Fictions of my mind; snippets, vignettes, and other bite-sized morsels and musings. Perhaps you'll spy someone you can relate to here?
Showing posts with label school homophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school homophobia. Show all posts
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Sticky Floors Worse than A Movie Theatre's
Setting: A major unholy chain store for crappy retail schlock
in the fair-to-middling sized hole-in-the-wall (No pun intended!)
town of Irredeemable, South Carolina.The Date: Voting Day for Republican Primaries (not that there's
any significance to that!)
The Time: Lunch time! And all good little Christian parodies of
real men are washing their hot and horny little hands like the
barn's afire; OCD harsh scrubbings and self-flagellation aplenty.
Meanwhile, in the Men's room.....
Ricky sings to himself while he fumbles with his tiny pecker, fervently
working it free of the chastity belt he had modified for himself. Too
many damned cute interns to take chances. What are they feeding
those young mid-western boys these days? He sings, not for joy
of touching the withered and neglected member, but because he has
to distract himself whilst physically acknowledging he has one.
Don't want to sin and notice genitalia!
Ricky is at once relieved by the swishing sound of the men's room
door, and also aggravated that he may have to work hard at keeping
his composure. These bitter-sweet moments were what he lived for,
and dreaded.
Once he turned slightly to catch a glimpse of his acquaintance,
Mitty, he was actually disappointed. No school boys today, he
thought, dismissing the aged gentleman. In truth, Mitty looked
and acted far younger than he truly was, born eons ago for the
plow and hearth crowd he was part of, sheer desperation feigning
his youthful zeal. Funny enough, this was in direct contrast to
Ricky, who looked far older than his Micky Mouse Club
childishness and immaturity, who sought to maintain the illusion of
decorum and stability.
Methuselah and Peter Pan, coming together to shake their bitter,
useless pickles. Avoiding their own, while hoping to control all others.
Mitty pretended not to notice Ricky was even standing next to him
now; children are to be neither seen nor heard, and his power play was
in full swing. He tweezered out his Vienna sausage and thought long and
hard about the lean young men his boys had become.
Mitty is feeling his oats, today, and flips a coin in his head, deciding
to take the low road. Familiar territory. "Lovely sweater vest," he
lays out to Ricky in a snarky huff.
Ricky is not too quick or too adept, but his angry inner child,
longing for reconciliation with his absent Daddy (whom Mitty
certainly reminds him of,) has him blurt out a schoolyard retort
of "What are you doing here? Stocking up on your Crisco hair
supplies?"
He's clearly vexed while stoic Mitty just keeps that stiff upper
lip clench in play, hoping eventually someone will be impressed
by it and think him a badass. He pictures Heaven in his mind, as
he often does when he plays with himself. He sees himself in the
throne at the top of the clouds, reshaping the environs in his image.
Both men fight their carnal urges to at least look over and size up
their competition. But fear wins out. Fear that if they initiate such
a spectacle, the other will follow suit, and their secret will be out,
definitely in the wrong hands. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
There is a long glassy stare of insolence that passes between the
two pompous, posturing, pedantic boys-in-men's-bodies....this
octogenarian and this fetus, so far apart, and yet...so much in common?
That soulful discomfort....that detachedness...the slow-wittedness....
the earnestly pleading lost boys who cannot get answers.
In a moment of mad giving in to all that they suppress daily, they
are mauled by their passions, knowing now that they were two sides
of the same coin. Self-hating lapsed into reasoned denial.
"We both have everything to lose! It's the perfect outlet!" they
both thought in unison.
Sure, it wasn't cabana boys, hustlers, interns, or their own barely
legal nubile flesh they were plundering on the cold, dirty, tile floor,
but it would do. After all, that's what fantasy is for. Robotic,
shame-filled, they groped and fudged around until they had both
squirted forth their worthlessness. They quickly made themselves
back into their normally disheveled forms and began their charade
anew.
"Ahem! Well, these voters are sure to back me and my solid core
values. God has made a plan for my Presidency, Ricky. I hope you
don't have too much invested in winning." Mitty's caricature of a
caricature was nauseatingly obvious, but so long as he never ceased
the ruse, could anyone actually expose it?
"These aren't New Englanders here, Mitty. We may have a surprise
or two in store. Don't get ahead of yourself!" charged the little
cheerleader, surprising himself with his gusto even as he prepared
which Bible verse he would recite for the Southern crowd.
"Maybe, if you're a good boy," Mitty said with a lecherous wink,
"I'll save a special spot in my cabinet for you!" With that gauntlet
thrown, Mitty tightened his tie noose-like around his throat and
stomped out of the latrines, enough of an angry air to wilt flowers
and scare children.
Meekly, Ricky splashed water on his face and contritely gave
himself affirmations in the mirror, puffy-eyed and fearful. He sighed
mightily and scurried behind his errant Papa, just as the janitor was
sauntering in for the mid-day cleaning.
