I think children by the age of five can smell a victim the way sharks smell blood. At the very least, their little eyes pick out social differences with feverish enthusiasm. If you're poor, if you don't have a nice hair cut, if you're wearing hand me downs on the first day, you are immediately judged and placed into your rung in the caste system and few ever move up that social ladder.

I was all of those things and more. I was a gangly, awkward kid with big front teeth and a sort of spastic enthusiasm. I also had a milk allergy and in kindergarten this caused me to occasionally wet my pants. Thus my first nickname was born, yellow smell. How they came up with that, I have no idea but once it was uttered by one of the kids from the right side of town, it was forever.

By first grade my standing as the schools biggest loser was pretty much unchallenged and for the next couple of years playgrounds, bus rides, bus stops, hallways, lunch rooms and bathrooms were a battlefield. Every face I saw I'd hope would be friendly and since we were very young, sometimes they were. Other times I'd find myself pinned down on the playground, a larger boy straddling me with his knees on my arms, rubbing dirt in my face or spitting while other kids snickered and jeered in that evil high pitched cackle that only little kids can make.

I was a wreck. I dreaded school. I frequently sought refuge at an older boys house up the street where we would play secret games that both excited and worried me. Other times I'd go home and play with the five to ten kids my mom babysat. With four brothers at that time, this made for a full house and so the social situation was similar to school. It was the lord of the flies set in a lower middle class, blue-collar back yard.

My greatest nemesis however was my older brother. We'll call him Bill. I was the third in what would ultimately be six boys. Bill was the second. My older brother was too old to relate to. But Bill, he was trouble. He had a short temper and a cruel manner. If he couldn't reduce you to tears with words, he'd do it with his fists. He'd always been that way. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of Bill and my oldest brother having a fistfight. My mother grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the door shouting to my father that, "if this didn't stop she was leaving!"

My father was not a physical man and he wasn't capable of stopping anything.

When Bill lost a fight with my oldest brother, that spelled even worse news for me.

I remember one fall day I was being pulled out of third grade early. My Mom was picking me up. I was going to the hospital for some sort of test. I had missed an incredible amount of school that year (I was faking sick so I could avoid school and enjoy being home without Bill) and the family doctor surmised that I had an ulcer. I was terrified. I didn't know what an ulcer was but I knew I'd been faking sick so whatever it was, I doubted I had one.

I was wrong. I had developed an ulcer from being "a nervous kid." There would be many more tests, all of them horrible. Some involving a tube inserted into my %#@&#! and being filled with fluid so they could watch my entrails on a screen. Not one of my better days.

School continued to get worse. By fourth grade the social scheme in the school had developed to the point of established norms for the various groups. This was bad news for me because I was labeled both fair game and social poison. To associate with me lowered you to outcast status and nobody wanted that. Quickly the kids my mother babysat broke ties with me and joined the mocking chorus of voices that could lash out at any moment.

I was desperate and so I begged for the right jeans, shirts, shoes. But my mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer so my family was down to government blocks of cheese, donated bread, and huge packages of hamburger. I guess we bought those because it was cheaper. But what mattered to me was my selfish desire for name brand stuff and I'd torture my parents, pleading for them.

It was hopeless and so I resigned myself to the ridicule. I started to believe with each cruel name, kick and jab that they were right. I was less than them. I could see it in the mirror when I looked at my face. There was something really wrong with it. There was something really wrong with me. I was different. I hated my laugh, my smile, my teeth, my hair. My pallor was overwhelming and I wanted to climb out of my skin.

I began acting out and calling for help. I would tell anyone I could find that nobody liked me. I would scream that I was ugly and that everyone hated me. I told my parents, my teacher, my Sunday school teacher, and even my grandma. Nobody seemed to know what to do and so nothing was done. Things continued unchanged and everyday I wore my worry, fear and self-hatred on my disfigured, buck toothed face.

By junior high I had learned the fine art of resentment and I gravitated toward the roughest crowd I could find. The heavy metal kids (this was the 80's, what can I say?). I took up guitar, skateboarding, all of it. I sensed the safety in numbers but the problem was that only a few of them wanted me. The rest treated me, well, the way everyone else did. They teased, flung insults, and threw random slaps or wrestled me to the ground until I said mercy.

One boy who took me in as a friend was Lane. He lived in the sprawling trailer court that began across the street from my house. This was the roughest part of town but it was worth getting beat up to hang out with him. It was a year or so before the relationship turned sexual. I guess I sort of loved him in my own way. He was so nice to me, a true friend in every way. We would masturbate each other during sleepovers or sneak away with his father's porn. In many ways it was exactly like the relationship I'd had with another neighborhood boy years earlier save that this time puberty had happened. Until ninth grade I would fantasize about holding him in my hand or maybe even letting him "butt %#@&#! me" as I put it at the time. He was the biggest part of my life.

Being from a blue-collar family, my father was very anti gay. In fact, his view (stated during dinner) that "all gays should be put on an island and we should nuke it" pretty much summed up the attitude of the whole community. I would sit there and listen to him say these things and my heart would sink. I was old enough to know what he was talking about. He was talking about me. I was one of those inhuman things. Since this fit with my general perception of myself as a mutant, why would I doubt it?

It was inevitable that someone would find out about it. What I was. Cyran0 the freak was a ******. My relationship with Lane ended. Senior high became the most violent world I've ever known.

Teasing became harassment. Slaps and jabs became closed fist punches that left me gasping for air. One night in the trailer park I was jumped by four or five kids. I never saw the punch coming. I only saw a red flashing light and some hint that I was heading toward the ground. I propped myself up on my knees and blood poured everywhere. I couldn't really see. I found my feet and stumbled into the street. Where the hell was I? A heavy metal chick (though not one that liked me) was suddenly in front of me and she reached up to my nose. She said something like, "%#@&#! you %#@&#! broke it."

When I got home I finally started crying. I kept repeating that at least I didn't cry in front of them as I rocked backward and forward, pressing a bloody washcloth to my face. My parents watched in dumbstruck horror.

I talked to guidance counselors and teachers but they couldn't help. After all, when an entire school is out to get you, what can they do? I found some refuge in the arts, performing in school plays and speech team. This saved my life. But I still walked the halls and the streets like an abused dog poised to bite anyone who reached out to me.

I was small and weak as guys go so this vicious demeanor probably made things worse. I had become a punk rocker with piercings and multicolored hair. I started doing drugs, drinking and hanging out in Minneapolis (I had discovered refuge in the big city). My crowd was outcasts, artists, musicians, petty hoods, down and out leftist activists and drug dealers. I'd get %#@&#! up and cut up my arms or shove new metal into my face. I still have marks on my arms from cigarette burns. I didn't care. I wanted to die. I was worthless. I had dropped out of high school and left the suburbs.

Like I said, in the end it was the arts that saved me. As it turns out, I was a good performer and a terrific writer. I started making videos, performing in college plays, forming bands. I developed my first true friends and I somehow lucked into my own self worth. I began to pull out of my spiral. I saw hope for the first time and I had a new sense of purpose. With it, I developed an ego and would never let myself be treated that way again.

I still have problems. I still see myself as different and alien. I can't seem to help that. I have a dark perception of the world and a serious self-loathing problem. I'm jealous of people who had a normal life and I hate that I can never be like them. I have trouble feeling love or affection unless it's translated into something physical. I'm obsessed with success in the arts and want the admiration of the whole world. I rarely feel happy and there's something seriously wrong with my face.

But I can write. I can make films. I can act. I can play music.

So I can hope.

Cyran0