Cut the Shit

Fag, Fairy, Fruit, Homo: Some Just Call Me “Joe”

When I was in 8th grade, I had my first inkling that I might be gay. I remember sitting in math class at my private Baptist school and staring at a kid that sat in front of me. His shoulders were wide and even for someone his age, his body was absolutely perfect. Luckily (or unluckily) for me, he and I were good friends from a young age and we spent a lot of time together. We would wrestle and go swimming and do all the things that kids our age did. It never crossed my mind that I had a crush on him, until that fateful day in 8th grade when I got my first hard-on induced by lust. WHY was I feeling that way and how could I stop it?? I used to pray every night that I would wake up straight. But instead, God had something else planned for me…

In 9th grade, I transferred to a public high school and I not only had no friends, I was the biggest, most feminine dork in my class. The kids were really standoffish at first and it took weeks for anyone to introduce themselves to me and to offer the hand of friendship. Sadly enough, the minute I started making friends, the jocks (aka fucking assholes) started calling me “Fag”. At first, I didn’t really understand why they were picking on ME. I was the most non-confrontational person ever. But assholes can pick out a gay guy faster than a gay guy can pick out another homosexual. So as the year progressed, not only was I called “fag”, I picked up the names “fairy”, “fruit”, and my all time favorite “It’s Pat”. I wasn’t a girl, but then again, I wasn’t a boy! “Hey everyone, there’s “pat”!

The thing about being harassed every day of your life and having such bad stomach pains at the end of every summer or winter break is that you learn how to build up a tough skin. Very rarely did I cry over the fact that I couldn’t walk or talk in public without being ridiculed. In fact, I did my best to ignore it and to pretend as though none of it was actually happening. It always bothered me the most that the people who WERE brave enough to be friends with me would have to be embarrassed themselves that I was their “fag” friend.

I’ve always been a very outgoing and nice guy. I learned to accept everybody for who they were and it always bothered me greatly when other (not-so popular) kids would get picked on. I knew how it felt and sadly, there was a part of me that was grateful that I was being left alone for an hour or so. But I did my best never to contribute to that kind of cruelty. By the time I graduated from high school, I had a shitload of friends, ended up on the “court” for Winter Carnival and was incredibly successful in our high school theater troupe.

I was dreading college and absolutely petrified to start all over in a town where I would once again be starting from scratch. My freshman and sophomore years of college were very similar to my freshman and sophomore years of high school. The “fag” jokes started almost immediately and within weeks, I was once again terrified to do simple tasks – like walk across the dining hall to get a second bowl of cereal. Each foray into the public eye left me petrified of the new and creative ways that the jerkoffs at my school could come up with to make me feel like a subhuman.

As with high school, by the time I reached my junior year of college, I started to make some genuinely wonderful friends that not only supported and encouraged me to be myself, they were instrumental in my “coming out”. My depression kicked into high gear during my junior year and if it hadn’t been for the support of people like Rita and Kelly, I’m afraid to think of the lengths I would have gone to destroy myself.

By the time I graduated college, my self-esteem was incredibly high and I even felt proud of the man I was becoming. I got my first legitimate boyfriend (Paul) during my last semester and I left school to move to Boston to nurture that relationship. Some could look at that as brave, but I looked at it as the one and only decision that made sense.

After 6 months of living in Boston, I moved to NYC to pursue my acting dream. I finally felt as though I moved to a city that embraced diversity and allowed homosexuals like myself to thrive and grow. At first, this was true and I believed that I would be completely safe and comfortable in my skin. But then it happened…I was on a bus with my friend Rita and this guy picked me out of the group and just began rattling off disgusting slurs at me. “You fucking faggot, mother fucking fruity, gay piece of shit. Fuck you for being a homo, you fucking nasty fag”. My friend Rita sat next to me, both of us silent and scared, as this douchebag railed me from bus stop to bus stop – and worst of all…in front of a packed NYC bus.

It took me a while to get over that one. Since then moments like that have been few and far between, but they still exist nonetheless. Paul and I had a scumbag jump out of his van once and chase us, on his crippled leg no less, all the way into a movie theater screaming that he was going to “kill those two faggots”. And just two weeks ago, I was walking with my friend Brian into a restaurant and this bitch looked me directly in the eye and mouthed the words “You fag”. I stopped dead in my tracks and Brian was like “What?!” I explained what happened to him and he couldn’t fathom how this type of thing seems to keep happening to me.

I’m not a flamboyant homosexual. I am in no way a girly type of guy and while most of my close friends do happen to be women, I also have guy friends and can fit quite easily into the straight community. However, this type of angry harassment seems to be a dark cloud that I just can’t escape from. It’s built up a lot of anger within me and it’s caused me to racial profile, when I’m SO not that type of guy.

Although Paul has rarely dealt with this type of shit, he has seen me go through it and it has made him incredibly volatile to different groups of people. He doesn’t understand how I can roll with it as easily as I do, but he also becomes infuriated when I talk about it and the tears fill my eyes. There is nothing he can do to protect me from this type of hate. He can only sit there, hold my hand, and tell me that I’m above all of it.

Once again, I find myself filled with insecurities about who I am and how I act in public. I ride the subway without making eye contact and I’m ALWAYS aware and alert as to who could possibly give me a problem for being who I am. Trying to get my courage up to go to an audition has been almost impossible and I know for a fact that a lot of that has to do with the inferiority I believe I deserve. Therapy has allowed me to grow and shun those thoughts, but it’s still an uphill battle to be the confident and proud man that I know is living inside of me.

Everyone has their own shit to deal with, but I wish that everyone also had the sensitivity to refrain from saying hurtful and spiteful things. If I responded with a “nigger” or a “spic” or a “kike” to every person that’s ever called me a “fag”, I would have a body riddled with bullets. I try to be above all of this and to understand that these people actually hate themselves and not the gay man that I am.

But that doesn’t mean that the next time I get called a “fag” by someone on the street, I won’t go ballistic and end up in jail for hurting someone so badly that they end up in the hospital, or worse, dead.

Clearly, I’ve had just about enough.