From the earliest possible memory, and I do mean earliest, my mother role-modeled the love of the underdog. Why, she married my father, a polio survivor, who sported a cane and brace and walked tilted from side to side. Think Danny DeVito, only slightly taller. My dad was all of 5 feet, one inch.
My mother took in strays, both people and animals. A famous gay makeup artist with a serious drug problem moved in for nearly a year. Each day that I left for high school, he asked me to score him some good dope. I always smiled and said “sure,” but never copped, not for him at least.
In retrospect, I’m thinking that I was an underdog. I was extremely tiny, with crossed eyes, so I had to wear those horrific cat glasses of the 1950’s. But I didn’t feel like any underdog. One day in grammar school, I watched, horrified, as all these nasty students surrounded the mentally-retarded girl and poked fun at her. I came home and related to my thin-skinned mother what had happened, and she lectured me, warning that it will never be me joining in. And it never was. I was almost always fighting for the underdog. Put up with no shit, that’s what I learned from both parents. That new show, “What Would You Do?” resonates with me because I’m the one who gets indignant in the face of injustice, and says something. It’s not always pretty either.
Some years ago, I kept noticing this homeless woman in my hood. I feared where my heart would lead me, so I looked away. I mean, for a few years I saw her out of the corner of my eye and knew that she tore at me, called to me, if you will…. But I wouldn’t touch it (or her). (more…)
