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I’m Proud to Be a Sissie Richard Gollance may 1973 I’ve stopped worrying about whether or not I’m a Real Man. I like to dance, and sometimes when I’m walking along the beach, I’ll dance right there. Sometimes I visit my friend Donna, who is “straight,” and we play with Wngernail polish, painting designs on each other’s nails. I have a bright red scarf I like to wear around my head, like a gypsy. Maybe I’ll sew this evening, or go for a motorcycle ride in the mountains this afternoon, or write a few scenes for a play I’m working on. I don’t consider whether my voice is deep enough or my presence authoritative enough. I don’t have to do a mini-size version of the He-Man Strut or feel apologetic for being mini-size. And I won’t surrender my life to an oªce. I work part time, just enough to support myself and that’s all. Any other work I do will have to be meaningful to me. This is a new freedom for me. Gentleness, introversion, slightness, or emotionality are dangerous in a boy, a sure sign that he may not be capable of meeting his male duty in the grownup world. When I was very young, sometimes I played with dolls, or cried, or painted. I don’t remember when the Wrst pressures to change all that started, but gradually the agony of being made fun of and being called a “fairy” became the most horrible part of my life. Any situation could suddenly turn on me and leave me shattered. And my secret guilt about being homosexual intensiWed the need to hide and reconstruct the incorrect parts of my personality. As much as I tried, I never fully escaped the threat of imminent humiliation. What hurts most now is realizing that my quest for masculinity and normality always involved restricting myself, never exploring or expanding myself. I wasted so much time and energy doing things I didn’t enjoy. I remember my adolescence as a time of being constantly on guard. There is no legitimate way for a boy in the suburbs to avoid baseball in the spring. Without raising a fuss, I would try out for the Little League, and every year wind up in the outWeld of a third-string team where I couldn’t do much harm. For encouragement , my parents would come to all the games, and at any family gathering, an uncle or a cousin was sure to ask my batting average, how my team was doing, what position I played: Was I a hero? Meals were rescheduled to accommodate practices, and buying a mitt was an event. 131 There was an annual ritual I became familiar with. It would start with my coach looking at me strangely after I threw a ball a few times. The routine: he would take me aside and ask me to have a catch with him, and I knew what was coming. He would try to be tactful (but make me realize, at the same time, that it was a serious problem ) and say something like, “You’re not following through when you throw the ball. You’re doing it all wrong, like a girl.” The coach would then try to teach me the right way but, realizing me hopeless, would Wnally give up. I knew I was stuck in the outWeld forever. Eventually I found an illegitimate way to avoid baseball in the spring. For several years I got sick for a few weeks every April or May. I dreaded the end of winter. I Wnally discovered a spring sport. Distance running doesn’t really require talent as much as it requires drive and a monumental need to prove something. Why else would you go around and around a track several miles a day and subject yourself to a grueling regimen whose only pleasure is the possibility of winning a race perhaps once a week? Why else go to bed early when all the next day promises is more timed laps and more calisthenics? I had that monumental need. Even after I established that I could be athletic and after I grew to hate the meaningless, repetitive exertion, I still continued. At last I had something to prove my precarious identity. Every circumstance, every action demanded second-guessing. When I heard a sarcastic wolf-whistle as I walked in the school...

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