This image of an elderly man:
Does not excuse this image of the same man at an earlier age.
The headlines and the stories of former Speaker D Hastert’s sordid actions and his downfall are all over and well known by now. I am sure this story is hitting a lot of people in ways that the majority of Americans are not aware of: in terms of our own personal experience. This has caused me to have some serious discomfort and reflection on events of my youth, events that I had kept secret and revealed to no one even until this day. It’s time to ‘let it go’.
What Hastert ( and countless others throughout life apparently ) have done is despicable in so many ways. My experience from NW GA late 1960’s follows.
I was starting in the 7th grade at a new school where I was expected to settle after going to a different school every year (sometimes 2 a year ) up until that time. I was 12, but one of those boys who was more physically mature than others my age due to growth spurts and genetics. Awkward because of those growth spurts, I was the last kid picked for any sports team, when I tried to dribble a basketball, I could only hit my already size 10 feet and send the ball rolling across the court. Still, I did go out for junior football and played on the Jr High team, second string ( size helped at 5’10” already, but a beanpole ...) I was never good at it. I could run, but I couldn’t catch well, and I was so thin I had little chance of dominating as a guard or tackle. But I played almost two seasons. Aside from being non talented, I was picked on ( well, yeah ) by the other guys. It happens, I don’t blame them. Some were prescient, even knowing things about me that I didn’t know (or realize at the time) about myself. I was also the kid who changed and dressed in the farthest corner I could find to shield my self from others, and my view of them as well. Between the 7th and 8th grade, I had my first encounters with another boy my own age, and, well, then I understood. That’s not the purpose of this diary, but it lays out some groundwork for my story.
Also, during my 7th grade, I joined the school band. The band teacher also taught the high school, and the Jr High band trekked to the High School band room for our daily band time. Admittedly, I was not a very good musician either. As a poor family, I could not buy an instrument. The band director ‘loaned’ me one from the school stash. I mean, what beginning band student starts out on the oboe? Seriously? Between the 7th and 8th grade, I joined the HS marching band: nope, oboes don’t march, but I was put on the male ‘color guard’ Flags and fake rifles, and trips with the HS band. I gave up Jr High football, (thankfully!), and was all in on the marching band. The band director even directed covering my terrible playing by having a muted horn cover all my musical messes during concert season. I got to be with the marching band. He saw something in me. Well, yes, apparently he did. He was married with kids, probably he was more than double my age + (I was now all of 13), probably no more than 30. His wife was also affiliated with the school band / drill team. He seemed like a teacher who was interested in helping students grow and learn. One afternoon after school, he asked me to go with him to get some equipment being given to the band by a community group. We went, got the equipment, and took it back to the band room ( a detached building behind the high school). After we unloaded it, we were placing it in the storage room. He was between myself and the door, stooped near a shelf, I was paying no attention. As he turned towards me, his trousers were open, exposing himself and he was then undoing mine. I was frozen in my tracks. Completely frozen. He attempted to do what he wanted, but my body would not cooperate. The smell of putrid High Karate still makes me retch, the jangle of a gold chain bracelet makes me retch, the thought of him makes me want to break things. When I couldn’t meet his expectations, he stopped and allowed me to leave.
In the next week or so, I became a very different kid: I skipped school. I broke my ‘loaned’ instrument. I blamed myself. I thought of my experience with my own age male friend, and I was suddenly aware that I was ‘queer’. I was like HIM!. That made me more self loathing than anything could ever do, aside from the soon to be immersed in family Baptist church. I never told a soul, no one. I dropped out of band, immediately. I gave no reason. My parents were divorced, I stayed at that school one more year even though it was torture, sheer torture. The 9th grade was in the High School, and there I heard the rumors about this band director and his students. It was no secret. It was widely talked about among the band members, some of the guys even supposedly enjoying it because, as I understood it, his wife was part of the deal: one classmate saying one afternoon, “he has his boys, she has hers”. I left and went to my Dad’s. went to my 10th grade there. The band director left (not found out, apparently) and I went back in my Jr and Sr school years.
These event changed my life forever. People like Hastert and H***y (my abuser’s name) don’t just pick on any kid based on randomness or opportunity. They identify and groom kids that they think they can use for their own pleasure. I was identified, in part because of my size and age vulnerability, but also because the band director, like many of my classmates, already could tell even before I could that I was gay. His actions didn’t make me gay, his actions made me HATE myself for being gay. I spent the first year or two away from school trying to fit being gay into the mold of the time, and then spent almost 2 decades trying to deny it and be ‘normal’.
So the band director’s chair or the coach’s chair or the priest’s chair or the principal’s chair, the wheelchair is not an excuse or a punishment in old age for the hundreds of years of lives that have been affected by these ‘super predators’. If my abuser H***y were to still be alive, I would have a really hard time not kicking him in the nads if I ever walked up on him. I have no idea where he went, or what happened to him. Honestly, I’ve tried to forget about it and just ‘let it go’, but then someone like Hastert gets an easy ride. If not for the banking law violation, he would be free, one victim would be getting paid for his silence ( an act that I vehemently disagree with, BTW ) and the rest would still be suffering in silence. For me it would do no good to go back and try to expose my abuser now, that was 50 years ago.
Watch your kids. Trust no one. Know the signs that something is wrong.
Thanks for letting me spill after all these years of keeping that inside.
