I was always the new kid at school. When you move 3 or 4 times a year almost every year like I did, you never have friends. Always being the new kid means you never know where the restrooms are, or the lunchroom procedure, or who is safe and who must be avoided at all cost.
Always being the JUST TRANSFERRED IN KID made me the kid no one really knew. What I learned from this early miserable life was that the best target of prejudice, the perfect scapegoat is always the person who is not part of your group. No one cares all that much for someone they don’t even know. It’s true. Watch the news tonight. Someone has been killed in a traffic accident, or a suicide bomber just killed 30 people you don’t know and will never know. You may feel sad that there is senseless death in the world, but you aren’t upset the way you would be if it was someone you really knew. When someone needs a target for their fears and rage, if they need to draw attention away from themselves, then it is the new kid who is the perfect kid to make fun of, the most enjoyable one to mock, the perfect pick to pick on.
At home I was under no illusions about who I was – I was the inferior child. I was referred to as idiot, knot-head, stup-o. At home I was being told to “straighten up and fly right.” I never understood the second half of that phrase. The straighten up part was a reference to my poor posture, but how was I supposed to “fly right?” I didn’t fly at all. What I knew with absolute certainty is that I was a disappointment. I was a drain on the precious resources of my family. But at school I was a jerk, a dweeb, a loser, stupid, the butt of every joke, and the victim of every bully. For my entire school life I felt totally vulnerable every day. There was a target on my back. There was a kick me sign hanging off the back of my belt, but my victimization in the classroom and halls was nothing compared to the locker room.
In elementary school we had recess and a play ground. For a short period of time you were released from the agony of desks in rows and the pounding that made us all alike. During recess we were free to be who we were and do what we wanted to do. All of that changed in Junior High School. In junior high we had to take those moments of freedom and impose order upon them, we had to set standards, to write and implement rules and then inflict punishment for any and all violations. In junior high PE was mandatory. In PE the coaches made it a rule that everyone without exception must shower naked before getting back into your school clothes and completing the school day. What sort of cruelty was this? Most of us were hugely self-conscious in junior high.
The only way to avoid the nude shower was to forget your gym uniform, so you could not "dress out." Of course, not having your gym clothes earned you a zero for that day. Guess what it was like to bring a report card home with an F in PE. "What is the matter with you?" my father would yell. (It wasn't a question.) "You can't even pass PE?" my father said incredulously.
If you feel like a sitting duck in the hall way, just imagine how much worse it is to have all those strikes against you and then to be naked. Very early in the process I had no pubic hair. I didn’t want anyone to look at me “down there,” but if they did, I didn’t want to be hairless. The PE locker room was the place where my shame, and self doubt was put under a microscope. The other guys compared dicks, lied about sex, and made themselves feel tall by knocking someone else down. I spent a lot of time toppling.
There were five basic groups in most Junior High locker rooms:
1. There is the self-acknowledged studs
2. There is the testosterone fan club
3. There is the shy, and/or clueless virgin
4. There is the decent and self-assured kid, and
5. There is the invisibly visible ones.
I was the one people saw, but not being known was never truly seen. I wasn’t a nerd, but nerds are smart. All I knew about sex was that it was sinful mostly. The stud kids may have had some sexual experience, but probably there was some hyperbole going on as they talked about the tits they have handled, the girls they have scored with, the ones who gave it up slowly, and which ones were slut easy.
I couldn't count myself among the decent kids, because in my head I was not decent at all. Inside, I was a cauldron of burning lust. I was a crucible that turned hopelessness and sexual yearning into the alloy that is “me.” I was not decent. Had I grown up in one place, if I had friends in Junior High that I’d had in Elementary School I would probably have belonged to the testosterone fan club with dual membership with the “clueless virgins” group.
Instead, I was the butt of jokes, the target for practical jokes, the perfect victim for bullies. If you were a loser and needed someone, just one person you could make fun of and feel superior to, I was that kid. “You have a teeny-weeny peeny.” “Suck my dick.” “Jump on this trouser trout.” “You pitiful peckerhead.” “Jerk off!” “Jerk wad.” “Shit head.” “Shit ass.” “Asshole.” “Ass face.” "Homo." "Faggot!"
For most people Junior High is the worse period of their young life. For some of us, the misery of Junior High leaves psychological scars. You can’t see my scars, but I can’t see a photo of myself without focusing on those locker room wounds that will not heal.
No comments:
Post a Comment