Legacy 3: Of Jocks and Fags
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 Clay Burell 
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Of Jocks and Fags
Dates: 1976-80 (-present)
Picture a boy growing up in the same home from birth to the end of Junior High at age 15. The friends he made in first grade remain his friends, and his world, for the next nine years. He is blissfully secure in this world, in which nothing social or environmental abruptly changes and everything and everyone is familiar. He academically excels in grade school and in junior high, he plays Little League Baseball, then junior high baseball, basketball, and football.
His teammates are his friends. They are and always have been teammates in life as well as sport: together they begin as shiny boys playing spaceship and avoiding girl-germs during elementary recess; the seasons roll by until, suddenly, their voices crack; they experience an unexpected stirring at their cores until puberty rips from its cocoon like some mad, winged demon and deranges them all; they read the troubling runes of new hair on each others’ bodies as they shower in the locker room after football practice, and they laugh and kid each other to beat back their fears.
The demon drives the boys to haunt the local mall in search of girls. The boy meets a girl from a distant suburb. They exchange phone numbers and spend the next months talking so late into the night that they usually fall asleep with the receivers next to their ears. They see each other at the mall on weekends only occasionally. It doesn’t matter: the conversations intoxicate them for months. Then he—or she, it doesn’t matter—meets someone else and life goes on. The break-up doesn’t hurt.
It doesn’t hurt because the boy, though he doesn’t realize it, is blessed. Yes, he is backing into the future with no view of the road ahead, and it’s unsettling. But his friends are doing the same, and they are all there for each other. Their camaraderie steadies them, like soldiers joking in the trenches, knowing that, at any minute, the order to charge the enemy lines will come.
That order comes when the boy’s family decides that it is in the boy’s best interests to move to a new community in order to go to an all-white school, rather than the desegregated, predominantly ‘black’ school he is currently zoned for. The boy dutifully packs his belongings—his comic books, his varsity jacket, his “Most Popular” award from junior high graduation—and unpacks them in his new bedroom in the suburbs.
The only person he knows in his new community is the girl from the mall. It has been years since they have spoken.
Summer football practice begins two weeks before he starts classes at his new school. He signs up. He doesn’t know a soul. But on the first day he sees the first girl-friend’s best friend and she is excited to hear that he is joining their school.
Football practice poses problems for him. He has never been a new kid. He has never had to introduce himself to others. He knows nothing about the rituals involved in gaining acceptance to a group. Somehow neither his parents nor his school equipped him for this. So he does nothing, expecting acceptance to just happen.
He doesn’t understand why an upperclassman walks by him before practice and throws such a powerful roundhouse punch to his shoulder that it immediately forms a knot. The boy has observed that the attacker, the fierce star line-backer on the team who always has a lower lip swollen with snuff, is very popular. And that this line-backer seems to be the best friend of the other team star, who is held in almost godlike esteem by all the players for his bodybuilder’s massive, well-sculpted frame, for his two State Championships in wrestling, and his two state records in football rushing yardage—all while a freshman and sophomore. This god is now only a junior, so he has not one but two years remaining at the school to add to his miraculous record. The boy, having come from his old school, which ends at junior high and has no high school, has never seen or known that high school boys could look so much like grown men. He still feels like a boy himself. He has no script for dealing with this new social breed, the high school upper-classman.
So when the god, muscles bulging and lip trollishly stuffed with tobacco (the disfiguration of the face from this was a new visual experience for the boy, and it triggered gene-deep fears) approaches him in the locker room and says with no smile so you’re the new guy, the boy says yes and offers his hand and gives his name. The god looks at the boy’s hand and back into the boy’s eyes and offers no hand in reply. The boy doesn’t understand what is happening but he begins to fathom that it is not good.
