kipouros's Open Salon Blog

Nazi Gym Teachers and Avoidance Strategies

Thu, 2 Dec 2010 08:12:09 -0500

I suppose some might not consider this a “con” in the traditional sense. Nobody lost money; nobody really lost anything except me. I didn’t con people directly, just a system I didn’t want to conform to.

I had always hated gym class. It wasn’t that I hated physical activity, but I was a geek, I wasn’t good at sports, I hated the humiliation of being the last one picked for teams, I hated being called a “lily” by testosterone-poisoned gym teachers. And the closer I got to adolescence, the more intolerable it got.

Junior high school is a hard time for most teenagers; it certainly was for me. High School was like a breath of fresh air. There was a change of faces, so you had a new chance to make friends before they learned that you were unpopular and not to be associated with. And now there were enough kids who thought being arty, musical or even nerdy weren’t necessarily horrible things.

The only thing that got worse, was gym class. Our junior high gym teachers, for all their faults, were basically decent people, and when I think honestly about it, I have to admit that they did spend time encouraging me as well. It wasn’t their fault that I’d much rather be reading a book about Cambodian verb forms than playing tag football.

But high school… Kids frequently call teachers they don’t like “Nazis,” but this gym teacher came as close as any I’d had to truly earning the title. (Well, there was that physics teacher who knocked a black girl’s pencil off her desk, and when she stooped down to pick it up, lifted her dress with his crutch and made a comment about the only good n****r being a dead one. But he was fired.) This guy, on the other hand, was a museum piece, and one could only wonder what favors he had done for whom to avoid swift termination. He was unadulterated vileness, and we knew about him even in elementary school from the spray-painted swastikas that frequently appeared with his name on the outside wall of the gym. His “encouragement” to an overweight student who was doing his best in a 600-yard run was, “Move it, fatso.” He singled out a friend of mine for harassment in class because her older brother refused to join the football team. I had light gynaekomastia - i.e. breast development in adolescent boys - and it was bad enough getting comments from fellow students (how many times I prayed to be on the “shirts” team). From a teacher? No way.

And whereas in junior high, gym was three times a week, in high school I’d have to face this ass every day of the week.

A friend of mine, by the way, had faced the same situation in his high school, and I wish I could say I’d been as brave: He went straight to the counselor at the very beginning and said, flat-out, that he refused to go. When they told him, “you won’t graduate if you don’t,” he said “okay, then I won’t graduate, but I won’t put myself through that.” They eventually worked out a deal where he tutored students in math instead.

But I wasn’t nearly so self-possessed at that age, and I’d always been a person to take my own tack with a minimum of conflict, so my solution was simply to stop going. Not all at once – first I didn’t go for two weeks. When I went back, he asked where I’d been and I said I’d hurt my foot. Then I just stopped for good. For three years. I don’t know why there was never a call to my parents. The “I(ncomplete)” on my report card I explained away somehow, said it meant the class wasn’t graded or some such excuse. It was so easy that I never even worried about it.

Until a month before graduation, because I knew that Iowa state law dictated that to graduate, we had to have attended gym class every day for three years. So I went into my counselor’s office and told him the story. “You realize this is a serious situation, don’t you?” he said. Would I have been there if I didn’t know that? (To this day, I wonder if it would have even come up if I had just kept my mouth shut.)

So we went into our family doctor and explained the situation. He wrote a letter to the school basically saying that the psychological discomfort that came from the classes would outweigh any benefit I’d get from being in it. And told me that he wanted me to be able to ride my bike to West Branch and back with no problem. (I already did anyway.)

Was it a con in the true sense? Maybe not, but it was a good lesson in manipulating the system for the sake of self-preservation.

The Beginning of the End?

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 08:11:50 -0500

I'm not naming names, but I'm wondering: Is it the beginning of the end when you're 52 years old, and a folk/rock vocal artist you've loved since junior high school comes out with a Christmas Album including "Walking in a Winter Wonderland?"

I don't feel at all good about this.

Fall Pumpkins

Mon, 4 Oct 2010 08:10:17 -0400

When I was a kid, there was a lady in our neighborhood (every neighborhood had one) who roamed the streets, monstrously overgrown zucchini in hand, attempting to palm them off on unwitting neighbors. That lady was my mom, and I, for better or worse, have become my mother. Only my squash are supposed to grow big, and most people like getting them!

