Shame and Fear by Ari Frangias
It’s 2002 and I’m in the second grade. A boy in my class yells insults at me across the playground because I’m not coordinated enough for competitive sports and I tear up when I drop the ball. It doesn’t help that I’m a pacifist at heart, always too scared to fight back, or that I have a voice three octaves higher than all of the other boys so my verbal retorts don’t have the same impact. The harassment continues. You’re bad at sports cause you’re gay. Why do you sound like a girl, is it ‘cause you’re gay? All of the kids that I think are my friends laugh at me and suddenly I’m consumed with embarrassment over a word I’ve never even heard before. I go home that day and ask my mom why the other kids called me gay. “What does gay mean?”
She tells me, “Gay is just another word for happy so don’t let it bother you.” There’s nothing wrong with being happy, right? But it’s too late. I’m only 8 years old but the line is already drawn in the sand. I’m not like the other boys. I’m different.
We’ve all been ridiculed and taunted at some point in our prepubescent lives. In my case, my classmates made it clear very early on that I was different from them. Although I was years away from any sexual revelations I knew whatever it was that made me standout from the other kids had to be stored away and hidden from the world. As if it’s not enough being the kid with the weird ethnic name that half the class can’t pronounce, throw in some feminine mannerisms and you’re basically candy for all the cruel kids to dig their rotten teeth into. Every year would bring new insults. Gay eventually turned into fag, and with each new label thrown at me, I learned to curate different versions of myself just to get by. Act more like a boy when I need to fit in, act more like a girl when I feel the environment is safe. What I didn’t realize is that it would take two decades to tear down the walls I put up as a result of my grammar school trauma.
Fast forward a few years.
It’s 2010 and I’m sixteen. I’m at rehearsal for the school musical and the boy that I love indulges me by chuckling at my self-deprecating jokes--if my childhood trauma has provided me with one tool, it’s comedic timing. I learned to make fun of myself before others could, but the sad thing is that the jokes didn’t hurt any less. The boy I love has a girlfriend but she isn’t around and I’m intentionally saying things I know will make him laugh just to make the most of this moment. Every laugh feeds the fantasy I’ve created in my mind where we are the average high school couple, sharing the same experiences my friends unknowingly take for granted. But sadly, I know my fantasy will never come to fruition and I won’t experience the bliss of young love until much later in life--long after the novelty has worn off on others my age. But until then, I hold onto these moments of laughter the way a child holds on to their favorite stuffed animal.
At this point, I’m a few years into my new role of the closeted queer teen in a conservative town where every day feels like survival of the straitest. I have friends, but don’t be fooled--my scars from years of childhood ridicule remind me to always keep people at arm's length. My friendships are like a scene out of the Wizard of Oz—I’m the man behind the curtain, keeping the crowd entertained while praying they don’t see me for the fraud that I am. In this critical period of adolescence where all of my teenage milestones are experienced through secondhand stories from my “straight” friends’ dating lives, I’ve conditioned myself to believe that I am incapable of being loved. So although I know the boy in front of me will never love me back, it is in these few moments of laughter where I start to believe, even just for a second, that love isn’t impossible for me.
Hey, Ari. Someone asked me if you were gay, but I told them you were just weird. Unless you are gay...are you?
Suddenly, I’m ripped from my moment of bliss when a girl (who claims to be a friend) addresses me in front of the room. The walls of protection my psyche has put up come crumbling down and I suddenly feel exposed. My ears are ringing with the sound of giggles scattered throughout the room. I look at the boy I love but he’s looking in the other direction--possibly from second hand embarrassment but mostly because his girlfriend is grinning from across the room and he wants to distance himself before she notices. My teenage fantasy, the only place I’m free to be me, has been invaded by my peers and burned to the ground. After what feels like hours, I give an awkward fake laugh, deepen my voice and deny the accusation. Yet another piece of me goes into hiding that day and in its place is a familiar friend, shame. Unfortunately I’ll experience many more moments like this throughout my high school years and the one piece of me that I want to keep secret will continually be the punchline in someone else’s dumb joke.
Fast forward a few more years.
