neighbors
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.from Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
I was almost 10 years old when I declared that I was a pacifist. Nobody asked (who’s interested in the ethical discernment of a child?); it was just an internal declaration. I didn’t even say it out loud until a few years later when, during my first year in high school, a classmate asked if I played football. “No,” I said, “I’m a pacifist.”
A year before my bold declaration, I met the boy next door whose family was new to the neighborhood. My mom encouraged me to say hello and to invite him over, so my friend and I knocked on the door, invited him to hang out, and promptly fired a barrage of “get to know you” questions. I quickly learned that he was my first in a lot of categories: he went to public school (I only knew kids from Catholic schools); he didn’t go to a church or a synagogue (to which my friend actually said, “So if you’re not Catholic or Jewish, what are you?”); that he had two younger siblings (a brother and a sister) and an older brother who had a different mom (blew my mind) away at college. He was tan and blond and played sports - he actually looked like he’d fit in with all the boys in our grade who made school a daily hell for us (but, unlike those boys, my new neighbor was laughing with us).
We’d see each other from our yards after school and drift toward one of our houses. His family mesmerized me - for one thing, the kids had private space. The boys shared a bedroom, and all three shared an exclusive playroom in the attic to which their parents might be invited but were never welcome to just show up. They were much more glamorous than I knew people could be, too. In the hallway leading from the front door, oversized photos from his parents’ wedding looked like stills from a soap opera! Their mom, the bride, and her dozen bridesmaids wore broad-brimmed hats and long, shiny, flowy dresses, the height of early 1970s wedding fashion. A wall in the den featured family photos - individual shots of the kids posing in matching outfits, the whole clan in a different set of matching outfits, and several photos of their older brother who (even my 10-year old self could tell) was really, really, hot.
We’d sleep over at each other’s house from time to time. I woke up during a very warm summer night to find him lying in bed with me, above the blanket but alongside me. I spent the next few hours with my mind racing, wondering what to do, but I kept my eyes closed to prop up the illusion that I was deep-asleep. I wanted him there, but I didn’t know why. I wanted to turn toward him, to touch him, to be touched by him, but I didn’t know why. I wanted to fall asleep and wake up with him still there, but, after I finally and unwittingly did fall asleep, I woke to find him back in the other twin, lying on his side like he was gazing out the window. He didn’t move when I sat up, when I got up to walk out to the bathroom, or when I walked back into the room. He only moved when my mom called us down to breakfast, and as we walked down the stairs I convinced myself that I’d had a very odd dream.
But it happened again, a few weeks later at his house. I woke to find him under the blanket with me, his back to my front. A decade later I would’ve known to call it “spooning,” but I wasn’t concerned with what to call it. I was more concerned about who might see us, but I didn’t know why. I was particularly concerned about his younger brother, who’d given me his bed for the sleepover and who might walk in at any moment, but I didn’t know why. This time, I feigned slumber but kept myself awake, and as the room brightened he slowly came-to, stretched a bit, and slipped out from under my blanket and into his bed.
A few weeks after that, he proposed that we play “family” in the attic. “I’ll be the dad,” he instructed, “and you’ll be the mom.” I’ve never been particularly good at improv, but we went through the motions of some mom-like and dad-like behaviors until he said we should go to bed. So we flopped down on the floor. I was on my back, hands folded across my belly, pretending to sleep, but he sat up, leaned over me, and kissed me.
Through the school year, we played “family” frequently. It always started with parental role play, he always adopted a strange way of talking (his dad voice I’d guessed), and it always ended with us kissing and groping furiously for several minutes before we’d say “good night” and pretend to sleep. He slept at my house one night at the start of summer break, but this time I made the bold decision to slip into bed with him. In the dark, I sat up as quietly as I could, my face white-hot and my jaw clenched to keep my teeth from chattering, lifted the blanket covering his twin bed, and lay down behind him. We both lay on our sides, like we were just watching something through the window. We didn’t touch. I kept a few millimeters’ distance just in case (but I didn’t know why), but I could feel the heat of my breath bounce off his neck and back into my mouth. I hoped he’d wake and want to resume our, um, character study, but he never did. My eyes closed, and when I opened them it was morning and I was alone. I turned over to find him in my bed.
A few days later, we played running bases. It was a favorite game in my family’s backyard - a runner would sprint between two bases and hope to avoid getting tagged. The boy next door could run swiftly, spryly, and I could rarely catch him if I was guarding the base. This time, though, I did. He zigged thinking I’d zag, but I zigged and tagged him, tapping the small of his back. He kept sprinting toward the base, but when I breathily announced that I got him, he screamed back, “That was my shirt!” I felt the blood rise into my neck and face. I felt my mouth go dry. I felt the grass squirm under my shoes as my legs and arms stiffened. I engaged in a burst of back-and-forth accusations (“No you didn’t!” “Yes I did!” “No you didn’t!” “Yes I…”), meeting his steadily rising pitch and volume. When he shifted his argument to “You got my shirt!,” I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say, I know your back. I’ve seen your back. I touched your back. I groped it. I even caressed it while you kissed me. I could only blurt out, “I know the difference between your shirt and your back.” Without missing a beat and with all the venom he could muster, he hurled back, “You’re a liar!” When I didn’t respond, he said flatly, “I hate you.”
