14-Bigotry's Subtlety
I went on a date with my brother.
He’d moved to California with the rest of us since he was on summer break from college. I non-recall how our outing came about, but I remember the highlight of it came when we stopped on a Newport Beach or Balboa Island side street to join a party that had spilled into a front yard. I loved his nerve, his ease of walking through life as if he belonged there. Somebody delightfully thought we were a couple rather than brother and sister and offered us a drink. He accepted effortlessly, as if he didn’t calculate every move, every thought, every spoken word.
That evening became a dream, a precious memory, one of a handful of togethers. Some may scoff at that sad reality, but I gratefully cherish each one.
Brother didn’t stay long in our new homestead, having tasted college freedom and launched his independence. I remained behind, non-free, dependently codependent—but somehow non-cognizant of the vise grip that kept me shell-bound.
Thus adding a new aware/non-aware duality to my boy/non-boy girl/non-girl nature—I was nothing if not complexly contrary.
It had started in my Chicago-suburb fishbowl. No matter which way I turned, the water was filtered and calm, the gravel never changed, and everyone swam in set patterns, our mutual destiny predetermined, as if a precursor to Lois Lowery’s The Giver. Sameness was lionized and I, being non-same, created discord whenever I was dumb-as-fuck enough to non-pretend, to let my snout poke out and sniff at the current. I was so ready to leave all that conformity, convention, and conservatism behind that when my parents said they’d put off the move until I graduated high school, I said, “Why wait? Let’s go now!”
Ah, California. The sky was bluer, the air lighter, the very ambiance spacey-er. Granted, I still didn’t fit in the boy-girl arena, but I belonged in society at large because so many others were also non-same in their own different ways. If nothing else I could get lost in the variances.
And so I did. Tingling with freedom on SoCal’s freeways, I dumb-as-fuck put my foot on the gas and got my first ever speeding ticket. But where the ticket would have been a source of shame or disdain in my Fishbowl, here it was damn near a rite of passage. “Yeah, that area’s a speed trap. You’ve also gotta watch out for the stretch between…”
Breathing commenced.
Not so much dating.
I did find a group of friends pretty quickly, which seemed amazing since I was a stranger from a distant land crashing into the student body as a senior. Guys, especially, wanted to sit with me at lunch, walk me to my car when I got off suspension, play… teach me how to play chess. My mother put it off to “new blood” syndrome, but none of them asked for a date—they just wanted to hang out.
Thinking back, they might have been the resident group of gays. Huh. Imagine that.
One guy, not of our group, took me on my sole California High School date. I think we had an okay time but, of course, he didn’t ask for a second—I wasn’t the easy lay he’d expected from my physical advertising. But oh, I loved the experience. Not only was he the first Hispanic I’d ever met—quite macho, quite handy, and, fortunately, quite easily dissuaded—but my mother was absatively horrified when he came to the door. Even better, she wasn’t quick enough to hide it behind her gracious mask. I only felt a little guilty about laughing inwardly.
My father laughed right out loud. We had all watched Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the groundbreaking film about Spencer Tracy’s daughter falling in love with Sidney Poitier, and he, like me, was probably recalling Katherine Hepburn’s iconic line. After reciting everything she and Tracy had told their daughter about bigotry, she concluded with, “And when we said it, we did not add, ‘But don’t ever fall in love with a colored man.’”
That mighta been a father-daughter opportunity, but I was too dumb-as-fuck, too visely controlled to take advantage of it, and I suspect he was equally encumbered. Another sad reality, but, on the upside, a golden sliver of together. And the first glimmer that I was more like him than her.
Senior year lasted one quick semester. Thanks to the academic divergences between Fishbowl and Open Spaces, I had more than enough credits to graduate mid-term. My California school gave full credit for everything: mixed chorus, choir, theater, gym—even my two summer tennis failures! Yes!