The god says I hear you know my girlfriend. The boy doesn’t like the god’s slow, deep, emotionless drawl. The boy says and who would that be. The god pierces him with a gaze strangely menacing and pronounces his girlfriend’s name. It is the name of the girl from the mall that the boy had known in sixth grade. The god gazes deeper into the boy’s eyes as he pauses for effect. Then he says, and I don’t like you, faggot, and walks away. The boy watches him go, and notices that all the rest of the team has stopped to watch this encounter. They all look at him with the same impassive expressions as the god. At that instant, inside the boy a new cocoon breaks and a new demon emerges. It will fill his high school years with one ceaseless chant: Escape. Escape. Escape.
The boy doesn’t quit the football team. Nor does the football team quit sucker-punching and insulting the boy—except for one player, a wrestler and student council member who the boy would learn many years later was gay. This player treats the boy kindly. But he cannot help the boy. The boy is too busy over the next two years with his daily strategizing for survival: how to pass from class to class without crossing the athletes’ turf in order to avoid the choruses of faggot they would hoot. How to disguise his depression and act normal when girls he likes try to get to know him. How to prove himself to the football coach he overhears at practice telling the one friendly teammate, who had nominated the boy for a position, you know that boy doesn’t want to play football, and saying this in the midst of a huddle of almost the entire team. How to care about geometry. How to care about his sudden decline to a C and D student. How to skip school. How to find the students who sell pot and quaaludes. Whether to fight the group of tens calling him faggot every day. How he can alter his face by maybe paying someone to pummel the prettiness out of it. How to find an adult who can help (he never does). How to express himself in art class with a block print of a boy hanging from a noose. For which he earns a B, and teacher feedback suggesting how he can improve his technique, and praise for the print’s title: Escape, Escape, Escape.
Where are the boy’s parents? They are working more hours than ever in his life because the economy has taken a downturn due to the OPEC oil embargo. Interest rates for home-buyers have skyrocketed, his father’s real-estate sales have dried up and threatened the family with foreclosure on and loss of their new home in a safe suburb with all white students. One day, however, the boy’s father seems to get wind of the boy’s troubles, and pulls him aside and offers his solution: we’ll just go up there together and whip those boys’ tails. This was a noble possibility in the time of Odysseus and his son, but the boy is not interested—there are dozens of them, and there are laws against such things too.
“Self-medication” and a few unpopular country-boy friends get the boy through the first two years at the school, and the god graduates. Maybe the final year will be easier.
It is, somewhat. The god’s devotees in his class are still around to carry on the tradition, but the boy is not so scared of them. One day he picks a fight with one of them in the cafeteria. After his suspension ends, the boy returns to school and the best friend of the guy he fought invites the boy to join the jocks at lunch. The jock means it. All of his group seconds the invitation. The boy realizes that this must have been the ritualistic key to acceptance from the start. But he hates these boys now, and their type. He declines that sick ceremony. He also decides against playing sports with these fools his senior year.
In the first month of his senior year the guidance counselor holds a transitional session with the boy. The counselor congratulates the boy for scoring the highest SAT score of all the boys in his class, but regrets the boy’s GPA is in the bottom third of the class. What does that matter, the boy says. Look at my SAT. The counselor explains that GPA is as important for scholarships and admissions into good schools. This is the first the boy has heard of the practical value of the GPA.
It doesn’t matter anyway. The demon has decided the boy’s future. As soon as he graduates, the boy will escape, escape, escape, on a one-way Greyhound bus to Los Angeles and never look back. He will never again live near his family and his friends from childhood.
