I attended SUNY Buffalo, where among my 5 undergraduate jobs I was the first and only undergrad Teacher’s Asst. for 3 professors, paid as a graduate level student, did admin work, was a Resident Advisor and ran the first Uber-car service—-$5 bucks a person and single bag to Amtrak, bus station or airport—-I had a Bronco 2 that sat 5 comfortably plus huge back area for bags. I also worked for Public Safety, campus police, as a dorm monitor and perimeter monitor, plus I checked IDs at the dorms and reported drunk students. And yes, with a little bit of calculus you can see sometimes I was the RA on dorm duty, in my Public Safety uniform, while running students back and forth to leave town—-as I corrected papers as a TA—-overlapping jobs/work/paycheck. Juggling but I did it.
I was also 21 when I got to SUNY so I was a bit older, had been a cage dancer and partied in NYC so I wasn’t into joining clubs, getting drunk, etc.. I therefore maintained a sort of detached attachment to the LGBT Student club as I was out from day one and had done dorm in-service workshops of the RAs as a student, been in the paper but not done work for the club. But they had sofas in the big student union building and I had friends there.
One young man, Andrew, 6′3, 350lbs, with a perpetual running nose would come to the group and was in one of the classes I TA’ed—-I sort of got to know and be known by hundreds of students a semester because the professors I worked for put me in charge of Drop/Add—I was the gatekeeper for lots of Sophomore/Junior/Senior level credits—-so I was popular besides my prodigious published writing—-on many social/work/school levels. Andrew was in that awkward phase of coming out slowly but not to his family, but regularly coming to the LGBT club.
Someone told me then that I was like Madonna or Oprah (I opted for the latter, controlling and owning my work and negotiating how and where it would be published and getting paid for it/readings around Buffalo (to my ego naivete I didn’t know that you couldn’t or that others couldn’t so a lot of the envy, animosity it garnered, I didn’t understand because I thought you were suppose to get to school, work your ass off, be recognized, prosper and be popular/known/renowned—-I thought everyone was winning Oscars and acclaim with me, not it was just me in some arenas)—-seemingly charting my own course and the “person” to get to come to your class (I spoke at several about my writing work) or to your house party (I was often working and older so it wasn’t until like my Junior year that I went to one) so there was a mystique, élan about me—-that I had no idea about.
I was friendly with Andrew even though he was a bit—-awkward—-gooberish, nerdy, overweight and socially awkward. But as harsh as it sound, that’s who a lot of the White guys his age—-21ish——seemed to me. He though started to mentally unravel, get odder, so odd that even the White folk started talking about it.
My Freshman year there had been another huge guy in the dorms, let’s call him John, 6′4, 350lb who slowly began to freak out in a shared dorm room. He set up an altar in the shared bathroom and began worshipping and feeding the Gods only he could hear—-M&Ms and 7Up. I kid you not. Under dormitory rules, he wasn’t doing anything—-but freaking his 3 roommates out and it wasn’t until he got violent in retaliation to the desecration his Gods’ altar that he got kicked out of the dorms.
But I’d witnessed this and several others—-decompensating——-Psychology. to lose the ability to maintain normal or appropriate psychological defenses, sometimes resulting in depression, anxiety, or delusions. Later in my own teaching and non=profit coordinating work, I’d have several other students decompensate.
As he visited the LGBT club office more and more, Andrew was decompensating. Badly. So there’s huge Andrew, me 6′1, 200lbs, another big Black guy, Gene and the rest under 5′10 gay guys, under 5′4 lesbians, all White. The President Judy and Joe, I actually took aside one day and said: “Andrew is freaking out, farther and farther—-delusions, hallucinations, talking to himself, sitting in the office rocking back and forth—-he’s gonna blow…in a not LGBT way. You guys, as the leadership, have to do something.”
I implored them. Joe, who was seemingly born with no backbone, kind of mewled helplessly. I turn to Judy and for some reason, probably to be emphatic, touched her forearm.
“Don’t touch me,” she said so venomously that I was like this like four eyed dyke with a pageboy, doesn’t like me. (To give a picture—-Judy was 5′4. pale, pageboy, dressed like a 10 year old boy, big glasses and looked like she would refuse to perform or receive oral sex from her girlfriend. You could hear a faint squeaking sound when she walked—-she was an ironically, tight assed lesbian. A walking contradiction.)
Which I was shocked by her rebuff eventually my mentoring professors I worked for, hipped me to the fact that I was in a sort of elevated Super-Student position (and paid for it) and Out and Black, and also an Only Child (which means that through my 20s I was sort of blind to envy and jealousy in others because I had nothing to compare it to growing up. So I’m doing all this Super Student shit on campus, getting published and paid for readings around the city, country, the darling of professors, gatekeeper to hundreds of students (also marking off the tenure ballots for new professors—-yes, ambitious professors tried to seduce and blackmail me)….and Out and Black…and dare I say, in my youth prime, cute and sexy—-rocking them Janet Jackson ripped jeans, tank tops, running 11 miles a day, wearing chokers and biker boots and leather jackets with linked chains as a belt—-we won’t even discuss the year of the Lenny Kravitz dreds….) I was a lot and self-fulfilled among thousands of awkward, self hiding, denigrating, White youth.
But my over-point was when Andrew goes ballistic—-and his shouting tirades suggesting he’s gonna teach the whole room about the term BLOWING UP——only myself or Gene are close to his size to slow him down. And there’s no guarantee we’ll be there or inclined to do anything but save ourselves. My point to Tight Judy is that Andrew is going to go ballistic, he’s had several near-violent outbursts and if she thinks she, or any of the others Rainbow Chill’uns can take a punch, grapple, slap or John Wayne Gacy beatdown from him, she should continue to do nothing. Which will incur my testifying, during the personal, civil lawsuits—-and to some degree I have the Super Student gravitas that the Administration and lawyers will hear me and my reasoning, if she refuses to. In the wading pool of her venom, she realizes, I’m right: what should we do?
I offer to talk to the officers, my friends at Public Safety, we’ve dealt with this before in the dorms. We’ll have them come in to do an in-service about mental health, what to look for, how to deal with folk flipping out. They’ll know about Andrew, Andrew will be there but everyone will be directly taught——as you’re all gossiping about his flip outs now stoking his paranoia—-how to deal with him and then the officers can even measure and chat him up a bit.
She agrees.
I talk to my Public Safety officer friends, they come in and do it. It goes well. They talk to Andrew, he goes to Campus Services for psych help—-they get his parents involved, he gets the help and meds he needs.
Oh, of course he silently fumes at me and stares daggers at me for the rest of the time, I’m the narc. And of course Judy and Joe are frenemies now for double down sure. They think it’s a club takeover, I never run for anything.
We have another full cadre club meeting when Buju Banton comes to do a concert and the club is the deciding vote for the school about whether to let him play. Because myself and several friends are LGBTSGL and artists, I’m able to talk to the group about the freedom of artistry and how our rainbow infused art is considered offensive, just as we consider his lyrics offensive….but that doesn’t mean we should censor his playing as other clubs have brought him in. In some sort of Jimmy Stewart Gregory Peck summation—-I sway the club and they vote to let him play, though to have a clear mark of protest but not censorship.
Oh, Joe voted with us, Judy against.
(Judy is somewhere in a Prius aiming at Black men in crosswalks, to this day, due to me…but I digress.)
Flash Forward a Few years.
I’m standing on the corner of 8th Street and 6th Avenue. Not working the corner. Standing there, awaiting a dinner date. It’s fall, after 8pm. Barnes and Noble, literally my Batcave for a decade, behind me and I hear this shouting down the block.
“Kyle! Kyle! Kyle!”
Yes, lumbering towards me like a pachyderm—-in a nice raincoat, is Andrew. Decked out in a suit and tie, with briefcase and spectacles—-he barrels over to me.
I’m prepared to be rhinoceros run down. Or vehemently cursed out.
“Hi, Kyle! I saw you and ran over,” he huffs and wheezes (he hadn’t lost any of the weight.)
“Hi, Andrew,” I brace myself, look for cops, friends, a weapon.
“I want to thank you. You saved my life back at school. I was in a terrible place, all messed up. Not out to my family, hiding myself, disgusted with myself, suicidal, depressed, angry. My roommates didn’t care, I couldn’t talk to my family, everyone avoided me, even when I went to the LGBT office. I was seriously going to kill myself there. I was angry at everyone. You were the only one who tried talking to me and then organized that Public Safety intervention, who pushed me into getting a therapist. I got on meds, came out to my parents and they were okay with it. I was able to graduate, got a great job and have a wonderful boyfriend of two years—-we live together! All the things I thought would never happen for me because I’m a big, funny looking gay. I was mad at you then but you saved my life. You saved my life.”
He hugged me. On the drizzly corner of 8th Street and 6th.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. How are you? What are you doing? Here’s my card. I’m in accounting, thinking about law school. Thank you.”
(He still had the perpetual sniffles AND a boyfriend, who obviously was into that.)
He lumbered off after more hugs and thanks and I stood there gobsmacked. There were a couple of other folk at school, decompensating, not Out—-it really seems to fuck up White guys the most—-being terrified of their sexuality coming out, the truth—-people deeply unhappy that I teetered on saying nothing to but then somehow, said something. It’s not that I’m a buttinsky. In fact, I often teeter longer than people think when I see something wild or crazy because I think about the ramifications of especially labeling someone “crazy” or disturbed or even when younger, before I had a clearer sense of mental health and resources, how to help. What’s appropriate?
I say that to clarify that even as a teacher and mentor, I’m still not solidified in been some sort of savior riding in to fix someone’s life. I debate it deeply for some time about helping, intervening, speaking up or just watching what happens happen.
Though he was big and awkward and nerdy, I liked Andrew as I person. And yes, sometimes I felt and noticed, I was the only one who treated him like a person, a valuable, viable person—-that’s my issue with LGBTSGL world—-all that sexuality magnanimity—-and still, petty, flawed, racist, envious human beings. I think being some sort of rainbow should be the elevator to effort to be a better human.
I allow for LGBTSGL folk to be human, but I’m disappointed at how racist, sexist, misogynistic, misandristic (Judy had some issues with men period—-Andrew and I being big, and my being Black and popular, in no way helped. Being a squirrel like Joe was how she liked her males) bias and prejudice are so commonplace to the marginalized. (To this I take surcease in Fanon’s work about the oppressor oppressing and the oppressed seeking others to oppress. The Niggerization Effect—-a nigger seeks to niggerfy others because they have been niggerized.)
I’m glad I stood up for him, when he couldn’t, and I would (and have for others) do it again.
Little efforts like that make me believe in my own humanity, in spite of my own foibles and flaws and missteps. Him, the Universe, coming back to me, randomly and saying: “Hey, kid, good on taking that stand. You helped someone. Thank you.”
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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