Summer was also a bit more depressing this year than usual, because much of this part of the world was gripped in a giant cloud of humidity that just didn't let up. Istanbul is a humid city, relatively, but it usually lasts a few days, after which we are saved by a stiff breeze down the Bosphorus. This year, that breeze never came. Clothes mildewed in the closet, we had to pull up all the carpets to keep them from molding. I even went to make brownies one day, and opened a package of cocoa to find that it had turned green with mold. I thought that sort of thing only happened in Puerto Rico during the wet season.

And as is typical of Istanbul weather, it suddenly came to an end. Seasons do not change gradually here but in fits and starts, as if two enemy weather gods are at battle. It's all or nothing, with lands passing back and forth between them until one declares a solid victory. After a brief reprieve in early September it was Indian summer (or pastrami summer as they say here), almost as hot and oppressive as "real" summer had been. Then, suddenly, autumn came, at 3:15 a.m. on Saturday. And now we have one of those glorious, gleaming fall days where you can practically see into the windows of houses a mile away. But you can't be too fooled by it, it could just as well be pouring rain in an hour.

Of course, during all this time, there was a garden out there, mostly loving all this moisture. During the month that I was in the States, it rained nearly every other day, and I came back to find that out in the garden, pretty much every last weed seed lurking anywhere near germinating depth had sent out its roots and grown into tree-like proportions. Some plants unaccustomed to a steady drip did give up the ghost and turned to fertilizer for their neighbors, but the six different kinds of winter squash (Why so many? Because I'm obsessed, that's why.) completely outgrew their bounds, invading my housemate's garden, the neighbor's garden, and ensuring that the children of the parking lot attendants down below us will have no beta carotene deficiencies this year.

Here, when it starts raining regularly, the snails come out in armies, and they seem to love to gnaw on the stems of pumpkins. If they do, it increases their chances of rotting, so I decided to go ahead and harvest them.

I don't know why I'm so attracted to squash. I like eating them as much as the next person, but if it were all about that, I'd be perfectly happy to grow one or two, and buy the rest from the market. It's more that squash make me happy. Their colors, their texture, their improbable shapes, and the exuberance of their vines as they transform the landscape into a sea of enormous spreading leaves; or in the case of the Seminoles, hang like ornaments from an old dead apricot tree. The fact that they're edible is a nice bonus, and probably the only reason I'm not growing gourds instead. Squash are extreme, in everything they do. Even smaller-seeded ones announce their germination with thick, spreading seed leaves, they grow apace, they produce the largest and most fragrant flowers in an edible garden, with abundant nectar for the bees.

There is also an element of patience involved; unlike a zucchini, you know you (mostly) won't get to harvest anything till the autumn, so you nurture them throughout the entire season. And in February, while the tomatoes and peppers and green beans are long gone, you continue to enjoy the fruits of your labor, both in the kitchen but also visually and tactilely, and you remember watching the flower bloom, and the miniature fruit grow, don its color, and mature. Amy Goldman kept a specimen of the beautiful Australian "Triamble" pumpkin on her mantlepiece for two years. I'm not sure I'll keep any of mine around for that long, but I know that every time I walk into the kitchen, I will enjoy running my fingertips over its hard, smooth surface.

Then again, maybe I just need to get laid more.

Plants with Stories

Wed, 9 Jun 2010 02:06:20 -0400

I love a plant with a story. To be honest, almost every plant in my garden has a story - of the person who brought it to me, or of the trip involved in collecting the seed, or some childhood memory. I have a large fragrant evening primrose, for example, that originally came up in a pot that my grandmother gave to my mother. When mom asked what it was, she said cryptically, "something beautiful." To this day we don't know if the primrose was the intended beautiful something, or just an interloper. Once or twice I've almost lost it, but always managed to find a plant, either from friends with whom I shared the plant or by making a pass by an old gardening site. Once I searched through turf for half an hour to find two seedlings that had come up in the former-garden-now-lawn in the house where I'd lived. It's just part of the family now.

But some plants come with their own stories. One such plant is my absolute favorite clematis, "Betty Corning." I first learned of this plant from an old Seattle gardening friend, Steve Antonow, who also told me its story.

The real Elizabeth (Betty) Corning was the wife of Erastus Corning II, mayor of Albany NY. Incidentally his father, Erastus Corning I, was a New York businessman after whom the city of Corning, NY was named. In that city was the Corning Glassware Company, which first manufactured Corningware - now known as Corelle Livingware.

