Newsgroup: soc.motss
From: transvox@crl.com (Mark Roberts)
Subject: Re: Oxford shirts (was Re: It's either leather bars or....)
Date: Wed Aug 07 18:28:22 PDT 1996

broudy@bcf.usc.edu (david s. broudy) had written:

| In article <4tqsri$pts@nntp-1.io.com>, Greg.Havican@io.com wrote:
| 
| - :>Class-o-1980 here. No, I never had a "fruit loop" torn off in high school,
| - :>and did not know that those useless things were, in fact, called "fruit
| - :>loops" until about a minute ago. I went to a *really* preppy high school:
[...]
| - Class-o-1976 here.  You apparently were one of the lucky ones.  Since my
| - parents were divorced and we didn't have a lot of money, my school clothes
| - came from K-Mart.  
[...]
        Part of the deal here, too, Greg, is that preppy didn't become
big until after you and I were out of high school.
| 
| - At Sharpstown HS (called the Sharpstown Country Club), you were either
| - white and straight, or you didn't fit in.  We had a total of 6 minority
| - students, and I was the only openly gay person in the school.  This was the
| - school that I got thrown out of for breaking the assistant principal's
| - nose.
| 
| The idea of being openly gay at Dana Hills High in 1976-1980 just does not
| parse. 

        Likewise at Fort Zumwalt High. I was beaten up several times
on suspicion of being a "faggot" (though I hadn't figured any of that
out at the time). Between that and constant harassment for being an
excellent student uninterested in athletics and boneheaded timeserving
administrators who didn't give a shit about the situation, it was
nightmarish. One sure sign of stress: I became quite overweight as a
result. Another: I was depressed and slept 12 hours a day, often at
odd hours. I tried to graduate a year early (could have done so; I had
the credits), parents said no. That whole scummy high-school
experience is where my extremely low tolerance for gratuitous
namecalling cames from. I have refused to go back for high school
reunions, which, in the St. Louis area, is just about the ultimate
form of heresy.
        Maybe I *should* have punched someone out, but I just didn't
believe in fighting that way. And still don't.

| We had one guy who wasn't openly gay, but who was rather nelly, who
| ended up transferring to Laguna Beach High, where apparently such things
| were better-tolerated, because he was constantly being harassed by both
| the Prepsters and the Stoners.
| 
        I wish I *could* have been transferred, and I wasn't openly
gay and hadn't even fucking figured out that I *was*.
        Got to college in 1975, finally, much better environment,
where people actually *valued* what I was good at, and among other
things, I lost 50 pounds (6'2", 155 -- yes, I gained height when I was
20). 

        Mark (who has gotten surprisingly angry while writing 
                this post -- I guess it had to bubble out sometime
                even though it's been in such constrast to my
                good humour as of late)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Roberts | Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | http://www.crl.com/~transvox/
"4. Your child has lots of unlabeled floppy disks scattered around the room.
This indicates he has been downloading pornographic pictures to view while
you aren't around" -- from "How to Tell If Your Teen Computer Buff Is a
Dirty Nerd", the _Weekly World News_, August 13, 1996
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