My Different Boy Friends

Willie was my first boyfriend who was different. He came with huge ears that protruded outward like rearview mirrors or jet engines. Little did Willie know that he stood out, and later he would face sorry glances and sneers and demeaning laughs. For all he knew looking forward, I would be the one in school to have a solitary friend, to be the last chosen for the kickball team, to be overlooked by the teacher looking for an answer, to finish last in a race, or to wear clothes that someone else had worn before.

Russell and I met in second grade because he was held back from proceeding to third grade. In my mind this meant Russell was dumb since smart kids would never repeat a grade. Only the lesser were held back in school. They needed to catch up, and they did that by staying in place.

He had latent ability I never saw until we were both in high school, during the second semester of our senior year, when I was coasting towards graduation and he was studying trigonometry. He was barely passing, but he was more engaged than I, and to me that said a great deal about his tenacity. He was advancing incrementally while I was biding my time.

I never thought his life would reach enormous heights. He might find satisfactory marks at every step, not as an insult, but as the recognition his efforts were his best, and that was virtue enough. He could barely pass, but he did pass with all he could gather. I think he knew that some struggle would join him in every endeavor. He didn't know achievement without great effort. His praise would come at the expense of strained, fully extended commitment. And this reaching, with all his power, made Russell stronger than all of us.

Either from birth or some terrible accident Mike had debility in his legs that caused his feet to curve inward, so that he walked by dragging his feet while swaying from side to side. Walking was an ordeal; running was a near impossibility.

Otherwise, Mike was normal. However, he was snubbed because he was too different to actually be considered normal. Normalcy was something an elite few had the arrogance to define and the rest of us had the stupidity to accept.

One day in the gym Mike was humiliated when two boys, who had been bullying him, spit on his face. When he sat down on the bleachers to wipe the saliva away, he glanced at me, his best friend, who said and did nothing. My silence was my consent. I gave my approval to the taunting and jeering, to the laughing and deriding, to the insults and injuries, and to the spit. I said yes to it all because I said no to none of it.

I look at a boy with outlandish ears, who is shy and short and suspicious of every glance, who hides behind a wall of fear and shame so he won’t feel the pain of being noticed, and I cannot see the well of friendship that comes from a loyal and honest heart to any person who chooses not to steal a second look at how God has made him special.

I look at a boy who is slow in mind and speech, who is a ready-to-mock creation, who is routinely derided and rudely disregarded, and I cannot see the hidden abilities that someday will outpace and outlast the arrogant presumptions of weaker wills.

I look at a boy with crippled feet, who hobbles from side to side, who is demonstrably different, and I cannot see the mettle inside that will define him as the bravest person I have ever known.

Sometimes I look at so much and see so little, and what I think I see is so often a mirage of my own making, formed by my own prejudice and distorted perceptions. The truth becomes what I make it to be. Truth in labeling becomes a contradiction

Why is judgment so often tinted and tainted by labels? Republican means right-wing conservative fascist and Democrat means left-wing liberal snowflake. Evangelical means arrogant bigot and atheist means devil worshipper. Straight means alcoholic sex abuser and gay means morally degenerate pedophile. Artistic means gay and impassive means straight. Environmentalist means Democrat and huge carbon footprint means Republican. The missionary position means conservative and the Amazon means liberal. Extrovert means confident and introvert means insecure.

Imagine the mental gyration and social unease from meeting a gay evangelical Republican lumberjack Antifa member. Or meeting a pro-life liberal Democrat fiscal conservative atheist. Or meeting a Playboy centerfold, Miss July, whose hobby is Jesus! A literal mental miasma occurs when we face a configuration of labels that are not intended to be grouped together. This incongruence is not something we try to understand as much as it is something we want to stare at. It is difficult to embrace a confusing array of descriptors all amalgamated into one person.

I self-label as a straight conservative Republican evangelical social libertarian who enjoys being around other like-minded men but who also enjoys diametrically different men who are liberals, Democrats, atheists, and gays. Philosophically I could not be a humanist.Politically I could not be a liberal. Theologically I could not be an atheist. Socially I could not be a fascist. Morally I could not be a relativist. Sexually I could not be a polyamorist. Yet regardless of what I could not be, I am eager to know and experience men who are all things I am not. I don’t want to live in a monoculture where every man is identical to me. If given the chance, I would rather run with warriors from many tribes than sit around a fire with clones.

