From my Bullied Pulpit

I witnessed a lot in eighth grade. Girls took the focus off me — somewhat. Interest in feeling their blossoming private parts, and the discomfort it brought them, trumped picking on the kid with a crutch. Most were completely violated and minimized, although a few always exuded this coy brand of self-defeat, enjoying their time as damsel in distress. A lot of pubecently curious testosterone spilled in the halls, classrooms and schoolyards of West Junior High. A lot of hostility and total ignorance and mockery of authority was spent on over-worked or under-paid staff. In the late 70s I saw things that today would warrant legal intervention. Half of those kids would have compiled at least a page of juvenile offenses. That is, if the girls were not tight lipped about them. I, as a boy who had normal urges, but also was smart enough to know that I lacked the nimble fingers to get away with assaults, have no idea how much of this defilement was ever reported.
Johnny Tremain’s hand was gilded. It was burned in molten silver so it wasn’t useful. We watched the 1957 film on a small projector in the back of the classroom. It was one of the days the teacher had no lesson plan. He sat at his desk in a darker part of the room pretending to be interested, always about to make insightful commentary. They were the filmstrips that sometimes melted from heat concentrating on one cell too long. I sat as a good student, never having the unprincipled behavior that can forge a relationship in which I might consider the disciplinarian I saw to be my pal. The kids that were my sworn enemies were on a first name basis with him though. I kept my nose clean and my hands to myself. I watched the movie, saw it for the cheap education about the American revolution that it was.
However I laughed with dissonance. I don’t really know what I felt for the victimized girl. Part of me was glad that, momentarily, the heat was off me and no one was writing on my shirt. Part of me wondered about the true repulsion of the girl in this case, how much of the attention and harassment was honestly unwanted. She was know to be kind of slutty. Half of me felt a sense of loyalty to the feminist liberal values my home espoused, the other half wondered what it was like to be one of the boys, one of those awkward pubers who, in a few years, would most likely have some kind of relationship with those girls, possibly intimate. Now that’s a lot of division for a thirteen-year-old. The girls had things growing on them that excited some boys, and some were bold enough to act on their impulses. We were horny. We were simply YOUNG AND DUMB. In the end we were FULL OF CUM. I sat as girls were harassed, I must confess. I don’t know what went through my head then. An impulse maybe, weak as it was, to tell the teachers what was going on. What would have been the fall out out me? The backlash for telling, for “narking” I recall was the vernacular of the day. The next day I can hear my adversaries saying “What, are you some kind of fag? A sissy boy?” Did I need that label in addition to the cripple with a crutch. I did not want to find out.
Two boys, hormonal derelicts, one who turned out a respected teacher who I’m sure would now level charges for the same behavior. The other one, I have no idea what became of him. He was my greatest abuser though. He bullied me, picked on me, bloodied my nose back in the day. But he also seemed like he wanted to have some kind of friendship based on that hostility. He stopped a fight once that I had instigated with another kid, foolishly thinking I could win. Just as he was about to cave in the side of my face, my “friend” comes along and stops it with his mere presence. We used to pitch pennies against the wall, in the foyer, after lunch before going out for recess. He was usually the instigator, or co-conspirator, of the daily gang-bang. Man, in those days kids were like dogs. Dumb, instinctual animals who humped the most notorious leg. If I stood on the side lines of that field today, picturing those kids 37 years ago, I’d have to pencil in a fire hose or two being turned on them. It was, or would be, legally chargeable scandalous behavior. A group of YDFOC boys tackled a less-than-willing girl and I was told the bottom guy got the goods, the treasure at thirteen. I stood by with a whiff of envy, a hint of anger, a little resentment that no one included me,but I knew it was wrong.
During Tremain, under cover of darkness and the guise of an educational film, a teacher sat silently with no clue of what was happening in his classroom. He was the mountain of neglect and incompetence that would not allow me to use a typewriter in the room. He feared its sound would disrupt the flow of his educational wizardry. The two boys slid up the aisle. I was a tag team effort. One tweaked a boob, she swatted, and a moment later the other reached up for the grab fro the other side. It went on, unnoticed by most, throughout the film. They worked like a perverted pair of Marx brothers. The girl had a spotty reputation. She was one of those lone “burnouts,” no clique, one of those low-esteemed kind that cuts class for a smoke in the girl’s room. She was also known to be promiscuous and easy. If it had been — say — the girl I had liked back in sixth grade, who had even allowed herself to be known as my girlfriend — even for only a day — I’d have reacted differently, maybe even taken a poke at one of those guys. My girl then was soft and nice, clean, smokeless, diligent, hard.
I felt, but couldn’t or wouldn’t feel. I knew I was too slow to get away with it, the slight of hand like I saw as Johnny Tremain played. I wanted to be like the others but I knew that I couldn’t and shouldn’t. I was better than that. I was raised to respect women. But being able to do that, even to the sluts who seemed to have an ambivalence to it, was something I tried on a dare, or an initiation to be one of the boys in the YDFOC herd.