It’s 2014 and I’m twenty years old. I’m freshly out of the closet and on a date with a guy I’ve been seeing for a few tumultuous months. My years of hiding from the world have created major roadblocks in my communication skills and I’m frustrated with my inability to open up to people without immediately wanting to hide. While others my age are confident in dating and relationships, I’m still in the trial-and-error stage they experienced in high school. My naivety to queer dating and my date’s overly-assertive energy are a terrible mix so I know this relationship is destined to fail, but until then we pretend to enjoy another below-average date night.
A male server approaches our table with a friendly smile and asks for our drink orders. As I review the options with my date, I feel a sudden shift in the energy looming above the table. It’s the kind of switch that can only be triggered by toxic masculinity. At this point in time, my shame and anxiety have teamed up to produce an ongoing sense of fear. But it’s no longer the fear of being exposed or outed, it’s now the fear of being discriminated against or attacked for living authentically. It’s the very reason I’m too afraid to hold my date’s hand in public or even offer my date the same quick peck on the lips I’ve seen countless friends exchange in the past. Regardless of all my attempts to block any forms of PDA, my server has somehow detected the same things the boys on the playground detected all those years ago.
I guess life and the hostess of The Cheesecake Factory both work in mysterious ways because we happen to be seated at the table of a homophobe.
Our server quickly storms off and from behind me I hear his voice. I’m not serving those fucking faggots, Over my shoulder I hear another employee trying to reason with our server, but I’m too distracted by my own anxious thoughts to pay any attention to their conversation. My mind goes to the worst case scenario. Will I get thrown out of this restaurant in front of all of these people? I suddenly regress back into the wounded 8 year old on the playground, ready for all of the restaurant-goers to laugh at me the way everyone else did years before. I want to put an end to this uncomfortable and painful experience, but before I can grab my jacket to leave, I look up and a new server has appeared before us. No mention of our former server or the slur he just casually used. I’m too embarrassed to speak to a manager so I continue with the meal as if the moment never happened. But it did, and for countless dates in the years to come this moment will always live in the back of my mind like a sad reminder to never get too comfortable in public.
Fast forward to a few short years ago.
It’s 2021 and I’m twenty seven. I’m reflecting on what feels like many different lives. A year in quarantine provided much needed time for self reflection, and through this process I realized that I internalized all of these life moments along with countless others to create barriers between me and the world. I’ve used every toxic friendship, every heartbreak, and every painful experience as a giant brick in the construction of my emotional fortress.
Unfortunately, somewhere in the process I became so consumed with building up these walls that I forgot to nourish the spirit of the person living with them.
In each of my former lives I hid a piece of myself as a defense mechanism. At eight, it was my unwillingness to open up and let people in. At sixteen, it was my self worth. At twenty, the courage to live authentically. For each of the experiences listed above there are hundreds of other hardships too painful to write about and with them more hidden pieces of the person I once was like withered artifacts stored in a forgotten box. The process of unpacking these boxes can be painful, but it’s a necessary step on my journey to self-love.
While these moments I’ve reflected on have pain and humiliation tied to them, I realize they were unavoidable and in some ways necessary for growth. I desperately wish I could go back in time and tell each version of myself to live openly and without fear of judgment or ridicule because with all the effort I put into hiding from my peers, it still didn’t prevent them from pointing and laughing at the parts of me I didn’t love. It’s taken twenty seven years to come to the awful realization that hateful people will always exist, whether you are eight or twenty seven. But I’ve also learned a greater lesson: There is a great deal of power that comes from living openly and authentically. Self-love is a force strong enough to free us from the grip of judgment and heal the emotional and sometimes physical wounds of hate. As I continue to explore my gender identity and sexual orientation I am reconnecting with all of the parts of me I spent so long avoiding and I no longer let fear or judgment dictate my identity. I’m learning to love ALL of me--not just the parts of me others are willing to accept.
There are still plenty of boxes to unpack on this move towards the “real” me (whoever that is) but thank you to the few true friends who have created an encouraging atmosphere for me to explore the many facets of my queer identity. Friends with no judgment, just love. But most importantly, thank you to eight year old Ari, and sixteen year old Ari and all the Aris in-between for doing the best they could to survive even when it felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel. They survived, so I know I will too.
