Excerpt: Reminiscing about Malcolm
Haven't been blogging lately... fell down the author's rabbit hole. I'm 37,000 words deep into book three :)
Here's an excerpt -- it's a flashback sequence in which I'm thinking back to junior high days and another misfit named Malcolm, who hung out with me in seventh grade.
The narrator's voice is me-at-23 thinking back, so if the analysis at the end comes across as somewhat unsophisticated and even a tinge homophobic, that's intentional.
----- from In the Box, "July 28, 1982 (Day Ten)" ----
Nobody in our high school was out as gay. At least as far as I know. This was circa 1974-1977. Small town. Esoteric town, to be sure. But not terribly safe to be different from the categories of people available to be categorized as. There was no role for Out Gay Guy. Anyone opting for the role would have had to have created it from scratch. I have a strong sense that I can relate to that.
I met Malcolm in seventh grade at Valdosta Junior High. Earlier, 1972. We’d been in some youth church group which is where he knew me from. I don’t know, Methodist Summer Youth Program or equivalent. He did one of those “Hey, I recognize you” things, and although I had that facial agnosia thing going on for me, where I’m slow to recognize people out of context, I thought I’d for sure seen him before, so when he explained, it fit.
Malcolm liked to talk to me, and early on seemed to find it amusing to try to shock me.
“Let me tell you about these people” was Malcolm’s general presentation.
“These people like feet”, he’d tell me. “Like they’re hot for it, you know? And they hang out around libraries...”
Malcolm, I think in retrospect, probably quickly reconfigured his estimate of my sophistication and experience. Way downward.
“Do you know Betsy?”, he asked me. “She’s in our classroom for homeroom. Do you think she’s cute?”
I always had, since fourth grade. We all had. Betsy had it.
“Well would you ever want to stick your hand inside her skirt and feel around?”, he posed.
“Umm, no, yeeck, I’ve known her for a long time, that’s creepy”.
Malcolm insisted, “She would. You don’t believe me? She would. She’d let you do that. Or somebody. But it could be you.”
I was in seventh grade, mind you. The concept that the girls might have these same feelings for us like we did for them, I mean interest in the shapes and textures and wanting to touch or perhaps to be touched like that....this was all new information, or alleged information, all under consideration. With a lot of rather intense interest, yeah, I wanted to know. Did I ever.
But the way Malcolm was describing it back then... he was like a bridge person, honestly, echoing a lot of the things I’d overheard the boy boys say about girls; and still at the same time he made more sense to me. Nobody’d ever asked me about whether I’d want to put my hands up inside some girls’ skirt or not. Not that directly. Definitely not Betsy Johnson. Or maybe Betsy Johnson. It really changes how you think about it if you think maybe they want it to happen. Malcolm was saying the girls liked it. That would be wonderful. It would be so awful if it was just me, being a pervert, a creep, wanting to touch girl parts. Which was how I still worried, down deep inside, might be the case. So of course I never wanted anyone to know.
Yeah...so., Malcolm. We hung out during recess at Valdosta Junior High. I really didn’t have many friends so someone who wanted to hang out with me and be company, that was nice.
One of the interesting kinds of people Malcolm told me about at some point were boys who got fantasies about other boys, and wanted to touch them. Wanted to do sex with them, he told me.
My seventh grade self looked back blankly. I held up my hands and banged my middle fingers, left and right, into each other, tip to tip. I told Malcom, “That’s not possible, it wouldn’t work!”
Malcolm shook his head. “One of them goes up the butt of the other one. Like being with a girl. It feels a lot the same”
I ewwed a face at him. Gut reaction.
“Well they also lick and suck. With mouth and tongue”. Malcolm looked back at me, confident and gentle. “I’d like to do that if you’d let me”.
“Yecch no”, I replied.
So that was my first real-life first-hand experience of gay guys. Totally not some creepy invasive thing where one guy has a lot of power over the other. Or some creepy salivating begging person who just seems pathetic to you. Or any other stereotype, really. We were both fascinated by difference. He had a lot of interesting tales to tell. I hadn’t thought about sexual variation as a plot device for a story, but yeah it was intrinsically fascinating. Got me thinking more about where the way I was might fit in to all that.
He hit on me. Yes, that happened. He didn’t act like I had no choice, or he was entitled, or fawn at me like oh please, I need this from you. He was okay with it not being something I wanted, and we stayed friends and it totally didn’t matter. Or I assume that’s how it was for him. I have no reason to think otherwise. He was totally non-sulky about it and never brought it up again.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves. Hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
Here's an excerpt -- it's a flashback sequence in which I'm thinking back to junior high days and another misfit named Malcolm, who hung out with me in seventh grade.
