June 2, 2010
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Chapter 2.
Here’s the first chapter if you haven’t read that: http://scornedstandingup.tumblr.com/post/347566102/a-chapter-from-my-book
2.
That eye-opening experience may not have really affected my 10 year-old self back then in 1996. To be honest I’m sure either making my little league team or meeting President William Jefferson Clinton in Boston could’ve over shadowed my pre-occupied psyche. And to be really honest making my little league team (League champions, ahem, ahem.) surpassed the meeting of one the greatest minds our country has seen, or at least the horniest. Either way it should be an important moment. Right? I was ten! Not only was I ten, but I didn’t know what democracy actually was let alone who Bill was.
He was very charming though, he complimented me on my tie, and said I must have a great arm if I play shortstop. And he was right!
To the matter at hand here, my “fag-ness.” But homosexuality made a huge stomp on my door the next year. My uncle and aunt got a divorce. Not only did they get a divorce, but they got a divorce because my aunt realized she was gay. A lesbian. I did not know what a lesbian was. My mom told me it meant she liked other women. I said, “Like when guys like other guys? Like being gay?” She told me Aunt Mary was gay. I didn’t get it. Aunt Mary is a man? How could this be? Does that make Uncle John gay? Then what exactly is a lesbian? If Aunt Mary is a man, and she likes other women doesn’t that make her, normal? No Aunt Mary is a women, and she likes other women, my mother assures me. And she pointed a word out to me, the word “normal.”
My world got flipped upside down. I started getting flashbacks of the fake zoo. Being called something else, than just who you are? My existential meltdown occurred. I discovered labels, and self identity!
I am Shaun O’Neill Connolly.
I live in Worcester, MA.
My address is 2 Lansing Ave. 01605.
I play sports.
I like watching Rugrats and Doug.
I am a boy.
I am in the 5th grade.
Those things don’t define me. Who am I? I’m a boy; that defines me. There were other ways to define you? Why do I need to? Will I exist if I don’t define myself? Or will I just slip away? Wait! I am normal? Is that the word? I don’t like boys. I am normal. Right?
I had to go to the smartest person I knew: my Dad. And after some debate on the kind of normal I was looking for, my dad decided I was “normal.” But he wanted me to know that it wasn’t really polite for me to say it that way. I was so dumbfounded. So I am normal, but I can’t say that? He told me that it means I am just in the majority. I could tell he started to get uncomfortable about this conversation. And I don’t think it was that he was uncomfortable with homosexuality, a word I’d learn soon. But it was more that he was so unprepared to be speaking to his 11 year-old son about this.
“You’re father, for being such a square, is pretty hip,” exclaimed one of his brothers-in-law to me, after a night of drinking with him. And I think that sums him up. He’s an intellectual from rural Massachusetts. And he gets it, without knowing how or why he gets it. So he was absolutely open and game to be talking about this topic, it’s just he wasn’t prepared to be talking to me about this. He then took a breath and said for intensive purposes, I was “straight.” Not “normal.” He explained to me that “normal” meant that Aunt Mary was irregular, improper and even wrong. I did not think Aunt Mary was any of things. Aunt Mary was funny, happy, sweet, and caring. There is no way she wasn’t normal.
And that’s when I figured out homosexuality at its simplest form. Guys who like guys are gay. Girls who like girls are lesbians. And they are people just like you and me. They just fall in love with people I wouldn’t fall in love with. This was great! My Uncle John was devastated, and I saw it in his face. But it was for the better, because Aunt Mary knows she can’t love him and she would be lying to him otherwise. Their lives are going to be better. I was happy for both of them in a way. I didn’t realize the negative and hateful connotations that went along with homosexuality, yet. As far as I saw it I just discovered a whole new world and it was smack in front of me. In my eyes, I was Indiana Jones in the world of love. I walked with John Williams’ score.
Then came middle school though; a hateful, whining, angst-ridden discovery of boobs, freedom and algebra. The first day of school visions of caged animals and sounds of female 10 year-old laughter came flushing back when I heard an eighth-grader call someone a “faggot.” Just those first three letters made me break a sweat. There I was standing in high heels. It wasn’t even directed at me. Just that first syllable shook my eardrums. I ran.
As the weeks went on and I heard the word more, and my colleagues on the basketball team were using it and my homeroom friends were using it and my Catholic Church peers were using it and everyone was using it and I had no idea what it truly meant. I decided to casually call someone it. And see what kind of reaction I got.
I would like to preface this attempt with an update on my “ability” with the ladies. I was still a friend. I was just another one of the girls. I was the silly, strangely funny kid who could play basketball. The jocks tolerated me cause I passed the ball. The girls thought I was cute, but not the kind I wanted. The popular kids looked the other, per usual. And my friends laughed with me. I told a girl she liked me, she told me we were dating, I asked for her number and she told me her mom would kill me if I called her. We broke up. I then asked another out for the CYC winter dance. She told me she didn’t like me and she liked another boy. I then became the middleman for my friend and she got what she wanted and I got a nice big, hug. Was I too nice? Was I too small? Was I not good-looking? Did I smell? I just started using deodorant. It could’ve been my overbite. Or was I too outgoing? I couldn’t figure it out. But apparently everyone else had already figured.
