Bullies

I thought of my past as encompassing the sundry experiences of youth, until fixating on headlines about bullying, about young people who go to therapy and take antidepressants, those who do self-destructive things and hurt other people because they had been bullied.

Nowadays, they have the bully-patrol in schools, and public service announcements about bullying.

It’s very scary. I’ve also read articles about adult bullies. I need to be on the lookout for bullies too?

“I didn’t know I was bullied. That was bullying that I experienced when I was in junior high school? Wow, I was bullied,” I said to my sister.

The media says that being bullied causes people to have syndromes.

People reading about these syndromes can measure themselves up against them, eventually determining that they have these syndromes and begin manifesting other behaviors outlined therein. I did.

Maybe I was just naive, albeit, one who had been called “Skeleton Head” and “Chester” because I didn’t have any titties – but I just thought getting fucked with was comeuppance for me because I said and did mean things to kids too.

But on days I’m digging through archives, feeling sorry for myself, I can focus on having been called “Chester”. Then I can watch Dr. Phil and learn even more about me.

The media influenced me to feel sorry for myself. It made a lot of money doing it. It defined me when previously I had no idea that I even had any syndrome.

I thought I was evolving into something new and different everyday. But now I’m in a cubby-hole, marked with an indelible stamp: “The One Who Was Bullied”.

At the end of this I realize it’s good to draw attention to bullying so that we think about it and grow eventually, as a culture.

But, could we tone it down a little, so that we can hear ourselves think?

 

 

Come Hither

I don’t flirt usually unless I already know you.  If I flirt with a man I don’t know, it means I’m overpowered by chemistry.  I saw a man near Park Avenue once, and had an animal reaction.  I locked into him and shuddered a little.  He wasn’t conventionally handsome.  There was just something alpha about him.  He looked at me, and appeared to be nodding subtly to communicate that he understood my reaction — this is part of the reason I think he had alpha chemistry.  He might have been used to this reaction?

I probably flirt with girls more.  I used to be fearful of boys.  They fucked with me when I was sick in junior high school.  They were mean and teased me mercilessly because I was emaciated and flat-chested.  When I got out of the hospital after a month, and got meat on my bones, things changed.  They asked if I had been at the farm — haha!

I’m not a lesbian, but I used to like girls better.  I didn’t gush around boys, I tensed up.   I remember playing in the pool with some boys and girls.  The boys dunked the girls, and they giggled — squealed.  I was horrified.  They’d come at me and my eyes widened, and there would be no giggling — I scratched the shit out of them.  I was frightened of the water and the boys were so overpowering.

I was curious — and suspicious — about girlfriends who had ‘friendships’ with boys.  Although I had boyfriends, I didn’t care to just be hanging around dudes.  I cared about impressing them, but from a distance.

In my thirties, I relaxed, and allowed myself to be “friends” with a couple of guys.  But I knew it’d probably be bullshit.  I had a girlfriend who said she preferred male friends to women friends.  I asked if she was fucking those male “friends.”  “Well, yeah,” she said — hahahahaha!

I believed there would always be an underlying agenda with mixed sex friendships.  In most cases, both would probably need their sexuality validated in some way and that would negate the platonic part.  I wrote a brilliant novel with this premise, but it has yet to be recognized as such — ha!

So, I tried the platonic ‘thing’ with a guy.  We spent most of the time almost fucking, and actually did twice.  Finally I had to let him go.  He turned out to be dishonest.  It just confirmed my theory.  While I do call a few men ‘friends’, I still have difficulty with the concept.  But nowadays, I’m trying to understand men as fleshed out people, and I do like them, not that I ever did really dislike them.

Today I practiced flirting and it worked!  The guy just hung around, asking questions, blushing — ha — so cute!  I think I might be experimenting with this kind of thing more.  Too bad I’m all old and shit trying to do this now.  I’ll keep you posted.