He wondered to himself why the floors were always stickiest after
the married men finished their lunchtime constitutions, and figured
that it must just be the glue that holds America together.
**************************************************
Saturday, December 10, 2011
"Tweezers Versus a Telephone Pole" essay
Every beleaguered story mainstay has to have one thing to remain
a relevant and exciting fixture of an adventure series; an adversary.
From as early as I can remember, I was plagued with several foils
in bad standing at any given time. Yes, life counts as an adventure
series.
One particularly dastardly piece of work took the form of Mrs. Ellen
Witkowski, a New England transplant to sunny Florida where she
took up teaching at a prestigious all-boys private school, the Academy
of the Holy Names.
Ellen, an old school theatrical bitch with a permanent scowl and a
sneer that would shatter glass, was not at all afraid to show her
favoritism among the students. She was an elitist sow who
showered praise and affection on the rich students, and alternately
ignored, penalized, or was contemptuous of the less affluent students
(of which I was one.)
Needless to say, when a woman past her prime resorts to screaming
matches with adolescent boys, it's not pretty. Regularly, she would
make snide remarks about boys' intellect, their lack of pristine clothing,
or their lack of worldly knowledge (You know; significant shit like what
a Cartier is, or what Bergdorf's was...life-saving world events stuff.)
She was a text book snob, a braggart, and a bully.
I dreamed nightly of slapping the taste out of her mouth and beating
her senseless (short fight,) and occasionally forayed into just
what my alibi would be when her body was discovered in a shallow
grave at the dairy farm near our house, the cops scratching heads
as they pondered aloud "What we just cain't figury is why some
uppity Yankee would have been way out here'ins this country side
of the county? Y'all have any ideas about that?" Whoopsies.
We had standoffs on an hourly basis; she knew what buttons to push,
and I kept my insubordination just this side of insurrection...mostly.
It was a moot point, though, because this was the 7th grade, and I
had long since mastered both parents' handwriting style so as to
effectively forge any responses to notes home, progress reports,
disciplinary forms, and the like. She only thought I was scared of her.
(And lest you think I had an ally, when I wasn't being terrorized at
home, they were training me to be a punching bag for others. Both
parents instructing me to avoid trouble, never talk back--even if the
other person was wrong--and to allow my ass to get kicked if it
came to it. My parents looked at me as their Golden Ticket, and
they wanted no problems at this oh-so-important school they had
sacrificed to get me in. No matter the quality of life or the long-term
side-effects; be a doormat so we can have a Presidential son!)
If I were to be bullied or teased in her classroom, she would allow
it to go on and on in interminably. When I finally had my fill and
responded, all Hell broke loose.
(I imagine not much has changed from this incident nearly 30 years
ago to the current bullying problem in schools where a double-standard
invariably permeates.) I was hit and stabbed with pencils at one point
and she laughed, but when I placed gum on The Jew's pants (hey,
that's how stupid 12 year-olds refer to one another--sorry!) it was an
act of unforgivable terrorism. Never mind that he routinely pointed
out that he could buy my entire wardrobe with what he spent on the
average nightly dinner.
I had a hatred for that woman that was dangerous. And one day, the
firestorm. A boy was teasing me on the playground, calling me "Fag."
Now, I knew at the time I was, but I was terrified of anyone else
knowing, so my macho defenses kicked in. I chased and grabbed and
ripped shirt and whooped ass. Then Witkowski came to the window
of her classroom and called for us.
When we came, huffing and puffing, she very belligerently told us we
were both sitting out PE and getting classroom punishment as well.
Andy Boyer lied and said I attacked him unprovoked. She gave her
trademark sneer and said to him disgustedly--as markedly foul a look
as ever I have seen--"I heard what you said to him, and if I was him,
I'd have beaten you for saying such a horrible thing, too." That gut kick
of soulful disrespect from an authority figure. Didn't matter I didn't
respect her; I was so vulnerable on a deep emotional level in regards
to my sexuality and my worth as a human being, this sucker-punched
me. My homophobia was 'justified' for many years by such seemingly
insignificant comments that haunted and lingered.
Yup; that was confirmation. Being gay was the 'worst' thing imaginable.
We continued to go round and round, and I wish I could say I worked
things out or progressed past my hatred of her. or even that I under-
stood her. When she was my homeroom teacher the next year, she
gave all of us personalized posters for our graduation from her class
and the school. Mine was the "Serenity Prayer." You know..."accept
the things I cannot change." It only further enraged me as I saw it as
a slap in the face to the inevitability of corrupt people running things
and injustice prevailing. Maybe, too, it was something more she saw
in me.
But who's to say. My view of her was rather entrenched by the more
prominent experiences. I'm not sure I'd be open to more depth in her
if it were true.
Middle school isn't for sissies, and time has not proven any more forgiving
of my chief foil, WitCowSki, aka The Head Bitch In Charge.
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