The F Word

I used this word in my last post, the dreaded F word that almost all gay men know and know the power it holds. Faggot. Many have heard it shouted at them, whispered to them, angrily said to them, and jokingly passed off to them as something to bond over. It is easiest to tell people that fag and faggot are always bad and should never be used. But that doesn't completely fill in all the blanks, nor does it touch on the more complex relationship I have with the word that has followed me for as long as I can remember.

I always knew it was a bad word, even if I didn't always know what it meant. Faggot was never said in a cheerful way, and I knew even as a child that it was a really not nice thing to call people. There was always some form of venom behind that word; it always had an agenda to it. It was a word meant to hurt, meant to belittle, and scold. It was an unkindness laid upon another person, a judgment placed upon their life and self worth. I didn't like it.

I remember fag first being applied to me in Junior High School. Or rather it was first directed at me. I wasn't willing to acknowledge that they were talking about me, but it was hard to ignore it when the more popular kids would go out of their way to make sure you heard them. It was embarrassing and I remember no one really caring to stop it. "Boys will be boys" and "It's part of toughening up" were often common phrases used to brush the incident under the rug and then out the door.

I started Junior High in Wayzata, but had the chance to change schools to Minnetonka when my family moved. It was a chanced that I took because it offered me a way out of my brother’s shadow and a way into my actual life. My relationship with my brother can be complex, so I will save that for later. But a chance to not be his little brother in the eyes of the teachers was appealing. So in the 8^th grade, I found myself at Minnetonka. And I had no friends.

The first two years were not great. I could never find my footing, I couldn't find my place. I just didn't seem to fit in anywhere and I was too scared to really get out there and make an effort. Minnetonka was more different than I expected and my mind was already plagued with growing demons. And then the 9^th grade taught me about strange forms of harassment. Minnetonka's high school was grades 9 to 12, and I wasn't prepared to be at the very bottom of the totem pole one year after moving. And then the locker break-ins started. All in all, I think strangers broke into my school locker 3 times that year, taking anything I had of value. As a result, my locker was moved from place to place to find a home where that wouldn't happen and my parents thankfully went on the rampage because the school wasn't great at dealing with this. And they forced me to find places to make friends; which is how I ended up joining the choir (since I liked singing and playing the piano) and eventually found my way to the theater department.

It turns out that much of my people were in choir, and a majority of my new circle of friends was in the theater department. Granted, I didn't fit in with all of them as some people crossed boundaries with cheer-leading and football, but we had enough in common that I started to make friends. Many of them had been subjected to the word faggot and they could relate to me and my experiences since they had them too. And instead of being completely ashamed and hiding from the word, they were determined to not let it get to them and went so far as to take it as a badge themselves. Literally.

 At the local small shopping center, there was a machine where you could make a badge where you could type in any word or words simply by spinning the dial to the right letter and impressing it upon the badge design you chose. Many of my new friends had one, and they all said one thing in common, "Dramafag". Well, not all of them. It was easy for the dial to land on the wrong letter, so I know one friend’s badge that said, "Dramafaf". But we all knew what it was supposed to be. It was our own way of declaring our family, and taking the power of the word away from those who would use it against us. Since no one talked about which of us were gay or not, at least not to me (more on that later), we would all take the word and all be outsiders together.  There was a safety in numbers after all.

 

A mock up!

Now, I could never fully take the word to heart; as it was harder for me to deal with being called a fag than others for whatever reason. I couldn't own it like one of my friends did. When he was called a faggot at the Burger King, if I remember correctly, he simply walked up to that person and hissed, "That’s Mr. Faggot to you" and turned and walked away from the stunned fellow who had no response. When I was called faggot, I just simply didn't respond and hoped that my ears weren't burning to red.

My father, on the other hand, didn't understand why I had something like that attached to my keys. "Dramafag? I don’t like it. Why do you have that?" he asked me in the car one day.

"It’s just a thing, Dad," I muttered exasperated that I had to have the conversation at all, "We all have one. It’s just a way for us to be a group!" I didn't want to go into the full ordeal and admit things I wasn't ready to admit. That was a conversation best avoided and saved for later. I couldn't really explain why it was so important to have that stupid badge on my keys and the strength it gave me. Had I been a stronger person, I would have told him the whole story; I would have admitted an emotional honesty with my father and explained that I used the word because I was the word. I needed to own what it was and who I was so it could stop having so much power over me. Instead, I went into angry and indifferent teenager mode and shut down.

