Bullying

Orwell’s essay ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’

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Found in 1950 shortly after Orwell’s death was discovered an essay about his melancholy, rather gloomy childhood. The essay focuses on his grammar school days, around 1913-1916 roughly. (He was born in 1903.)

What shook me up about the piece is how similar my grade school experience was. Now, let me say up front: My experience throughout the mid-late 90s was nothing at all like Orwell’s Orwellian experience in the early part of the 20th century at boarding prep school which included being half-starved and regularly beaten by teachers.

And yet the feelings and some of the circumstances strike me as eerily similar.

Here’s how Orwell described his emotional landscape as a boy in school:

“From the age of eight or even earlier, the consciousness of sin was never far away from me. If I contrived to seem callous and defiant, it was only a thin cover over a mass of shame and dismay. All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude — and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.”

I relate to this probably too much. Due in part to the fact that I was a sensitive, intelligent, inquisitive, fairly heterodox and rebellious kid, I always carried this same feeling, as if, deep down, there was something putrid and rotting about me.

Orwell’s childhood schooling occurred at a private prep boarding school in Eastbourne, England. I myself attended a private K-8 Episcopalian school in Ventura, a half hour drive from my house in Ojai, east 12 miles from the coast in Southern California. High school—which I began in 1999—was a private catholic college-prep school in Ojai. My parents ironically were not religious—quite the contrary, actually—but felt strongly that ‘parochial schools offered the best education.’

I never fit in at school. I wasn’t a nerd or anything. I was short, one of the oldest kids in my class (long story), was considered weird, always wore a perpetual scowl on my face (this frankly hasn’t changed that much in adulthood), and often looked angry. Sophomore year (2000) I met two guys who changed my life by pulling me into the punk rock world, but that’s a story for another time. Freshman year I had no friends. I hung out by myself. I was a lonely loner. I desperately wanted connection, someone to talk to. Yet even then I knew I was brooding and contemplative, troubled and wounded, already set on my own path.

Here’s Orwell from the essay again:

“My situation was that of countless other boys, and if potentially I was more of a rebel than most, it was only because, by boyish standards, I was a poorer specimen. But I never did rebel intellectually, only emotionally. I had nothing to help me except my dumb selfishness, my inability — not, indeed, to despise myself, but to dislike myself — my instinct to survive.”

I was an independent thinker. A free-thinker. A critical thinker, even as a kid. This of course got me into hot water both with teachers and students. I learned, like Orwell, that there were rules to follow, often unstated rules, and pre-packaged ideologies to swallow. I would not and could not do this, and that made me a freak in progress. Shut up and do as you’re told, was the idea. I remember freshman year religion class, taught by a certain Kafkian teacher who I’ll call Mr. V.

Mr. V dressed like a Jehovah’s Witness, with crisp long-sleeved white collared shirt and thin black tie with beige crisp pants and polished black dress shoes. He had fiery short red hair. Thick prescription glasses. He loved to slowly pace back n forth across the blackboard, wrists pinned casually behind his back, a serious gaze pinned on us all, telling us about mortal and venial sins, and how gay people were going to Hell. Sometimes he walked carefully down the aisles of desks. If your backpack was jutting out even a quarter of an inch he’d savagely kick it under your desk. He never made eye contact.

Everyone knew I was trouble, even as young as ten or eleven. I had a bad habit of staring. I hung out alone. I dressed strangely. I was different. Sometimes I smelled. Around fifth grade I started being sent fairly often to the principal’s office for various minor infractions. When a new kid started with our class in 6th grade and almost got suspended for saying ‘Motherfucker’ to the teacher, he and I became instant best friends. My new friends became scholarship kids, smart kids from dysfunctional families who didn’t really ‘belong.’ Meretricious misfits.

Orwell:

“In a world where the prime necessities were money, titled relatives, athleticism, tailor-made clothes, neatly-brushed hair, a charming smile, I was no good. All I had gained was a breathing-space. A little quietude, a little self-indulgence, a little respite from cramming — and then, ruin. What kind of ruin I did not know: perhaps the colonies or an office stool, perhaps prison or an early death. But first a year or two in which one could ‘slack off’ and get the benefit of one's sins, like Doctor Faustus.”

