hat is this “cancel culture” thing?
Stand-up comedian Dave Chappelle (he played Kevin Jackson, bookstore manager of FOX Books in the 1998 love story movie “You’ve Got Mail”) is in trouble today because he joked that cancel culture has gotten so bad in America that “you can get away with murdering a black guy but, ooh don’t you dare hurt a gay person’s feelings!”
If you got offended just reading that line, then save some time and don’t bother reading the rest of this piece. Miss a great story.
First let me lay out my credentials. I started wearing eyeglasses at age three. I’m still wearing them now. I went to public elementary school where I earned such aliases as “Four Eyes”, “Kuwago”and “Telescope.”
Wearing glasses told playground bullies you were “fragile” and can be pushed around. So I got pushed around plenty in countless confrontations between me and some hefty uppergrader that resembled a matchup between Mike Tyson and Mr. Bean. I always stood up against all bullies and, man, did I show them how. They’ve never seen a boy bounce off the wall and ricochet around the classroom so much and still stay alive to try and fix his broken glasses.
Have I ever been mistreated, discriminated against, minoritized, marginalized and victimized? You don’t know the half of it. And that just in elementary school.
There were three boys in my class who were gay. For some reason, gays in my generation were always scions of wealthy families. And even if they were average, their doting parents (especially moms) pampered and spoiled them rotten. They dressed well—in boy attire, mind you, nobody crossdressed yet then—and their pocketmoney always consisted of paper bills. Mine was coins. Always coins.
We, “normal boys” watched these gay boys mingle with, laugh with, casually kiss and put their arms around the prettiest girls that we often wondered if it was possible to fake it—to “play gay.”
I honestly don’t remember if I tried. Just as well, because psychologists would later prove that gay was NOT a choice. People don’t choose to be gay. They just are.
What Dave Chapelle touched bad was not the raw nerve of being gay per se. It’s the insinuation that gay people are fragile—even if he only meant emotionally oversensitive. Dave Chapelle is my generation, but we belong to different cultures and societies.
Back in the 1970s in Baguio Central School, gay boys cried (but who didn’t at that age?). But I wouldn’t say they were vulnerable. In fact, one of them could rough up any of the bullies anytime.
Rather, it seemed to me it was those macho ruffians in my day who couldn’t handle the least dose of embarrassment or adversity, if we talk about emotional fragility. One bully was yelling the Tarzan yodel while swinging on a rope in gym class when the rope snapped. Everybody laughed hard but Mr. Bully chose ME to vent his frustration on. Holding me by the scruff of the neck, he gave me a couple of loving smacks to the face then introduced his elbow to my nose before walking away.
Everybody scampered away, which is what you did if there was a raging bull in a china shop. So I lay on the ground alone bleeding when another classmate Jimmy Patacsil happened by. “What happened?” In between mumbles, I told him what Mr. Bully did. Jimmy took out his handkerchief and started wiping the blood in my nose. When I screamed that it was broken, I saw a look of urgency in his eyes.
He picked me up, slung me over his shoulders and sprinted the fifty yards to the school clinic. The school nurse, Mrs. Warren, was aghast, “What happened?” Jimmy had to retell the story I told him. Because the nurse was working alone, it was Jimmy who had to rummage through cabinets, handing over the cotton, bandages, alcohol and such to Mrs. Warren who was fixing my nose. Then Jimmy ran back to retrieve pieces of my broken glasses, and gathered my books and notebooks that were strewn all over.
While I was slung over Jimmy’s shoulder and he was running to the clinic, carrying me, I remember thinking, “how can any boy be so strong?”
To be more specific, how can any boy WEARING NAIL POLISH be so strong?
Jimmy was gay.
And wherever you are today, Jimmy, God bless your golden heart. I pray that somebody forwards this to you.
To Dave Chappelle, shove it.
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