"Well I don’t think it’s right and you shouldn't call yourself that," he stated and I just sighed my best sigh and stared out the window. "Parents never understand,"I thought to myself in that smug superior way that only teenagers can manage. And why would he understand something I never bothered to explain. With my badge in hand, I drifted through high school.

In the dark places of mind, my high school life was terrible. But in reality, it really wasn't that bad at all. I made a bunch of friends; I found some of my callings in life. I grew, I discarded parts of me that weren't worth keeping and I grew stronger. While it was a lonely time, it wasn't at the same time. I had a lot of friends, in the end and if I’m completely honest, over all I enjoyed it.

It was in college that I started coming out to people. When I turned 19 or so, I stopped being bisexual and just was gay. By then I was more used to who I was and more confident in who I was, which still wasn't a lot but it was a start. I heard the term faggot less and less as I was in the theater department and that word wasn't a part of our daily life there. I would occasionally hear faggot on other parts of the campus, but almost never in my home on the West Bank.

It was at this point that faggot stopped being a weapon against me, and started being a weapon I used to get into arguments. Like many newly minted gays, I was angry over my lost time of living honestly, angry with the unfairness of the world, and just begging to be called a fag so I could scream and yell out all the pent up frustration. There was an unfairness in what I was doing and I was gently chided by a good friend about my behavior, and rightly so.

After college and overtime, I lost my strong defense to the word because I didn't need it. The few times I heard faggot after that, it always came as a shock. "Who still uses that word?" I would think, repulsed by the thought of some troll trying to get my anger or shame going. Sometimes it worked, but usually because I was surprised by it. Faggot would hit me like an unexpected slap in the face. I would be at a restaurant, and some stranger would walk up and hit me with "Faggot" and then wander off.  It was rude, annoying and stung a bit, but never cause to ruin a perfectly good evening. And it gave me a reason to flip them off.

These days, I only really see it online in horrible comments sections or through Xbox Live. Used by children who know the power of the word and wield it like madman with a gun, shooting at anyone who angers their sense of justice or fairness or masculinity, or just to try to gain some sense of power over others.

The most awkward use of recent was with my co-worker when we met for the first time after being on the same work team for a number of months.  I was out at work, it wasn’t a secret and he and I have a very bantering and fun relationship. We tend to goof on each other and give each other shit. He and I went out to dinner while on a business trip with a few other co-workers and for whatever reason he decided to jokingly use faggot upon me. I want to say that I let it roll off my back, but it seemed like a betrayal. My first reaction was to be angry and unleash that anger, but I thought better of the action. I needed to let it cool down a bit before I could explain how that was not ok. But before I could get there, another co-worker took him to task. He was duly ashamed and appropriately apologetic. And best of all, it gave me some extra ammunition to tease him with, which honestly was the best outcome.

Yet when I think on the word faggot, I’m often brought back to the time when I realized how much more comfortable I am in my skin and how little power, other than shock value, faggot had over me.  Brent and I were walking our dogs through our neighborhood together, as we often do. We have two Italian Greyhounds, which are prim and rather uptight looking dogs. They are also crazy. And they sort of carry this stigma of not being the manliest dogs out there. Nor are Brent and I the stereotypical example of manliness either, so we are aware of who we are and how we appear in the wild. As we were walking our dogs, this car stopped on the street ahead of us and the four passengers inside took a good look at Brent and I.  We ignored them until the driver shouted, "Hey... You got points!"

Brent and I looked at each other, clearly confused. The 'nice' man decided to state it again. "Yo, you got points. Do you know what that means?"

We clearly didn't and I shook my head.  He continued, "It means you’re faggots!" and with that proclamation he hit the gas and floored it to get away from us. At the time, he seemed more afraid of us with the way he sped off in his car with his friends than we were of being screamed at by four grown men in a car. Brent and I just shrugged and I said, "That’s accurate" and we walked home. Once at home, Brent said, "I think they might have been trying to insult us." I nodded, the whole scene making much more sense. "Yeah, I think you’re right", I commented and we went about the rest of our evening.