He will he never again find it easy to like athletes and popular, group-oriented people. He will like the solitaries, the dreamers, the readers, the rebels. He will always, often unfairly, harbor a certain skepticism sometimes bordering on scorn for officials of all stripes and people desiring power. He will always be somewhat aloof and never assume goodwill in others. He will always be uncomfortable in groups, and feel that he never did learn the social skills that other people use to escape that discomfort. Often he will find himself wishing that he had.¹
But he will go on to study, to discover a home in literature and philosophy and history and art and religion and classical and jazz. He will make his way into college, despite his guidance counselor, and even graduate Phi Beta Kappa. He will go on to experiment with his life, to see lands torn by war, to see Michelangelo in Florence, Mahler in Prague. He will kiss Wilde’s tomb in Paris and lay a flower at the graves of Abelard and Heloise. He will play hacky-sack with saffron-robed novices in Laos, swim a species-bridging five-second spiral with four wild dolphins off the coast of New Zealand, hike bamboo forests in Thailand with a simple Buddhist guide who seemed the most perfected human being he’d ever met.
This boy from a respectably middle-class, all-white suburban high school in Tennessee will even go on to trust a few people, though awkwardly.
In his 38th year, he will meet a woman beautiful and intelligent and kind beyond his wildest expectations, and be unable to understand how she could agree the following year to marry someone like him. He will follow her career path and become, like her, a teacher.²
And he will come to understand, late one night in Spain while writing a story about a boy, that he owes it to that boy to always watch over the new student, and the one who doesn’t fit because he is too pretty or she is too large, and the one who doesn’t fight, and the one who doesn’t know how the present shapes the future. And he will try to help them learn what he was never taught.³
The Spanish Moon
—
¹Funny, five years later he has found that comfort, that confidence, that pleasure in good society.
²The marriage ended in benevolent divorce; “irreconcilable difficulties” indeed.
³This was written years before the “My Suicidal High School Years: A Happy Ending Bullying Story” podcast post. It was my first attempt to write the story. I’d change the tone now.
–
*Earlier Years:
Legacy 1: Baptist Childhood
Legacy 2: Comic Books
- Legacy 5: Human Sacrifice
- Legacy 1: Fear and Trembling at Camp Joy (or, “Ambivalent Apostasy”)
- Legacy 2: Reading Despite Teaching (or, How the Hulk Led Me to Hamlet)
- Legacy 4: In the Crumbling Temple of the Dead White Males (the College Years)
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Tags: autobiography, bullies, bullying, personal narrative Print This Post
No. 1 — July 30th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Uh, not much more to say than … wow.
Winawers last blog post..Here’s something that’s a little bit more fun.
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No. 2 — July 30th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Unbelievable… I don’t know what else to say except I never fit in (and still don’t think I do) but more upsetting to me is how your tale is my son’s. He will be starting 9th grade and I fear for him – he has great tech skills but not sports and this is such a small backwards town with not much for non-sports kids to do. I have not decided how I will handle being in the same hallway.
Students are blessed to have you.
Louise Maines last blog post..Fast food culture in our schools…
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No. 3 — July 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Speechless. Wait… I think I have something:
This is absolutely fantastic writing. I don’t know how you do it, but you naturally capture my attention and bombard me with your knowledge – which, by the way, is a pleasure to receive. I am glad that we have people like you to learn from, or truly this world would not be as wonderful as it is.
Wishing I was as eloquent,
/gradster(1)/
/gradster(1)/s last blog post..Knight Spent Fighting Crime
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No. 4 — July 30th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
This was an awesome story. I too, was a victim of bullying, abuse and humiliation during my elementary and junior high school years (by students and a teacher) and I think that experience has made me a better teacher. I keep my eyes out for the students who may need my support and understanding when no one else is there for them. I wrote a blog post a few months ago about the experience: http://loonyhiker.blogspot.com/2008/03/school-revisited.html. Thanks for sharing yours.
Pat Hensleys last blog post..Be A Pioneer
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No. 5 — July 30th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Yeah, that sounds familiar. Nicely written, well stated.
Stephen Downess last blog post..Help Design the OER Research Network
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No. 6 — July 30th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
[...] Fear and Trembling: Goodbye to Christianity 2. The Hulk Leads to Hamlet: Reading Despite School 3. Of Jocks and Fags: The High School Bullying [...]
