Bullied and Brutalized
I entered high school under extreme duress. After barely surviving my stint in a Catholic middle school, I was newly sentenced to an even more conservative Catholic prep school. I was banished there because mom and dad suspected that I had quite possibly sold my soul to Satan. Perhaps the Franciscan friars and priests could save me from certain damnation, they reasoned. My god, if they had only known that I was having homosexual relations with some of the boys in my neighborhood they would have spontaneously combusted. All my parents knew, however, was that I was becoming a somewhat snarly and disrespectful teenager. My crippling gender confusion hung over me like a cloud. The intensity of the emotional pain was reinforced each day when I was forced to wear slacks, a blazer, and a necktie to school. There were so many days when I would muse about hanging myself by that goddamn tie. Suicidal thoughts were indeed floating through my mind back then, but I had neither the plan nor t...