In addition to being an aristocrat, Betty Corning was a passionate gardener, and it was once said jokingly of her that she cared more for her seedlings than for her children. One day Mrs. Corning was walking through a steelworkers' neighborhood, and saw a clematis that was completely unknown to her. It was truly outstanding; an extremely vigorous vine with pagoda-shaped, fragrant lavender flowers. She knocked on the door and asked about it; the lady of the house said she'd received it from an aunt, "rooted in a potato." The last detail is rather unlikely, but whatever its origins, Betty asked if she could take a cutting. The lady obliged, and Betty nurtured the cutting and began to propagate it. Several years later when she was in the same area again, she went back to ask for some more cuttings, only to find that the entire neighborhood had been razed for new development. So if Betty Corning had not taken her initial cutting, it would have been irretrievably lost.

My Betty Corning is in her second year. They say about Clematis, "The first year they weep, the second year the creep, the third year they leap." Thankfully I was able to avoid the weeping stage, but last year I got just one stem about a meter and a half long, which gave me a total of three or four flowers. This year she is definitely leaping, with three strong stems (there was another one but well, the snails have to eat too...), enough branches to cover most of a 6-foot trellis and at least 50 flowers on the way. Still, when you compare it with the true hulk that this plant can become, it might still be creeping in a relative sort of way.

I last saw Steven Antonow in 2002 when I was back for the Northwest Flower and Garden show, and immediately realized he was not well. He passed away less than a year later from cancer of the pancreas. Not only has he left his own name on a plant, Melianthus "Antonow's Blue," but he has become inextricably linked in my mind with Betty Corning as well. May they both rest in peace.

Another One Bites the Dust

Wed, 12 May 2010 12:05:05 -0400

The more religious nuts I talk with, the more convinced I become that anyone who feels an obsessive need to change others' faith definitely has some chinks in their own armor.

So it really comes as no surprise to read that George Alan Rekers, board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has become the latest in a long and honorable tradition of gay therapy proponents being outed.

It's gotten to the point where these folks don't even have to come out; simply being a high-up in one of these organizations is now almost a de facto statement of homosexuality!

Some of them come clean, so to speak (though I think I might still want to wash my hands if I touched most of them), and speak about the conflict that led them to where they were. Having spent thirteen years trying to change my sexuality I know from conflict. So though it's easy to judge them, I also understand.

Then there the others. The ones you feel you should feel some compasison for but just can't because they try and keep up the facade. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, who insists in a voice that would send most guys' Q-Meters spinning off the charts that he is not gay. Ted Haggard whose outing and subsequent (continuing) therapy have converted him from an Evangelical closeted gay minister to a "heterosexual with issues." (The main issue being that he is attracted to men; I'll admit that's rather a looming issue for a heterosexual. It's hard not to snicker.

Rekers really does take the cake though. He took a ten-day subsidized trip to Europe with a rentboy that advertised on rentboy.com. For a man in his position to put himself and his career in to that sort of jeopardy, there has to be a pretty strong motive, and there's only one thing that can cloud a man's judgment that much. His initial story was that he hired the boy, named Lucien, for 75 dollars a day and had no idea until halfway through the trip that he was a rent boy. When Lucien talked and said he found him off the site, he changed his story; he hired rent boys in order to "evangelize them."

It seems that if the goal were to evangelize, there would be easier ways to do it than taking them to Europe. Not to mentione plenty of people to evangelize without needing to go onto a rent boy site to find them. I have to wonder, as he pored through the profiles, how did he decide that Lucien was the one to contact?

Understandably, Rekers had not wanted Lucien to talk to the media. And he especially had not wanted him to talk about the massages which he was to give Rekers every day. Perhaps they didn't have sex, as Lucien says (now); as one blogger wrote, "only the laundry maids of Europe know the truth."

Whatever the truth is, one more self-deceiving "therapist" offering a "cure for homosexuality" has been knocked from his perch.

Who's left? Will Pat Robertson be caught spreading the word of the Lord in a Pattaya bath house? Will James Dobson be photographed "offering a strong father figure" to some wayward youth in Peoria?

Only time will tell. Speaking of telling, getting Rekers to get his head together and come to our side after he gets over his shell shock would probably be way too much to hope for. You know this guy would have some really good stories to tell...