Moving out of the Haterhood

Growing up in Scottsdale, AZ is hard if you're not Republican and hetero.

I don't want to be a man. I don't want to be considered butch. I don't see why anything I do would be considered "un-feminine"... except maybe talking about my huge c**k. I don't want to be called a hippie or an anarchist. When a straight man I've never met calls my gay friends "f**s", I don't want to be called an "uppity dyke with no sense of humor". And when I call my very close friends "homoface", I don't want self-righteous straight people telling me I'm "sabotaging the cause".

I just want everyone to mind their own f*****g business.

I spent my whole life in the shadows. Being a good, quiet little girl. I was pretty, I was dainty, I was smart, I was witty, and I didn't speak unless spoken to. My parents are in no way to blame for this behavior. My teachers would often call them in for conferences to discuss their "concern" about my "debilitating shyness". What they didn't understand, but my mom and dad did, was that I wasn't shy. I just didn't give a f**k.

I always knew I was smart. Everyone told me so and I was smart enough to know they weren't bullshitting me. That's not to say that I felt some sense of superiority and entitlement. I was always modest about it too... because I didn't give a f**k. I just didn't care, for the most part, about other people. I had one girl friend, Brooke. Everyone else hated us because we were fat.

They hated us so much that I often stayed home from school faking sick (Brooke's mom was a little stricter) just to avoid the verbal daily beatbown. The thing was- they never convinced me they were right. I always knew they were ignorant and hateful. And I let them know that. I spouted off well-constructed arguments as to WHY they were idiots and supported my points with logic and references. And all they ever had to say in their defense was "You're fat!" Wow. Well-played. Asstard. It wasn't their words that hurt me, it was the multitude. I felt like I was in a madhouse. Why was everyone so totally nuts and ignorant? I KNEW from the bottom of my heart that I was right. And I thought I supported that on many many occasions. But every time, the ignorance won out and no one was on my side except my parents, Chanel, and Brooke. And so I stayed quiet. I was afraid of all the hate. I was terrified as to why NO ONE would listen to what seemed so obviously to be right. Even the adults turned a blind eye at best, or flat-out persecuted me at worst.

Growing up in Scottsdale, AZ- one of the most boring, Republican, Caucasian, racist, homophobic, overly-privileged, hateful, ignorant, and all-round dicktastic cities in the US made me feel very alone and afraid. I remember in high school when we were assigned to read George Orwell's 1984 the overly-privileged, Caucasian trust-fund kids would laugh during discussion about how "out-there" it was. Meanwhile I was thinking "ARE YOU INSANE? IT'S ALREADY LIKE THAT!" The government and TV already tell you what to eat, what to think, what to wear, who to f**k, and what colors and religions are acceptable to hate.

And then, to my utter shock, my teacher, a lovely woman named Mary Kay, verbalized everything I was thinking, seemingly amazed at how dense her students were.
Before art school, I didn't know people like me existed.

I started art school at 16 as a last-ditch effort to save my education before giving up and dropping out. I hated school so much. The subjects were useless. The students were useless. The principal was up my a*s daily because I had pink hair. I reminded her more than once that my straight A's and high test scores were putting more money into this school, which she could excitedly dump into more f*****g football games, meanwhile "Do you even know where the theater class room IS? It's in the basement next to the cafeteria kitchen." They never expelled me because they couldn't. But f*****g hell they wanted to. And I wanted to go. But it seemed unfair and stupid to drop out of school being as smart as I was. So I looked into my options. And I found a small, free charter school called New School for the Arts.

It was...ok. I found most of the teachers (who were on average about 30 years old) to be pretentious douchewads. And I won't even get started on the students. Suffice it to say: imagine attending an entire school of upper-middle class white goth kids. O_o

But there were a select few who really cared. One was my friend Rachel. One was my creative writing teacher Matt. Apparently Matt and a few others on the staff seemed to share my opinion of NSA. So they went off to start a whole new school: Metropolitan Arts Institute in downtown Phoenix. I think it was mostly because of the amazing people who made this school that made the difference. And I think a big part was simple geography. We weren't in Scottsdale anymore! We had DIVERSITY! *gasp* There were gay students and gay TEACHERS! Black people, Hispanic people, lots of Jews. Artists will always be drama queens on the whole, but just knowing for the first time that there was a world beyond white hetero sex and football games allowed me to start expressing myself in ways I never did before. And yeah, I kind of sucked. I was 18 for f**k's sake! What the f**k does an 18 year old have to express? I'd never experienced love, tragedy, REAL hate, death, adventure, or anything of note. So my creativity waned, especially during the time when my dad died only three weeks after graduation from Metro Arts.

It's taken quite awhile, but I think I've experienced a lot of things in my few years. Enough, at any rate, to find a renewed sense of hope and confidence. I know I have an assload more to learn and experience, and my stories and sense of self will only get better through the course of my life. But for the first time ever, I've learned to love myself. A lot of the world is going to benefit from that. And a lot of it is going to pay! I will no longer keep my opinion to myself, agree to disagree, or let anyone win an argument.

I look around these days and I still see most of the US as a big Scottsdale, AZ. I used to think "How can I possibly change this alone? Maybe I should just go somewhere else where no one will bother me." F**k. That. This country belongs to me every bit as much as it belongs to John Doechebag. I'm not going to let these tools force me out of my home. And now I know that I don't have to fight alone.