Jesus didn’t save me from junior high school. I prayed fervently and asked the Holy Spirit to make me invisible in gym class and the hallways, but Satan always fanned the flames of humiliation.

            None of my friends had transferred to John Muir Junior High. In elementary school I’d played dodgeball with neighborhood friends. But they lived just on the other side of the wide, sunlit suburban street that divided our school district, and I began junior high with no tribe to call my own. I tentatively attempted to make new friends but got off to a bad start.

            “Hey, Cannistraci,” Tom Lohr shouted in the cafeteria. “Beth McGovern told me you tried to feel her up. Pervert.”

            “No, I didn’t! It wasn’t like that!” I said.

            “Baloney. You’re a pervert! Admit it,” Lohr said.

            Beth had told a few of us, after social studies, that her pet beagle had to be put down over the weekend. She burst into tears, and I put my hand on her shoulder, hoping to make her feel better. She pulled away and glared at me.

            I tried defending myself, but it was useless. “Sorry, I just thought you felt bad.” I didn’t know how to read the signs of the caste system. Kindness made me an outsider, and being an outsider made me an easy mark.

My life at home was claustrophobic. My father went to work and our Pentecostal church and nowhere else. We were forbidden to go to movies or attend school dances. Sports weren’t encouraged. Television was approved, but not rock music. I didn’t share any common ground with my classmates. I was a happy child in elementary school but couldn’t understand or navigate the food chain of junior high. It was like being thrown in an ice-cold lake.

            My church was a harbor from loneliness, from always feeling I didn’t fit in. I was raised in church. Although I couldn’t reconcile the violence and verbal abuse at home with speaking in tongues and the love of Jesus, I felt a comfort in being with kids I had known since early childhood. I attended Palm Sundays bathed in the glow of innocence—the sunlight kissing my face, dressed in my white shirt and little bow tie, whirling palm fronds in the air with my friends. I would sink into the soft, padded mahogany pew and breathe in the warm paper scent of the hymnals. I loved to sing and sang second soprano in the children’s choir. I was never bullied and found it easy to joke with both the boys and girls in my bible study.

             When I reached the middle of seventh grade, our church had a fundraising drive, and our youth pastor, Pastor Gordon, spent thirty days in a canvas tent on the church roof. The head pastor and the deacons would plead for money every Sunday and Wednesday—a small sacrifice compared to Pastor Gordon’s suffering. Granted, this was Northern California, but the nights must have gotten a little chilly; I can’t remember how he went to the bathroom.

            In junior high, I was always anxious to impress my classmates, to say something that would make them pay attention and like me, but I had nothing in common with most of them; since my knowledge of movies, sports and music was limited, I had no way to spark a conversation. I made the mistake of mentioning the pastor in the belfry in my English class, and word spread quickly that not only was I a pervert, but I attended a weird church where the pastor slept on the roof.

            “Hey Mike, do you go on the roof with your pastor to talk to Jesus?” my classmates asked after class.

            When I walked down the halls, the girls in my English class broke off their conversation to watch me with giggling disdain.

The fight with Chris Crook pretty much nailed my coffin shut. Chris had been calling me shithead in gym class, something I hadn’t heard much since cursing in my home was followed swiftly by a whipping. I stupidly called him out, telling him he was a punk. The frustration of name calling and having a target on my back five days a week, six hours a day, got to me. We met on the dried, burnt grass near an abandoned housing development. I had never fought before, but Chris had, and he hit me so hard my neck cracked, and little stars flashed in the blue California sky. He got on top of me until I told him I gave up.

I walked home, my nose bleeding, listening to the shrill ringing in my ears. My mom looked up dully at my bloody face and went back to her coffee and cigarette. I got to the back room, the curtains drawn and dimly lit. I sat in the dark on my father’s worn polyester recliner, staring at the wall and counting the days until I turned eighteen.

Satan turned up the heat of the fires of Hell on the day I was assigned to Mr. Hammerness’s gym class. It was the middle of the seventh grade. I have forgotten all my other teachers’ names, but he lives on.

We met first on the basketball court. The class, by dumb luck, was filled with the most popular and athletic boys in school, and me. The court smelled of raw sweat and old dirty socks, the air filled with a cacophony of sounds: kids talking over each other, the shrill shriek of a whistle, the thumping echo of a basketball on the dented floor. I was sitting on the hard wooden bleachers staring at the dirt and small pebbles ground into the wood-paneled court. The gym felt alien to me.

