm, pity, that. Sniff. Oh, well, what's the difference? As long as I get my cut. Liberal suckers.
Political correctness never packs a punch like pure and unadulterated evil. Except when it is, in fact, evil itself. Which happens often enough. Really, though, what's the difference?
Life's packed with surprises. Sometimes the ugly queer duck turns into a beautiful gay swan. Sometimes fairy tales do come true and the two Princes live Happily Ever After.
Me and mine live in Hawaii now.
I expect any day now to overcome my stale and irrelevant white liberal guilt about not picking up hitchhikers here on the Island. (Don't make eye contact.) Pack of losers who can't maintain a working car on an island where one is indispensable. Dangerous psychos. Drunks and druggies. So what if some of them are not — what if they're just romantic
young kids, hitching their way around the globe, out to experience life firsthand instead of through a TV or computer screen? Oh, look, they're caught in the sudden downpour. Hmm, pity, that. Sniff. Can't save the world, now, can we. (Switch on wipers, turn on air conditioning, roar on past. Pretend it's not happening.)
At the point when I've shrugged off that last twinge of self-loathing and moral discomfort, I expect to be electable to public office. (Lack of doubt is effective with the public. In other words, cool. Suckers.)
My favorite definition of "politics" goes like this:
Poli – from the Latin poly, meaning "many"
tics – from ticks; those tiny, blood-sucking, infectious parasites
Politicians routinely lie, cheat, and steal from the polity. They can't help themselves; after all, "tics" are also repetitive, involuntary movements.
In other words, most politicians started out as bullies. A few of the truly evil ones might even be victims with misplaced rage, methinks. So, hmm, stardom. Icon status. Revenge will be sweet. Kid pro quo, baby.
Now, gentle reader, which version of the Golden Rule should apply when I'm elected mayor? Law and the Prophets or Law of the Profits?
What's the difference?
Wishing you a beautiful day,
Bill Brent
[this page last updated: 2007.06.02, 5:45 a.m. Hawaii time]
LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $199 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!
| |
40 / 199 (20.2%) |
This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution within 24 hours.
All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.
The images in this particular blog post came from varied sources and are © their respective owners. If you are an owner, artist, photographer, or subject of any of these images, and don't want them displayed on this blog, please contact me at EmaiBillBrent AT gmail DOT com.
Comments