Walk Like A Gearbox
guys in high school
knew things about me
that I didn’t know
or rather didn’t fully understand
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I was a small blond boy
with very fine hair
that I let grow long
like pop stars of the time
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that got me teased
or was that bullied
with name calling
fruit fairy gearbox
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in the days before
faggot or queer were used
I knew those names meant
I wasn’t manly enough
not that I was fem
but I was not masculine like them
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I never knew
what tipped them off
until a guy I knew
suggest I should fix my walk
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I had no awareness
of how I walked
or of how
men were supposed to walk
<>
I had little real body awareness
beyond my awareness
of the bodies of the boys
changing in the locker room
<>
this guy
gave me some lessons
in how to walk like a man
lessons I didn’t understand
<>
it wasn’t as if I was deliberately
walking any one way
it was something I couldn’t
consciously change
<>
the right walk wasn’t going to cure me
any more than dating girls
having sex with them
cured me of being a fairy
I once directed a play in which one of the actors for one scene was supposed to walk like a runway model – to sashay. He found it almost impossible to change his usual gait; any attempt to change it, he said, made him feel too self-conscious on stage. Turns out one of the ‘classes’ trans people now take is in how to change their walk to more suit the gender they’re changing to. Whoa – what hasn’t been genderized!
his piece is a true story. In high-school one of straight guys did what happens here. The name-calling started in junior high & followed me until I moved to Toronto. I can’t recall a teacher ever stepping in to stop it. At the time I thought I was being picked on because back un the day name calling wasn’t considered bullying but part of what one needed to become a real boy. I know know it was verbal abuse.
I didn’t really understand the sexual connotations of those names & I’m sure the kids didn’t either. I was a nonconformist & such was my lot in life. By the time I hit high school I knew my sexuality was behind the name calling – not that I was sexually active with anyone except myself but my eyes told me what I wanted.
I tried the usually things to disprove their taunts – I had a couple of girls I would go to sock-hops with, I was active in some sports & even won a few trophies but that didn’t change the way I walked. Ultimately it was the hair that established me a fairy – too long & being a natural blond very fem. But like my sexuality, my hair was the way I was born & there was no cure for that either.
TOpoet 