We were in class. Global Studies. We were doing group work. I and three others were talking about whether Iraq was a threat or not. (The verdict was no, ha!.) We weren’t really, but that was the assignment. One of the kids my group said something about Saddam Hussein’s mustache and I decided to pounce on the situation, this was the time to experiment. I could finally see what the word “fag” was all about. I wasn’t nervous. I knew this was a failure mission. I was hoping that when I said it, the group would stare at me strangely and correct me and make fun of me. So then I would know what it was about. And it would look like an accident, not admitting ignorance. Fool proof. So I called him a “fag.” And all three passed the scoliosis check, their backs straightened. They all looked like they were smacked, and a vacuum suck the air out of their lungs. Uncomfortable was the mood, not a sound was made, and I just sat there with this goofy grin in anxious anticipation. I broke the silence, “Right?”
“No, Shaun,” one of them said.
“Oh I used it wrong, right?” I replied.
“No, we just thought…”
“What that Hussein’s mustache is cool, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Well, you’re not, you know?”
“What?”
“Gay?”
My life came to a halt. My mind was a NASCAR vehicle and my identity was Dale Earnhardt. I now understood why people buckled their seatbelts. I went flying through life’s windshield. The clean up crew came to scrape me off the pavement but the wayfaring fan, these kids, were still cheering because the collision was so catastrophic. Clueless to feeling, the both of us moved on. I was paralyzed, they were slightly crazed after the hit. That word I heard, that was a negative word, I knew that. But, it was negative towards gay people, toward my aunt’s friends. Towards perfectly awesome people, I realized this was the granddaddy of the gay insults. This was the gay “nigger.” I was shocked that I used it and that people thought I was one.
I was not gay. I knew that. I masturbated to scrambled porn on my parent’s computer that weekend. I faked sick. After class I called my mom and went home. I felt guilty. Why was I so offended that people thought I was gay? My worldview was already to the effect that it didn’t matter if you were gay. There are people I love that are gay. Being gay isn’t bad. Being a “fag” is offensive. I was offended. But I wasn’t gay, so how could I be offended? This twisted my soul. It was wringing my self-respect. Was I actually gay?
I couldn’t. I just masturbated to scrambled porn that weekend. I was set. I decided to test anyways. My mom dropped me off and kissed my head and was worried. I was worried too. No one was home. I used our dial-up Internet, AOL. My dad had mail, AOL told me so. I hadn’t used the Internet for masturbation yet. I never had the opportunity to be alone. My life changed forever.
You could just search “boobs,” or “giant boobs,” or “hot girls,” or even “bikini.” They all showed me pictures and sites with more pictures of girls and boobs, a truly boner-ific, overwhelming availability. I had to stay the course though. There was a test that needed to be done. I was rock hard from the mass pornography, like a three-inch, fleshy paperweight. So I did the unthinkable. I searched “dicks,” “abs,” “hot men,” and even “Speedo.” What was once a pillar from Stonehenge was now the clay around its base. I couldn’t get hard even if I tried. You might as well have put a picture of one of my female family members. There was no stimulation. I went back to my other window from the first part of the experiment. I was watching bread rise, breasts being the yeast. I arose; I could hear Igor exclaiming, “It’s alive!” So I went back to the next window, almost instant flaccidity I’d go back and forth. I looked like a balloon being inflated and deflated. I started to get light-headed, the movement of blood at such a rapid pace was throwing off my steady flow. I proved it. I wasn’t gay. But now why did people think I was?
I couldn’t figure. I knew I was different. But why did I come off homosexual? What gave anyone else the right and authority to decide people’s sexuality? Were there signs I was giving off? Did I inadvertently flirt with one of my friends? Is there some sort of gay radar that people had, that I didn’t have. I looked into it, and apparently there was such an idea as gay radar, affectionately coined, “gaydar.” How come I wasn’t born with “gaydar?” I needed to know why people thought I was gay.
I watched “Will and Grace.” I searched gay culture. That was about it. I didn’t know where to find gay men and women. To me everyone was the same I didn’t know what else to do. But through my limited research, I noticed a pattern. Most of the homosexual men I saw in popular culture were stereotypically more in tune with the feminine side of things. I was always just one of the girls, which was probably it. I understood we were young and kids make stupid assumptions. I would like to note I was thirteen and I definitely didn’t know what “assumption” was, but you’re humoring me I know.
Curious now, I wondered what it was like to be gay. I wanted to ask everyone I came in contact with if they thought I was gay, or if they even thought it. I mean those random kids in my Global Studies class thought I was. Was that the majority? I heard in health class that for every 100 people, 7 of them are gay. That means in the hallway in between classes at any given point there are about 35 homosexuals roaming to their next class. And my classmates assumed I was one of those 35. That’s why I was so estranged at school. I had at the most 3 or 4 close guy friends, a bunch of gal pals and a lot of people who were polite from a distance. Was there something to this? I had to find out.
