I should be careful what I watch or think about. Lately, the turn around has been fast, less than a day in some cases. Last year I spent the winter and early spring on the Cape with my friend Liz and her two girls. I was on an 80s movie kick in between cooking and watching out for the kids, and early springtime I called up the movie Heathers on my laptop. I loved the counter cultural thread running through it, and I thought Christian Slater’s dad was just outrageous. I was about to get a taste, however, of one of the more unsavory aspects of the narrative.
I walked in the woods as often as possible on Cape Cod: almost every day. It’s a habit I’ve been in for years. Easter Sunday’s walk was sunny, beautiful, the perfect temperature. I circled around a secluded pond and saw geese, ducks, seagulls. I passed an older couple who smiled, and wished me a Happy Easter.
I emerged from the woods an hour or so later. I would have stayed longer but I needed sustenance and had my mind on the peanut butter and raisin sandwich I’d packed earlier that day. I had parked on a back road near a one hundred and forty acre lot of forested trails. There was a crescent shaped shoulder off the dirt road next to a patch of woods, an SUV parked in front of me where I’d landed.
I found my way back, got in my truck, ate, drank from my water bottle. There was a house right across the street surrounded by an iron fence, with two healthy German Shepherds running around the yard. I had actually chatted with these people already on previous walks past their house. They had reached out and said hello, chatted about their dogs, Cape Cod versus Western Mass, the forest versus ocean.
I noticed a car pulling out of their driveway, a man of about twenty-five driving. He stopped right next to me and motioned for me to roll my window down. I pressed the power window button but it didn’t work; the keys were on the passenger seat. I motioned for him to wait, took my time putting the key in, rolled the window down and smiled. I assumed he was going to ask for directions and I was ready to say sorry, I don’t know anything around here.
“What are you doing across from my parents’ house?” he asked. His tone was not pleasant.
“Ahh… finishing up a walk, eating a sandwich,” I offered.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“A walk in the woods,” I tried again. Perhaps he hadn’t understood me the first time.
He got out of his car. His manner was abrupt and aggressive.
“In these woods,” he said, pointing beyond me, to my right. “I know what you’re doing here. I know what goes on in those woods. Fags go in these woods.”
“Oh…” I said, surprised. I wondered why he was sharing this information with me.
“What are you doin’ out here across from my parent’s house?” he demanded, his tone more aggressive. “I know what’s going on here. Fags go in those woods.”
Apparently, this man thought the woods in Yarmouth Port were reserved only for straight people. He also appeared to have made several incorrect assumptions about me: one about my sexual orientation, the other about where I’d come from, as I’d actually been in the much larger patch of forest down the street.
The mom came over. That’s when I learned his name was Jerry. I hoped his mom would help me, but took one look in her eyes and knew she wasn’t going to.
“Jerry, watch your language,” she said.
He was aggressive and profane, threatening in his tone, but I was not afraid of him. I was, however, concerned there was going to be some kind of scene. I hate encountering this kind of hostility, especially when it is so truly mistaken and unnecessary. I just do not enjoy it.
I looked at Jerry’s mom. “He really has the wrong idea,” I told her.
“What’s your license plate number?” he demanded. Looking back, that was a pretty inept question on Jerry’s part. I was sitting in my truck, with the plates right there on the front and back of the vehicle.
I didn’t point out to this guy that I’m straight, and have nothing to do with the assumptions he made. It was not relevant and wasn’t his business. One interesting detail here is that Jerry twice pointed to me and said to his mom, “He said he was going into the woods to meet someone,” something I had definitely not said. Why would I have? He inserted that into his memory to fit the scenario he’d already decided on.
This, right here, is the most astonishing and telling part of Jerry’s performance, and it bears repeating. Jerry literally inserted words into his memory that had nothing to do with me, words that fit the bizarre scenario he had imagined.
The worst thing about this incident was that for a few minutes I felt isolated and guilty, as if I had done something wrong. I can see how a situation like this could escalate in a predatory way. It’s called projection. I had, in fact, done nothing wrong. There certainly appeared to be parking on this quiet, forested side street; I parked in the shoulder behind an SUV. I hadn’t even been in the woods he was referring to, and as for what he was referring to, that was a projection of Jerry’s own inner world; it had nothing to do with me.
He swore again and ordered me out while I drove away, as if he could have commanded me to leave.
It’s clear that if Jerry had actually thought through his bizarre little homosexual fantasy, he would have had to realize he believed I was going to walk back to my truck after having parked it for more than an hour and a half on a sunny Easter day, sit quietly across from his parents’ house and eat half a peanut butter and raisin sandwich while secretly planning some kind of covert sexual exchange with an as yet absent partner in the woods across the way. This doesn’t seem very plausible to me, but I can’t speak for Jerry’s mental acuity, or stability.
I won’t park in this place again, but it can be a little disconcerting to confront the ignorance and loathing that is loose in this world. It is truly uncomfortable to feel the vibe change to one of fear and hatred so quickly. I’m sure it is the same fear and hatred that’s gotten people dragged to their deaths behind pickup trucks, or strung up from a tree and hanged to death. None of this happened to me. Homophobia, however, appears to be a particularly virulent kind of bigotry. Jerry’s behavior was more than unpleasant; it was a kind of assault.
