Sunday, November 13, 2011

That Hippie Free School, and the Rigid Position



I strongly advise reading the whole comment thread to the previous post. Lots of wonderful thoughtful stuff.

This made me laugh: Or, you could just become gay. Solves the "ugly sex" problem! Creates others ... from Jarrett.

During the the years at my boarding school -- what I fondly refer to as "my hippie free school" -- one of the many wonderful things that happened to me was encountering openly gay men. That was not so common, in the early 70s, as it is now. I barely knew homosexuals existed: I certainly had no clue that I actually knew any of them.

But my room mate was gay, and our school was one of the few safe places in Spokane, Washington, at the time. Gay boys and men were in the house a lot. So it was my very good fortune to meet the people before I met the stereotypes. There were, of course, people I liked and people I didn't. But I was on my home ground, surrounded by friends, so I felt entirely safe. I could absorb the culture without any fear of getting lost in it; I could flirt without committing myself to any identity.

My orientation was obvious to me. I liked girls. I've always liked girls. The supposed latency period that Freud mentions, when boys purport not to like girls? I skipped that. There has never been a time in my life, since first grade, when I haven't had a serious crush on someone female. I am, as an old friend of mine once put it (in mild exasperation), "heterosexual to a fault."

So the wonderfulness of being around gay men had nothing to do with discovering my orientation. It had to do with being an object of admiration. I was a weird kid, in middle school. A dork. I read books all the time. My hair was too long. I am congenitally incapable of following a party line, any party line: I was out of place even among the weird kids and the outcasts. Being associated with me in any way was a social death sentence.

And then -- there I was at my hippie free school, fourteen years old, plump and inarticulate, with gorgeous flowing blond hair -- and I was the toast of the town. People admired me. They sought me out and chatted me up.

I blossomed. I suddenly found that I could talk. One of the longstanding reasons for my stumbling, almost stammering speech, was that I always dumbed it down. You didn't want to be using fancy words, if you were a teenager in Springfield, Oregon. You didn't want to let a word such as "inadvertent" or "malevolent" fall from your lips. You didn't want to get too clever.

But among these people, clever was a good thing. Words came pouring out of my mouth. I had, it turned out, lots and lots to say. (No doubt much of it was tiresome, but much is forgiven in a glowing teenager.) My hands came to life: I could gesture. I could throw my head back and laugh. I could unlock my wrists and hips and ribs, and let them sway. I could brush my hair out of my face, rapidly or languidly. My words and my body, for the first time, were free. The experience was transformative. I no longer had to hold myself like R. Crumb's Whiteman. I could be someone else.

11 comments:

carolee said...

then we are all grateful to your hippie school!

YourFireAnt said...

Very interesting, Dale. One phrase stuck me and made me yearn: "....much is forgiven in a glowing teenager..."

Not where I grew up.

You are fortunate.

T.

Dale said...

Oh, man, not where I first tried to grow up either, Teresa. Which is what made the New School so precious, for me.

Joyce Ellen Davis said...

Looking back, I was not as fat and ugly as I thought I was. Also a loner in HS, I ate my lunch with a 5 yr old from the experimental kindergarten. (This fit in well with the loner-hippie image I was cultivating). I majored in Art. Then suddenly decided to study Acting, which allowed me to be my flourishing hippie self, and take on a lot of other personae as well...never really got out of my "fat and ugly" phase and into the "glowing teenager." --though, as I said, in retrospect I wasn't all that bad!

Zhoen said...

Everyone needs a period like that, to become, to bloom. I had mine in the army when I was 26-27, very physical, open, and freeing to the mind. I didn't care what they thought, I would never see any of them again, and I said anything that came into my head. And a lot of them loved me for that.

marly youmans said...

Now that is an interesting story. Would make a great novel slanted toward teens--hits an entirely ignored angle onto a social world.

rbarenblat said...

What a wonderful story this is. I can imagine you as that glowing teenager, Dale. I am smiling.

Kathleen said...

Ah, the freedom!

Jarrett said...

So you ended up associating "gay" with "clever" ... In that generation, gay men who came out had to be clever. Today, greater liberation has brought out a greater diversity of gay men ... I wonder how long that association will hold ...

Dale said...

Not so much that they were clever -- some were and some weren't -- but that they didn't automatically despise people who were clever. That was all I asked!

Seon Joon said...

"You didn't want to let a word such as "inadvertent" or "malevolent" fall from your lips. You didn't want to get too clever."

Been there--but I went ahead and did it. F* all you malevolent ignoramuses! I didn't make many friends, unsurprisingly. ... But I'm glad you found your voice then and not later, and have continued to develop it. Imagine all the lost poetry wedged between teeth clenched in self-consciousness and wrapped around tied tongues.