{"id":257,"date":"2000-10-12T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-10-12T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2000\/10\/12\/were_not_worthy\/"},"modified":"2024-12-01T20:21:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T04:21:58","slug":"were_not_worthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2000\/10\/12\/were_not_worthy\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Not Worthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A big ol’ bag of mixed feelings:<\/strong> I\u2019m occasionally hit by an attack of conscience (that flares briefly then goes away) when I think about the sissy boys I who went to school with me, the ones who gave the rest of us a bad name and made us cringe with shame, thinking, “Well, at least I\u2019m not like THAT.” Now that I\u2019m an adult, no longer fending for myself within the treacherous social arena of an all-boys Catholic high school<\/a>, it’s a little easier to think back and feel bad about acting the part of saint Peter (I\u2019m talking about Catholic school here, so you’ll have to pardon the Bible\/Jesus-Christ-superstar<\/i> reference) and denying that I had anything in common with abuse magnets like Dennis, Jose, or the inimitable Fish. That flash usually fades, though, when I remember that as much as I felt bad about the harassment these guys got for not being able to hide their light under a bushel the way I was to do for a few years more, I still just didn’t like any of them that much. Dennis was haughty, Jose (who I really tried to be nice to, even when we went to college together) was kinda spacey, and Fish was just a totally annoying pest. I often got the urge to apologize on behalf of everyone else, but I usually squashed it because these particular guys (and a handful of others) drew so much attention because they were living out some of the worst qualities of bad stereotypes, and they were just not fun to hang out with.<\/p>\n

But here’s something I also came to realize later on: The rest of us who had the luxury of coming out at our own pace (and I know you guys are out there \u2014 I\u2019ve seen you on your dates, I\u2019ve seen you in the West Village and Chelsea, I\u2019ve met you at parties) ought to get down on our fucking knees and not only apologize for being part of the problem with our complicit silence, but also to thank them for drawing all the attention away from the rest of us and letting us deal with other adolescent problems. Dennis and Jose and Fish got all the abuse. They were the ones who were called fags. They were the ones everyone snickered about. They weighted the curve so much toward one side that those of us that could<\/i> hide it escaped notice. In effect, we used them as human shields.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A big ol’ bag of mixed feelings: I\u2019m occasionally hit by an attack of conscience (that flares briefly then goes away) when I think about the sissy boys I who went to school with me, the ones who gave the rest of us a bad name and made us cringe with shame, thinking, “Well, at … Continue reading “We\u2019re Not Worthy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77444,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/77444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}