"My name was Faggot before I moved to Portland"

I stole that title from the fantastic barber at Bishops Barbershop on Beaverton Hillsboro Highway. We were talking about the dangers of growing up in a small Midwestern town and liking art, dance etc.

I know, I know... how cliche! Pretty much every movie, opera, or rap video has some sort of "not fitting in", being the outsider and coming back to kick ass plot line running through it. Well, I suppose that is because the cliche it is true. In my case, it was hard to win the label of Heterosexual man when you enjoy a good show tune, like French antiques and happen to live in Leavenworth, KS. Just sayin'

At any rate, the dude from whom I stole the quote pretty much rocks in every sense of the word. He just graduated Summa cum Laude with degrees in Poly Sci.and Philosophy, passed the LSAT in the 98th percentile plays trumpet, upright bass, piano, organ and also has 15 years of classical dance under his belt. Pretty awesome, no? Why the hell would he or anyone else be tormented to the point that it takes tranquilizers to go into social situations? It always baffles me, interesting, talented people who just don't fit the standards of society. Why is it that we chastise people for reading Chaucer and studying Nijinsky? Men and women alike... So strange.

At any rate, from the age of about 8 (before I even knew what the word meant) I was called a "Faggot" or some other form of the label. Family, school mates, people who hardly knew me. What the fuck, right? Wuss, gay, pussy, peter-puffer, etc... AWFUL.

To be honest, I didn't even know what the word meant until I was in the 7th grade, just that they (the "faggots" that is) were good targets for physical violence and didn't get picked for team sports first. "Whatever" I thought, "it's just a word" until somebody told me (whilst holding me down and smacking me with a traffic patrol stick) what they did to win the moniker. Not that it should matter either way. It just changed the perception.

After a while, it just became a label, I had other things to deal with. The ignorance of high school pales in comparison to the stupidity of real life and the latter seemed to win out in the end.

I made it through and survived. I even went to an extremely conservative college in an even smaller Kansas town and had the nerve to major in Music and minor in Classical Dance. The first year was rough, I remember "Faggot" being whispered as I passed the football player's table in the lunch hall early in my tenure. I turned around and said "is that the best you've got? $20,000 a year for college and that is the best you have?" I then rattled off a list of alternative names that would surely make Howard Stern blush. I had nightmares for about a week, sure that the team was going to kill me and dump my body into a dumpster, but after that confrontation, I didn't notice the names as much. Not sure if they stopped or I just stopped caring.

I moved to Portland for love. For the same person that I fell in love with in high school. Said human had just graduated from college and had settled in Oregon. They cared not for the labels of others, but rather liked me. We were married within a year and have three children nearly nine years later.

Looking back, I have often thought about how growing up in Portland would have been different. Not that the labels aren't there. Just the ones that I had for all of those years aren't such a big deal. I wonder what I would have been here?

I know that it is silly, but I think that the barber reminded me how monumental it is to come into yourself. To take control of the perception that others have of you and accept or deny it. I also have to say that I am proud for the massive amount of courage it took me to listen to that shit for all of those years and to not let it kill me. To anyone with a label, be it fat, ugly, fag, dike, ad libitum, ad nauseum... know that I admire you. It aint easy...

My name was Faggot before I moved to Portland, now it is Zakk. The rest of it is incidental.