"Mr. Myrick Explains the Fruit”

"Mr. Myrick Explains the Fruit”1

I had had Mr. Myrick during my first semester of college for macroeconomics and despite writing my final paper on “the virtues of Marxism and the downfalls of state capitalism” in a small southern community college; I got an A in the class. What is perhaps even more surprising is I enjoyed the class and the teacher. That may not seem like thing of celebration, but for a Socialist, Ashiest to like a teacher in Tennessee is pretty rare, and this wasn’t even in the “enlightened” part of town.2

During my fourth semester I returned to Mr. Myrick’s class for microeconomics. What is normally taken the following semester. I didn’t need the class, but I had roughly the same credit hours as I did when I had taken his first class. So I figured I would try to raise my GPA. I was being responsible and taking charge of my life. I was doing this because it was the adult thing to do. Not because I needed health insurance, a place to stay, food, or internet access. Those things just happened to be added advantages to staying in school.3

I never knew what to make of Mr. Myrick himself. He was a handsome man, but something just didn’t seem to sit right on him. He was around the same height as me, but much thinner. He had dark hair that always looked as if he put get in it right before he went to sleep, and square trendy glasses. It was a night class so he always had a five o clock shadow, and I think that was what seemed wrong about him.4

Though I have no reason why, I always thought of him as a very feminine man. He was interested in 70’s zombie films, the Nintendo Wii, and often talked about remodeling his house. None of these things seem inherently feminine; however it was the way in which he talked about them. His voice wasn’t overly high pitched, but it was excitable and passive and he used his hands to talk in a very, shall we say, limp wristed motion. When he did this, his shirt sleeves would wave around.5

It wasn’t that he was a bad dresser, on the contrary he always matched very well and I often wondered where he bought his shirts myself, looking for more dress cloths. But, it wasn’t his style that was wrong. It was his sizing. It was almost as if he was a deluded 16 year old girl. Even though one could see his ribs poking though his shirt as if he just got back from Auschwitz, he thought of himself as obese. Now, I don’t know if he actually had an eating disorder, but he certainly shopped as if he did. Fitting into, what I imagined to be a small or medium, he bought what appeared to be extra larges. This caused him to look not unlike a circus clown at times; his shirt flapping around when he spoke, because of the aforementioned style of presenting himself.6

7

8

9


It seemed above all else his curriculum revolved around explaining that he wasn’t trying to push an agenda on us, the fact that he can spout off a large number of theorems and laws relating to some higher form of math that pretty much sounding like B'Elanna Torres and Seven of Nine having a conversation about a warp matrix manifold to me, and how everything he wants to teach us can be summed up or explained through a story about his life. Whether it be getting scarred and screaming like a girl in front of all your friends while fishing, the maximum utility you can get from throwing skittles at your best friend during a basketball game, or his wife eating platefuls of obscure fruit.10

All of Mr. Myrick’s stories were interesting, or at least entertaining. The end result was always a small chuckle and occasionally a vague understanding of an economic principle. One in particular does stand out in my mind, however. It was the first day of class and after briefly going over how to read a supply and demand chart, he was explaining what could cause changes in demand. The first option we discussed was a shock to the system. He drew a graph on the board and wrote “demand of Muscadine” . He turned back to face the class and with a giant wave said
“Now I know yall are thinking, what in the hell is a muscadine”
I hadn’t thought about it until he said something, but he was right. I may not have stated the question as flamboyantly as he did, but what the hell was a muscadine?
“Well, I am gonna tell you exactly what it is. It is the treasure of the south. After I tell yall about the amazing health benefits of this cousin of the grape you’ll think ‘well, maybe I should pick me up some of these’ and that is the shock to our system.”
He turned back around, obviously excited that he could talk about the grape that he held in such high esteem. He scribbled on the board, and thin repeated in a slow voice
“Mr. Myrick explains the fruit”.
I think I was the only one that thought this was a funny sentence. At first I was just amused at him not seeing the double entendre of the title he had given to his little story. Then, he continued and it was all I could do to not burst out laughing.
“There were many where I came from. They would just pop up in your back yard out of nowhere, and boy were they sweet.”
I forgot all about the grape like fruit, and imagined him saying this about homosexuals. His voice and appearance making the presentation all that much better, I couldn’t help but think he might be choosing the describing sentences for their ambiguity and comedic value.11