I felt my body take two bold steps forward - right, then left. I felt my right arm lift and absorb the momentum of my gait. I watched it swing toward his face. I saw his eyes narrow and then flash. I felt my open palm slam into his left cheek. I stepped back silently. He stepped back and touched his face. Without a word, he turned and walked home. I never saw him again.
The feeling lingered, though - his cheek against my palm, his momentary, suddenly aware and indignant glare, his pain. And my pain, my shame - not (in retrospect, surprisingly) about our clandestine play - about wanting to hurt him, about succumbing to an impulse (I thought) I could’ve controlled. I never wanted to feel that again. I couldn’t tell my parents or friends, but I didn’t know why. I wasn’t afraid of getting in trouble - my parents would’ve been more baffled than angered by my sudden turn from quirky-and-kind-introvert to highly reactive brute. And I didn’t really have friends to tell…or perhaps I didn’t want anyone to ask how I knew the difference between his shirt and his back. I didn’t want Jesus and the Virgin Mary to wonder why I knew what the boy next door’s neck smelled like, so I definitely wasn’t going to bring this up in the confessional. This was a sin I was going to have to carry, so I assigned my own penance: pacifism.
What started as penance became an internal shield against bullying and verbal violence (I repeated I’m not a sissy, I’m a pacifist like a mantra) and a smug differentiator (it’s great to feel holier-than-thou in high school). Then I started learning about actual pacifists. Some reacted to an experience of violence, of being directly impacted by it. Some pursued religious or cultural ideals. Some politicked for peace to avert global calamity. All noble motivations, I thought. Which one am I? Sure, I started with impact (specifically, I started with the experience of morphing from the aggressor to the penitent pacifist) but my religious practice and cultural affinities gave me language to explore the ethical dimension of my choices, everything from my vision of the world’s potential to how I treat my neighbors.
I don’t mean to suggest that I always make good choices or that I never defer to violence. I haven’t intentionally hit anyone since the boy next door, but I’ve often chosen to use words like spears. I’ve often lied or failed to tell the whole truth. I occasionally think cruelly about others and about myself, and I casually wish terrible things to happen to the people who’ve crossed me. I still buy ethically questionable products and don’t pay that much attention to the damage that my retirement portfolio or wardrobe are doing to the planet. It’s only been about 35 years, but I’m still learning.
Recently, I recognized that my relationship with the boy next door also planted a seed that would be vital to me through adolescence and into adulthood, one of comfort with my sexuality. I was listening to David Sedaris reading his story “I Like Guys” for the approximately eight-thousandth time. The story recounts his experience as a 13 year old at a Greek summer camp. While his older sister took the opportunity to reinvent herself, Sedaris found himself isolated from other boys. He connects with a cabin mate “who tended to look away when talking to the other boys, shifting his eyes as though he were studying the weather conditions,” Sedaris’ evidence, collected by his unhoned gaydar, that his friend was different from other boys, too. One afternoon, they found themselves alone in the cabin.
What started off as name-calling escalated into a series of mock angry slaps. We wrestled each other onto one of the lower bunks, both of us longing to be pinned. “You kids think you invented sex,” my mother was fond of saying. But hadn’t we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn’t we all come away feeling we’d discovered something unspeakably modern?
Listening to and reading the story so many times in the past, I’d always drawn on my own summer camp experience to bring the story to life. I didn’t share his particular experience, but I understood his sense of isolation, the impact of his removal from trusted spaces and routines, and even his sister’s desire to reinvent herself. This time, though, the boy next door came to mind. I started to see our relationship (can I call it a ‘friendship’?) as a profound and pivotal experience. We shared an invisible, unspoken need for intimacy, but we didn’t know what to do with it. Despite the invisible and insidious structures that isolated us, that kept us all from knowing each other, that kept us all from knowing I’m not the only one, something - something two ingenuous kids couldn’t articulate and nobody else seemed to notice - guided us beyond the lives we knew.
What started as my first crush and heartbreak inoculated me and grew into a shield as I navigated the accusations, degradations, and condemnations that boys like me suffered. You’re unnatural. You’re disgusting. You’re going to hell. The world provides endless instruction to boys and girls about how to channel those desires toward growing into men and women who want to be husbands and wives, but not every kid wants to be molded around those models. The ones who do can smell it on the rest, and something deep inside, something they inherited from generations of other boys and girls who wanted to be husbands and wives, whispered to them that different is bad. When I was the butt of their jokes (You’re unnatural), of their name-calling (You’re disgusting), of their intimidation (You’re going to hell), they could only do so much damage. I was protected by…something, something I still can’t articulate, something deep inside that bolstered me, that kept me looking beyond the pain I knew, that whispered in my heart, You know who you are.