No. 7 — July 31st, 2008 at 2:45 am
Clay- Our district has set a summer administrative discussion topic on the “At Risk Student”that we don’t know about.”. I’m sharing this piece with them, as it is illustrative of a larger issue in our schools as a whole.
Thanks for sharing. Outstanding writing.
Barry
Barrys last blog post..Rigor as Cerebral Weight Lifting
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No. 8 — July 31st, 2008 at 5:22 am
[...] this story is played out. Often enough, I would suspect. Clay Burell, Beyond School, July 30, 2008 [Link] [Tags: none] [...]
No. 9 — August 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
Clay,
My paraphrase of Nietzsche, “What does not kill us, will linger with us forever.” Which is a good thing as compassion and empathy ennoble us all. I am sorry for your pain but I envy you the depth of growth. We all need to try to save one child, one day at a time. I too will share this with my teaching colleagues.
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No. 10 — August 5th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
[...] Update August 2008: If you want a written version of the same story, I did my best here. [...]
No. 11 — August 6th, 2008 at 4:51 am
I was searching for something to help me out with my son. He is going into the 7th grade at a Parochial school and having some serious problems on his football team with kids he knew back when he went to public school. They gang up on him, tease him and generally make him feel like he is worthless. The problem is, he loves football. He has to play with these kids if he wants to play, as it is the only league in our area. He has a couple of friends from his current school, but they are now starting to avoid him due to the disease the other kids are causing. His coach is also starting to pretend he doesn’t exist, because it is hard to put forth an effort when you are teased incessantly, and the coach ignores everything. The issue is, he really is a great player. Please help, if you have any ideas.
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No. 12 — August 6th, 2008 at 9:29 am
@JJ: It’s hard to help from across the Pacific, and situations like this are tough anyway, with no easy solutions.
And I’m no therapist.
Obvious options, none guaranteed, are:
1. Parents talk to school admin/coach.
2. Parents involve kid in discussion of how to solve the problem. There’s a life lesson here.
3. Kid stands up against main persecutors, and fights back.
I wish I could help more. But the point of my post is, growth can come from this stuff. It’s just not visible in the short-term.
Clay Burells last blog post..**Warning .. http:/ is a known spammer . delete this message
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No. 13 — August 7th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Clay,
Thanks so much for your advice. We have since talked to the coach and another administrator. The coach acted fairly unconcerned, but the admin. was quite helpful. We found out that others were having problems with these same kids! They are splitting the team and he assured us the “bully” kids would be on a different team. Your story really helped us out. I read it to my son. He felt like he wasn’t alone. He felt a sort of relief, I could hear it in his voice.
So anyway, they are splitting the teams in a few days. My son, after reading your story sacked the QB (main perp) at least 4 times last practice. The coaches cheered, the “bully” kids protested, and my son’s friends are all acting normal again. I don’t think it is over yet, but it is getting better. I want to thank you again. God/Goddess Bless You, Namaste’ … and a heartfelt hug across the Pacific.
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No. 14 — August 7th, 2008 at 11:06 am
@JJ,
Now there’s a great solution: sack the QB four times!
Best news I’ve heard in a long time. Smiling as I read.
I hope your son gets many more sacks before the season is over. Sounds like the QB needs to be brought low, to eat some dirt, to take a fall, so he can learn to be good to people.
Good job on all sides (did the coach ever show any concern? So far, he sounds like a jerk.).
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No. 15 — August 8th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Well we found out the “split” is going to be Varsity & Junior Varsity. If playing Varsity means you have to put up with jerks like that, then we pass. The QB ate plenty of dirt and another mouthy kid is out of the season all together! I guess his knee cap has moved locations from the front of his knee to the side. I don’t think my kid had anything to do with that, but it did get rid of another problem. The bully kid didn’t learn anything though, he just moved on to a different kid (also bigger than him) to torment with his cronies. Maybe if he relied on his skill to make himself feel good, instead of putting everyone else down, he’d learn to be good to people. Then again, maybe thats it, he doesn’t have much skill, he just trash talks everyone who does. I think the coach knows or is friends with, the parents of that kid, no help is going to come from him anytime soon.
