The Brett Incident

I had spent much of my teenage years wanting to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard.  I even ran my bath scalding hot, so I might prepare for diving in the hot water around the underwater volcanoes.  When I tried to get into LSMSA, see Cold Hands, I had to take the SAT’s.  I began to understand I was smart, but not that smart.  Math is the bane of my existence.  I also began to understand I would have to leave the state to study, something I was not prepared to do.  I did not want to leave my family.  I also did not want to leave the area, go away, build a life, get married, have kids, own a home, and have to give up everything many years later, to come home and care for aging and dying parents.  I am an only child.  I don’t get the luxury of handing it off to another family member.  It is going to be me, doing it all, in the end.  I was brought up to believe you do not put your loved ones in a nursing home.  It is dishonorable and distasteful. 

So I knew I could not be an Oceanographer, although I loved writing, I figured I could never make a living at it, besides I knew I wasn’t very good at it.  I knew people who could write circles around me.  I didn’t want to be a teacher like my mom was working on becoming, and two of my Aunts were already.  I didn’t want to be a nurse like my other Aunt.  I had been training in the wifely arts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and hand work since I could remember.  My mom always said she wanted to prepare me.  So I thought I am a pretty good cook and I love food, maybe I will be a chef, so that is what I started out going to college to do.  I was also in love with the Frugal Gourmet about this time.

As my senior year approached I began to look at colleges.  My father then stepped in and said, “You may only apply to colleges where I may get to you in less than a day’s drive.”  That sealed the deal, no Oceanography for me.  I remember measuring off the distance and marking my large US map with my compass and setting up the radius.  I decided to apply in state.  I asked, my family, for help filling out the forms for both financial aid and college applications, they refused.  It taught me how to do them though.  I always found it odd some colleges required you send a picture.  What the hell did that tell them about your brain or who you were???  I applied all over the state: to Northwestern in Natchitoches, LSU in Baton Rouge, USL in Lafayette, Louisiana Tech in Ruston, NLU in Monroe, Southeastern in Hammond, and McNeese in Lake Charles.  I got in to all of them.  I was very surprised I got into LSU, but I did. 

I was so ecstatic when my letter came from Louisiana Tech that I had been accepted.  My entire life my father had told me, “You’re going to college.”  I never had a say in it.  I wanted to go to Tech, desperately, like my father before me.  I have always wanted to be just like my Dad.  I still remember going into the living room to tell him.  He held the letter and said, “That’s great, but you can’t go there.  You will have no one to watch over you.  You can go to NSU, where you Mom is attending, and she can watch other you, or you can go to USL where your aunt can watch over you.”  I was devastated.  All that work, applying to all the other colleges, only to be told, again that what I wanted, didn’t matter.  I am sure he had his reasons, but he broke my heart that day.  Still makes me angry to this day.

I thought for a moment.  I wanted to get as far away from my mother as possible, and I knew others from my school were going to NSU.  I was terrified the bullying would continue there, so I said, “I guess I will go to USL then.” 

USL became my battle cry, it became my hope, and thinking of going there and getting away from the daily abuse, which was only getting worse now that Cajun Rink had been added to he bunch, became my refuge.  Cajun helped crank the daily taunts up to 11.  But I was trying so hard to be a good Christian and turn the other cheek, and to do what my parents asked.  But with every word he hurled at me, I died inside.  He even went so far as to paint penis on my car windows, in shoe polish. I am still thankful for the cheerleaders who helped me remove enough from my window, to drive home, with spit and a Kleenex, and held me while I cried.

Into my life came Brett.  He was beautiful or so I thought.  He had this long curly black mullet.  He was of Native American decent, and covered in pimples.  I didn’t care.  I was on him like white on rice.  He was fresh meat and I wanted him.  In my mind he had not been tainted by my tormentors.  So it was game on.  He was from Shreveport.  He was always crying, come to find out his father had recently died.  His mother had remarried.  She and her new husband had moved to Keatchie.  Brett and I became fast friends.  I was always trying to comfort him, rubbing his back and trying to help him through this difficult time. 

