THE BURDEN OF BEING "DIFFERENT"

My 16-year-old son, Benjy, recently acquired a broad-brimmed black Borsalino fedora from his cousin. The "Bors," as he reverently calls it, is a religio-political statement, the sine qua non headgear of a subgroup of young orthodox Jewish males we call "black hatters."

Benjy wore his Bors to synagogue, still unsure as to whether brim-up or brim-down made the quintessential statement. Later that afternoon, he exchanged his Bors uniform for floppy Nikes and urban chic hip-hop attire. That same evening, he dressed up in a National Hockey League jersey and other hockey paraphernalia. Finally, to bed in a surgical scrub suit "borrowed" by his sister from Mount Sinai Medical School.
My boy is exercising his inalienable right as a preadolescent to try on a broad, incongruous variety of personae. Sooner or later, he will find one that fits. I will not rush that decision. He does it with my blessings, and my envy.

Forty years ago, it was not so easy for my friend Jack.

Jack was artistic, inclined toward theater and dance. He ran and threw a ball "like a girl." Jack played Curly in a youth theater production of "Oklahoma." On occasion, he would get a little too close and touchy to a boy in ways that made you feel odd and squeamish - perhaps a function of being the only child of remote and unemotional parents, or perhaps a preadolescent testing out of his nascent sexual ambivalence.

Jack, they said, was a "homo." That was the cruel caption ordained by the gang of pubescent boys who, like most boys at that confusing age, were no more secure in their sexuality than Jack.

"Homo!" they would leer at him as he passed them in the hall. "Homo!" they would yell as he reluctantly took his turn at bat in the schoolyard. "Homo!" they would hiss at him over the telephone before slamming down the receiver.

But despite it all, Jack was a nice kid. Or, at least he was sufficiently bereft of cruelty and rowdiness to welcome a sensitive mama's boy like me as his friend. It was an odd relationship, odd certainly by adolescent male standards of middle-class Chicago, circa 1962 - an amalgam of sexual misinformation, sports, put-downs and toilet humor.
Jack and I sat for hours, talking about teachers, aspiration, only-child-hood, hurt, the plight of being "different." Never once did he make a physical advance toward me, not even an affectionate stroke on the arm.

To Jack's tormentors, I was a "homo-lover." Gradually, I became Jack's advocate and defender. I thus came upon a disheartening reality that still, more than three decades later, I accept only with greatest difficulty: Prejudiced, insensitive people are remarkably resistant to appeals to conscience and compassion.

After all the "how would you feel if . . ?" and "do unto others" arguments have been exhausted, so many people are still terminally driven by the urge to conform, the need to be accepted, the inclination to judge, the fear of the different and the unknown.
So Jack remained a "homo." I remained, if not a "homo-lover," then at least a friend, an advocate, a defender. And I am as amazed, frustrated and angry today as I was 38 years ago that - despite all the supposed progress in the intervening years - such malice and ignorance still prevail.

The image of Benjy trying on his Bors and trying out another persona draws my mind back to Jack, who, in the best of all possible worlds, should have enjoyed the freedom to discover a "self" that fit, unencumbered by the cruelty of his peers.

I lost touch with Jack years ago, not knowing or caring whether that talented youngster wound up homosexual, heterosexual or something in between. All I can do is wish him peace, and respite from the torment of his differentness. But with callousness and xenophobia still so rife, I'm sorry I can't give that wish more than half a chance.