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.
