I am having huge problems with my current med cocktail - impossible to write. So it's time for a rerun. Especially in the light of the recent bullicide in Mass.
12th Grade. First period. American History. The teacher, a former hippie and lover of all Rock and Roll from the 60s era, was presenting. It was supposed to be a lively discussion on Watergate, Nixon, and why we, mostly 18 year old now, needed to vote carefully in our first election that November. We were going to go on a class trip later that week to register to vote in the primaries, and later the fall election, and visit our congresswoman, the late, great, Millicent Fenwick, who was supposed to inspire us to vote and as a woman, inspire the girls to careers other than house wife.
I was 17. I, being a September baby, and one of the youngest kids in the classs could not vote, but thought the idea of meeting Ms. Fenwick would be neat. She was, after all, known to us as Lacy Davenport, in the "Doonesbury" strip.
That day I recall like yesterday. The class was split in two, half the desks on one side of the room, the isle in the middle vacant so the teacher could walk through on his way from his desk to the chalkboard. The other side of the room was filled with more desks.
And I , sitting at the desks nearest the door, recall thinking, not for the first time in my life, my mother's maiden surname started with a "G". Had she married a man who's surname had an surname, say A-H, or kept her maiden name, I wouldn't be in the predicament I was in then, For sitting a mere two seats away was my nemesis, my bully. Someone who also had a surname that started with an "S", And that day, like most of the other days, when it was my turn to speak in the class, he had all the other boys in the class stare at me, my face, my body, and i stammered out the correct answer, but not before I lost my train of concentration and had one of them call me an idiot and another one a dumb blonde.
When the bell rang to dismiss, I gathered up my history books, note book, put the pen and pencil in my handbag, and walked out of the room , not before I saw a foot lurch ahead in a feeble effort to trip me, and sighed when I saw him and a gang of boys circling his locker, a few lockers away from mine. it was going to be a long, long day. I wouldn't cry, but when when I got home the inside of my mouth was bruised from me biting it, and the popular cheerleader who had the locker next to mine, would be teasing me with her boyfriend, who was constantly necking with her during change of classes, and trying to feel her up, laughed at me, telling me that I was ugly, and a dried up virgin.
Sigh. It was also the first time I ever looked up the word "virgin" in the dictionary, Sir Richard Branson had not started his empire then.
Two of my blogging friends in the UK, Matthew Holford, of the "It's Quite an Experience Blog', and Fiddy of the "SEROXAT SUFFERERS (Paxil in the US), blog, have icons against bullying on their respective blogs. I know from reading Ben Elton, this is a problem in the UK and it has gotten a lot of press. I may be way behind the times, but I am glad it has a public presence, and this movement happened way before I became aware of it from the "Celebrity Big Brother"(UK) house antics against one Indian contestant making me gag watching it a back then on the bits I saw on You Tube. See, I got it real bad, all instigated by one lone boy, but had the misfortune of him being the President and main boy of the class. So bad that from 10th grade til the day before graduation, I would think about suicide, not that I wanted to die, per say, I just wanted to be stopped being bullied. Now, he did not do this every day. Maybe once or twice a week, to keep me on my toes. But the anticipation lead to all kind of side effects like OCD, SI, and several, well, going home and taking a handful of Tylenol or Bayer aspirin in the feeble thought that five or six of them, or even as many as ten would make me sleep through the night and I would never wake up. But I never slept through the night. I had nightmares and panic. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't pretty enough. I wasn't smart enough. I would never get into a good college, all my peers were getting into Ivy and Jr. Ivy. If I didn't get into the right school, I wouldn't have the right career, meet the right husband, have the right children. I was disappointing my parents, I couldn't hold a candle to my cousins, all who attended Ivy and were in careers like law, and engineering, or going on for PhD's. I would spend the night listening to WOR on the radio, the golden age for me, where Larry King had a radio talk show, and I could hear Jean Sheperd, and Bob and Ray, as well as Long John Neville. Home was my sanctuary. I could loose myself in a book on weekends write in my diary, lock myself away in the room while I put on records on the record player. LPs and 45s of the Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd. I played "The Wall" over and over again til I wore out all the grooves, and had to replace it. Later I would get a copy of NJ's own native son Bruce Springsteen's "The River" and fell in love with him, playing "Point Blank" over and over so much I went through several LP's of this as well.
