The truth of the matter is that I am gay.... 

    That being said, I'm happy now and well adjusted in the matter of my sexuality. I have not experienced in my adult life the abuse at the hands of my peers that I experienced as a teenager. But that was the case then and it still affects me to this day.
    I was born into a good family and raised as a single child. I had most everything that I wanted and truly appreciated it. I was never given to the fits or demands of "spoiled" children. I grew, went to school, and had friends just like anybody else. I had a wonderful, happy childhood and I remain thankful for that. I was a very smart child with a very high IQ. Sometimes the other children registered a little disgust with that as children will, but it was nothing to bad. Then came junior high.
     In junior high, things seemed to change immediately and with force! I began to hear cat calls of "fag", "queer", or "queer bait" and I honestly didn't know what those words meant! I would get shoved in the hall as we were changing classes sometimes and I just didn't understand why. It all began that fall of 1974 and continued until my graduation and ultimate release from what I almost considered to be hell adjacent.
   The only thing that saved me was marching band. I loved being in the band as it was a reward at the end of a bad day. Ironically, that was one of the things that put me in harms way as well. At my school, the football team hated the band. Strange as it may seem, that was the case. I was well versed in music and did well in band and eventually rose to lofty positions. That made those of high football rank hate me even more.
   I was a pretty normal "1970's" teenager. I had the typical hair cuts and wore the best of the fashion of the day. I felt fortunate to be able to have these things and didn't flaunt them in the faces of others. Yet, as I lived in a very rural area fraught with farmers and "rednecks", the very fact that I didn't wear dirty flannel, a cap and carry tobacco in my pocket made me an icon of hatred. Admittedly, I was different. I was "me" and that's all that I've ever known how to be. After I struggled to learn what all the names that I was being called meant, at some point I began to wonder about the truth of them.
   There seemed to be two different types of people somehow. Of course there were men and women. And I knew all about body parts, but there seemed to be something else too. I had never really though about sex in all those years. I knew very well not to ask about it either. I also learned very early in childhood that sex was bad and a necessary evil of life! Whether anyone meant to teach me that or not, that's what I learned from watching and listening. And If I did get it wrong, then that's not my fault, it's theirs!
   Though I knew about the "parts", of men and women, both internal and external, I didn't know how they fit together! I had no idea how a woman actually got pregnant! You have to remember that back in the late '60's and '70's that things weren't quite as "out there" as they are now. Still, as obvious as it should have been, my mind didn't pick up on it because I had been trained (intentionally or not) to not think about sex.
   The way that I finally broke through the veil and found out about the mechanics of it all was on the band bus. We were on the way to all state band tryouts one Saturday, when one of the girls had a book called "Beulah Land". She was passing it around so that everyone could read the dirty part.
   Soon, it came my turn and I began to read. There was a very vivid and accurate description of a male and a female character having sex on a cliff by the ocean. I read quietly, showing no emotion, with my shock growing! After I handed the book back I smiled and tried to react as everyone else did. As Blanche Deveraux of "The Golden Girls" might have said, "I was stunned. Stunned, I tell you. Stunned was the only way to describe how...stunned I was."
   After the tryouts were over and I didn't have to think about them anymore, I spent the rest of the weekend laughing as I though about all the dirty jokes that I had ever heard and didn't get. One of the greatest mysteries of life was now revealed to me.
   So now I knew. Still, nothing changed for me. I really didn't expect for it to either. Still, I was only "myself" as that's all that I've ever known how to be. That was my sophomore year in high school and it was at about that time that I really began to wonder about myself.
   I never had the desire to date. The reason for that was that underneath it all, I just didn't have the desire for girls. I didn't understand that then, but I guess that the other kids noticed it and that's part of what made them torment me. I didn't do anything to deserve the treatment, but I got it anyway.
   All through my childhood, I had had little girlfriends. As I moved into the dark years of junior high and beyond, I had crushes on girls that lasted days or weeks or months, but I never acted on any of these impulses. It, in a way, seemed unnatural to me. The common questions among the kids back then were, "Who do you like..?" "Do they like you back..?" The winter of my sophomore year was the point when I had my last girl crush.
   That being said, I didn't feel that I liked boys. My entire life I had seen other guys here and there and looked at them with an admiring eye. I thought to myself, "That's what I want to look like", but I didn't equate it with anything sexual. I had always thought the same things about some of my male friends through the years too.
   In childhood, I thought that Victor was the cutest little blue eyed blonde boy that I had ever seen. In teenage years I thought that Greg was the most adorable guy that I had ever met and he was so nice too! But in all those cases we were friends only! I never said anything or did anything or acted on any of those undefined impulses in any way!  
   In all the previous years, when one girl crush ended it wasn't very long before another began for whatever reason. I waited and waited, that sophomore year and another never came. I began to wonder if what everyone was saying about me was right? I became curious about myself. In my junior year, I decided that everyone just might be right about me. In my senior year, I pretty well knew that I was going to give gay sex a try even if I didn't stick with it.
   As all the abuse was heaped on, I vehemently denied any attraction to guys. I also denied with fervor any of the experiences that were invented in the minds of my oppressors just for sport. I held my head high and went about my business, hard as it could be some days. I developed an icy stare and an impenetrable stone face to hide behind when all I wanted to do was cry. I never did. No one ever got through. 