  The gym class, for the first week, was a series of tests, how fast we could run and swim and how much we could bench press. We did wind sprints, long runs, and long jumps, and threw baskets. I was clumsy, and it didn’t help that I had no experience; my father and stepbrothers never taught me anything about sports. We watched Lawrence Welk, not Monday Night Football. I was last in all the tests.

I don’t know why Mr. Hammerness didn’t transfer me to a less advanced gym class instead of keeping me with the gods of the school. I’d see other classes filled with boys who couldn’t catch a football or shoot a basket and felt envious that I wasn’t with them. Mr. Hammerness was the most feared of gym teachers, tall and thinly muscular, his hair cropped short. His face was chiseled stone.

It began one day during roll call. Mr. Hammerness called each boy by his last name, and we were expected to respond—

“Adams?”

“Here.”

“Barrett?”

“Here.”

“Burris?”

“Here.”

“Pussy?”

The gym was silent except for a basketball bouncing in the distance. The whole class looked at me, some of them grinning.

“Pussy?” Mr. Hammerness rumbled.

            The other boys were starting to whisper and chuckle to themselves. My face got hot, and my shoulders tensed hard. I tried to swallow; my throat was sandpaper, and my heart pounded in my chest.

“Pussy, what’s the matter? Are you deaf?” His voice graveled and echoed in the gym.

“Mr. Hammerness, are you talking to me?”

“Who else would I be talking to? Are you here, Pussy, or do I mark you absent?”

            In my dreams I walked out of the gym, I told him to fuck off, I left the school, my parents filed a complaint with the school board. In dreams, I am always brave, and I stand up for myself, but those are dreams. None of that happened.

            I choked on my shame and stared at my dirty Adidas sneakers and skinny legs.

“Here,” I murmured.

            I hated myself more than I hated him.

I thought it would go away over time. It never did. It spread through the school like a blistered rash and followed me relentlessly every day. My new name was tattooed on me, as I walked down the halls, went on field trips, rode the bus—every day, every week, someone would call out pussy and wait for my response in giggling anticipation. If I got angry, that made it worse, and my classmates would double down, barraging me throughout the school day. I knew enough not to cry in front of them. I turned into myself and shut down.

            I told my parents, and they suggested I speak to the boys and Mr. Hammerness. They were sure that if I explained that this was hurting my feelings that it would stop. I looked in dumb wonder at my parents, stunned at how clueless they were. I was alone with no one in my corner, and I’d have to figure out my own salvation. My father’s rage and beatings didn’t stop, so often I came home from school after a day of pussy for six hours and was slapped and punched for leaving a broom on the driveway or forgetting to make my bed. The next morning, I got on the bus and was greeted by my new nickname. Round and round; day in and day out, I held the anger inside and kept a stone face. There were days when it seemed the real purpose of my parents and teachers was to destroy my life.

The youth church meetings, held every Wednesday night, offered a mid-week respite, a break from the bullying at school and the abrupt slaps at home. The girls in my junior high classes alternated between contempt and a vague pity for me, but the girls in my church group—Karen, Charlene, and Sherri Ann—all looked at me with longing. Karen, tall and darkly brunette, loved to send me teasing scrawled notes during church service, trying to make me blush. Sherri Ann, her sandy blonde hair pulled back tightly, would stare fixedly at me during prayer meetings, but it was Charlene who introduced me to the sins of the flesh. She was razor thin, with auburn hair that fell to the middle of her back. She grabbed me in the music room as we were putting the hymnals away and kissed me hard, pressing her body into me. I got an erection immediately and she rubbed her hand over it, the other hand holding a hymnal.

            “You got a beautiful body, boy,” she said.

            All that repression raised a fever of Pentecostal lust between us. It was the first time I felt desired by anyone.

            Lust and guilt thrummed in my body every day. Charlene and I would meet after church or some weekday afternoons in a park near her home. We hid behind a cinder block bathroom, kissing so deep I felt dizzy, fondling and discovering each other. I lived a splintered life, desiring the girls in my junior high, their long hair pulled back in shiny, amber barrettes reflecting the California sun and torn with guilt that I was sinning in the eyes of the Lord.

My mother caught me sneaking a Playboy magazine in my school bag. “You make me sick, I’m ashamed to call you my son,” she said.