Even better, I finally had “that teacher,” the one everyone has sooner or later who sees our potential and goes out of their way to encourage us. Mine said, “Once in a great while, I get a student like you, someone with a wonderful imagination who writes so well. I’m so happy I had you in class this semester.” Yes, yes!
The principal had told me they’d hold my diploma so I could walk the stage in May with the rest of the seniors. I was on a life-is-finally-good high with my surprisingly comfortable friends, my English-teacher praise, and my soon-to-be-done-with-schoolness. So when the entire student body attended a rally just before Christmas break and the hep-hep cheerleaders ended the holiday sing-along with a rousing, “Merry Christmas!” I, dumb-as-fuck, stood up and yelled, “And Happy Hanukkah!”
My little group of probably queer friends immediately gathered to hustle me out of the auditorium while boos, pencils, erasers, and other handy projectiles flew in from all directions. The next day, the principal handed me my diploma and wished me well, mumbling something along the lines of, “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry.”
Who knew I was the only Jew in the school? Possibly the district.
I chose to believe that ignoble high-school ending was a one-off incident. I was too naïve, too trusting, or too plain dumb-as-fuck to realize how much my Fishbowl had protected me from life’s rawness.
And that was the point, wasn’t it? Conform to the gravel, the swim patterns, the filtered water and predetermined destiny, and the community-at-large would have my back, even if some individuals don’t understand or like me. None of that would matter. If I would least pretend to swim like the other fish, they would at least pretend to accept me as part of. I woulda-coulda belonged. I woulda-coulda fit in. All I ever had to do was lie, hide, and deny who I was and keep my wrong thinking about the wrong things to myself.
Isn’t that the promise, the almost irresistible click-bait of every deity-based religion, every political affiliation and us-versus-them organization, anywhere, anytime, past, present, and future? The bedrock of nearly all recovery programs, conversion therapies, self-help roadmaps, spiritual paths?
“Just do it our way, and we’ll support and defend you. It’s lonely out there on your own! Why try to ford the stream all by yourself? Join us. Vote how we vote, believe what our book says—what we say our book says. Accept our god, our rationale, our rituals, our ways, and we’ll care of you. We promise. You can trust us. All you have to do is give up those minor, inconsequential little pieces of you that don’t match, the tiny, insignificant non-same bits. That’s all. It’s not so hard. Lots of people do it. Just let us guide you, let us tell you what to think and feel, and everything will be fine.
Excuse me? How can sacrificing my true essence to the greater good of those who want me to not be my authentic self be the best way to heal from the inculcated damage I experienced at those very hands?
I call bullshit. I’ll opt for the freedom of individuality over any so-called “security,” be it based on deity-worship or steeped in philosophy.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? A hellova confident, dynamic stance for a turtle/chameleon to take!
Of course, it has its downsides. For one thing, I have to reaffirm it nearly every day or my fears will shatter it like ramen at the bottom of a grocery bag. For another thing, it affords me absatively no protection whatsoever from any way, shape, or form of reality.
I needed an excuse to not attend a CalState University after receiving an “Accepted with Honors” letter I had hoped would be a flat-out rejection. What could I do that would only take six months, a year max, so I could nail an occupation and move out of my mother’s house once and for all?
Nursing! Of course! Because I’d never had the slightest interest in science and notoriously eked through my one-and-only high-school requirement with a D! What a perfect choice!
I spoke to the admissions officer of a highly touted, or at least advertised, practical nursing school. She assured me that yes, there was still time to register for the program, and yes, I could finish it in a single year. Yes-yes-yes! One more year and I’d be done-done-done with school.
When my mother and I got to her office, the admissions office waved us into side-by-side chairs without looking up and continued writing whatever she was writing. Finally, she raised her face with a smile. I saw her eyes fixate on the Star of David around my neck. Without missing a beat, she intoned, “I’m sorry, there’s been some mistake. We have no openings in our program at this time. Or in the foreseeable future. You might want to try another school. Thank you for coming in.” And she waved her dismissal.
Oy! Where’s a fishbowl when you really need one?