| Sunday, July 17, 2005
Why is letting go sometimes so hard? | |
 For five years, at my High School, Otago Boys' High School, I experienced incredible alienation. Very early on in my first year at the school, a teacher saw fit to 'label' me a faggot. (Yes, I too have often wondered since then what gave rise to such an accurate gaydar in one apparently better suited to scientific enquiry). He wasn't informing me of anything I didn't already know. Of course I was different. Not in an 'accepting diversity' sense though, but in a deeply unacceptable way. Even before High School I had always felt different. I cultivated many personal beliefs that I used to explain this, circumstances that I recruited to explain to myself why I didn't want to be an All-Black; my parents had long since separated, I was so-called intelligent, I preferred cooking to digging in the garden, I was terrified of climbing trees - a terror only eclipsed by my terror of my peers, the kids in my neighbourhood and at my school against whom my 'otherness' was put into the sharpest of relief. I spent too much time in my bedroom. I was not engaged by sport (I was never bad at sport really, I was bad at fitting in. It was as if the closer I had to come into contact with kids my age the more deeply alienated I felt. I simply didn't understand how they operated. "Sport" was competitive team sport, of course). I threw 'like a girl'. I liked bright-coloured cardigans (unimaginable even to me these days). Then, at the age of 13, it was all made clear. I was a faggot (Oh, how strongly, even now, I desire to wrap that word safely in puctuation, quotation marks). Naturally there was no-one in my life who I could look to as a model of what a homosexual is meant to be. No matter, my school and my society could teach me what I was, how to view myself. The teachers and people in authority could confirm it all by silently looking on, or turning a 'blind' eye and thus placing their tacit stamp of approval on the proceedings. A gay boy was treated with disdain, disgust and outright hatred. But it wasn't this that truly did the trick. Sure, I was spat on, punched, tripped, made to prostrate and humiliate myself, made a scapegoat, jeered at, had my work defaced - stolen only to find it strewn in the school urinals... the list is as endless as it is banal. My school was a daily living hell. I learned that there was no point fighting. Who would care? Why tell a teacher of actions taken by students when the teacher was present when it occurred. He had eyes of his own. I only 'brought it on myself', as one of them famously said. Yet, no matter how tough all of that was, I know it was of the time. I feel I have let go of much of the sadness it caused. I'm not a victim. I make myself. I no longer believe that my entire society is appalled by me. I know there are many others like me and I know that they live lives of love and joy. We are sometimes even respected. What sticks with me now is the unspoken distancing I experienced. People steered clear. I existed within my own untouchable bubble. I was the only one of me. What I cannot seem to yet let go of, to shake, is that disassociation that I felt always, and that was cemented through those years of High School. I learned to step out of myself and watch everything from a critical distance. I became self-conscious. Aware of my every gay movement, gesture, sound. I raised an academic screen around myself. I predicted every situation and person and reaction, so that I was prepared when the inevitable happened. I can't seem to reel it back. To come back to myself. I feel apart. I reckon that may explain why I find time by myself to be such a relief. I can finally relax. I can be 'myself' completely and unconsciously. It may explain why I document my life online in this way. My missives and messages that are produced, edited, filtered, normalised and screened for public consumption. It's just so much easier to do it this way than in the intellectually-acrobatic real-time. It may explain why I always take positions of control. The aerobics instructor, the teacher, the manager, the non-drinker, the list goes on. It has been 17 years since I finished High School. I was only there for 5 years. They taught me where to put the apostrophe. I think it's high time I let go. Writing this helps. Letting go of control would be a good idea too... It was heartening to read, on the school's website that the new Rector, Clive Rennie, believes:
One day they may even be part of such a community rather than 'pointing to' it from their limestone and granite towers. |
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| Anonymous
responded:
i cried when i read this.its so beautifully written about such a heart wrenching subject.you are such a strong good person Monday, July 24, 2006 |
| Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Slow movement |
 I like things to go slowly. If I let things go at their own natural pace, it turns out that slow is almost always the speed they go. I've been thinking about adding more of the photos I have from before I started this website about 5 years ago. Most of them are physical, so I would have to scan them. But as time is passing, I'm wanting more and more to do this. This self-reflexive online exercise of mine lacks balance. So far I am only looking at the present, the immediate past, and the future. Considering how much my more distant past (My experiences at High School and my long relationship with Stephen are examples) informs who I am and how I make my decisions today, I feel I need to provide a better representation of them on here. It's curiously emotionally difficult for me to do it though. It has taken me a slow long time to gather the courage. The courage not just to show you the carefully packaged and 'refined' me in the here and now, but also the raw, vulnerable, hopeful and often naiive me of days gone by. Let's see how it goes... |
| Sunday, July 03, 2005
Yeah! |
| Okay, so not having a TV does have its drawbacks. Sometimes, when you live on your own and you're doing your ironing or cooking a meal and National Radio is playing music from the '50s again, you just feel the need to listen to or watch something. I would guess most people flick the TV on in that moment. I haven't given myself that option. And while I'm trying not to use the word "lonely", I was certainly feeling pensive this evening. Enough to open up the new iTunes and search the podcasts for something local. I typed "New Zealand" and out popped the internet's first podcast radio drama: Claybourne. It met my needs nicely and planted a few seeds of ideas for my Drama class this year... Go the internet and go New Zealand on Air! |
| Look what Julia sent me! |
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| Friday, July 01, 2005
A Day In The Life. |
| 7:25am: The alarm goes off... and continues to do so 6 more times at 5 minute intervals before my feet hit the ground. 8:17am: I exit the shower, turn on the kettle and National Radio and eat 4 weetbix. 8:31am: Drive (I know! But I love my car) to school. 8:40am: Get greeted by 8WT, a class of 12 Year olds who have organised a party to celebrate the last period of my teaching them grammar. We play charades and have a 'dance-off' to "Car Wash". Obligatory speech. 9:30am: Training for the Roy House Theatresports team. Set up PA in the gym. 10:15am: Whole school assembles in the gym for Inter-House Theatresports competition. I'm the MC. 10:45am: Cup of tea 11:05am: Visual Language analysis with Year 12 English. 11:55am: Teach Aerobics to a year 11 PE class. 12:45pm: Duck out to Soul Food with Carol for a recharge. 1:30pm: Drama with the seniors. View the video journals, directions on the next assessment, performance for the year 8 class then group devising work. 3:20pm: Debrief with Bagley. 3:30pm Take-away coffee (and select a DVD) and it's off to the Lake's edge for a quiet moment to watch the sun set. 5:30pm Home to cook dinner (feta olive pasta) and watch the film (Father and Son - real good). 11:30pm Post a journal. |
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You can also read my old journal that I wrote in 2001 when I threw everything up in the air and did a road trip of New Zealand to help me make some decisions. |
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