When he started on the more scientific reasons as to why the muscadine is the master race of fruits, it was hard to imagine him talking about some anonymous gay man. I can picture Elton John popping up in my backyard out of nowhere, and I can imagine him being sweet. And of course it wasn’t hard to relate this gay man with, what Mr. Myrick called “the amazing power of the fruits juice”. However, skin busting open and re-healing itself thousands of time to create a patchwork of intricate scars that amounted in mass antioxidant power, this is not something I equate to the gay man. At least not the kind of gay man I want to fantasize about during economics.12

13


My mind started to wonder and I completely stopped listening to his reports on the different strands of the plant. I began thinking back to my childhood and the immense problems I had with my own sexual identity. It started pretty much from the time I could remember being conscience and aware of human interactions. Since I lived most my early childhood in cars, motels, the street, and briefly in a foster care system; it was relatively late before I started forming bonds with other children. I didn’t have a friend until the age of 5.14

15

While I don’t remember the exact details of early childhood, I recall the majority of it being spent at girl’s houses. This wasn’t because I was dating them, or even popular among them, but more or less because they were the only people I could relate to. The ones that stick out in my mind are Katie, Catherine, and Rachel.16

Katie lived next door to me and we became friends early on, she was in the same grade as me and on the first day of kindergarten I rode on the bus with her. She was a very sweet girl and warned me to stay away from what she called “the spoiled catholic girl down the street”. Katie’s family was the prototypical American type that you would see in wholesome television shows designed to show everyday kids getting into everyday problems and solving them using their everyday moral high ground. They set off fireworks for the neighborhood during Fourth of July(an event that was illegal in Michigan, but with Katie’s father being a cop it didn’t seem to matter), they had habitual barbeques and often invited my aunts and me to church. Katie moved away relatively soon after we had hit it off, and I found myself a new best friend. The catholic girl down the street, I was warned about.17

Catherine was the exact opposite of Katie. She had an alchaholic mother and no father. Her house was always in a mess and smelled heavily of cigarettes and what I would later come to know as marijuana. She was, at that point in my life, the meanest person I had ever met. Somehow at the age of six she had gotten sarcasm down to an art, only surpassed by her ability to find your weaknesses and exploit you on them. I absolutely loved this girl. I was amazed at her ability to tell me to fuck off every time I said “maybe we shouldn’t be doing this”. Catherine was my first brush with insanity.18

I remember how I would go over her house right after school because her mom wasn’t home. I had to wait because while I went to the public school, her mother sent her to the private catholic one 40 minutes away from our house. I suppose this is why Katie thought she was spoiled, no doubted picking the notion up from her parents. Nothing else would suggest luxury in this girl’s life.19

20

21

When we played together, it always involved her seemingly trying to get me arrested, or humiliate me. Her two favorite activities certainly seemed to suggest a sociopathic side in her. She would steal her mom’s lighters and we would see what in her house would, and wouldn’t burn. She would tell me I had to hold the flame to my leg as long as I could stand, which was never long enough for her liking. She didn’t like me being so sensitive, I didn’t like my flesh burning. That should have told me to stop trying to be with her all the time. But, still I continued. We burned mail that would come to the house, try to burn house hold appliances, and one time even burned her mother’s panties.22

The other side of her, involved no physical pain at all. She had a life sized barie in her basement and we often played with it. On several occasions she would pretend like she was making a movie, I was the husband and the Barbie was the wife. She would make us dance together or get into fights. Then she liked to progress things to a level I wasn’t
really ready to explore. I had to take off my cloths and wear the Barbie’s. This was
strange, but it didn’t truly matter as much as what always seemed to happen next.23

Catherine would start making fun of me, as only she could. She would taunt me telling me I really wanted to be a girl and I was jealous of her. Wearing a life sized dolls dress in a small dark basement crying while a six year old girl taunted you is bad enough. What is perhaps more embarrassing, and what made her taunts hurt that much more was the fact that she was completely right. I wanted nothing more then to be a girl. I loved everything about them. I hated sports, hated cars, hated all the boys at my school, and hated everything that I was told I should be.24

