The film was about one of our heavier friends, Drew, escaping from fat camp.
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I figured John was using it playfully, among friends, the way he would also call me “Jew.”Ī few weeks later, John invited me to join an online conference using our school’s in-house email system for a movie he wanted to make. It was a word to be feared, but still buoyant enough not to always be taken seriously. “Gay” was a word that boys tossed around like hot potato, everyone hurling the insult in the vain hope it wouldn’t stick to them. But I knew that “gay” meant more than having sex with men. I was 14 and barely knew what sex was beyond the definitions I’d gleaned from health class and pornography. At that point, I had only had the most fleeting of interactions with girls. He wrote it on my textbook in biology, where we sat together, and he would whisper it while pointing at me. I was happy to have someone to sit with at lunch, but eventually John started to do something I didn’t understand - he would constantly tell me I was gay. “I guess it was more just to prove that I can.” He shrugged. “One time I did it 10 times in one day,” he said at practice, both of us standing at the end of the field waiting for the coach’s call. He was quirky he wore the same pair of purple sweatpants to school every day, and he joked about how much he masturbated. It got even better when I met John during soccer practice. Mostly, I was relieved Fred was gone, and I could stop jumping every time I heard a locker slam. I heard his dad was seen screaming in the office about what a screw-up his son was, a detail I relished with a grim smile.
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That August, before the start of high school, I walked into my brother’s room and asked him, with the most serious face I could muster, if he could teach me how to punch somebody.īut I didn’t have to learn. I nodded, trying to breathe and pretending I wasn’t about to cry. “Are you OK?” asked the assistant coach, a tall, heavy-set man who was also the head of the upper school we would both be joining next year. My helmet disappeared my sweaty gloves flopped on the ground. One day during practice, he dropped any pretense of chasing after the grounded ball and simply rammed into me with all his force.
In the locker room after lacrosse, he would snap at my ankles with his stick until they turned bright red. Something about my incompetence made Fred furious. I had changed schools so often I’d forgotten how to make friends. People whispered that he smoked pot and felt up girls after school. I was perpetually clothed in hand-me-downs. He wore clothing emblazoned with Hilfiger and Klein. Fred was tall for an eighth grader, and he was clear-skinned and golden, with hair so light it seemed more than blond. We were both faculty brats, and the school catered to elite students from wealthy families.īut our similarities ended there. When I arrived at this new private school in seventh grade, after my mom got a job teaching, I hoped Fred and I might be friends. That’s because my head was being slammed against a locker, the syllables crashing together like cymbals in my ear. The first time someone called me a “faggot” I didn’t hear it at all.