Despite my double life, I loved Jesus and prayed every day. My faith, during the abuse at home, the constant bullying, and the lack of school friends, kept me clinging to the hope that I would find my way to a better life. Kneeling beside my bed late at night, my knees stinging against the hard wood floor, I would talk to a kinder God who didn’t judge me. I felt a presence, a source, nameless and faceless, that held me in the dark. It was the only time I felt free to cry and let out the pain. I had no idea how, but I clutched to a vision of myself, loved and whole.

By the end of seventh grade, I had no friends outside of church, attended no parties or any school events. Even my mom, absorbed in her sinus infections, allergies and depression, took notice. On the advice of a neighbor, she took me to an audition at a community theater for a summer musical, and I was cast in the chorus. Despite my social awkwardness, I was accepted by the other kids in the musical, and the director and choreographer were encouraging. The choreographer, a local dance instructor named Marie Stinnett, took me aside near the end of the show.

            “I think with training you could become a good dancer. Why don’t you start taking classes at my studio?”

             I was embarrassed but had to tell her the truth. “My parents won’t pay for dance classes. I can’t do it.”

“We’ll figure something out. I need more boys for the classes anyway. Let me find you some used Capezio shoes, and you can start next week.”

  She never charged me for seven years of classes.

            I never thought of dance as athleticism until my first class. My lungs burned as Ms. Stinnett worked a class of twenty adolescents for two hours at a stretch. I was klutzy, falling on my ass daily doing simple turns—forget about triple turns and grand jetes. I was never teased for failing, only directed to do better. For the first time, my body was reaching outside of myself; dance opened a door away from always feeling like a weak loser.

            By the time I turned fifteen, my body moved like mercury moving over stone. I was tightly muscled and danced with a skill that surprised all my teachers. I could dance for hours at a stretch, then do a show that night. I was sweat-soaked, my hair drenched, and my breath galloped through my chest and burned in my torso.

            I kept my performing life secret at junior high school, knowing that would add gasoline to the fire of name calling. Geez, a guy dancer! No wonder we named him Pussy.

Later, as an adult, the wound from the bullying homophobia of my classmates and the gym teacher festered despite years of therapy. I would tense with anger, remembering the witch hunt that stalked me in the confusion of my adolescence, while I was being beaten at home at the same time. There was no safe place to hide. I wondered how many other boys were emotionally crippled, injured on the playing fields of Mr. Hammerness’s hatred.

In my thirties, I came home and bumped into a classmate from junior high at a bar. We reminisced, and I asked him about one of my gym tormentors, Kelly, who used to follow me down the halls whispering pussy, pussy, pussy, his face only inches from mine.

“Oh man, he died of AIDS. He only came out to his parents in the hospital. No one saw that coming,” my classmate said.

            Theater became the sole focus of my life: dance classes, voice lessons, auditions, and performing. To pay for my additional lessons, I did yard work and odd jobs for neighbors. I held tight to my dream of working professionally. Curled in my bed at night in a tight ball, I would scream into my pillow, every muscle in my body humming with fury at my parents, Mr. Hammerness, and everyone in my school. My survival plan was to graduate high school early, move out, and start my acting career, far away from my parents and classmates. I attended school without being a part of school in any social sense. I was never a stellar student in elementary school, but by the end of seventh grade, I was getting straight As; school was only about a diploma and getting out. I planned to be the first member of my family to attend college, although I knew a degree in theater was unlikely to lead to wealth.

            The horrible reality that I wanted to make theater my vocation slowly dawned on my parents. My mother was sickened and appalled. “My lord in Zion, boy! How are you supposed to support yourself if you waste your life trying to work in theater? You are doomed if you take that path,” she wailed nightly.

            Some of the elders in my church had seen me in community theater productions of My Fair Lady and Funny Girl, conservative, straitlaced musicals that didn’t push any boundaries. They complimented my parents on my performances, singing and dancing, and my parents did a good job faking that they had seen the shows and knew what the elders were talking about.  I’m convinced my parents hoped that if they didn’t go to see me perform, I’d get discouraged and quit.

             I lived a double life in my late teens, pretending to be a good, born-again Pentecostal, innocent and rejecting of all worldly pleasures during the day, and dancing and singing at night with young gay men and women, joking backstage with hard-living stagehands and set designers, leaving after a show with willowy young women from the chorus, a few years older than me, who happily took me to their beds.