I didn’t want to go to the game surrounded by a bunch of loud noises and stupid people shouting over two teams of even dumber people exerting themselves into what I considered the biggest waste of time imaginable. I wanted to go play with the neighborhood girls. I wanted to pick flowers and play Barbie. Not the dress up Barbie that ended in me crying, but the kind where we would make story lines about having to grocery shop and decorate the house. Yes, that was the life for me.25

Despite her torture, I looked up to Catherine as a symbol of something different. I was willing to put up with her torture, but she wasn’t willing to put up with my “jealousy of her body” as she put it. After about two years of hanging out, she called our dysfunctional relationship to an end, and looking back on it, I can’t blame her.26

It was my summer break, but she still had school for another couple weeks before hers began. I was in my backyard swimming in a shallow plastic pool. Catherine came over right after she got off the bus. She was still wearing her school uniform so I got out of the pool. We grabbed some popsicles from my house and went into my play place. It was one of those aluminum fun centers you could buy at Wal-Mart. It had several swings on it, a slide, and about 10 feet off the ground a small room with walls and a cover. The place where eight year olds could hold their secret meetings away from the meddling eyes of adults.27


We where sitting in that room and after a few minutes I got bored. It was summer and I wanted to swim. She said she couldn’t get her uniform wet, her mom would get mad. I tried to convince her to go home and get a bathing suit, she said she didn’t want to walk their and back. Finally I said28

“Okay, well why don’t you just go in your underwear. I won’t mind”
“ I can’t do that, I would get in to much trouble”
“But, why? I have underwear just like you”
“Yeah, but you have a dick, and I have a pussy”29

Her language was always harsh, but it was the first time I had heard the terms. Not wanting to sound stupid, but wondering what she was talking about, I jumped to what I considered the only rational comeback.30

“Oh yeah, well why don’t you prove it”31

Catherine reached over and stuck her hands in my swim trunks. She pulled them down and pointed at my penis. She then proceeded to spread her legs and lift her green pleated skirt. She pushed her panties to the side and revealed her prepubescent vagina. I was amazed. I had never seen a vagina, never even imagined what one looked like. After she closed her legs I didn’t know what to say.32

“What, didn’t you know boys and girls were different”
“Well, yeah….”
“Okay then, stop acting like I just shocked you”
“But…. I, well I never”33

Looking amazingly frustrated, Catherine pulled her panties completely off and spread her legs.34

“There, see. It isn’t anything special. Just a hole between my legs”35

I couldn’t believe the situation that was at hand and being an adolescent boy, I saw no other option but to exploit it as much as I could. I asked her if I could touch her.36

“I don’t see why you would want to.”
“Oh come on, I got a funny idea”37

38

39

40

41

When she agreed, I took my Popsicle and rubbed it against her vagina. She twitched and said it felt weird. I hit it against the side wall, knocking the entire frozen fruit flavored sugar off of the stick. As I stuck the stick inside her, I was almost paralyzed with the fear. It could have been fear of Catherine turning something I was enjoying into insults and humiliations, or the fear of my grandma walking up and seeing me insert objects into a girl’s vagina. Something no one wishes to see of their grandson, let alone when they are eight. It was the former of the fears that materialized. After the stick was a good half way in their, she pulled my hand away from her but leaving the stick, making her vagina look like a treat you could buy at a your local grocers freezer. With her legs open wide and a stick half inside her, she looked deeply into my eyes.42

“would you like to touch me?”
Before I could even answer she continued.
“Close your eyes, ok?”
I closed my eyes and she guided my hand. Very slowly moving it toward her. Just as my hand touched her I felt a stick being shoved into my mouth. It was the one I had left in her. She threw my hand back.
“Just because you wish you were built like me doesn’t mean you can touch me to find out what I am like. If God wanted you to be a girl, he would have made you one. Stop being jealous of my body”43

I never talked to her again, and mentioned the incident to no one. The idea that she presented, that god made us into what we are seemed to scare me. I didn’t want to go to hell, but desperately wanted to be a girl. This dilemma would be solved by the next girl I grew to adore.44