The narrator's voice is me-at-23 thinking back, so if the analysis at the end comes across as somewhat unsophisticated and even a tinge homophobic, that's intentional.
----- from In the Box, "July 28, 1982 (Day Ten)" ----
Nobody in our high school was out as gay. At least as far as I know. This was circa 1974-1977. Small town. Esoteric town, to be sure. But not terribly safe to be different from the categories of people available to be categorized as. There was no role for Out Gay Guy. Anyone opting for the role would have had to have created it from scratch. I have a strong sense that I can relate to that.
I met Malcolm in seventh grade at Valdosta Junior High. Earlier, 1972. We’d been in some youth church group which is where he knew me from. I don’t know, Methodist Summer Youth Program or equivalent. He did one of those “Hey, I recognize you” things, and although I had that facial agnosia thing going on for me, where I’m slow to recognize people out of context, I thought I’d for sure seen him before, so when he explained, it fit.
Malcolm liked to talk to me, and early on seemed to find it amusing to try to shock me.
“Let me tell you about these people” was Malcolm’s general presentation.
“These people like feet”, he’d tell me. “Like they’re hot for it, you know? And they hang out around libraries...”
Malcolm, I think in retrospect, probably quickly reconfigured his estimate of my sophistication and experience. Way downward.
“Do you know Betsy?”, he asked me. “She’s in our classroom for homeroom. Do you think she’s cute?”
I always had, since fourth grade. We all had. Betsy had it.
“Well would you ever want to stick your hand inside her skirt and feel around?”, he posed.
“Umm, no, yeeck, I’ve known her for a long time, that’s creepy”.
Malcolm insisted, “She would. You don’t believe me? She would. She’d let you do that. Or somebody. But it could be you.”
I was in seventh grade, mind you. The concept that the girls might have these same feelings for us like we did for them, I mean interest in the shapes and textures and wanting to touch or perhaps to be touched like that....this was all new information, or alleged information, all under consideration. With a lot of rather intense interest, yeah, I wanted to know. Did I ever.
But the way Malcolm was describing it back then... he was like a bridge person, honestly, echoing a lot of the things I’d overheard the boy boys say about girls; and still at the same time he made more sense to me. Nobody’d ever asked me about whether I’d want to put my hands up inside some girls’ skirt or not. Not that directly. Definitely not Betsy Johnson. Or maybe Betsy Johnson. It really changes how you think about it if you think maybe they want it to happen. Malcolm was saying the girls liked it. That would be wonderful. It would be so awful if it was just me, being a pervert, a creep, wanting to touch girl parts. Which was how I still worried, down deep inside, might be the case. So of course I never wanted anyone to know.
Yeah...so., Malcolm. We hung out during recess at Valdosta Junior High. I really didn’t have many friends so someone who wanted to hang out with me and be company, that was nice.
One of the interesting kinds of people Malcolm told me about at some point were boys who got fantasies about other boys, and wanted to touch them. Wanted to do sex with them, he told me.
My seventh grade self looked back blankly. I held up my hands and banged my middle fingers, left and right, into each other, tip to tip. I told Malcom, “That’s not possible, it wouldn’t work!”
Malcolm shook his head. “One of them goes up the butt of the other one. Like being with a girl. It feels a lot the same”
I ewwed a face at him. Gut reaction.
“Well they also lick and suck. With mouth and tongue”. Malcolm looked back at me, confident and gentle. “I’d like to do that if you’d let me”.
“Yecch no”, I replied.
So that was my first real-life first-hand experience of gay guys. Totally not some creepy invasive thing where one guy has a lot of power over the other. Or some creepy salivating begging person who just seems pathetic to you. Or any other stereotype, really. We were both fascinated by difference. He had a lot of interesting tales to tell. I hadn’t thought about sexual variation as a plot device for a story, but yeah it was intrinsically fascinating. Got me thinking more about where the way I was might fit in to all that.
He hit on me. Yes, that happened. He didn’t act like I had no choice, or he was entitled, or fawn at me like oh please, I need this from you. He was okay with it not being something I wanted, and we stayed friends and it totally didn’t matter. Or I assume that’s how it was for him. I have no reason to think otherwise. He was totally non-sulky about it and never brought it up again.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves. Hardback versions to follow, stay tuned for details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts