I was born on Sunday, June 25, 1967 at precisely 3 AM, the hour, they say, when the soul most fears death.
I was born nearly two months early. I was born blind with a crippled hand and weighed 3 lbs. 11 oz. I was in an incubator for the first year of my life. I should not have survived, but I did.
Sunday, June 25, 1967.
The Summer of Love.
The sign of Cancer.
Taurus rising.
I was slow to talk, slow to crawl and slow to walk. When I did, my family noticed something was wrong. I moved funny, fell down a lot, walked into things, sat too close to the T.V. They discovered that I had cataracts and I had an operation to have them removed when I was four years old and again when I was six. I was blind, but now I see. My mother still has pictures of me at Riley Children's Hospital with patches over my eye-- first the right, then the left-- sitting in the hospital bed playing cards with two other children that I still remember to this day just as I remember the nurse who taught us a little Spanish-- hola, buenos dios, que pasa, other things too and how to count to one hundred. It came in handy in Miss Nic's Spanish class in Junior High.
They discovered I had cerebral palsy-- often the result of a premature birth due to lack of oxygen. When I started school when I was five, I was in a wheelchair. I remember always taking the elevator in school, instead of the stairs. I remember the other kids taking turns pushing me around when we played the circle games.
"We can't return we can only look
behind from where we came
and go round and round and round
in the circle game."
You know the story of Achilles? His mother wanted him to be powerful and immortal, so she dipped him in the river Styx, holding him by his feet. He was invulnerable down to his feet and his one weakness proved the death of him. Thetis, his mother, did the best she could. But it was not enough.
To better equilibrium and the chances of walking for children with cerebral palsy, surgeons lengthen or stretch the Achilles tendon. They performed this operation on me just before I turned six years old. My equilibrium restored as best possible, I was able to walk. I walk with a limp, but I walk. I still have the scar from the operation-- it's long and pink and looks like a worm crawling along my foot. It's a pretty scar, but it's still a scar.
I am a marked man. Always have been.
My family did the best they could to take care of me and it was never easy. However, they did little to encourage me. They, like most people, could rarely see beyond my dis-ability, always focusing on what I couldn't do rather than the things I did. Of course I was teased and taunted in school-- any child who is different than the rest is called out. I remember once, in the sixth grade, someone asked if I knew Teresa. I said, "She's my sister." The girl responded, "She's not your sister." "Yes she is," I said. "She can't be your sister," the girl insisted. "Why not?" I asked. "Because she so pretty," she responded, "And you're so ugly."
Being gay didn't help either. I had an art teacher in High School who harassed me constantly. When I complained, no one believed me because, they said, he was an award-winning teacher. There was a boy in our class who came up to me one day and said, "I want you to suck my dick." I said, "I choke on small bones," and walked away. Later, he and three other boys backed me into a store room and were hitting me. This teacher walked in, walked by us, turn to me and smiled. When I asked him later why he didn't do anything he said, "It looked to me like you enjoyed it."
This world can be hard and cruel, even for the best of us. I suppose my family tried to spare my from that in their way. But none of us can be spared from it.
"This world is not my home
I'm just passing through."
Unfortunately, my family--in trying to shelter me-- also kept me from many opportunities I might have had. They did not want me to drive, they did want me to work, they not want me to go to college when I was offered the chance at a music scholarship. By holding me close, they also held me back. They meant well; I know that. They did the best they could. But it was not enough.
But they were also right in some ways. I tried to find work and could find none. Even now it is a particular challenge. I can't count the times I've sent out my resume and got an enthusiastic phone call from a prospective employer saying I was perfect for the job, more than they had hoped for. Could I start tomorrow, Monday? And then, when I walked in the door and was clearly not what they expected, I was told they were still interviewing others. "Don't call us. We'll call you," which, of course, they didn't. On the other hand, I was hired once to be the Site Director of an after-school program specifically because of my dis-ability; the program Director wanted students to see that people who are "differently abled," can still do the things that others do.
That is the right attitude.
Relationships are not easy either, especially in the gay community where looks and being "hot" are so important. When my former partner, John, asked me to move in with him, his family and friends tried to dissuade him because they thought he deserved better than a man with a disability. He called me to tell me it was over. I said, "I'm far from perfect and maybe you do deserve better but I love you. Not that that counts for anything." A few days later he called me back and apologised. I moved in and we were together fifteen years. I wear glasses with very thick lenses that magnify the size of my eyes. When meeting new guys I usually don't wear them. Last summer, when I was seeing this guy, we went out to dinner to meet his friends. I drove, so I wore my glasses. After ordering, I sat listening to the conversation for a bit and he leaned over and whispered, "Take off your glasses." He didn't mean any harm, but it was embarrassing and it hurt.
I criticized my -ex's in another post for masking their insecurities and pretending to be someone they are not. But, in truth, I envy them. I'm jealous. They can hide their scars. They can hide who they are. I cannot. What you see is what you get.
"Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille."-Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
But I get tired of being the nice guy who finishes last. I get tired of being the good guy who's never good enough.
To my credit, I usually don't listen to people when they tell me I don't deserve more than what I have or what I'm getting. "That's good enough for you," they tell me time and again. I don't agree. I don't listen. I can't. If I did I would have never gone back to school, graduated cum laude, seen my writing published, won awards, become a teacher, traveled to Canada.
Still, I have the scars. I'm a marked man. Always have been.
It's hard to be the good guy who's not good enough.