Rachel lived in the house directly across the street from me. She was four grades ahead of me and Despite the age gap, I convinced myself that we were very good friends. I tried telling myself that we rarely hung out because she was busy with middle schoolwork, as if she was tackling advanced calculus and theoretical physics. However, looking back on it, Rachel probably hated me. I can imagine I was a pest that she only hung out with occasionally because she was extremely bored, wanted to end the assault of lonely calls for a little while, or was feeling particularly self loathing that day. No matter what her feelings on me, it doesn’t change the way she impacted my life.45

Not sure how she interacted with kids her own age, Rachel always seemed like the ultimate cool kid to me. She was a hipster, except without all the negative connotation that term carries. Every time we hung out it amounted to nothing more then her inviting me over to her house and us watching movies. This is such a small event, and most likely meant nothing to her. For me, it was everything. Those few brief moments when I actually got to be with Rachel, instead of just watching her get off of the bus and bike off to some unknown destination, greatly defined who I have become today.46

47


The things I can recall about Rachel’s house are blurry, as well as the details about her family. I know her house was considerably bigger then mine, even though we lived so close to each other. Her kitchen had two fridges in it, and while it confused me I was always to shy to question why. Thinking back to how Rachel looked, her family may have been Jewish, and therefore kosher. She was tall for her age and well built. She often wore baggy track pants and a wife beater, her curly brown hair falling just over the straps of her exposed bra. Most the time her shirts were to short and when she would raise her arms you could see her naval surrounded by a tanned firm stomach. She didn’t exactly have a six pack, but she had definition. Her arms were also well defined and muscular. I imagine she was on her schools track or softball team, something to keep her active.48

I also know that her family was large, at least two sisters and a brother all of which were older. Her room was in what was likely a finished attic. The ceiling wasn’t consistent and slanted many different ways. When she would take me in their, she would have to duck to walk. Her bed was in the corner of the room and a small TV / VCR combo was sitting on the adjacent wall. This is all I remember from the room, you would think that I could recall it with amazing detail seeing as it was where I was first exposed to so many ideas that changed me.49

I must have watched at least 20 films with Rachel over the times we hung out. Of the ones that I can recall are: Wayne’s World, Beetlejuice, Pink Flamingos, Tank Girl, and an Elton John concert she had on VHS. The movies certainly were amazing, I had never even heard of those titles before and can’t think of how else I could of possibly seen them if it wasn’t for her. In fact, to this day I love all those movies. It was the Elton John concert that affected me the most though. After watching it I had found my first musical love, though I would deny it for years to come after this. I told Rachel how great I thought he was and started singing his songs.50

“Be careful, wouldn’t want anyone to think you are gay”
“What is a gay?”
“Ugh… Elton John is a gay man. He is….more in touch with his feminine side. You know, more emotional and likes things typically associated with girls.”
“Well, that sounds like me. I am a gay man., well a gay boy I suppose”
“Gay means more then that, gay men have sex with other gay men. So trust me, you are not a gay man, or boy for that matter.”51

I went home after that night thinking how unfortunate it was that I wasn’t gay. I thought to myself how easy it would be. I could be a girl, without wanting the physical body of one. In my eyes, this didn’t seem to contradict what Catherine said to me. Her problem seemed to be that I longed for female anatomy, and that just wasn’t so. I was interested in female anatomy, but more because I was a young boy just entering puberty and would have liked to fuck any female on the face of the planet. I wanted to be a girl because I was much more comfortable with the set social role that was given to them. I related with girls so much easier then I had with boys. At school I talked to boys and pretended to be friends with them pretty much for the sake of not getting beat up. When it came to outside school though, I stuck to the girls.52

It then occurred to me to just be gay. If being comfortable in a pre set role an unjust society has set meant I had to have sex with a guy, I was willing to make the sacrifice. I then began trying to be gay. I would practice what was passed of as the voice all gay men had, I started watching soap operas and television shows about interior design. I thought about what boys at school could one day be good boyfriends. This is where the problems happened.53

