Girls Guys or Goldfish

"Fag"

Today is October 20, 2010. It is Wear Purple Day.

I learned about the event as I learn about so many other events in my friend's lives: Facebook. This time, it started with my friend J.F. Wickey, or rather, Reverend J.F. He's a United Church of Christ Minister living and working in the far reaches of Oklahoma and a man for whom I have a great deal of admiration.

Today is Wear Purple Day to honor the people who have recently committed suicide over gay bullying. The 6 faces on J.F.'s notice were all young men. Some were just in high school. Another was Tyler Clementi, the sweet faced Rutgers boy who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after two fellow students videoed him having sex with another man and then distributed the video online. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20018170-504083.html

I've let everyone know about today through my own Facebook post. I made sure my husband knew to wear a purple t-shirt while working on the house today. I applauded my mother's purple workshirt (she and Charles are running the table saw today, working on the house.) She informed me it was the last clean shirt she had, but if it did the trick, all the better.

I am wearing Purple because of Tyler, of the other 5 boys, because of Jack and Chris and Shannon.

I'm also wearing Purple I was once the target of gay bullying.

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Middle school is no fun. Anyone that tells me they liked middle school is automatically suspect in my book. It's Lord of the Flies in real life. It's Animal Farm. It's horrific. A friend of mine's sister took her kids out of middle school and home schooled them to just get through those years then sent them back to public high school. I totally get that. Her reasons may not be because her children were being tortured and that the other kids had obviously misplaced both their brains and their hearts under some remote staircase at home, but I still get it. Actually, in my book, high school bit as well, but that's another blog post.

My middle school experience was horrid. We'd just moved to central Illinois from New Jersey. I'd literally gone from the largest elementary school in the state of New Jersey to what had to be the smallest speck of a school in the smallest speck of a town: Atwood, Illinois. The town was so small that they had to combine with nearby Hammond to have enough kids to actually make up a school. There were 35 kids in my entire 8th grade graduation class.

My class had its bullies. They were classic. Backwards backwoods putzes, Kyle and Mike. They adored torturing me every time the teacher's back was turned. Everything was up for grabs: Acne, glasses, being tall, being geeky, my family being rich (PUH-LEEZE. We'd bought a big house just outside of town and were forever house-poor afterwards. My mother would never let us turn the heat up past 60 because we couldn't afford it!)

It didn't help that my family was going through some horrible times as well. My parents should have divorced when I was 11. They didn't until much later. The emotional tension in my home was terrible and I pulled dramatically into myself to just stay out of it.

I was taller than most everyone else. I was the daughter of a tomboy who thought long hair was too much fuss. I had very short brown hair. I had big Kathy Whitmire glasses. My feet were size 11, so I wore unisex lace-up Dexters with crepe soles. Finding clothes was a nightmare - I wore lots of jeans and short-sleeved "polo" shirts with collars.

I earned money during the summer by walking soy bean fields to pull weeds and I walked corn fields to de-tassle hybrid corn. My mother and I installed an iron pipe fence and electric "hot" wire around our 3 acres for our horses. She and I also roofed the barn. I was in charge of chopping the family's firewood by the time I was in 7th grade.

I say all this so you can have a picture of me by the time I reached 7th grade: Tall, geeky, strong as an ox, sexually ambiguous, totally introverted with very little voice, and alone.

It was about then that Kyle and Mike found a new way to torture me and I learned a lot of new words: "Fag", "Dike", "Lesbo", "Gay." It was way too easy.

I pulled into myself. I buried myself further in books. I tried to talk to my parents, but they had their own problems: "Ignore them." I tried. I really, really tried.

But it was middle school. The Middle Passage between childhood and adulthood. Things are happening in the body - hormones are percolating, feelings come crawling from the nether regions and propel a body forward. My body was strong and vigorous and virile. I was full of fresh air. I was sexually turned on by just about everyone.

Because I believed so much of what was said about me, I began to believe this too. I had no idea who I was - All I knew was that I pretty much was a waste of space, and here was another reason why I was just all wrong. I knew I was really really attracted to a number of boys in my class, but... there were also girls I thought were delicious and I was sickened by the realization.

I had to work this all out on my own, because there certainly wasn't anyone to talk to about all this. I could't really decide what I was. Was I gay?? Well, there were some cute girls in class... And there were some cute guys in class, but they were all putzes...

I ultimately decided that maybe I was doing the whole sexual orientation thing wrong like everything else I did and that I just was attracted to people. A very broad choice, but one that allowed for variation, so I went with it. It made me different, but I was used to that. It meant I thought differently, but again, I was used to that. I went back to my books and dealt with the churning unreleased volcano in a variety of unhealthy ways and then proceeded to do my best to grow up.

