Of Rutgers, and 'Harvey the Homo'

I thought of Harvey last week when I heard the news out of Rutgers and saw Ellen Degeneres's widely circulated video message (http://bit.ly/9icnF7).

I hate thinking of Harvey because his memory forces me to confront an ugliness in myself. It’s an ancient ugliness, one for which the statute of limitations probably is up. But it’s still ugly, and it’s mine, and I don’t like owning it.

See, Harvey was the guy that the rest of us in our Boy Scout troop decided was gay. Only we didn’t use the word “gay,” of course. You know what words we used. We called him queer, a faggot, a homo.

I don’t remember Harvey’s last name, or why we decided he was gay. The gaydar of young teenaged boys is not a very finely calibrated tool, or at least it wasn't in the mid-70s. If a guy had a lisp, carried his school books funny, flipped his wrist a certain way, or got along suspiciously well with girls … well, case closed.

So, we just casually decreed that Harvey was gay. And we teased him about it -- Harvey the Homo. Clever, huh? We sure thought so. And Harvey cried. Which made us tease him more, because real men didn’t cry. Only homos did.

What a bunch of assholes.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I had a friend who I assumed was gay. He certainly wasn’t “out,” but I assumed he knew he was gay, and we, his friends, assumed he was gay though we never talked about it to each other, and I assumed he knew that we assumed he was gay. There’s a whole lot of “assumes” there because none of us talked about it. Surely it would have been healthier for all – especially for him – if we had, so that it would have just been in the open and no big deal. Still, it felt like progress over how Harvey was treated. And maybe it would have been a big deal if it was out there in the open. I don’t know. If he was gay, I hope he eventually came out and was met with love and acceptance and was treated like it was no big deal. Because it wasn’t, and isn’t.

Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi didn't get that far. He jumped to his death last week after his roommate posted online video of him having sex with another man. It’s an appalling story of how an act of callousness, stupidity and meanness can spin out of control in ways surely Dahrun Ravi and Molly Wei didn’t intend.

No matter what happens from here, Ravi and Wei already have been convicted of a hate crime in the 24/7 media-frenzied court of public opinion, which never takes a recess and rarely even allows for the introduction of exculpatory evidence. It just rules -- instantly, mercilessly and with no possibility of appeal. At the age of 18, they're still kids, and yet they now may be forever defined in the public eye by their worst moments as human beings.

Is it possible to feel some pity for the suddenly notorious Ravi and Wei?

I think I can, if only because I remember with shame my own callous, stupid, mean contribution to another’s torment, and I'd be mortified to have been defined by it for the rest of my life. I feel that pity even as I acknowledge that there’s a wide chasm between ages 13 and 18, between 1974 and 2010 and, most of all, between calling someone names and capturing an intensely private moment and sharing it with the world for twisted yuks.

I don't know what became of Harvey -- whether, gay or not, he eventually shrugged off our cretinous behavior, whether he went on to more of the same in high school, college and beyond and, if so, whether he got past it to become comfortable with who he was.

I do know this: While the events of this last week made me think of Harvey, I sure hope they didn't make him think of me. I hope he's forgotten all about me.