Bullies

I’m not sure when the bullying began; maybe grade three. Thinking back, it seems so obvious that the other kids would’ve teased me about my last name, Gajdics—at the time, pronounced “gay-dix.” My father, an immigrant from Budapest during the 1950s, had anglicized his surname to make it apparently easier to pronounce, and so I grew up never knowing that the correct Hungarian pronunciation was “guy-ditch.” It didn’t take much for the kids to make a leap from my name, “gay-dix,” to just screaming out “gay,” and always in a pejorative way. At the time, in the early 1970s, I hardly even knew what the word meant yet, but from the way the kids chanted it in my ear when running up behind me in the playground and slapping my back, or spitting in my face, I knew it wasn’t good.

Clearly, “gay” was not something I ever wanted to be, and yet that’s exactly what I felt myself becoming, as I went through puberty.

It was painful to reconcile myself to being the very thing that seemingly caused me so much distress. Separating the name-calling and sense of shame I felt, all connected to my very name, from my emerging identity was fraught with difficulty, and confusion.

I spent almost all of elementary school being teased. The bullying was relentless. The one and only friend I had, Patrick, quickly “changed sides” when he discovered that in order to be my friend he would need to push back against the bullies. He would not. He caved. I suppose to his credit, in retrospect, even though he stopped being my friend, he did not taunt me while the others continued relentlessly.

Finally, my parents sent me to a new high school for grade eight. I was beyond elated. Fresh start, new opportunities, the possibility for actual friendships with no history of ridicule.

At the new school, across town, the other boys and girls welcomed me and I made friendships quickly. No one teased me about my name, even though my family still pronounced it “gay-dix.” I suppose it didn’t hurt that my three older siblings had all gone to the same high school before me, and all of them had been popular. For the first time in my life, I was popular.

Unfortunately, my high school was also near the bottom of the then ranked academic institutions near where I lived. My parents soon realized this, and removed me from that high school at the end of grade eight, sending me to an all-boys school for grade nine. The new high school, it just so happened, was also where all the bullies had gone after elementary school. Even before the first day in September that year, 1978, I knew I was walking back into my worst nightmare.

And so it came to pass that I was not, indeed, mistaken: my history had preceded me, and it seemed as though everyone in the school, even those younger than me, knew all about me and my name when I walked into school that first day. The taunts, ridicule and isolation continued unabated.

I have long been inclined to depression and thoughts of suicide as a means of “escape,” and I am sure this is where it all began: in school. There really was no escaping the ongoing trauma, while in school, and so as my only form of escape I skipped school. Often I ended up downtown, alone, which led to even more problems when men three times older than me stalked and then sexualized me for years. The sex, though sometimes pleasurable because it was, after all, still physically arousing, only made matters worse. The psychic dread I felt around possibly ending up “gay” (and “like them”) only exacerbated.

I left high school, finally, in 1982.

Two years later, I was working in a movie theatre in the downtown core. By this time I also had many new friends, though my tendency toward depression always remained just a breath away.

One day a new employee began working in the theatre—one of the bullies from my high school. His name was Bob Taverzan (not his real name, but close enough). I’m sure he recognized me the moment we first laid eyes on each other, but he pretended otherwise. I remembered him as being one of the worst of the worst—daily threatening to beat me up as soon as the school bell rang at the end of the day. He always walked as part of a pack, like wolves, with the other (perhaps “second tier”) bullies circling close behind. The level of fear in my body lasted for years, because of people like him. In more recent years, I have also struggled with adrenal fatigue, which I know can typically be brought on from prolonged trauma, and I’m sure at least in part it dates back to these years of living hell.

Not long after he started working in the theater, I knew what I needed to do. I suppose by this time I also had a much stronger sense of self, and so when he was cleaning the carpets as an usher one evening, I approached him, alone. This would have been in around 1985. Playing in the multiplex were movies like The Colour Purple, The Breakfast Club, Back To The Future, and The Purple Rose of Cairo—pretty fantastic, all things considered.

From across the otherwise empty lobby I could see the panic registering in his eyes, as I cornered in on him, more self-determined than ever before.

“We went to high school together,” I said, several feet away.

“I don’t remember,” he said, backing away, obviously freaked.

“You were a bully. You threatened to beat me up every day. You kept me in of state of terror for years.”

Slowly, he took another step back. He looked scared and small, not at all as I’d remembered him from school: fearsome and larger than life.

“Stay out of my face or else I’ll smack you,” I said, enraged. Then I turned and left.

He quit the theatre sometime soon after that.

Several years later, I was in a gay dance club late one night. From across the club I saw another one of my high school tormentors. The dance floor was body-to-body with skimpily dressed gay men, all sweating, laughing, kissing. I had long suspected that many of the bullies from high school were gay, or perhaps might have ended up gay, which begged the question of whether or not simply being gay was enough to precipitate being bullied. Bullies, I had learned by then, in fact, came in all shapes and sizes: tall, short, skinny, fat, Caucasian, Black, male, female, straight, bi, gay, trans, young, old, whatever.

I walked around the dance floor and stood next to him. His name, I had never forgotten, was Gregory John (also not his real name, but close enough). Seconds later he noticed me standing next to him. Obviously thinking that I was cruising him, he grinned. I did not.

“We went to high school together, years ago,” I said. Startled, he looked me up and down.

“My name is Peter Gajdics,” I said, pronouncing my last name as I had in school, “gay-dix,” even though I’d long since changed the pronunciation back to its original: “guy-ditch.”

“I don’t remember,” he said, finally and flatly, looking pale and expressionless.

I stepped a foot closer, and then moved directly in front of him, staring him in his eyes. Animal to animal.

“Well I do. You teased me for years. You were an asshole. You used to call me faggot.” I glanced around the club, an obvious reference to the fact of where we were: a gay bar. “I lived in fear for years because of you. I just thought you should know.”

I continued staring him in his eyes, until he looked away first. Then I turned and walked away, not looking back.

I saw him many more times after that one time, usually in the gym. He always avoided me.

In summary, here’s what I’ve learned about bullies:

They move in packs, like wolves; the more of them together, like one great “group identity,” the stronger they feel. But they are not strong. As individuals, they are weak.

They will eat you alive as a group, but when alone as individuals, without packs to hide behind (even, especially today, virtually), they will often back down out of fear, or run in the opposite direction.

Bullies are terrified and deeply insecure. They are fuelled by adrenaline and lies. Calm, reasoned truth and a belief in one’s own self-worth are enough to defeat them. Though their threats and bullying and even possible physical violence leave lasting scars, which can never be undermined, ultimately, bullies don’t win.