Take Me For What I Am...

People in my life have accused me of being cold, superficial, and over critical of others. I tend to dispute these claims, but since more than one person has brought these issues to my attention, I guess I should address the observations.

Gay men tend to be more critical of others. For myself, I suppose it is a defense mechanism that I developed as a young child to protect myself from the taunts of other children. If you were quick enough to come up with an insult back, then it dulled the pain of the verbal and physical assaults that one was enduring.

When I was about 7, my family relocated from Daytona Beach, Florida to southern New Hampshire, about an hour from Boston. I remember the first day or two after meeting a couple of boys from the neighborhood, one remarked to me, "You act so gay. Are you a fag or something?" I had never heard anything like this before in my life and was completely unprepared to defend myself. Before long, I became known throughout the neighborhood as the new gay kid. I was very shy and didn't know many people. A couple of weeks later, I remember getting on the bus the first day of school and not being able to find a seat. The driver and the kids were all screaming at me to find an open seat, so I sat down with these young girls up front rather than go to the back of the bus where the older elementary school boys were. Even at that young an age, I had developed self-defense mechanisms and I was afraid of being beat up.

Elementary school proved to be a tough time for me. I didn't have a lot of friends and I never felt like I fit in. In the fifth grade, I went to a guidance counselor from the school. I told her that I was being teased and made fun of for being gay and such things. She asked me who was teasing me and wanted names. So I named 2 or 3 of my classmates and she called them in and had us sit face to face. She then interrogated him or her on why said person was saying these things. All of them said that I had effeminate mannerisms or the way I spoke was gay. The guidance counselor's advice to me was, "If you don't want to be construed as gay, then maybe you should consider changing your behaviors."

Looking back on this makes me very sad. What did I, a 9 or 10 year old kid, know about my sexuality at the time? I did not even understand the words that I was being called. Gay, faggot, fudge packer, pussy boy, sissy. On top of being a repressed gay kid who had no contact whatsoever with his sexuality, I came from a conservative Roman Catholic family which did not openly discuss matters such as this. The only things I knew about gay people were the horrible names that people used in describing me and that there were daily news reports in the 80s of gay people dying of AIDS. I remember my mother watching Donahue one day when I arrived home from school and he had a gay person on his show. My mother quickly shut the television off muttering, "Well, we don't need to see anymore of that, now do we?"

I also buried my loneliness and sadness in food. I was a pretty chunky kid looking back. I was never obese, but upon graduation from high school, I was about 5'10-6'00 and 250 pounds. I gained 20 more pounds when I went to college a year later. So at my heaviest, I was 6'1, 270 pounds, and a 40 waist. I have broad shoulders and most of my family members and classmates say today that I didn't look that heavy. But looking back at photos, yeesh...

We all have our stories of traumatic upbringings and I'm certainly not saying that one person's story trumps another's. As a young child, the only way I could defend myself was with my wit and quickness. It became a mental game to come up with something horrible to say back to the person just in case they came at me with an insult. I'm still famous for always wanting to have the last line. You know, one upping the other person. "Oh wait, that's nothing!" I believe that this is where a lot of that comes from. Being able to mentally bring someone else down in order to make yourself feel better or safe.

Gay men, when we get around each other most times, talk shit about people. A lot of shit. "Girl, did you see that train wreck walking down the sidewalk?" Or "Did you see what Trey wore to the club last night? Oh my god, I didn't know Wal-Mart had a men's clothing line!" I am famous with accents and I do impersonations of different people and races. I truly do not mean any harm when I impersonate people. All races, cultures, genders, and sexual orientations of people are wonderful. Personally, I like to poke fun at some generalizations to get a laugh. (For example, whenever I'm hanging out with my Mexican friends, I'm always cracking on white people with them. Like "Damn these white people. What the fuck man? Always trying to keep us down!") And, for the most part, people get it. However, sometimes people believe that by me being critical, that I think I'm better than everyone else. I can assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. There is definitely a certain part of me that likes to get a reaction out of people. My friend Brian, who is also from New England, does the same thing. We often wonder if it's a New England thing or just a mean streak in our personalities. Sometimes we will goad people until we get some kind of level of attention or verbal sparring back our way.

Everyone has a right to their opinion. I am quite confident in the fact that I am certainly not the best nor the worst looking person on the face of the planet. If I make a comment about someone for a particular reason, then it's my opinion. It certainly shouldn't be taken as me thinking I'm better than anyone else. I'm sure they have an opinion about me that they're not necessarily expressing either. I just tend to vocalize these things rather than internalize them.

I also completely enjoy when the tables are turned and someone can "take the piss out of me" as the Brits say. I appreciate wit, dry humor, and sarcasm more than any other qualities in a person. Let's face it, if you can be catty and sarcastic with someone who is clever, how much FUN is that? Grrr... I love it. I suppose Olympia Dukakis put it best when she said the famous line from Steel Magnolias, "Honey, if you don't have anything nice to say, then come sit by me!"

On the charges of being cold, I don't necessarily get that either. If I am meeting someone for the first time, then I tend to be fairly shy until I can get a read on the situation. If I arrive at a party, I'm more apt to circle the room a few times and listen to conversations before joining in. People construe this as me being standoffish, but it's not. I'm simply protecting myself from the memories of being that fat unhappy kid in elementary school that didn't have any friends or any understandings of who he was as a person. Until I came out of the closet and became comfortable with who I was, I had a pretty rough time of it. Social situations with gays are awkward anyway. Especially if you've been invited to a straight wedding or someone's Christmas party, it's very stressful. I'm always wondering, "Ok, who knows I'm gay and who knows I'm not? Will it be an issue here? If I want to dance with my boyfriend, will we cause a scene?" No matter where you go, you always have to think in the back of your mind about your surroundings and what is appropriate or not appropriate for the place you are in. Straight people don't have to think about these things. You can make out with the opposite sex on a subway, in any grocery store, at the beach, in a bookstore, in a restaurant, on tv, anywhere, anytime. For me, I always have to make a quick mental note of who's around me and where I am. Being spontaneous is not possible. And that's very sad.

So these are some of the things that I think about on a daily basis. I hope this has given the people who say I'm cold, uncaring, and unfeeling something to think about. My favorite play of all time is Rent. The chorus from one of my favorite songs goes like this...

Take me for what I am,
Who I was meant to be,
And if you give a damn,
Take me Baby.....
Or Leave Me

I couldn't have said it better myself. Cuidate.