One detail that I can’t forget here is that when I’d had a casual conversation with Jerry’s mom a few weeks before, she had mentioned that she had a son who was in law school. Very serious, she had indicated, his dedication. I find it worrisome that if he graduates law school and passes the bar exam, a man as sick as this will be entering our legal system.
This simple minded individual brought a message however, one more astonishing than I realized at the time. I’d had something on my mind that Sunday afternoon and was looking for insight, and the more I look this over, the more i think my encounter with Jerry happened for a reason. It wouldn’t be the first time. I taught music for seven years to special needs students at a small, private music academy in Western Massachusetts. I dedicated seven years of my life to this school and this population. I gave my heart and soul to this job, and because my students were so unusually gifted and intuitive musicians, the music we produced was amazing. The place was like a family and a home to me.
In 2005, things started to go south. I could count the ways for you, but in short, I noticed real changes happening: the school was becoming less of an inspired, creative project and more of a rigid, fear based organization with conditions on all fronts that reflected it. In the final few years I watched more good people than I could count on both hands get fired or quit out of frustration, a staggering amount for such a small school with a student population of less than thirty. We had four directors in five years, some of these great people whom I was sorry to see walk away. They just kept dropping off.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when three years later the axe finally fell for me, but even after all of that, it hurt. It was handled in such a numb and inept way that I created a great deal of suffering for myself about the details, what I could have done differently, what I could do to make it right again, and so on. Again and again, I blamed my self. A vacuum of power due to all this upheaval had left truly incompetent people in charge in my final semester. Their approach was harsh and inquisitorial, and turned out to be senseless and untrue. The interim director and supervisor who behaved so coldly toward me were each gone in less than a year, one of them embroiled in a highly contentious lawsuit against the school. After all of that, and after seven years of sincere dedication and hundreds of hours of volunteer work, when I applied for Unemployment the school said “Oh, no, he quit.” The state of Massachusetts disagreed, and awarded the benefits.
Looking back, I’m not surprised I was feeling so much angst on this topic that day in Cape Cod, and that I asked for perspective. I’ve done this before and always gotten answers. It’s just that, in my experience, signs are usually more subtle! Still, I can’t ignore the timing of this request, followed within the hour by Jerry’s virtual assault of accusation and misplaced projection of his own issues. At least this one only lasted a few minutes. When the axe finally fell for me at this music academy I witnessed treachery, dishonesty, and fear based projection equal to Jerry’s and probably surpassing it. At least Jerry had the courage to face me.
What do you do when someone accuses you of something you have nothing to do with, projects something onto you that you’re not? For a time, you might feel terrible about yourself. Eventually though, you realize you have responsibility to own your flaws and mistakes and do all you can to atone for them, but not somebody else’s. It may not have been pleasant at the time, but this individual’s mindless attack was a real gift to me. I had felt similarly isolated when things went bad at my school, at which I had given so much of myself. In my angst over this I had asked for a sign, and looking back, I sure got one. In fact, it occurs to me that I didn’t exactly get a sign; I got an actual experience of the thing I was trying to understand.
So what is this all about? Has something like this happened to you? Recently, a man walked up to me at a yoga center I visit in the Berkshires. I had been sitting on a couch a few minutes before, playing guitar. “Your music is beautiful,” he said, but I don’t think he had even heard it, as I wasn’t plugged in. He just really wanted to talk, and that was fine. He was very nice, and went on to reveal that he was at Kripalu for a workshop on issues related to his shyness. I stood there and listened, and we talked about this. It was easy to find ways to relate to this man and let him know he wasn’t the only one to feel that way. The guy hugged me twice in a twenty minute conversation, and expressed real gratitude. Then he said something interesting. “You’re like a mirror,” he said. “I feel like I’m talking to myself when I talk to you.”
So, I later realized, there it was. This was a lot more pleasant than my experience with Jerry or the music academy, but in a sense, the message was the same.
It is strange that at the most difficult times in your life you will find yourself under attack, but i suspect it is probably quite common. There are predators in this world who, it appears anyway, sense the pain you are in and move in for the attack. I think that when you’re broadsided like I was with Jerry, you don’t need to internalize. You don’t need to analyze and think too much about what you might have done differently to keep this person from attacking you, and so on. That’s victim mentality, and you don’t need it. There are people like this in the world. I see no harm in being prepared, or being aware they exist, but their sickness is not yours. Defend yourself if you need to, but then move on. The school and Jerry’s projection may not have been pleasant, but as a result of these experiences, I know myself much better now. Though I may have done this a little too much, I believe there is great value in owning what you might have done differently, and how this awareness can make you stronger and smarter.
But let me end this story on a positive note. The day before this little Cape Cod saga, a Saturday, I had several nearly angelic encounters in those same woods, one with a lady and her three dogs, another with a nice couple and their two canines, each of whom smiled and chatted as if they’d been expecting me. We chatted, laughed about dogs and their antics, and I got expert advice on some good spots to hike on the Cape. In each case, these people treated me as if they recognized an old friend, and I was pleasantly surprised by the relaxed, easy way they fell into the kind exchange of conversation. The good guys won.