As I sit here looking at my annual, I don’t know that we were ever officially boyfriend and girlfriend.  I was invited to a bonfire at his house.  Our parents met and they liked each other.  They encourage us to be together.  I went to a Christmas party at his house, where he danced with me.  He gave me a cassette single of Dwight Yoakam’s “Fast as you.”  I spent hours listening to it, to see if Brett was trying to give me a secret message.  I hate that song now, it reminds me of all of this.

Brett was strange.  He spent hours on his hair and although it was my guess he liked me, he didn’t want to hold my hand, and kissed me only once.  When he kissed me it was not like Adam’s kisses, full of passion and want.  No it was like kissing a rock.  I was confused.  I liked him, was falling in love with him, but he did not seem to reciprocate.  I knew, deep down, it was going to be another one of my one sided love affairs.  I often fell “In love” with a guy and then waited for him to say he liked me, even tried to buddy up to some of them, but none of them ever got the hint.  So it was always on sided.

Brett, me and our families went out New Years Eve to the American Legion Hall dance.  Brett was prone to migraines.  He had one that night.  I would learn later he faked it to get away from me. 

Not long after we were due to give blood.  I talked all my friends into doing it.  It ended up that I could not because had an ear infection and was on antibiotics.  Brett, Sonya and some more of my friends gave blood.  A few weeks later Brett received a letter, or so I was told, that said he had a devastating medical condition.  I wrote him a letter and told him how much I loved him and I would stay beside him through this diagnosis.

Within a few days later I was given a note from him, by Sonya, he said wanted nothing to do with me anymore.  I was devastated.  For once in my life, I thought I had found love.  I have always said the worst thing about all of this, was that for a few weeks, I had hope that I was not this horrible, ugly, fat, crazy monster that everyone told me I was.  When I read his letter, all that hope was destroyed.

It was not just the relationship that hurt, what did the most damage is what came after.  Sonya, my best friend since 2^nd grade, was also friends with Brett.  What I didn’t know, is that many nights that I was on the phone with Brett, she was quietly listening in.  He had called her, before he called me.  I didn’t know until later that she was acting as a conduit to help get him hooked up to another friend, who Brett began dating a few weeks later.

This friend he dated, a few months later, when the relationship was over, turned to me in class and said, “He lies doesn’t he?”  I said, “Yes he does.” 

I still do not know what was said.  I don’t know what rumor was spread, but from the time that Brett broke up with me in January of 1994 until about a month before I graduated in May of 1995, I was basically shunned.  Suddenly none of my friends, or anyone for that matter, would speak to me.  No one would eat lunch with me.  I was treated like a pariah.  My only clue is what one friend said to me one day.  He had the courage to break whatever taboo they had set against me.  He said, “They have told me to hate you and I just can’t do it anymore.  You have always been nice to me.”  And he sat with me and ate lunch.  It was finally over.  He was the first, more would join us as they year drew to a close. 

I cannot tell you how desperate I was.  I cannot tell you how many nights I wanted to kill myself.  How I wanted to jump from the river bridge.  In one swoop I had lost everything I understood.  My people, my tribe, my friends, or however you want to call it.  My sociology professor years later, would call it a “social death.”  When I finally got up the courage to talk to my parents, tell them what was going on and I was suicidal, my Dad said, “Oh It’s just puppy love.  It will pass.”  Twenty-Two years later it hurts, almost as bad as it did when it happened.  At least I now have some understanding to go with all of this.

I stayed friends with Brett’s parents.  I have seen his mother several times over the years.  When I saw her, I told her all that had happened, and she confirmed for me what I had begun to suspect many years before.  Brett was gay.  I now understand what he did.  He used me for cover.  He was pretending to be interested in me to appease his family and hide his homosexuality.  That I could have lived with, and would have even happily participated in it had I known. 

I found Brett many years ago on Facebook, we discussed much of the above.  To say he has a different idea of what happened is an understatement.  He said we were never in a relationship and he never cared for me, that he has always been gay.  I am sure there is much truth to that.  I have known for a long time what I felt for him, was not reciprocated.  I had hoped for an apology, but that will never happened.  Never got one from Sonya either or knew what was actually said about me.  Would love to know now, if someone wanted to PM me, I would be open to hearing it now.  Ten years, after all this, I would see Sonya again.  Who just hugged my neck and could not understand why I was so mad at her.  What a Bitch!