   Then came the thing that almost broke me. My senior year, I was confronted with hysterical laughter and glee by some girls that new me with the rumor that I had won Homecoming Queen by a landslide! Again, I didn't react as everyone else laughed at me. No one should have to endure something like that. A dear dear female friend told me that I should find out if it was true and if it was, demand my right to be crowned!. She said that she would be proud to be my escort. I wanted to cry then too, for different reasons. It turned out not to be true. It was yet another of the cruel jokes of which I had to bear the brunt. 
   I remember that afternoon like it was yesterday. When I finally made it through the school day and sat down in my car and locked the door, I breathed a little sigh of relief. I was safe and alone now. I turned on my radio and the first sound that I heard was Ann Murray singing "Daydream Believer". I had never heard it before that moment. "Cheer up sleepy Jean. Oh what can it mean to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen?" In a strange way, I actually felt like someone understood me at that moment. I rushed right out and bought the 45 rpm record and I think that I still have it. Funny how you can find comfort in the little things.
   Another thing that I had to endure was the loss of my best friend. He was the best and most special friend that I had ever had and he stabbed me in the back to save himself. We did everything together. We were in band together and church together. We ate lunch together with our little group of guys and girls. We road around together on the weekends and discussed out inner most thoughts. Again, I never said or did anything inappropriate to him, with him or about him!
   Then, we became the school "couple". Not only would they all yell at me, they now yelled at "us". We laughed about it, because he knew that none of it was true. He knew that I wasn't gay and hadn't tried anything with him. Then over the summer of 79, it happened. He began to agree with what was being said by others.
   It actually began at church of all places. The good kids, the children of the Lord, the ones that were supposed to be righteous and pure, the ones that were supposed to have been the "proper" friends for me to have turned out to be some of the worst demons of all. They began to tease him about me, about us until he just couldn't take it anymore. That's when he turned on me.
   He began to agree with all the other kids. He actually told some things that I had done to him. I hadn't done anything! That made everyone laugh even harder. That was the day that I lost the best friend that I ever had. I've seen him a couple of times since in these last 28 years or so. I just looked at him with cold indifference and turned away. I don't' hate him. I never did. I just learned to stop feeling anything for him. I still miss him sometimes though.
   I learned the places that I could go in school and when and where that I couldn't. I couldn't walk out the middle entrance to school, because that's where all the rougher crowd was and I might have been physically hurt. I couldn't go into the boys bathroom during break because that's where all the guys were that hated me. If I had to use the bathroom, I had to wait until I was in the middle of class and then ask to be excused. That way, there was less chance of running into anyone.
   I would often find trash shoved into my locker through the vents. I couldn't leave my car windows cracked or I might find something in there too. I had to keep close check on all of my possessions so that no one would steel or damage something out of cruelty. The last thing that anyone ever tried to do to me was at graduation and it didn't work.
   We entered from two sides of the gym and sat in rows of chairs. There was a mark on the two center chairs so that the row leaders would know where to stop. I was at the outer end of a row. That day of graduation, when we filed in and I got to the end of the row, there was one chair short. I almost had no where to sit. I was able to reach over and grab the band directors chair and sit down as if nothing was wrong.
   One of the girls that was a true friend of mine, though I don't remember who, told me later that she had found out that two of the guys had moved the pieces of tape on the chairs so that I would have anywhere to sit. They had tried to take into account for my being able to reach for another chair, but they had miscounted. They wanted me to be left standing and embarrassed. It didn't work out for them that time.
   I was glad when high school was over. I had planned to leave and go far away for college so that there would be all new people to start over with and that's what I did. I went 450 miles away and I've never gone back home to stay. I've had a good life where I live and no one has treated me badly.
   I was a good kid in the 1970's. I looked normal and acted normal and didn't deserve any of the treatment that I got! And the thing was that it wasn't just the kids at school or the kids at church. I actually got laughed at by some adults on the street in town. I was that big a deal. Even kids at other schools had heard "The Rumor".
   I made a dear friend in a rival high school. He was in the band like I was and we hit it off for many years! We would have long conversations much like me and the friend that turned on me, but this friend never did. I told him once in a late night phone conversation about how people treated me and what they said and that it wasn't true. I didn't want him to hear about it and then stop being my friend with me, because this had happened to me so many times before.
   After I told him, he slowly said, "Yeah...I already know about that. Everyone knows and talks about it. It's called "The Rumor" and I've even heard it from kids at schools that are further away. I sunk in my heart just then. Why was I that famous for nothing?! Then he said, "But don't worry about it, because I sort of have the same problem at my own school, just not quite as bad."
   That was one of the things that sealed our bond for the many years that we were friends. Now he is on the west coast and I haven't seen or heard from him in many years. I still think of him with fond memories and I'm sure that he thinks of me too.

There are so so many more stories that I could tell about those years. It would take hours to fully illustrate the impact that those six years have had in shaping my life as and adult. 
I will never forget the experiences nor the aggressors! 
I do not choose to forgive and forget! 
May their own karma be their true and just punishment...