Today, and every October 4th, is the Roman Catholic feast day (commemoration) of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, patron of animals and the environment, champion of the poor and outcast, and the namesake of my alma mater.
In 1980, I was a student at Toll Junior High School, a public school in Glendale, California. It was obvious to my classmates I was “different;” they called me fag, though I doubt any of them really knew about or were basing their chosen name for me based on my sexuality. I was smart (perhaps a bit precocious) and bookish vs. athletic, and I was regularly beaten up – tripped on the way to class, books knocked out of my arms so I had to get down on my hands and knees to gather them up while a crowd formed around the scene to shout insults, regularly slammed up against the lockers. It was actually pretty awful.
One day, Gene and William and Chris, boys from my neighborhood who in a strange way I considered friends even though they were my primary tormentors, gave me a new name – Fifteen. Mr. Pack, our science teacher, had assigned some kind of project and we worked in groups to complete it – me with Gene and William and Chris. We did not get a good grade, and the guys blamed me. Who knows how the minds of teenagers work, but one of them, probably Gene because he was the alpha amongst us, started calling me “the fifteen-faced bastard,” and the name stuck: I was referred to as Fifteen from that moment on.
Shortly thereafter, we were walking home from school one afternoon (Toll was about a mile from our neighborhood in northwest Glendale), and someone punched me in the face; I don’t remember who, but I only ever hung out with the unholy trinity – Gene and William and Chris – and sometimes Randy Tan and Ronnie Smith, but Randy and Ron weren’t there that day. My nose was bleeding, and I’d smeared blood all over my face trying to stop it to the point where it looked much worse than it was; my face looked like it had been smashed by a cast iron skillet! I remember, I will never forget, what happened next.
When I got home, my mom was waiting with my after-school snack: cheddar cheese cut into squares atop saltine crackers and a glass of Hi-C Fruit Punch.
She took one look at me and dropped the plate of crackers on the kitchen floor, bits of shattered plate all over. She shouted, “don’t come in here, go to the bathroom.” She met me there, wet a washcloth, and gently wiped my face clean.
She was sobbing. It was the only time I ever saw my mom cry.
When my father got home that night, instead of gathering in the den to watch M*A*S*H reruns on KTTV Channel 11 which we did every night before dinner, mom and dad were in their bedroom with the door closed having an argument. I don’t know what was said by whom, but I am certain the decision was made that night to send me to a private, all-boys, Catholic school with a reputation for academic excellence and discipline about 11 miles from our house (roughly 30 minutes by car) – St. Francis High School with a student body of 600 run by the Capuchin Franciscan Friars.
I flourished at St. Francis, enrolling there the following fall and graduating in 1984 (my 40-year reunion was two weeks ago). At St. Francis, smarts and good grades would not get you beat up, they were celebrated. I was inducted into CSF (the California Scholarship Federation) and NHS (the National Honor Society). I made a new group of friends that were as interested as I was in computers and music. I became Editor-in-Chief of Alvernian, our school’s yearbook. And two of my closest friends were co-valedictorians with perfect 4.0 GPAs the year we graduated. St. Francis High School saved my life and provided the foundation of the man I am today. I am proud to be a Golden Knight.
I did get a new nickname. It came about one afternoon as several of us were playing Marco Polo in my friend Mike’s pool. I had jumped up on the diving board and was posing like a bodybuilder might. It was a ridiculous sight – I was skinny as a rail and my skin was an almost translucent white on account of it had not been exposed to the sun much (unlike today, I preferred to be indoors back then). I believe it was Mike, who along with his beautiful wife Amiee remains one of my best friends to this day, who gave me the name. Henceforth, I was known as…
THE BOD.