Friday, October 4, 2013

Being bullied was the best thing that ever happened to me

   In the wake of the incident at Ole Miss, where some football players in the audience shouted out homophobic slurs during a production of The Laramie Project, the talk of bullying comes up again. Now, of course I think those guys are dicks, but when it comes to looking for a solution I think a lot of it needs to be in the victims growing a tougher skin. I mean, when that incident happened there should have been an usher to throw the jocks out, but a lot of people are calling for the guys to be punished, and I’m not sure that’s a good solution.
   
   Getting bullied as a kid probably formed me more than most things. I was a spazz in grade school, and in 6th and 7th grade, boys from the class above me would single me out after school. Sometimes, one kid would push me from the front while another kid would unzip my backpack and throw all my books and papers on the ground. They threw my bike in the ditch and several times they beat me up. I went to this bullshit private school with a bunch of entitled, white kids. The jock mentality reigned. I was no good at sports and that increased their ridicule and made them call me “fag”. My parents didn’t buy me the latest designer clothes and I was just weird. Being treated like that at such a young age made me really see them for who they were, and I wanted nothing to do with what they liked, wore or listened to. Hell, that’s why I can’t even watch football to this day, because all I can think of is that “These are the kind of guys that used to fuck with me”.
   
   But I didn’t tell on them,  that would have just made their retribution greater. No, I got pissed and I held it all inside for a while, letting it cook. And then I found some music that was as pissed off as I felt, and in that I found a subculture where it didn’t matter if you “fit in”. None of us fit in, that was the point. We were all the losers and the dweebs and the outcasts. I found theater which was where all the other weird kids were and punk rock and I became proud not to fit in.
And when I walked in to high school, the hierarchy meant nothing to me and I looked at all the kids who were supposed to be “cool” and thought “Fuck you. Why the fuck are you cool?”
And I took that anger and alienation and I relished in it and used it to create pissed off music and eventually I got to see things that most people never get to see, traveling around the U.S. and Canada and Europe in a van and by the skin of our teeth. Me, the spazz who used to shit his pants in the 2nd grade, Me, the loser who barely graduated high school, I had a voice now, an outlet and a family.

 I took what I learned from punk rock bands, the DIY way of doing things where we weren’t going to sit around and wait for someone to deem us cool, we were going to be real and make our own cool. I took that attitude and put it in to the avenues of acting and film, and I still get to do really cool shit to this day, things that most people aren’t doing, and it’s fulfilling and I feel free.
  
   And the fire that keeps me going is the bullies and the haters. All the people who told me I wasn’t good enough, or didn’t fit in or that I was going to be a loser. All the people that spit on me and called me names.
And maybe I am a loser. I don’t have a pot to piss in, but I’m alive and I’m chasing what I want. I see pictures of the people I grew up with and their beautiful families and their nice jobs and part of me wants that. But for the most part I’m proud of my life and what I’ve done and if I died tonight, I’ll have very little regrets.

   Are those football players that made fun of those performers at Ole Miss total dicks? Yes. Do I wish violent prison rape upon them with red hot pokers and fire ants? Yes. Do I think they should be punished? Not necessarily. You can promote tolerance, but you can’t enforce it. That will always backfire. There will always be assholes. We need more pissed off young people and then we need to teach them to channel that anger and hate-fuck society with their art. Tell me, what makes a more lasting contribution to the world, art or football? 


If I had grown up where everybody told me how rad and special I was every day, I would have turned out just like them. 

And besides, the only reason a football player would be making homophobic slurs is that they're in total denial of their sexuality. All guys who play or watch football are in the closet. I mean, you're checking out dudes. There's no way around it. You're in to watching dudes slam in to each other, and it's ok brother. It's 2013 and you can be whatever you want to be.

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