Anyway, my question is, whatever happened to that “God” you speak of in your story? I’d like to think he married a BIG BURLY woman who bullies him on a daily basis. Ahhh sweet retribution.
Thanks again! We’ll keep you posted on our situation if you’d like.
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No. 16 — August 8th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
@JJ, Years later, in the army, another beefy troll chose me as a target. He was about 6’4″, by far the tallest giant in the unit.
By that time, I saw life very differently. At the first sign of aggression from him, I just called him on it. In front of a lot of people, I invited him outside to fight it out. Told him he’d probably win, but he’s also have to keep fighting me every time he saw me, because I wanted to be sure I hurt him, because I can’t stand people like him. I didn’t say it dramatically, but more straighforwardly than anything else. I did explain to him, though, beer in hand as if it was any Friday night conversation, why I would enjoy getting just one good fist into him, no matter how many he landed on me. And I did assure him that I wouldn’t rest until I did make him hurt. Then I repeated my invitation to go outside so we could get round one over with.
It threw him on his heels. He wasn’t used to people challenging him back. Apparently, he relied on the cowardice of others to enable him to do this stuff without consequences. He didn’t accept my invitation.
It was partially psychology, but if he’d called me on it, it would have been true, too.
I guess I’m wishing people would stand up to the quarterback, rather than cede varsity territory to him.
But that’s just me.
The “god” in my story? Too much. I answer that question in the podcast of the story as I told it to my class. It’s linked above, at the end of the post.
Short version: he married my little sister.
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No. 17 — August 9th, 2008 at 6:24 am
I don’t suppose your little sis is a BIG BURLY woman? J/K
Weird how life works out like that.
Anyway, I never really thought about it as “ceding varsity teritory”. Interesting point. My kiddo is not big on giving up, so I guess we’ll see how it pans out.
“Beefy Trolls” are around every corner of life. If you can’t live with them, challenge them and watch while they retreat back under the bridge. <– todays lesson?
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No. 18 — August 14th, 2008 at 4:30 am
@JJ, re: your offer to keep us informed here with updates, by all means, yes, please.
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No. 19 — August 14th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[...] Phil seems to want something similar in his context: We all need to try to save one child, one day at a time. I too will share this with my teaching colleagues. [...]
No. 20 — August 15th, 2008 at 6:35 am
Hello
Well so far we have been out of football for 3 days. My kiddo sacked their QB and made him fumble the ball and then jumped.. I mean LEAPED onto the ball and was “dog piled” by about 10 kids. I guess the coach told the players that he wanted EVERY PLAYER going after the ball on every play. I don’t know if that is normal, but I thought they each had other jobs etc. Anyway, my child and another kid were under the pile, and finally when they all got off of them my sons back had an imprint of a facemask on it (and still does), but according to him he, “didn’t fumble the ball”. The other kid didn’t get up for a while. My son jogged to the sideline to let one of the assistant coaches check it out. Practice was about over and my son – in pain – ran hills and wooped their butts back to the coach. He fell to his knee next to the car. Thats when I got to see the injury. I’m an alt. med. prac. and I checked the extent of the soft tissue damage and looked for signs of internal damage. I didn’t trust my own judgement as I was pretty upset, so I took him to a friends clinic, she is a nurse prac. She said to keep him out for at least a week, ice it, etc. But what I want to know is… why didn’t they blow a whistle? Or do SOMETHING to stop this. The “dog piling” happened several other times and there were about 7 other kids injured that night. Those coaches, if you can even call them that, are MOE-RONS! We did phone the one assistant coach that we knew a little bit, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you guy’s back”. I’ve got your back? What is this High School? It did make me feel a little better, but weird none the less. It does make me wonder what the coach has to do with all of this mess, and why we have to have someone “get our back”.
So far thats it. No good news yet, but I am enjoying the extra time with my kiddo. He’s got quite a sense of humor.
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No. 21 — August 28th, 2008 at 11:46 am
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No. 22 — August 28th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I came upon your page on StumbleUpon. What a revelation!!! Your writing is so true to the experience that I could just feel the emotions. In many ways it parallels my son’s experiences with bullies. It nearly destroyed him until I finally advised him that, while I would like to beat the hell out of these creeps myself, it would do him no good. When he was ready to do it, he had to stand-up for himself. I also told him that if he were to fight back then he should fight with everything within him and to win! He would get no flak from me if he did that and received discipline in school.
Of course, that day came, he vanquished his tormentors and was never bullied again.
Your observation that the present shapes the future is so true.
Great writing!!!
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Clay Burell Reply:
August 28th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Good advice from a good father, I think. Must have been tough.
Thanks for the kind words.
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No. 23 — December 2nd, 2008 at 6:16 am
[...] of you know I was harassed for three years for being perceived as gay at my high school back in the ’70s, so I’m fascinated by [...]
No. 24 — August 12th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Clay,
This is also my story, written in better words. I am a sophmore in high school. I have been bullied, in every grade, by the same few kids. They are the popular kids, the bigger kids, the ones who think they’re better.
In my freshman year, I was bullied every day by the same few kids. I fear this year will be the same. I fear the year after will be the same, and the year after that. It depresses me, it adds so much stress to my day, sometimes I want to cry…but I know in the end I am better than these kids. I don’t stoop to their level. Never would I make another person feel as bad as they make me feel.
And that’s what keeps me going through the insults and tirades and shouts of “faggot” and “nerd” and “nobody likes you” and “nobody gives a shit” and “go die”. Your story, I have come to realize, is one too often repeated and one that unfortunately often ends in sadness.
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No. 25 — November 18th, 2009 at 12:47 am
Hi,
First off, I don’t know what to call you here. But that doesn’t change the feelings from this. I only read the first part and will read the rest when I’m done my History of China homework.
But I could like fear you anger and then feel mine again too. I can’t believe this happened to you too. I always saw you as the jock or atleast the student council kid that everyone likes, but not the “loner kid”.
And I see all these other kids saying that they can relate, but what do you tell them in return? Can you help them get out of a rut? Should we really just hit the jocks? Why not right?
And I don’t really think it’s right that other people are trying to advertise their blogs on this. Especially not this post.
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Clay Burell Reply:
November 20th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Hi Simon,
I don’t know if I can help or not. But the possibility that people going through it can take comfort in this very happy 40-something saying he’s been there too makes it worth the effort.
In the blog world, we promote each other. The people above aren’t “advertising” themselves. I’m sharing what they write with a little tool I added that sends readers of their comments back to their spaces to discover more of each commenter’s world if they want to. It’s a courtesy, and a beautiful aspect of this world.
Too bad schools keep you guys stuck in the 1990s.
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No. 26 — December 18th, 2009 at 1:14 am
My friend posted this link on his facebook is how I found out about this writing. Its really good, I had to face some of it myself in school too. I know how you felt then. Its all true whatever you mentioned here.I don’t like the kind of guys you mentioned here due to many personal reasons, anyways I have learned to tackle with these but your writing reminded me of my highschool days again. I can just wish you good luck for future. I just passed out my high school 3 years ago and I am 21.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 18th, 2009 at 9:38 am
Thanks for that Ron, and same to you. All that you read is pretty ancient history now that I’m well into my 40s and very happy, so none of it bothers me now. It’s more an interesting story to me than anything emotional (and a story, again, I put out there so that students going through it today will hopefully see that it doesn’t last forever and life gets better).
Anyway, good luck to you. Australia, is it? If so, I was just in Queensland about three weeks ago. First time. Beautiful area.
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