Conundrum of courage

October 31, 2014

Half way through the morning and I wonder what the f+++ I’m doing sitting here reading the paper when I could be: going to the gym, going for a walk, writing at the computer, watching a movie, reading a magazine, stretching. So much so that I’m not totally enjoying what I’m doing. I am always thinking of something else I could/should be doing.

It is hard for me to live in the moment. I have a half dozen little projects that need attention, all of them seeming to be more interesting than what I am doing right now. Then there’s the whole “what would my life be like if I had turned left instead of right? Ran instead of walked? Runaway from home instead of staying in a place of mental, and sometimes brutal, childhood? If someone had taught me to fight correctly I can think of a dozen instances when I could have turned this or that memory into one in which I am the one doing the terrorizing and I’m not the one being browbeaten or humiliated.

Three boys told me in sixth grade they were going to beat me up after school and I was terrified all day. I could barely talk or move the fear had paralyzed me so. I could feel myself almost shaking, and imagine I was quite pale and looking sickly all through the day. (It was days like this that compelled me to stay home and feign a true illness so that I wouldn’t face these kinds of trepeditios mental assaults.

At the end of the day, true to their word, they cornered me as I was leaving for home. I meekly followed them out to the playground, and standing in the middle of the three boys I begged them not to hurt me, please don’t hurt me, and I fell to my knees with my hands clenched in front of me as if in prayer, beseeching them to please don’t do this.

The three looked at one another and the leader of the group said, “Come on. He’s not worth it,” and they did indeed walk away. I stood to retrieve my lunch box and the homework, and somehow made it home, just a few blocks from the school. The memory of me kneeling in the dirt, looking up at the three boys scowling down at me, even now fills me with anxiety.

I’ve learned that one of the ways animals defend themselves is to look bigger than they are, to puff themselves up, or have hackles like a dog or cat, or the brutish swagger that men have as they inaudibly announce they are to be feared.

If someone had coached me to stand up for myself I would have saved myself many degrading experiences. The boy who threw a rock over the fence, hitting me on the top of my head, and I run home with blood running down my face. The boy who pushed me from behind when I was steering a Flexi racer (a sled on wheels) with my feet, pushing me as hard as he could into a parked car, and remembering the wound over my right eye, dripping blood onto the ride’s wooden slats as I sped home crying. 

I still have that scar.

Even greater challenges faced me in the years to come, but they didn’t involve physical brutality as much as cause me mental confusion that fills much of my time with depressing regret.

When Sue and I moved to San Diego with two-year-old Daniel my homosexual desires overcame my better judgment, interfered in my marriage, causing me to abandon the predictions and plans for a successful future, leaving my boys with a single mother to raise them (and a third boy borne to her from another releationship after they moved to Oregon.) For many years I would look at that last shot of six month old Scott, lying down kicking with his arms and legs, or Daniel on his tricycle on the sidewalk where we lived in North Park, and weep over my decision to be part of the gay lifestyle, which became a source of sour memories and desires that I can, twenty years later, easily conjure the taste in my mouth of my first encounters.

I had struggled with my identity all my life, probably. But I didn’t have the courage, or I was so trapped by fear of rejection, that I didn’t tell anyone in the church of my dueling personalities. In the early 70’s everything around me threatened the part of my life that yearned for expression. I was fortunate that in the years I was in the church I had many lucid periods when my other nature seemed buried in a full life of friends and families, moving in an anointing and submission to the elders and apostles.

In the back of my mind, the desires niggled at me anyway. When being blessed by some of the pastors, with my head down, I admired each of their manliness, later recalling those times as a prelude to bliss. Or when I was at Shiloh in the showers imagining all the men who had showered before me, and even getting a thrill from watching a young man showering, while I faced the mirror, thinking of what the repercussions would be if someone walked in on me. Of course, this fear of discovery was often the catalyst for my lust.

I did talk with a pastor about how frustrated I was sexually, something innocuous like that, that didn’t portend my hidden life. Getting married was the answer and so I should pray for a wife. I took this to heart, praying that my other desires would be buried in a socially acceptable format. Even then I imagined myself with men, almost every time, to be honest. In the six years we were married, I can’t recall once being moved to invigorate any sexual fever, rolling over and falling fast asleep.

I was absolutely clueless about what a woman needed for fulfillment. It wasn’t until 30 years later that I realized women didn’t just have a one-off like men, but could have multiple ecstacies.

My first admiration of men started when I was 12, looking at Laura and David walking in front of me while I commented to myself how much better looking David’s rounded legs looked better than his sister’s.

I had some nocturnal releases but didn’t know about self pleasure until I moved into a house with other men from the church when we were all at university. Somehow I knew what I needed to do, but until that time I was totally clueless. From the beginning of puberty my lusts raged in me nights when I could not sleep. I wish I had known then how easy I could have been relieved!

I never had a wet dream involving women. I never dreamt of a naked woman, or spent my day fantasizing about intercourse. The successful dreams I would have in a dream was when I was at a urinal with other men around me. I was so terribly confused that I convinced my mother that I needed to meet with a psychiatrist and his only recommendation was to not be around men. What nonsense! The fee was $50, a great deal of money in 1968, and I never told mom about why I went, even when she asked me. I was so ashamed and afraid. I was trapped.

I tell you all this because I am still trapped in many ways. I am alone, except for my dear friend Moreen. I have no confidante, no buddies, no friends to speak of. Oh, yes, I know a lot of people, a lot of people, with whom I can carry on the expected niceties of society, but no one to tell me what a bugger I’m being, or dragging me out of the house to go on a surprise trip, or lie with me at night. I certainly could have any of that if I really, truly wanted it but there is nothing I want more than to be left alone, by myself, with my personal hobbies and pursuits.

It is a conundrum, this life, knowing that adventure is a 20 minute drive from here, or getting involved in a charity would surround me with new acquaintances and activities that would immediately fill my life. I could join Kiwanis, a local service organization, but there are members I have known and have never enjoyed speaking with, and don’t want to talk to. I have few things to say to someone I sort of know, much less those who I know and avoid.

There’s a new music center for which fundraising is taking place on Fay Avenue. I know Christopher Beach, the manager, with whom I could voluntarily share my public relations talents. I’m really good at that, writing press releases and talking with newspaper people, of whom I have been. I know hundreds of people in La Jolla through my experience at Gillispie, LJ Country Day, Children’s School, and Warwicks. I have a lot to offer and know that volunteering to stuff envelopes would lead to more activities to fill my hours.

But, you see, I still don’t have the courage to stand against these forces, that which wants to isolate me in my own personal pursuits. I’m still on my knees begging for a way out.