Of Buddies and Bullies

I am in the midst of reading Baby Be-Bop on the "recommendation" of the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, to whom I should send a thank you note. It's a quick read, but I also have very limited time, so I'm not done with it yet. I'm enjoying it very much, but it does leave me teary-eyed in places. Now, part of it is that it isn't hard for a story to leave me teary-eyed, but part of it is that it also reminds me of my friend Tom.

Tom was a friend of mine in high school. He was one of the nicest boys I'd ever met (which unfortunately, in my school was a crime in itself :P), and very bright. We were on the Scholar Bowl team together. He also wanted to be a writer. I remember being on the team watching these horrible "Art Lady" videos. I don't remember it that was actually part of the name, or just what we had spontaneously screamed in the agony of "not another Art Lady video!" But, their purpose was to briefly go over the major players in various art movements, and featured the most painfully cutesy mnemonics delivered by a woman who sounded like a kindergarten teacher who was exceptionally bad at her job. I can still remember her saccharine voice repeating "Dot. Seurat." I remember that, and I remember that Tom wanted to be a writer as well, because at that point we turned to each other and made a solemn oath never to write anything so painfully stupid. We had a lot of good laughs and a lot of good times together.

Tom was also gay.

Somehow, this came out during our Senior year. He suffered for it. A lot. His house was subjected to vandalism, and he was beaten up at least once. That's just what I knew about, and I know that there was a lot more that happened and a lot more he feared. The bullying got so bad that he left school, planning to get a GED immediately and use it to get into college.

It didn't pan out that way.

The last I heard from friends who were closer to him than I was, his parents had kicked him out of the house. He was living with a man 5 years older -- which at that age is a huge gap, and I didn't get a real warm fuzzy about that relationship from the friends relaying it. College was looking like a far-away dream. He was desperate to find a job, leaving no time for study, and the schools he was interested in would have taken a GED earned before he could have gotten a diploma (a sort of fast-track diploma, if you will) but wouldn't accept one earned after the normal graduation period.


Now, that made me think of the bully responsible for driving him from school, Aaron B. I actually remember that guy's full name, which makes him one of 3 enemies for whom that is true. (Of the other two, one almost broke my leg, and the other pulled a stunt so sad and pitiful that she pulled herself out of complete memory oblivion to cement herself firmly in my mind as The World's Most Pathetic Person. I can't think of her without laughing.)

Aaron B. If ever there was a person who actually, honestly deserved a beating, it was Aaron. Interestingly enough, the reason I remember him is because he is one of only two people in my childhood to drive me to the point of intentional violent retaliation -- this boy pushed me to the point where I beat the crap out of him.

Now, to really put this in perspective, please understand that in elementary school, I was the absolute bottom of the social totem pole. My name was an insult so firmly entrenched as meaning "social pariah" that other grades used it without ever having met me. In middle school, where I first met Aaron, I was one student above the bottom. There was not a day in the first 9 years of my public schooling when I did not suffer some form of verbal abuse from my classmates, and there were literally dozens or even hundreds of students delivering it over that time, because again, I was at the bottom of the hierarchy.

But it was not the case that that Aaron was at the wrong place at the wrong time and caught the explosive brunt of, at that time, 8 years of teasing. No, not at all. He was so far beyond those dozens or hundreds of others that he drove me to violence where no one else had before.

Now, you know what they say about bullies really being big huge wusses? Well, I don't know about generally, but Aaron got his ass kicked by a very short, slightly overweight nerd girl who couldn't lift 20 lbs. I guess I can't honestly say I beat the crap out of him, because I was pulled off before it got to that point. I did, however, draw blood. I know, because I was sent to the bathroom to go wash it off, and it wasn't mine. He didn't even land a blow. (I would just like to thank him for pushing that final button on the day we had a substitute teacher. Ms. D would have had my ass in the principle's office before Aaron figured out which way was up, but that poor sub never knew what had happened. She just sent me to the bathroom to clean up and calm down with a "gosh, Ms. D told me you two didn't like each other, but I had no idea!")

You know how you can look back at some of your classmates and go "Well, so and so was a complete dick at the time, but I can see where he might have grown into a decent human being"? I can look back at Aaron's best friend and say that. But Aaron himself, I look back on and think "well, I can see where he might have grown into a... used car salesman." I'd say there's better than average odds that at least one person in this world refers to Aaron as "my abusive ex".

That person there, he put concentrated effort into destroying my friend's life. Oh, he didn't do it alone. He was more the kingpin. Other people helped him beat Tom up, and to trash Tom's home -- but Aaron was the instigator. Aaron didn't make Tom's parents kick him out -- but he was likely responsible for them finding out about the closet, and the vandalism certainly made denial difficult. It just seems to unfair to me my sweet, kind, smart, creative friend had everything he planned to do ripped apart in front of him, his whole future stomped on by bigots, while the head asshole responsible for it got to go on and live a normal life. Worse, some of the other people involved, I bet at least some of them now regret what they did. But Aaron? Unless he is an entirely different person now, I very much doubt it. He's probably proud of it.

Tom, wherever you are, I hope things are going well for you.
And Aaron, wherever you are, if the guilt doesn't get you, I hope the Rule of Three does.