While all this was going on, all I could do was pray and count the days until I would go to USL.  I was in Hell and I had to find my own way out.  I was like Rapunzel.  I was trapped in the tower, no one was coming to save me, I had to cut my hair and save myself. 

There was a young man in my class who came in everyday, with the most beautiful smile.  As corny as it sounds his smile, gave me hope.  Seeing him smile, and hearing him laugh helped me in ways he has no idea of.  I even developed a little crush on him, but my fate was sealed and I was too broken and afraid to try to find love again.  I was leaving for Lafayette after I graduated, and that was that.

I began what I called “Smile Therapy.”  I would force myself to smile, just for a few seconds every few hours.  I noticed when I did so I would feel better.  Turns out smiling releases all kinds of endorphins in your brain, that are good for you.  Slowly, ever so slowly I feel it began to pull me out of the worst of my depression.  The first few weeks were the worst.  I would get two or three seconds and then burst into tears again.  I cried so much during class, during this whole thing, me a woman who hates to cry and used to see it as a sign of weakness. 

A few weeks before we graduated someone told me something I would never have dreamed.  They said, “Melvin has been in love with you for years.  He would have done anything for you.”  I remember sitting in our drafting room, looking at him and just smiling.  I have no idea if it was even true, but it helped me none the less.  And today I regret not doing anything about it.  The idea that Melvin had once loved me, along with my friends smile, gave me comfort in one of the darkest times of my life.  Stupid and corny, right?  I know.  But I love stupid and corny. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

 

 

Teachers

My favorite teachers in my middle school were:  Mr. John Gingles, 8^th grade Earth Science; Deb Land, 9^th grade English; and Coach Dale Morvan, 8^th grade Louisiana History.

Mr. Gingles was one of the most beautiful men I had ever met.  I was totally in love with him.  He was well over 6ft tall, with an auburn beard and mustache.  He was brilliant, and an avid chess player.  He was the first male teacher I would have, who didn’t have Coach attached to his name.  No offence to our coaches out there, but you could tell for some of them, coaching was their first choice and not teaching. Mr. Gingles was simply there for the love of teaching. 

Mr. Gingles was an Agnostic, something he had to explain to us.  A few of us tried to convert him, but he would not budge and refuted our ideas.  I admired him for sticking to his guns.  I was one of his brightest students, and we became fast friends.  I am still looking for him today.  I have yet to find him on the internet.  He had a profound impact on my life.  I would love him to read this article.  If y’all know where he is, please let me know.

At that time of my life I wanted to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard, who had found the Titanic just a few years before.  Mr. Gingles encouraged me.  I gave up on that dream, when I realized I had to move away to where the ocean was, away from my family.  But at that time in my life, I was convinced I was going to go the Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon and study Oceanography.  One day I wanted to run the Hatfield Marine Science Center there on the Oregon coast, in Newport, Oregon. 

Every night I went to bed and studied the Oregon map.  I used to keep it in this shoe box, I had covered in another Oregon map.  It was full of tourist information on the state, and letters from a Oceanographer I had been corresponding with.  I had found his name in a newspaper article, about his work mapping the ocean floor.  He was at the Oregon State University.  So I figured that is where I would go too.  I read any book I could get on the subject, and subscribed to a scuba diving magazine, because I knew it was a skill I would need. 

I had decided I was going to have a house in Sweet Home, Oregon, just down the road from the institute.  I had it all planned out.  I think I even wrote a story or two about it.  For years I fanaticized about a place, I had only seen on a map.  I was headed west, like the pioneers before me, just 150 years after the gold rush.  I studied hard, but my math was terrible.  I kept getting it all turned around in my head.  I know now because of my lack of math skills, that I would have never made it. 

I wanted to be many things along the way, before I would become the writer, dog mom, blogger and wife I am today.  Some of my earliest memories are of “skating,” in Oma’s dining room in pantyhose, on her linoleum floor, which creates a kind of sliding action.  I would prop open her bathroom door, it was adjacent to her dining room, to see myself in her full length mirror, as I spun and jumped like the figure skaters I saw on TV.  Now remember people, Louisiana has no ice to support such a sport.  Well not naturally anyways, so this was as close as I got.   I would land with a great thud!  I still feel sorry for whoever lives in that house now, as I am sure I damaged the floor by doing that over and over again. 

