Sometime during her night shifts at White Memorial Medical Center, my mother concluded that I could no longer live apart from society. I was ten and had spent half of those years in front of the television. My brother, four years older, was better adapted to the world; he had been a Webelo and was moving up the ranks of a Boy Scout troop in Temple City. The decision was made that I would follow him.
I admired none of what I had seen my brother go through—not the mud-colored uniforms, not the earning of merit badges, not the Sierra Mountain hiking trips that took him away for weeks at a time and brought him back stained with tan lines. He told stories of plunging into icy rivers in only his underwear or cobbling together skit costumes from branches and dirty socks. He craved strange foods: dehydrated stews and some drink he called “Tang.”
Now that I would be part of this world, my brother offered his guidance. After our parents went to bed, he brought me into the garage, a space that had gone from a storage area for broken furniture and Christmas decorations to a makeshift gym he and his friends furnished with a rickety weight bench and an even more rickety pull-up bar. A frameless mirror balanced on four nails and was surrounded by photos of Sylvester Stallone. There was one shot from Rocky IV, where he had to get in shape in a Russian cabin with only boulders and logs for equipment. My brother would take his shirt off and compare himself to his hero. He was dark and defined and confident, while I was pale and soft, a boy with a face so dimpled and pudgy my uncle called me “Old Man.”
“First there’s the Scout Motto. That’s the easy one,” he said. “Be prepared.”
“Be prepared,” I repeated, never having heard the word “motto” in my life.
“Then there’s the Scout Law. A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly….”
I buzzed with the anxious rush that came whenever my brother invited me to join him in anything. I felt fortunate but nervous that I would do something wrong. Under Rocky’s gaze my brother showed me the Scout shake, intertwining left hands at both the thumbs and the pinkies.
When I joined the troop, I was thrown into a new routine. Every Thursday I had to polish my black dress shoes and trim my fingernails and make sure my hair was short enough so that it didn’t brush against my neckerchief. I had to check that the neckerchief itself was rolled tight and covered the top three buttons of my shirt. The rest of the buttons had to line up with my pants zipper, and the groove of my belt buckle had to be in line with both.
Once a month my patrol was responsible for accepting the newspapers we recycled to help raise funds. They were heavy bundles tied clumsily with twine that we stacked in one corner of the storage shed owned by the Presbyterian Church where we met. The work was awkward and left my hands smudged and sticky. Corners poked into me, forcing my shirt open, which meant that I had to get straightened up again before inspections or risk lowering our score.
But being on paper duty was better than being on flag duty, which required members of the patrol to carry the American and California State flags up to the front of the room at the beginning of the meeting and lead the others in our recitations. Every part of this process was precise and nerve-racking. We had to keep in step and turn sharply on command. We had to insert the end of the poles into the stubby stands that inadequately counterbalanced their weight. Then we had to begin the Pledge of Allegiance, the Scout Oath, and the Scout Law, hoping the others would join in quickly to cover our voices. I hated feeling like I was center stage, everyone able to judge me if I made a mistake.
But I wasn’t a disappointment in the troop. Unlike the others, who viewed participation nonchalantly, I felt a pressure to perform and was afraid of repercussions that didn’t exist. I also had to keep up with my brother, both to avoid disappointing him and to honor our family name. I memorized first aid procedures and the flora and fauna of different environments. For a while, I was the only one in the troop who had both Morse Code and semaphore memorized—as if one person was all it took to communicate secret messages. But the strict rules also meant that I didn’t have to worry about accidentally wearing something too effeminate or getting caught playing a game that only girls played. My interior life could be tucked up like my uniform.
I was also fine during the hazing rituals, where I could rely on a toughness gained from growing up with a brother who was obsessed with the World Wrestling Federation. He regularly descended upon me from the armrest of the sofa, pinning me down at the waist while wrenching me up by the throat. I was coaxed into going limp so that he could entwine his legs among mine, and then I was ordered to struggle to see if I could break free from his holds. Violence seemed to be an acceptable form of communication. Under the guise of playing, I pushed and pummeled other boys around without any care as to whether this might bother them. We played in the darkness of the church lawn, where our identities were blurred and free from judgement. I didn’t know it then, but I would find the same anonymous feeling in college, when I could become another nameless body thrashing among flashing lights, entangled with other men on the dance floors of gay clubs in Sacramento.