Another 45 I had that I wore out was Janis Ian's seminal "At Seventeen". That seemed to call to me when I was 13, I wasn't attractive, I was the last girl always picked in gym class for what ever game we were playing, baseball, basketball, volleyball, I had two left feet, the original klutz. I also got teased in the locker room, because I was one of the few girls that did not need to stuff her bra. Not then. Never in HS. If anything I was binding them to make them smaller, and by Senior year, would not be able to take co-ed gym class because the boys were staring at my chest. I would go out running in on the track when the weather was clement, and the gym teacher would tell me not to run, but walk really fast. To this day I cannot run. I power walk.
Unlike Ms. Ian, when I was 17 I went away to college, and learned for the first time since 3rd grade that I was intelligent. I was scoring A's and B's in school. I actually had people telling me I was attractive. The girls on my hall had modern clothes, and I traded in my preppy clothes, the turtlenecks and fair isle sweaters, the cordoroy pants and Treetorns on my feet, for cooler shoes, and shirts. Out came the jeans, on came makeup, I learned how to apply it and do my hair, growing it long. I developed confidence. And a strange thing happened. My body might have blossomed up in High School, but my mind blossomed up in college. With the confidence, I developed, the thoughts of death lessened. The SI stopped. Guys actually came to my room to talk, and the real cool ones, the jocks, would take me out for coffee and ask me to help them study. I had friends. I was happy.
And i learned to forgive those who hurt me so bad in high school.
By the time I was 20, I still might have been a dork in their eyes, but I was on Dean's List, I was in one of the best schools in the country for Liberal Arts, and I had my first real boyfriend. I was still a virgin, but I had finally had my first real kiss and proper grope in the back seat of his dad's old 76 black Jaguar. And I for the first time in my life, had groped back. I didn't have brothers. Ah! So that was what it was all about!
And some amazing things started to happen. One was over the summer, between my Junior and Senior year in College. I was out to eat with my parents, I was living on campus, but came down for the weekend to see them. We went to the local watering hole, a bar that resembled "Cheers", and a restaurant on the other side, that was famous for it's burgers and steaks. The waitress, much to my dismay, was the "evil" cheerleader who had her locker next to mine, and would never let me get to mine, slamming it shut and teasing me, if she wasn't necking in front of it.
I looked at her, she at me. And as she looked at me, dressed in a sleeveless white shirt, jeans, she smiled and said words to the effect that she was gravely sorry for teasing me in High School. She was told to do it by my nemesis, and she realized now she was wrong, and it was eating her up inside. I looked at her. At 20 she looked much older, closer to 30. She had a ring on her finger, meaning to me , she never finished her studies. A closer look revealed she was pregnant. I just smiled and said something like, that's OK, we were just kids then and all teenagers are jerks. It's not a big deal. I am happy now. I hope you are too.
My father left her a big tip. I found out later, she did indeed get pregnant right after school, dropped out after her first semester of college and got married. I don't know if she ever went back.
The weird thing is over the next decade of my life, I would bump into people from my class, or my sister would bump into them in the city. And every one of them, apologized to me about their teasing, their taunts, their bullying. Every one of them felt guilty . I repeated over and over, it is OK, it's in the past, and I forgave them. Why cannot they forgive themselves.
I forgave them all by the end of my Freshman or Sophomore year in college. All but the ringmaster. He still plagued my dreams, turning them into nightmares. I was back in High School again, late for first period US History. There would be tests given, about Vietnam, Watergate, and I would look at the test and not know the answer. The dream always ended the same, even if the classes changed. I looked up at the teacher and said "Screw this test, I have a college degree", or "I just got my Masters", Then I would wake up, heart racing, run to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face and make sure that I was not 17 again and wanting to SI.
