Happy and Cruel

2^nd June 2012

Dear Cassi,

If you recall my letter about a girl so cruelly nicknamed Buffalo Chips. Her closet male friend was a man who we all thought was gay as a pigeon at a garbage dump. I’m going to call this fellow Earp for no good reason.

       

Earp thought of himself as a Hollywood type and so I guess he was, fit and healthy with blue eyes and blond hair. Come to think of it the two of us would have looked like brother had I not been a pimple studded wildebeest. I would never trade my wildebeest nature for his limp wrist boyishness but each to his own.

       

In any case Earp was already doing extra work in Hollywood so far as I knew and he talked about his time on the set of ‘Toy Story’. I think I was supposed to be impressed by this but I saw no reason to be so moved.  

       

Now gay was still something of a major insult among children in my middle school. However, Earp did grab another fellow’s back end so I honestly think he was a homosexual.

       

Then, as I recall, my own reality was something of a reason for insult. There were a few boys who would sing “Rick-y Neal, he’s so god dame fat” whenever I walked in the door so I guess we as children were cruel folks.  

       

Potato would sin this song “I’m a fag watcher, I’m a fag watcher, watching Earp go by, oooh my my”. I would have to say that this would make Potato as gay has his watched subject as he was then admiring another man from a distance.

       

What did we think at twelve and thirteen? Was their much in the way of logic to our rambling? Children are cruel things in this world and we pick at each other. I’d look back in shame but how accountable can a child be?

Don’t look back in anger, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal