The detour widens . . .

In my last post I promised to expound a bit on where I think my propensities for narrative and observation stemmed from.  I've spent most of the morning procrastinating on follow-through because I don't want this to sound cloying or self-pitying.  Apologies if it does.  Here goes . . .

I only have a few memories of actual friendships from my childhood.  The neighborhood in which I grew up, Baldwin (a working/middle-class suburb of NYC on Long Island) didn't have a lot of kids my age.  The only friend I had moved with his mom to Florida when I was about ten or so and I think he'd started avoiding me around shortly before that.  Of course, I could be reading into that situation, as I'm wont to do.

My lack of friends wasn't helped by the fact that, from an early age, I was an object of derision and a popular target for bullies.  I had a love of words from a young age and tended to reach for the most precise vocabulary possible, a habit that continues to this day.  I would never "sit" a book down but "set" it.  I'd never "put" a plate on a table but "place" it.  Combine that with a growth spurt that I've only started growing into and I was the perfect target.  My friends were scanty, and the few I did have were fragile at best.  One confided to me that he joined in the teasing at school because he didn't want people to think that we were actually friends.  When I "outed" him, he actually got angry at me.  I called him a coward, and never spoke to him again.  Another told me that the main reason he was friends with me was because of my status as a reject.  Hearing those words hurt, but I figured at least he was honest and up front about it.

My sensitivity didn't exactly help matters.  The roughhousing and teasing kids of that age usually put one another through didn't appeal to me at all.  It's not that I wasn't athletic or didn't like sports; I did, and still do.  I just have never really been naturally competitive and much prefer individualized sports such as running, tennis, hiking and biking.  Team sports, or any kind of group activity, only serves to drain me.  During recess, as the other kids would run around and have impromptu games of football or soccer I'd sit quietly on the steps behind the school reading.  I'd observe how the social pecking order would be hammered out, occasionally taking a break to escape back into whatever book I was currently devouring.  It could be anything from a book about the Medieval era to "Their Eyes were Watching God."

I'm not exactly sure whether my anxiety and sensitivity led to my social isolation, or vice versa.  It's doubtful that there is a clear-cut chicken and egg thing going on, but I guess I've always been curious as to which was the catalyst.  Regardless, it probably doesn't really matter.  Of course, my sexual orientation didn't exactly help, but I don't want to reduce everything to gay angst (gayngst?)

Besides, my sexual orientation didn't really become an issue until junior high, when I was singled out because I "talked gay" (yes, there is a gay accent sometimes, but I really think it was more a matter of verbosity on my part as well as the fact that my older brother was putting me through informal speech therapy in order to eradicate any vestiges of a Queens/Long Island accent).  After that was high school where, after my first fist fight in self defense, the teasing ended.  I joined the drama club most likely in an attempt to finally be seen, which led to a somewhat glorious freshman year.  After summer break, however, my newfound "friends" seemed to abandon me.  Forming actual friendships seemed, to me, to have let everyone see the real, socially awkward me.  I suddenly found myself isolated again.

I'm sure that only part of it was me.  My desperation for friendship obviously didn't help; to this day I cringe as I remember trying to extend conversations after school as long as possible, hoping I'd be invited to hang out, sometimes following other people who walked home from school at a distance (aka stalking).  That was just creepy.  However, I'm sure that everyone else remaining in Baldwin for the summer while I was away at summer camp only served to help the cliques solidify.  Drugs and alcohol also played a part, and my experimentation didn't really start until college.  All the while, I observed my more extroverted (I hadn't yet "come out" as an introvert who does gain energy from being alone) and socially adept peers.  I would imagine scenarios where I could finally be welcomed and belong.  Real life only seemed to involve temporary friendships where I would ultimately be abandoned, and who has time for that?

This seems as good a place as any to stop.  I could continue with college, where I would lose one of my best friends due to a falling out and graduate school part I where a toxic relationship would end with me losing most, if not all, of our mutual friends.  It's basically variations on a theme; me being left alone and wondering what exactly went wrong.  I don't think it's any accident that I went into Anthropology, a field that requires untangling the complicated web of social interaction and unwritten rules that everyone knows but no one can articulate.  Speaking of which, I should probably work on my research.

E T A Nemo