I could lisp all I wanted, know everything about the Buchanan Empire, and be a master florist, but I still didn’t want to have sex with boys. I mean, I wanted to so I could be gay but I didn’t feel the urge to. Boys didn’t get me aroused at all, I never felt that primal lust that dominated my mind from age 6-15 one time when looking at a boy. I didn’t know what to do about it and this infuriated me.54

One can fake his way through a friendship, but a sexual relationship I figured would be harder to do. If I could say I was gay and just act it, would that be enough? I decided it could not be enough and I had to make myself gay. I tried and tried to force myself to be attracted to boys. I would look at someone in my class and say to myself “alright, all the girls you really want seem to be into this kid, so he must be attractive. Now, dammit, feel the urge to run over and kiss him” It never worked, unless you count people noticing me staring at boys and then telling everyone I was gay.55

I soon learned to wish these thoughts in private, as it seemed everyone had a problem with gay people. I never understood why you would hate someone so completely because they got off on different anatomy then you thought they should. I mean, who are you to tell someone what they like? I couldn’t even convince myself to like something, so how was someone else supposed to change your life in this area? I assume homosexuals felt the way I did. They simply weren’t attracted to, in their case the gender greater society was forcing on them, and in my case the gay male.56

Years passed by and no matter how hard I tried I never learned to be sexually aroused by the male body. I am not an idiot, I can still recognize and point out when a man is attractive, but that is a completely different feeling then that I get of a woman I find attractive. I then hypothesized about a different approach. Perhaps I should be going about this in another way. Maybe if I learn to enjoy gay sex, attraction to men would just come in a second nature.57


I figured that starting out on the giving end seemed to be the most logical point. After all, I was new at this and did enjoy the sex with females I was having. I hoped it wouldn’t be that big of a change. As the anus is said to be a good deal tighter and four degrees warmer, I thought I might enjoy it more. I decided to definitely try this out on a girl first. It took some time, but I finally managed to convince my girlfriend at the time to try anal sex. Without getting into the messy details, it can be summed up as I stuck it in one time with plenty of lube and she cried for the better half of three hours.58

I am not a especially well endowed man, and I did go slow, so I tossed the crying up to her not really wanting to do it anyways and faking it. She insisted it was the most painful thing she had ever experienced. About a month later, while buying school supplies at a local store, I bought a jumbo size sharpie. I figured I wouldn’t try something the real size first. I carefully lubed it up and inserted it. While it wasn’t the most painful thing I had ever felt in my life, it definitely wasn’t pleasant. In fact, it wasn’t painful at all. Just felt like I was taking a shit. The idea of taking a shit, let alone the feeling of it is in no way sexually stimulating to me. This combined with the fact that the male body does nothing for me, made me realize I was nothing but a heterosexual. A fact my penis was happy about, but my brain seemed to be upset with.59

It wasn’t long after this that I realized many things. I felt such embarrassment in my life mainly because I got along better with females then males. Because I identified with what they were told they had to be. What I was told I had to be disgusted me on every level. What I realized was, I didn’t have the problem. The problem resides inside society and gender roles. As long as we tell people that they have to act and behave a certain way to be one sex, someone will always feel alienated and this torment inside them can lead to great depressions.60

My other revelation was that being gay isn’t something you can just be. You could have sex with members of your sex, but that doesn’t make you gay. What makes you gay is the sexual attraction, the desire on a deep level. If a gay person has sex with a member of the opposite sex, that doesn’t make them straight. It just means they are trying to fool themselves, just like I was trying to fool myself. I think this is why I get so mad at Christians when I hear them say you choose to be gay, that you are not born with it. I know for a fact, you do not choose to be gay. If you chose to be gay, then I would have been gay a long time ago. I know I certainly wanted it bad enough. But that is the point, people are made the way they are, you can not change your identity just to fit into what the majority thinks you should.61

When I came to grasp with all of this, I wrote off my childish attempts at homosexuality. Seeing how I embodied the stereotypes. Since then I have met gay men that are more masculine, macho, and testosterone driven then most straight men I know, and easily more so then me. The gay man isn’t inherently feminine. He doesn’t have a genetic lisp or ability to memorize show tunes. The gay man is just like all of us, he doesn’t fit into one strictly defined category. He is a human, nothing more and nothing less. This is why, try as hard as he might, Mr. Myrick could never explain the fruit.