The fathers who volunteered for the troop—the men in charge—were retired marines and police officers. Among them, Mr. Shea, a former scoutmaster, stood out because of his white hair and white mustache. The first time I met him, he approached me as if he wore a double holster with six-shooters. Later, I heard a story about him that took place on Catalina Island years earlier. He had been picnicking with the troop in an open field when a loud crack in the distance sent a herd of frightened bison racing toward them. Everyone managed to clear the area in time except for Mr. Shea and a younger scout, and Mr. Shea threw his body over the boy to protect him as the animals thundered by. In the end, nobody was hurt, but I admired Mr. Shea’s selflessness. He had simply protected the boy without thinking.
I was a young teen, and I was attracted to the men who surrounded me. At a family beach campout—the only campout where women were invited—Mr. Jacobs, one of the younger fathers, took his shirt off to reveal bulging, hairy pecs. He ran into the water, knees pumping, invigorated by the cold waves crashing against his body, and when he came out, he kissed his wife, a woman I would pretend to be for the next several months. Thanks to my much-adored television, among countless other influences, the fathers I fantasized about were always white. During camping trips, I imagined them passing me around the campfires, each man using me as a substitute for his missing wife until one of them finally carried me out among the undulating shadows of the creosote bushes so that he could have me all to himself.
My fantasies were the same with the senior scouts, the high school students who only had a few requirements left before they would become Eagles. These boys were white, fit, confident, and well-educated. To me, they were sophisticated, which meant they used words like “calculus” and “SATs”—abstract terms I imagined as circus acts performed behind the drawn blinds of classrooms I wouldn’t enter for a couple more years. I watched these almost-men in shorts and tees during hikes, the hair on their legs lighter than mine, the hair on their arms that I didn’t have. In them I saw an upper class I couldn’t break into because of the secrets I held.
While us junior Scouts were responsible for pitching tents and lashing together tripods, the seniors lounged around on rock outcroppings that served as thrones. I heard rumors of them catching each other naked, the boys having reached puberty, their minds filled with thoughts beyond Scouting. Even in the absence of girls, they celebrated their healthy bodies, secreted sexuality, tested their strength and skills like early Olympians. For a while, the prospect of seeing a senior boy shirtless was enough to get me to look forward to Scouting events. On one occasion, after a weekend trip, Michael Gordon drew a dirt smile across his abs, his nipples standing in for eyes, and called for the others to gaze upon him. Another senior, Eric Hamm, had gotten into body building. During a Troop meeting, he became a team of one in a game of capture the flag. He took off his shirt and sprinted across the field as we clambered to stop him, his pale and muscular torso charging through the crowd of drab olive shirts, our hands sliding across his sweaty body. Later, at a carnival, he approached me while I volunteered in a booth. For some unexplained reason, he grabbed the front of my shirt and mashed me against the plywood wall, his face almost touching mine. It only made me want him more.
In the nineties, James Dale, Assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 73, was expelled from his position in the Boy Scouts because he was gay. The men in charge of my Troop shared their views on the matter and assumed we would all agree: they did not want people like him among us. A letter was prepared to send to our senators. It was read to the group, then laid out on a podium for anyone to sign.
In front of the fathers, I nodded in support, but I was glad to be able to avoid signing the letter once the formalities of the meeting were over. It was a rainy day, and we stayed indoors playing broom hockey. When the meeting came to an end, when I figured I was getting away without signing the letter, a determined friend steered me over to it and handed me a pen. I signed and tried to push the act out of my mind, but whatever loyalty I developed for the Scouts faded after that. I was around 15, and a new generation of boys joined the troop. These sons wore single earrings and showed off fake tattoos sketched earlier in the day with Magic Markers. Their parents argued on their behalf so that they didn’t have to cut their hair, even if it didn’t comply with the standards of the former Marines. A softer, more accommodating mindset permeated our meetings. The hazing games came to an end. The chaos of Capture the Flag was replaced by guest visits—a doctor with a lesson on acupuncture, a man who demonstrated the flugelhorn.
Maybe I should have been in favor of this change, but I clung to the old ways. Whatever jealousy I felt for the boys who had learned to express themselves evolved into a quiet loathing. Throughout the troop there was a divide between the old and the new. I watched as the men in charge debated in the back of the room over what was best for all of us.