When I was 33 or 34 I was working part time in Borders' bookstore, at night for extra money. I was working for a news agency, but not in the news room. Not then. I had a regular 9-5 job there typing stock numbers into a spreadsheet which would be downloaded and shown on TV and computers. One of my chief High School tormenters came in to purchase a couple of CD's. My heart almost dropped. He was the best looking guy in the class, and the girl I was shelving books with noticed him too, and started to drool. He did a double take when he saw me, and said "Susan?". Then some desultory conversation, and somewhere in there, "you got beautiful. You are stunning. When do you get off work, can I buy you a drink?"
I cannot recall enjoying a drink so much, even if I only had a sip or two of beer. He was genuinely happy to see how much I had changed, and what a confident woman I had become. I told him I was making ends meet with my job, I was working an extra job to put more money in my portfolio and I wanted a vacation I was seeing a guy in England and I needed extra money to go back and forth, and the real job didn't give me the extra money to pay for that. Then came the bombshell.
"We never wanted to hurt you from 10th grade on. We were told to, if we wanted to be the cool clique, and not get harassed ourselves. He had the whole class scared of him, Susan. We all danced to his tune, and he wanted to hurt you so badly you would either suicide or transfer out".
Transfer out? Like that would happen. I was like the poor kid in the rich kids school, my folks didn't have the money to transfer me to a private school when I begged them to do so.
As for suicide, something kept me from doing that. Maybe it was like I knew, if I could just get through this my life would change and I would and could be successful and happy.
I looked at him, still handsome after 15 or so years out of high school, not a gray hair or a wrinkle on his face. And mustered up the words, "Why me?"
"You never knew? After all this time you never knew?", he almost laughed but stopped himself. Instead he went up to the bar and came back with another pint.
"He hated you because he was jealous of you. See, his father was abusive to him as a child. And his father thought-" another sip of beer "that you, the smarted kid in the class, the only Jewish kid in the class- well he should be more like you, so he told his son that. And because his dad praised you, he decided to destroy you. Any way possible. He set you up to fail, turned the teachers against you-
I blinked. He continued- "Teachers were as afraid of him as we were. So they set you up too, by looking the other way". We all saw you cry for help, but we ignored it.
I looked at him " So did Kitty Genovese when she was being murdered, you know. Cry for help and no one came'.
He looked down on at his shoes. "We did that Susan, and I am sorry. We all are. All of us but him, we are still scared of him, you know that. You escaped, you lived, and you look fantastic. You've really turned out to be a great gal, and i am really enjoying talking to you". He took my hand. "I;m just sorry I am moving to the midwest, in a week, I would ask you out for dinner. You deserve more than just a beer and bar peanuts".
I smiled back. Like I said, it was the best beer I ever had. He walked me to my craptastic Datsun, and that was the last time I ever saw anyone from my high school class.
Which brings me to this morning. I woke up, the sun in my eyes, and I could hear the faint trill of the birds outside my window, where I have a feeder set up for the cat's viewing pleasure. Kitty was on the bed, asleep by my feet. And the dream I had, had me in a cold sweat, my heart racing, and the decay of rot in my mouth.
I had a business. I was running a business, and it was very successful. Only, one of my investors was my nemesis. But I didn't know that. i was changing for some kind of formal business dinner I had to attend, and when I came out of the bathroom, I needed the zipper on my back zipped. it was a dark green satin dress, long, with matching shoes and clutch bag. I had a string of pearls that belonged to my mother on, and my hair was long and blonde, and down to my waist. I looked like the standard over 35 year old Trophy Wife.
I could not see the face of the guy who was zipping my dress, just the hands at first. I never saw the face but heard the voice. it curdled my blood. it was that of my nemesis. We had gone into business together, I made a lot of money for him, and now, he was zipping my dress up, in a simple act, but yet reeked of familiarity and closeness.
Yes, he had haunted my dreams most of my life. But this one, when I woke up, left me perplexed. I gingerly got out of bed, as not to disturb the cat's slumber, and washed my face. The cold water felt good. Then it hit me. I no longer hated him. I am letting him go. All the hatred i have been feeling all these years.... gone.
And the words from a book I haven't read since 10th grade came to my head.
"Tis a far, far better thing that I do, that I have ever done".....
I am free. I've just exorcised my last demon.
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