You Know My Name in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

Saturday was my cousins’ baby shower. I know what you’re thinking, babies and I do not mix well, but I trusted my cousins enough to know that they wouldn’t do anything crazy to make me uncomfortable. They’re still them, of course.

I’ve known about it for months but it wasn’t until this last week that something dawned on me. Larry and Steph are still friends with people from high school. These guys would also be coming to the shower. These guys are the guys who bullied me in high school. I was going to be in a room with my high school bullies, many of whom I haven’t seen in 15 years.

I started spiraling. I was having panic attacks, I stopped eating, I couldn’t hardly sleep because I was having all kinds of strange dreams. I don’t think people understand how monumental my anxiety can be, it never quite debilitates me, but that’s only because I somehow manage to push through it.

I was suddenly very thankful that Chuck (my 17-year-old brother) was going with me. My mother kept intimating that he didn’t want to go and that I should take her with me instead.... perhaps the only person in my life-history that has caused me more stress than the school bullies would probably be my mother. Why don’t we just see if we can reincarnate Joseph Stalin and invite him to the shower?!

The shower was nice but it was very typical of my hometown. Chuck could not believe that these people had a barn. When the horses walked up, he about lost his damn mind. I was trying to explain to him the extent of how country (for California) we were, but until he saw the barn and horses, it never clicked that this was my childhood.

It turns out I’m related by law to one of the bullies.... who shook my hand and was generally pleasant. My fears were assuaged until he called me by my nick name. I know he didn’t really mean anything by it but my nick name was just my last name in high school… something that lent itself to fellatio jokes. Many people say my last name (although I cringe whenever I hear it, part of the reason I changed my name when I went into comedy), but he said it like they used to say it in high school; like an accusation or something of the sort. It made me very uncomfortable.

One by one, they started accumulating, and I’m sure nobody really noticed my tension, but I was uncomfortable; especially when one of them, my biggest tormentor out of this group came over to me. He didn’t even remember me. The last time I saw him, I was on the floor of the locker room after having been tripped by another guy, and he kicked me in the ribs, spit on me while stepped over me and spat my name out. He didn’t remember me, but I remembered that fear.

Chuck and I beat him at beer pong later. I felt a twinge of victory, but it was time to go. I’d lingered too long. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, nobody was really rude to me, Larry wouldn’t have tolerated that, but I still felt like the edges of old wounds were burning.

When people talk about bullying and the bullying that teens go through, I wonder if they truly understand it. Being bullied is like living in a constant state of terror, and while they weren’t always kicking me at spitting me, there were always underlying games of dominance… like my nick name. Things to remind me that I was subhuman to them. Nobody even knew that my first name is Justin.

It’s funny because I think back, and Joe (my first boyfriend) didn’t call me Justin, either. Well, he did during intimate moments, or when we were fighting, he always called me O. He was the one who gave me Octopussy as a name and it’s the only one that carries with me. Even to this day, I don’t answer immediately to Justin. I don’t really know what the point of this entry is except to say that, although time and distance has been put between myself and that scared high school boy that I was, I can’t ever really escape him.

My name was something I tried to reclaim, but I never actually reclaimed myself.