At sixteen, I was cast in a semiprofessional production of Applause, the musical based on the movie All About Eve. It was to open the new city center theater in San Jose. The two leads were television actors from the 60’s, and the rest of the cast were non-union actors. Still, it was a big deal for me.

             The show was a hit and packed for most of the performances. I went to church before the Sunday matinee. The morning youth bible meeting was in the spiritual flow; the chapel was packed. We had begun with prayer, a few thirteen-year-olds shouting hallelujah and speaking in tongues in machine-gun bursts. The prayer was followed by the hymn “How Great Thou Art,” one of my favorites. I felt my heart fill with emotion and my eyes start to tear as I sang fully out in my tenor voice. The whole chapel rang with the crystal sound of tenor and soprano voices, none of the singers older than seventeen.

            Pastor Gordon had begun his sermon using a chapter from Paul’s letter to the Colossians when Dale Early stood up. Dale was slightly built, with sandy hair, and always seemed to be sizing people up; he had a feral and hungry look that made me dislike him, although I acted friendly in church.

            “Pastor Gordon, I apologize for interrupting, but the Holy Spirit has moved me to speak,” Dale said.

            I was standing near a back pew looking at Dale. My breath came and went with a whistling sound.

            “Alright son, go on,” the pastor said.

            “I’m sorry to have to speak out against a brother in Christ. I have prayed and can see no other way forward. Last Thursday, my parents took me to see a musical, Applause, at the City Center. It is a show that celebrates and glorifies homosexuality. Our friend and brother, Michael Cannistraci, was a dancer in that show, and danced in a scene at a gay bar. I have to speak out. Are you a homosexual, Michael?”

            Pastor Gordon and forty-two adolescent heads turned to look at me. My neck and face flushed red and burned. My mouth turned to sandpaper again. I stared at Charlene; we’d been naked in the back of her dad’s van a week ago. She stared down at her black Mary Janes. How could I not have seen this coming?

            Dale looked at me, his mouth upturned with just a hint of a smile, like he was sucking on a candy. His eyes gleamed with viciousness that startled me. I realized he was enjoying exposing the sinner amongst us. I didn’t want to turn the other cheek. I wanted to slap that smile off his face.

            “No, Dale, I’m not homosexual,” I said. “Are you a Christian? Because from where I’m standing, it sure doesn’t look like it.”

            Pastor Gordon cleared his throat, and everyone in the chapel shifted in their seats at the same time. I looked around at my friends, most of whom I had grown up with, all of us baptized in the love and cleansing blood of Jesus Christ.

             This church had been a resting place, a sanctum, a warm loving embrace where I was accepted. I wanted everyone in the chapel to stand up and defend me, to call Dale out for his sin and cruelty.

            But the world didn’t work that way. They just watched me slowly turn to salt.

            Pastor Gordon resumed his sermon, and everyone sat down. I stood at the back of the chapel, too numb to be angry. I hadn’t conformed to the rules of my church. I had chosen a life in the secular world of dance and music. I was a sinner in the eyes of the Lord and his righteous believers. This was what was meant by a holy life; this is what the cross demanded. I slipped quietly out the back and got on a bus. I still believed in Jesus but rejected the Pentecostal church. I never returned.

I graduated high school early, got my Actor’s Equity card, left home, and began performing professionally. I started college early, using my checks from theater.

I learned to embrace my faith in a new way, coming back to the church in series of staggers, zigzagging my way closer to belief in a God not made in man’s image or demanding obedience to man’s rules. I found a small Catholic parish that welcomed me without judgement. I took my first Communion at twenty-six. I learned to love a God without a gender or a face.

             Four years later, I was twenty and cast in a touring company of Mack and Mabel that performed in San Jose. I was walking through a crowded parking lot when I heard my name and there he stood, my nightmare. He was stooped, but still tanned from playing golf. I felt my fists tighten just looking at him.

            “Hello, Mike, remember me?”

            “I remember you, Mr. Hammerness. Need me to do some wind sprints?”

            He didn’t respond, just stared at me.

            “I saw the show. So, this is what you’re into.”

            “Yeah, this is what I’m into.”

            He stared at the asphalt and shook his head. “You know, all that stuff, calling you Pussy, I did it for your own good. I did it to make you a man.”

            I stood there in the parking lot, my eyes drilling into him, and a scripture from Corinthians came back to me.

            Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

            I turned and walked away.