What emerged from these discussions was the Survival Campout. Here was a way to define toughness without face-to-face combat. The challenge was simple enough the first year. The boys were left in the rocky deserts of the Mecca Hills with only our emergency blankets, pocketknives, trowels, and matches. We were given an orange and an egg that we could cook or eat raw. At night, hungry and cold, we huddled together to sleep among the shelter of boulders. I didn’t mind the discomfort. The test was yet another way for me to harden myself, to get closer to being the man who would protect a boy from a bison stampede.
The second year of the Survival Campout introduced the killing of a chicken. The fathers gathered us in the church parking lot to watch the procedure that we would later have to do ourselves. Mr. Shea presented a wooden board into which two nails had been hammered, about an inch apart. He lectured us on the solemnity of taking a life and the importance of doing so mercifully. Then, he slipped the chicken’s neck between the two nails, swung the axe, and held on firmly as a burst of energy exploded from the bird’s body.
The approaching murder presented an opportunity. I had been raised Buddhist, going to the temple several times a year and reciting the Pali chants every night before bed, even during campouts. Buddhism discouraged us from killing, at least as directly as this. I used the challenge to convince my parents that the Boy Scouts was no longer right for me. I wrote my own letter telling the scoutmaster about my decision and handed it to him at our meeting. He was relatively new, and I had no problem resisting his pleas for me to stay.
But Mr. Shea also wanted to speak with me. He led me to his car, and we sat inside with the windows rolled up so that no one would overhear us. He told me that I had a lot of potential, that all of the men in charge were excited to see me lead my own patrol. Then he said something I didn’t expect. “Sometimes we have to finish things we don’t want to do.”
I had never thought of Scouts as anything more than a way to socialize, part of my mom’s original plan to push me out into the world. Now I had a new understanding. If I didn’t stay, if I didn’t finish, maybe I would never amount to anything.
I told Mr. Shea I would think it over. That night, I asked for clarity from the deity I had created for myself, a hazy being that encouraged detachment but also occasionally granted wishes. Still, the challenge Mr. Shea asked me to rise to was easier to dismiss when I was alone. I thought about how nice it would be to not have to worry about hiking trips or tests, how luxurious it would be to not have to worry about getting into uniform. I wouldn’t miss the Scouts, though the feeling that I had disappointed Mr. Shea lingered.
It wasn’t hard to avoid the troop after that. High school graduation came, and college meant moving up to Northern California. My mother’s forced socializing had served its purpose and kept me from becoming a recluse. I came out to new friends. I lost my virginity. On the rare occasions when I did encounter someone from the old Troop, my reputation for exceling in school was enough of a distraction to keep the conversation away from my failure to become an Eagle Scout.
My brother wanted to join the marines so that he could follow in the footsteps of all the Scout fathers he admired, but my parents refused to give him permission. He started off at a community college and soon found his calling in sports medicine. Years passed. He stayed in our hometown and married a woman who had gone to our same high school. I was a groomsman at the wedding, and everyone who came to the reception knew me only as my past self. Nurses from my mother’s generation took hold of my elbow and asked me when I would meet a woman of my own. The old Scouts offered me their left hands, insisting that I fall back into the old practices.
At my table during the reception, Mr. Shea passed by and stooped down to speak to me. “I was worried when you quit,” he said. “But now I see you made the right decision.” The words buoyed me for a moment. Had I passed his test, even if it was by a different route? I doubt it now. His praise, while genuine, was given without him having all the information. But I had survived a different sort of test.
My brother had a son, and the son eventually joined the same Troop we had been in. He stripped my old uniform sash of its badges so that he could use it for his own. I was happy for the strip of cloth to have this second life, to serve someone more appreciative.
Two years into his time there, I arrived late to his Court of Honor, an annual ceremony to acknowledge the boys’ accomplishments. I lingered in the back of the church banquet room, not sure if I wanted to be ignored or if I wanted to be remembered.
A father stood up to speak, and I realized he was gay. He talked with pride about his pink-haired son and the other boys. The mothers had become more active in the troop too, my own sister-in-law appearing in slides of group hiking trips and a whitewater rafting tour.
I was sad but not surprised to hear that Mr. Shea had died. Some of the other men from the older generation were there, but no one seemed to think the proceedings were unusual. Maybe the troop had faced their own survival test, and perhaps they had passed.
The evening came to a close. The men and boys gathered, grasping hands and forming a circle to say goodnight. Some of the men I knew called for me to join them. I smiled and gently refused.