Pete, age 10
Fountain Valley, California (1974)
I was 10 when the old Irish priest launched into a furious sermon about the filth and flagrancy of homosexuals running wild in the streets of San Francisco.
His spit flew under the altar lights, his voice cracking with moral outrage. And somewhere between the words filth and unnatural, I knew he meant me.
A burning started behind my eyes. I felt it spread through my head as if I’d been caught in a lie I didn’t understand.
I was certain everyone in the pews was turning to look. Even the statues seemed to fix on me, their glass eyes gleaming with accusation.
At school, faggot was already the word attached to my shadow. Now the Church had joined the chorus. It felt organized—school, faith, and family forming an alliance against the crime of my existence.
Weeks later, I heard my brother Duke in the bathroom, telling my mother that the kids at school were calling me a queer. He didn’t know I was listening. I stood in the hallway, cold, realizing he was ratting me out—as he always would, given the chance. Now Mom knew. She probably brushed it off, thinking that I was simply “artistic.”
So I kept my head down and learned to move through the world like a soldier under fire. But the hate didn’t pass through me—it soaked in. It settled somewhere deep, a knot that never dissolved.
At school, the slurs were tossed like Frisbees, casual and lazy. And I imagined the kids who taunted me suddenly bursting into flames, their entrails splattering on the blacktop. It was childish, sure. But it was the only justice that ever felt fair.
By the mid 1970s, life felt vaguely softer and the world looked calmer. But for kids like me, the homophobia didn’t vanish—it just learned to smile. Television was getting prettier too—variety shows with glitter and choreography, and all the sparkle I loved. Every new song on the radio promised freedom, yet none of it applied to me. I was still the boy keeping his head down, knowing the lyrics were written for someone else.
I was starting to feel a bit freer, until one day my number-one bully was riding his bike past our house when I shouted, “After school!”—the neighborhood code for a fight.
As it was about to begin, my heart was hammering in my chest. But I was the one who had started it, so it was on. And there he was, the pugnacious little monster, standing at the center of his nasty little gang of street goons.
I walked forward, and he took a pseudo-karate stance. We exchanged a few words, and soon the anger that had been coiled inside me was unleashed. We came at each other, fists flying. I recall getting a few really good ones in and that he connected as well.
It was just a bare-knuckle brawl—and it felt good to vent my rage. Eventually, it wound down. I walked away exhilarated but rattled. The following days at school were a mixture of timid congratulations and sneers from my classmates.
You see, I was the fairy who took on the school bully and survived.
I still got called “faggot,” but there was a new respect that came with it.
I was a faggot who fought back-and that was a good thing. I had slain a kind of giant.
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