Free Tango by Justin Vivian Bond Page A

like most of the other girls, found him to be repulsive. Then he managed to dislodge a stop sign from the street
corner and plant it smack dab in the middle of her front yard, a not so subtle hint to STOP. Several years later after I broke up with him and had been ignoring him for some time, we were having a family picnic in my parents’ backyard and all the relatives were over. He decided that this was the day he was going to set off the fireworks he’d been saving up for a long time. The next morning, after the picnic, we woke up to discover that he had spray-painted Z ’s on all the trunks of the trees in our backyard. I never asked him why, but I assumed it was to assert himself and leave his mark—the mark of Zorro. My parents just couldn’t understand, but it was all very clear to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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    WHEN I WAS IN EIGHTH GRADE THE GUIDANCE counselor at our middle school called me in because my teachers were worried. My grades were slipping and I was causing a lot of trouble. I think I was angry, and I released my anger through humor, sarcasm, my constant need to laugh and make other people laugh. The guidance
counselor suggested to my parents that we see a child psychologist. My father worked at the health department so he was able to arrange, through one of his colleagues, for us to see a county psychologist for three dollars a session. I think my parents were embarrassed. At that time, no one in my family had ever been to a mental health specialist.
    The health department was very close to our school. In one of the sessions I explained to my parents and the psychologist that part of the reason why I was so angry was that I was constantly being harassed and being called a fag and that I didn’t feel safe in the school. Sometimes people in the hallway would slap me on the back of the head. I never knew when or what was going to trigger an outburst, and that was why I hated school. I thought that no one was going to protect me, and I couldn’t protect myself.
    The next week the psychologist told my parents and me that she had secretly trailed me through the hallways and I seemed to be very happy, well adjusted, and popular. She didn’t know where this story of harassment was coming
from but she had not seen proof of it, although she had only been in my school for a short time. My parents were relieved to be able to think that, in fact, I was fine, and for some reason I was making all of this up. Now I was not only paranoid about who knew what about me, but I was also perceived as a liar, which I wasn’t. My experiences and the stresses that I was facing had been completely invalidated.
    My gym teacher knew it was true because I cut gym class every day and went to the cafeteria to read instead. Although we never mentioned it, there was a tacit understanding between us that he wouldn’t say anything if I wouldn’t because he knew that my presence on the field or in the locker room caused quite a sensation, distracted the other boys, and put me in danger. It was easier to sweep me under the rug and I was grateful to be there.
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    IN MIDDLE SCHOOL WE TRAVELED TO DIFFERENT classrooms for different periods of time but our classmates remained the same. Gym class took
place right before lunch. After lunch we had math class with Ms. Maletzky. Toni Mosner, one of the girls in my class, lived nearby and always went home for lunch. One day in the early fall, she got back to school late. She apologized and told Ms. Maletzky, who also lived in the neighborhood, that her mother had to call the police and an ambulance because there was a homeless man in the street across from her house and they thought he was dead.
    Ms. Maletzky was shocked, as was I. It was strange that there would be a homeless man in our neighborhood which, although not an upscale one, was a nice area with wide streets and beautiful old trees. When I got home from school I found