I toyed with the idea of being a nurse, but I could not handle the idea of sticking people.  I didn’t want to hurt them.  So ditto on being a vet.  I could not imagine, having to be the one to put an animal to sleep.  I acted in many plays as a kid and I really liked it.  I thought a lot about being an actress, but that stopped when Sonya, my BFF, told me that I would have to sleep with directors and pose for Playboy. 

I think I hooked on to being an Oceanographer because of Dr. Bob Ballard yes, who remains a hero of mine to this day, but also because of this.  I am the first woman, in the female line of my family to be born inland in at least 50 years.  My mom was born on the coast in Corpus Christi, Oma in Danzig.  Oma and Ur-Opa (great grandfather), both worked in the Danzig ship yards.  My Grandpa spent his life at sea.  I still have no great passion for the sea the way my mother does.  She collects nautical things and visits the ocean regularly.  I was trying to live into that legacy about that time.  Now I am content for my local beach at Cypress Black Bayou, Biloxi every now and again, and some Jimmy Buffett music.  I kind of freak out when I can’t see land anymore.  I know I am a land lubber. 

So Coach Morvan taught me 8^th grade Louisiana History and I feel in love with it.  I’ve been in love with history and Louisiana for a long time.  I know I’m kind of a square, right?  I still think we should teach our kids in school, local history as well as the state and national stuff.  I think they need to understand how their community fits into the local scheme of things.

When I first wrote this article I believed Deb Land was my 8^th grade English teacher.  She was not, but I have still kept her in this article.  She was in fact my 9^th grade English teacher.  But it didn’t matter much, as we were all kind of squished together in one place, and teachers flowed between the main high school building, and the middle school building. 

In 9^th grade I had Deb Land as an English Teacher, and she was awesome.  That year she read Romeo & Juliet to us, and I fell in love with Shakespeare all over again.  She would read us a few lines, and then would tell us what it meant, and translate it into something we could understand.  She would then ask us what we thought about it.  I still feel Juliet was a freaking idiot.  If you’re that in love with a dude and he moves away, pick up your shit and go with.  Maybe I just don’t understand the times she lived in. It may not have been a real option in her mind.  I however really like the character of Juliet’s nurse maid, who had probable been her wet nurse, and raised this poor girl.  I have always thought if I ever got to be in a production of Romeo and Juliet that I would want to play her.  Cause she kept trying to talk some since into poor Juliet. 

Ms. Land also taught us grammar that year.  She would be reading from the book, and then look at it a bit distressed.  She would tell us to take our red pens, and turn to the back of the book to mark corrections.  I believe she sent her book back to the publishers after teaching from it, with her corrections.  It was the first time I ever saw a book be corrected, which I thought it was very cool.

Ms. Land was also a god’s send to me.  English was one of my favorite subjects.  The year before I had had Mrs. Coles.  She was a freaking nightmare.  While others loved her, and still love her to this day, I saw her for the monster she was.

I was one of her favorite people to pick on.  My favorite example is one day we had a report do.  I had forgotten mine at home.  Something I usually didn’t do.  Mrs. Coles calls me to the front of the class to public embarrass me.  She says, “What’s wrong with you Ilsa!?  Did you forget ½ your brain this morning??!”

Ever quick on my feet I respond with, “Yes, Mrs. Coles, I did.  I got up this morning, put in ½ my brain in, to you know get dressed and stuff, but I was running late for the bus, and I don’t know I guess I just forgot to put in the other half this morning.”  The class erupted in laughter and applause.  Mrs. Coles gritted her teeth and told me to sit down.  She had been bested by a student and she didn’t like it.

I was to have her for 11^th grade English, English 3 they called it.  She was the only teacher for it.  But the joke was still on her.  Mom and I walked into my principles office and I told him point blank, “I refuse to take her.  She is abusive and I will not take her class.  And you will find me some other way to take English 3.”  He was a bit taken aback at being spoken to so strongly by a student, but with the full support of my parents he had to listen to me.  He found me a correspondence course, which I did by mail through LSU.  It took me a year to do it, but I passed. 

Ilsa