What Happens if You Survive?

Yesterday in school we had the shortest staff meeting ever about suicide. This must have come in the wake of an 11-yr-old boy who took his own life after being taunted mercilessly with "gay" and "fag" and equally asinine names because he acted "flamboyant" and "feminine". His parents are now suing the school administration and teachers for "doing nothing". As a teacher, who happens to have received this complaint, there is a certain amount of powerlessness that you have. We aren't with the kids every hour of the school day, and it's exceedingly hard to undo prejudice that has been taught at home. This is another problem with having to teach values at school. I wonder if the mother who brought me this complaint was mad at the insult, and not just the fact that it was being used as a club against her son. 

National attention is being paid to the bullying that causes death. Everyone is talking about how "something has to be done" to combat the fact that people are made to feel inferior. We have to combat the fact that "words hurt".  But what about the survivors? What happens to the kids who survive being called "fag" and "queer" and "homo"? Well with any luck they end up like me, a little pistol with an acerbic, scathing wit who won't take shit off of anybody. 

 I don't know why we don't pay more attention to playground bullies anymore. It could be because parents have decided that their children have rights, and so, these days their teachers do not. Discipline must be witnessed and documented with dates and times and everything short of what underwear both students are wearing (because that would mean you're a pedophile). I know that part of me dismissed the complaint I got because I am that bullied kid. The one they called "fag". I think to some extent it gave me character. You see, true or not, bullying prepares you for the dog-eat-dog mentality of the real world. You become strong, and learn to fight back and survive. As a homosexual I learned to fight tooth and nail in the school yard and against my brother in the backyard. 

I can also imagine what little Carl Walker-Hoover was feeling when he decided to hang himself after school one afternoon. To this day I'm always watching and searching. Passing if you will. If I go into a certain bar, or hang out with certain people I try to make sure me being gay doesn't come up. I always hold my breath when it does. But I know that I can't do anything to change it. Now I wouldn't want to. I have to remember it's "their" problem. But it isn't just "their" problem because we're the ones dying. 

There is no easy solution. I learned long ago that you cannot change the hearts of men. You certainly can't do it over night, by magic or wishing or plaintive prayer. So with any luck, there will be fewer victims and more survivors. More survivors like me who realized that every body's fucked up. More survivors who walk around with, what Mary Karr, calls cobs of "fuck you" so that you can survive in the real world. In any case even though life may not be fair, everyone deserves a fighting chance.