A Sensitive Boy in a Kavanaugh World

There were so many remarkable aspects of last week’s Kavanaugh hearing. A fiftysomething jurist being called to account for the allegedly…

There were so many remarkable aspects of last week’s Kavanaugh hearing. A fiftysomething jurist being called to account for the allegedly violent acts of his teensomething self. The wildly partisan accusations and the temperament-questioning outbursts. The massive disrespect shown by a prospective Supreme Court justice to sitting members of the U.S. Senate.

But the part that I, and likely the history books, found most fascinating was the honesty and bravery engendered by Dr. Ford’s honesty and bravery that coaxed thousands of American women to come forward and speak their truth about their own accounts of previous sexual assault. I saw it everywhere from my Facebook feed to letters to the Senate judiciary committee to cornering a crucial swing voter in the Senate elevator. The outpouring was spontaneous, it was truthful, it was devastating and it was incredibly moving.

What I have to say isn’t that. It is nowhere near the level of that nor is it at all intended to be. So anyone who may try to discredit me by claiming that I’m searching for any false equivalency is just putting words in my mouth.

But the truth is, for many of my high school friends — friends who were by and large on the gentle, sensitive, bookish, often Jewish side — Brett Kavanugh’s testimonial ode to beer, football and brutishness was a trigger to a panoply of long-ignored emotions about what it felt like to be a sensitive boy in a high school culture largely ruled by codes of toxic masculinity.

I went to a West Coast high school that sounded largely similar to Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Prep. And while I didn’t know Brett Kavanaugh. I knew a ton of “Brett Kavanaughs.” And the more I think about them, rightly or wrongly, the more I believe Dr. Ford and all the other women who’ve come forward.

Let’s start with a teeny bit about me. I was incredibly shy upon entering the seventh grade. Odds are, I’ve already spoken more words in the top half of this piece than I did throughout the entirety of middle school.

Beyond that, I never felt like I fit in. Maybe not until I found my tribe late, late in the experience. This was an all boys, Christian school that just a few years earlier had ceased being a military school. It never ceased being the breeding grounds for LA’s most prominent families. I was a Jew in a Epsicopalian school. A Valley kid in a school where the prevailing ethos of cool came entirely from the Westside kids. I was a brain in a jock school. A gentle boy in a hyper masculine culture.

Basically, I had the wrong religion, address, nose size and disposition. And I felt it every day for six years.

Lest you think my memory is exaggerating my pain or that I’m confusing my experience with School Ties, in my seventh grade year, a bunch of eighth graders formed a group called the Sons of Hitler that drew Nazi-based graffiti on the wall and placed swatztikas on the lockers of seventh grade Jewish boys. These were kids who had heard from their parents that THEIR school had begun being taken over by a recent infestation of qualified Jewish and Asian kids. If you don’t believe me, it was all over the LA Times and the local news. The school was so alarmed they expelled one boy.

Mind you, this was a school in the classic “boys will be boys” model. If you had feelings, that made you a “fag.” If you expressed said feelings, that made you a “real fag.” And if you constantly expressed your feelings while wearing a Mod v-neck sweater or black penny loafers, god help you if you ever walked near a pool at a post-football party. You were either going in or living in terror that you were about to.

I tried to have my own identity. And find friends like me. And I did. Most of whom remain my closest associates to this day. But I didn’t have the strength of character to stand up to a culture of gay-bashing and women-trashing. I was in debate, a “fag activity” and cross country, a “fag sport.” My voice didn’t count. And I capitulated. I’d only wear my hard-earned letterman’s jacket when the football players weren’t around. Forget the fact that I lettered in two varsity sports. It wasn’t MY school. I was just a six year visitor on somone else’s turf.

Now it’s possible that with my gentle disposition and extreme anxiety, I wouldn’t have enjoyed high school anywhere. To that, I can’t entirely speculate. I can only assess the high school experience that I did have. And I couldn’t wait for it to end.

Needless to say, I didn’t have the emotional tools to handle the bullying, nor a safe outlet to bring to my concerns. In 8th grade, one boy’s taunting became so merciless that I started bringing a knife to school. Me. And not to whittle him some outsider art. The eighth grade me felt my only recourse would be to stab my tormentor. I didn’t. But he only stopped when I told him I was about to.

Eventually, there were brought spots and silver linings, most of them outside of school. By 16, I could drive. Junior year, I made tons of friends that were girls. Senior year, I found a real girlfriend of my own. This enabled me to step away from the weekend kegocracy. I was able to opt out and stop playing by other people’s social standards. It was the first time I didn’t feel like a pariah for feeling like myself. It was the first time I started to discover my own voice, as a writer and as a human. I was a quiet observer of things. And for once, I didn’t hate myself for being exactly how I was.

I know what’s coming. People will say, “that’s not fair. There were a lot of nice people. Not everyone was like that.” And it’s true. As a grown up, I’ve made peace with a lot of men who had tormented me as boys. At the time, I had no idea what was going on in their families of origin. It never occurred to anyone at that time to ask. Boys were just being boys.

I’m not mad at any boys in particular. I remain enraged at the culture, at the school’s singular standard of masculinity. Their version of maleness was built entirely around football, beer, misogyny, cocaine, denigrating women and picking on the weaker kids. This was the culture. This was the lingua franca of male communication.

And it was so institutionally enshrined that a schoolmate of mine recently posted about the school’s commencement address the year before I graduated. It was given by a prominent physician and the father of the school’s quarterback. In his speech to the graduating seniors he gave them the following advice about dealing with their female counterparts: “If she says no, she means maybe. If she says maybe, she means yes. If she says yes, she’s not really a lady.”

I’m not making this up. This was allowed to be said at graduation. At LA’s poshest high school. In 1983!

I thought I had long ago made peace with my high school experience. I’ve come to love most of the people I went to school with as brothers in a very trying experience. But then I heard the competing testimonies of Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh.

It triggered all sort of adolescent feelings. And it occurred to me that perhaps I’m not as fully healed as I thought I was. The only difference between now and then is I’m no longer afraid to say it.