The problem of associating with different is that I could be labeled as being different. The danger is that labels are not always true descriptors. If I sit naked in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony with an atheist friend can I be labeled a pagan naturist? If I go to a gay bar with a friend and drink beer can I be labeled gay? If I attend a fundraiser for a Democrat can I be labeled a Democrat?I have friends who would never sit in a sweat lodge, never ever enter a gay bar, and would never shake President Bill Clinton’s hand or ask for his autograph like it was something valuable because they wouldn’t be able to endure the labels that would be placed on them.

From an early age I knew I was different, but I didn’t know how I was different, and I knew I wanted to be different. For my birthday one year my Dad bought me a bike that was as strange as they come. Its design was unlike anything else in the neighborhood: low profile, smaller than usual tires, and a center knob that held the two halves of the bike together. Why would I want a bike that could be divided in half? It was different.

While still in junior high, American fashion went berserk and I went with it. I’m talking bell-bottom pants, puffy pirate shirts, wild, neon colors, disorienting plaids and stripes, and virtually anything else thrown in for taste. It was a veritable mess but from my perspective it was a gold mine of opportunity. I had my Mom sew a Native American-style braid on the hem of my favorite pair of jeans just so I could be different.

My sister and I were browsing a gift shop in LA when I noticed a guy milling around wearing a pair of jeans the style of which I had never seen. Like a hound on the scent, I followed them around trying discretely to discover the brand. No luck regardless of my deft maneuvering. So, I had no choice but to ask the guy what the brand was. He was amused but at least I would soon be wearing a pair of double-button Guess jeans that weren’t being worn by anyone else in my world.

Once I was in an elevator with a group of friends and another man came into the elevator wearing a cologne that smelled great. I asked the man for the name of the cologne and he told me. When he exited the elevator, my friends laughed in disbelief because I had violated man-to-man etiquette. Men don’t ask other men what cologne they’re wearing. Somehow a rule like that doesn’t apply to me.

Differences and the judgements they form can be uncomfortable and even threatening. Just ask any man in a minority. At any moment that young black man could easily drive off without paying for his gas, or shoot someone trying to stop him. That gay man looks outrageous on the float in the parade and there’s no doubt men like him will destroy America. A conceal carry gun permit is essential in a society where Muslims are beginning to be more vocal, and an AR-15 could easily be concealed under a galabeya.

The greatest risk to being different is that sooner or later someone may decide I don’t belong anymore because I’m too different. David, you don’t belong with us; you don’t belong in this place; and by the way, you don’t belong in this world. The history of the world is the story of purging the people it believes don’t belong in it.

My first three boy friends in life were different and they weren’t accepted as normal. They were underdogs and they were bullied. They were labeled as ugly, dumb, and disabled and told to stay on the cultural perimeter. Any closer to the center and they’d have to be told they didn’t belong there. In my alignment with them I adopted their spirit and it has never left me. The world dismissed them for being different. I embraced them because they were different.

My defense of people who are different was hardened further when my own son transitioned from normal to profoundly disabled. Early on this journey I would become annoyed with people who stared at Matt and his misshaped head as we coursed through a mall or down a sidewalk or from aisle to aisle in a store. I couldn’t read their faces well enough to know if there was genuine pity or simple curiosity, as though Matt was a circus attraction.

While my son remains locked in the prison of a withered life from which he will never be freed, and while there’s nothing more I can do to bring him back to me in a state considered normal, I will at least defend his dignity and his difference. The world be damned if there’s ever a day when my son is no longer welcome here because he’s different.

This world will always struggle with how to decide the limit of its tolerance of those who can’t be easily labeled. Without a label how will the world know if they deserve to belong in it? How lenient should it be of the diversity that erodes the conformity it prefers? Can a world without labels even exist? The answers to these questions lie with you.

So, what is this blog post about? Is it about three boys who were born with physical or mental differences, and who didn’t choose to be different? Is it about haphazard judgments that falsely label men based on their actions without any consideration of their intentions? Or is it about being different for difference sake, as though being different were a virtue and not just a state of mind?

This post is about being true. When a man discovers himself as he truly is he will find parts of his makeup and manhood that make him different from all other men who share his same labels. If a man then acts on what sets him apart, and accepts his differences as things unique and worthwhile, he must find a way to reinvent himself with labels that are true. It is in this process of becoming true where a man finds the greatest power he will ever know. It is the power of individuality. It is the engine of his soul that is renovating him from the inside out so that his inner and outer lives are one continuity free of labels that were never true and would never ever be true.