The above quote reminds me of a class trip we took in I think 7th grade to Ventura County Jail. They toured us through the place describing the process and environment. I distinctly remember a student named Charlie who pointed at me in front of everyone and, snickering, said, ‘This is where Michael will go after high school.’ The fear, shame and guilt I felt in that moment was profound. The only other time I recall a worse feeling was in 2010—four months before I got sober—when an old Ojai friend said, in front of me at a party, ‘Hey, at least I don’t piss my pants like that drunk, Michael.’ Similar jeers and laughter followed then, too. Sadly, shortly after high school I DID end up in Ventura County Jail, but only for about 16 hours. (Blackout DUI.)

Freshman year of high school I dealt with the only bully who ever assaulted me in childhood. The guy was a senior. Everybody hated this guy. I don’t recall his name anymore. When I think of that time I can’t help also remembering being in Mrs. Eastern’s class and reading ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’

I was listening to a lot of punk rock by then, surfing, skateboarding, self-destructing internally. Anyway this older student tortured probably half a dozen chosen ones. I don’t precisely know why I was one of the chosen. I was certainly smaller as a teen. Thin. Deeply insecure. Afraid. He’d approach me—a much larger guy—and, grinning sadistically, he’d chase me, easily capture me, and literally hold me up in the air by my underwear. It hurt, and of course it was profoundly humiliating. Thoughts of suicide and murder frequently entered my young mind then. Rage sizzled under my skin, rushing through my veins like Hemlock. Sometimes he’d see me walking towards him down the hall between classes and he’d sneer, smiling maliciously, and whisper ‘lunch,’ by which he meant at lunch he’d torment me in one of a dozen ways.

Orwell:

“The question is not whether boys are still buckled into Eton collars on Sunday, or told that babies are dug up under gooseberry bushes. That kind of thing is at an end, admittedly. The real question is whether it is still normal for a school child to live for years amid irrational terrors and lunatic misunderstandings. And here one is up against the very great difficulty of knowing what a child really feels and thinks. A child which appears reasonably happy may actually be suffering horrors which it cannot or will not reveal. It lives in a sort of alien under-water world which we can only penetrate by memory or divination. Our chief clue is the fact that we were once children ourselves, and many people appear to forget the atmosphere of their own childhood almost entirely.”

Yes. Precisely. On some level I always grasped that the father hits the son who hits the smaller kid who hits the dog, etc. Violence begets violence, and so on. What was my tormentor going through himself? But, as I thought this I also wanted to kill this prick; I wanted him to suffer. It wasn’t just the anger, fear and humiliation; it was the concept of not being able to face myself. I felt I was to blame for his cruelty, that I was some sort of weakling-sinner who ‘deserved’ it. The more he tortured me the more I hated myself. Soon alcohol changed that. Soon I would become the bully myself.

I’ll never forget that day sitting again in the back of Mrs. Eastern’s class. The tail end of 1999. We were almost finished with ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’ It was just before two in the afternoon, clear blue sky and sunshine. Perfect beach weather. I hadn’t yet got my driver’s license. All day I hadn’t seen The Bully. Which was odd. He was always there.

Sometimes it seemed he showed up solely to torture we chosen few.

Mrs. Eastern cleared her throat. Crimson crept into her pale cheeks. She said she had an announcement. Looking uncomfortable, she gazed down at the floor and asked if we knew who Jamie Richardson was. (I made up this name.) We all glumly nodded. The Bully. Then she looked at us all at once it seemed, sighed, letting her shoulders fall, and said, ‘Please say a prayer for him. His mother was struck and killed by a train yesterday.’

My face flushed hot. I must have gone white as paper.

My heart thudded in my chest. My first thought was No thought at all—simply shock; tabula rasa. My second thought was: Serves that asshole right! I’m glad! My third thought was not a thought, either, but a feeling: Deep empathy and sadness. He was a bully. But he was also a human being. A wounded one himself, surely. I thought of my mother, a good woman who loved me unconditionally. Tears suddenly threatened to drip down my cheeks. I couldn’t imagine what that suffering might be like.

Jamie never returned to school. And my life exploded with punk rock, booze and anarchy shortly thereafter.