I hated myself for this. It just further substantiated why I was just not human, was just wrong. I thought seriously about suicide. But I couldn't do it.

It wasn't the last time I was harassed for being gay. It happened a lot in high school. By then I was so pulled into myself that I'd become unapproachable and I cut myself off. It was only when I was a senior that I began to pull out, actually had a date for prom (a boy from my brother's class whom I adored) and started to feel like maybe I was worth something.

Gay bullying happened again in college, but this was the mid 80s where being gay was slightly exotic and just beginning to be maybe cool(ish), I had just been absorbed and accepted by an amazing group of people led by my wonderful friend Chris (whom I dated for a brief wonderful summer) and was becoming the Real Cecelia. More sure of myself. More who I felt I'd been built to be. I went on to be much less worried about which pigeon hole I belonged to.

Fast forward to today: I'm happily married to the love of my life. He and I have been together for 22 years. I'm still attracted to "people", but I want no one else but Charles.

Please, no labels.

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I've unfortunately witnessed other gay bullying that puts my experience in the pale.

Before we were married, Charles and I had our first apartment in Houston's Montrose, which was Gay Mecca at the time. We lived in a charming post-war 4-plex. Our neighbors included Jack and Chris. This was 1990, when deaths in the gay community from AIDS was spreading like wildfire.

Jack was the first to develop full-blown AIDS. He entered the public hospital and Charles and I went to visit. Jack looked horrible and Chris was a mess, worrying about his sweetheart. Jack developed all kinds of complications and was horribly vulnerable from attacks of all kinds.

The worst of them came from his own family. Chris told us about how his mother and father visited Jack in the hospital and denied Chris access to him. Chris had no rights to visit his lover.

Then Jack's parents started beating on Jack emotionally: He had to renounce being gay and renounce Chris so that he could be buried next to his grandfather in the family graveyard. If he didn't, he'd have a pauper's grave with no marker. Jack was feverish, couldn't breathe, was hallucinating. He agreed. Chris never saw him again and was not allowed to the funeral.

Shannon Ferris was a member of my new circle of friends post-high school. He was about 4 years younger or so, was still going to high school, and was an absolute dear. I loved him so much - he was a younger brother, best friend, sweetheart all rolled up in one. He'd not come out to anyone, but the fact that he was likely gay was pretty apparent.

I'll never forget when he came out to his very religious parents. He came home a few nights afterwards to find a strange woman in his home with his family. He was trapped with them - they forced an exorcism on Shannon, where the woman stood before him, screaming in "tongues" and hitting Shannon on the head to dispel the demons. His family stood around and wept in prayer that Shannon would be rid of the terrible curse of being gay.

After this horrible event, Shannon was at our door in Katy, in tears. He'd been utterly betrayed by his family and terrified that they were right that he was an evil entity. My heart shattered - I could see the same terrible feeling of being just essentially wrong, not human, not worth of compassion and acceptance. And he'd been made to feel that way by his own family.

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So, for all of you out there who find yourselves in the position of looking at yourself in the mirror and confronting who you actually are, know this:

• You are not alone.
• Who you are is not defined by who you have sex with. It is defined by the choices you make in the way you treat the rest of the world and yourself.
• Character is not defined by the outside but by the essential qualities of the inside: Compassion, honesty, willingness to stand up for what is right and those who have been wronged.
• Be in love with whomever you love and love them selflessly, with everything you have.

And remember: You are perfectly made. Your Maker made you just the way you are - enjoy that gift.

And don't let the backcountry putzes wear you down.

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One last note, because I always like to leave with a laugh...

While I was in middle school, dealing with the slings and arrows of small-minded hillbillies, I decided to go into the school band.

I announced to my parents that I wanted to play drums. Or the flute. Decided against the flute, but really really wanted to play the drums. Mom stated "No Drums In This House!!!" I was told that, if I really wanted to play an instrument, I could play my dad's trumpet. We didn't have to buy an instrument that way.

I dunno how a trumpet would be less loud than drums. I didn't really have a talent for the damned thing, tho I was very very good at playing LOUDLY.

My dad played trumpet in dance bands through college in Nashville and was incredibly good at it. So good that his parents bought him a beautiful two-toned Olds trumpet in a leather case and had his nickname in gold leaf on one side.

I carried that horn through middle school and my freshman year of high school.

My dad's nickname?

"Butch."