As practiced as I was, I never perfected the art of lying. I was basically a shitty liar, unable to separate my internal responses from my external presentation. Inside, I knew it was wrong and part of me felt guilty. This discomfort expressed itself through my body language, and those who knew me best usually could identify my prevarications.
Anger triggered my ardent oppositionalism and rebelliousness. Overt at home, it was more subtle and indirect at school. I was an inveterate wise-ass and unrepentant class-clown. In third grade my class-clowning incited the teacher to try to hit me (this was an era that allowed public school teachers to discipline students physically with relative impunity; one teacher who some of my friends had the misfortune of having was renowned for picking kids up by their hair). I ducked and she missed, striking her hand hard on my desk before sending me to the principal’s office where I was well acquainted with the office staff. Most of the office staff wondered how a student as polite and well-mannered as me could get in as much trouble as I seemed to. My parents only wanted to know what I had done to provoke the teacher, assuming that I had deserved her wrath. Fourth grade marked the first of many times when I got in trouble for using profanity in school.
My acting out brought me to Dr. Seymour Gruber, a child psychiatrist in Great Neck, NY (actually, it was my mother who brought me to the good doctor). By this time, my parents figured there was a real problem, and it was me. Appointments with Dr. Gruber got me out of school early and sessions were painless enough, spent making model ships and airplanes while talking about whatever. Still, it reinforced the feelings I had of being different and damaged. He diagnosed some sort of nonspecific chemical imbalance and put me on Dilantin, a medication typically used to manage epilepsy and other seizure disorders. Though not FDA-approved for it, there are indications that Dilantin can be helpful in stabilizing mood and managing anxiety, and it’s sometimes prescribed “off label” for those purposes.
Interestingly, Dilantin was used both as an anticonvulsant and as a chemical restraint to control patient behavior in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey’s acclaimed novel about a locked psychiatric facility and the interactions between the milieu and its unfortunate inhabitants. Of course, Kesey’s main character was a recalcitrant rebel rather than someone suffering from severe mental illness, but that didn’t keep him from being lobotomized.
Throughout elementary school my grades were mostly “A”s with a small smattering of “B”s. “B”s were cause for questions and concerns at home. In fifth grade, I got a “C” in math one marking period and based on my parents’ reactions, a casual observer might have thought there was a death in the family. My siblings routinely produced straight “A”s. They did their schoolwork with dedication and consistency, whereas my approach gravitated toward getting the best grades I could while doing as little actual work as possible.
Thank god for sports. Sports were my safe haven and my saving grace. It was the one area of life where I felt whole and good enough. The athletic arena—whether a baseball diamond, football field, basketball court, or lacrosse field—provided an environment where I had a coherent sense of self and a clear sense of self-worth. It didn’t matter whether it was a school yard pickup game or formal league play, I was given freedom from the feeling that I was a fuck-up. There was something transcendent in how sports integrated my body and mind. The hand-eye coordination required to track and catch a deep pass in football, to time and hit a baseball on the fat part of the bat, or to gauge the distance to the rim and execute the proper trajectory to make an outside shot in basketball had a present-centered life-affirming melody all its own. To me, these were majestic pursuits, and when I was immersed in them, the disease that followed me wherever I went for as long as I could remember melted away.
Although I was always drawn toward team sports, I busted my ass to hone my individual skills, practicing constantly, pushing myself to get better: shooting baskets on an outdoor court covered in snow and ice in the dead of winter; playing catch until it was too dark to see even the outline of the baseball or football against the evening sky; coming early to team practices and staying late. When I was nine, I remember committing to myself to continue playing after basketball practice until I had made 100 additional baskets. It didn’t matter how long it was going to take; I was staying until I accomplished that goal or they kicked me out of the gym.
In spite of the occasional intrusion of interpersonal politics in the form of favoritism, nepotism, or cliques, sports represented a meritocracy where you got what you earned. Schoolyard pickup games (regardless of sport) had a well-defined social order. The acknowledged two best players were designated captains who took turns choosing players for their respective teams from among the assembled kids. There was a direct correlation between your skills and when you were selected—the better you were, the sooner you were picked. I could count on one hand the number of times I wasn’t either a captain or among the first players picked. This selection process was fraught with emotion. As it progressed, with each successive selection, I watched the facial expressions of many kids fall as their hope to be picked earlier faded. If there were more kids than available places on the teams, some didn’t get to play at all. I always felt the anguish of those who were picked toward the end or not at all; of those who were not good enough.
Sports provided an ideal sublimation for my anger. Sublimation is a more “healthy” defense mechanism that channels or redirects unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and urges, into socially acceptable pursuits. It takes the energy of something potentially harmful and turns it to a constructive and useful activity. Athletic competition was a socially acceptable and emotionally safe outlet to discharge my energy and emotion, especially anger. Instead of criticism, feelings of inadequacy, and punitive consequences, as long as I could convert my anger and other heated emotions into sports-related competitive fervor, I experienced feelings of achievement and received positive recognition and high praise. In this context, I knew who I was and that I was worthy.
The only downside of this passion for sports was its ignition of a white-hot competitiveness that combined with rapacious perfectionism to drive me to be too hard on teammates, oppressive to referees and umpires (I set a record for technical fouls in Oyster Bay youth basketball in the early 1970s that probably still stands), and merciless toward myself. However, were it not for competitive sports and the cathartic release they provided, I have little doubt that I would have become part of the juvenile justice and/or youth psychiatric systems at a tender age.
My involvement in sports was also a sanctuary from much of the tension and conflict between my parents and me. In this special sphere, my parents were consistently available for me. They were models of emotional and practical support. Despite his nonstop work schedule, my father somehow still made time to play catch with me; throw pitches to me so I could practice batting and learn how to switch-hit; throw passes to me on the run until being able to touch the football meant I would catch it; and shoot hoops and play one-on-one with me on the court in our driveway—for what seemed like hours at a time. My mother drove me to and picked me up from hundreds of practices, often giving rides to my friends and teammates who didn’t have parents willing or able to be there like that for them. When I earned the money to get those $16.00 Adidas, she drove me across the width of Long Island to Wolf’s Sporting Goods in Rockeville Centre, the only store on Long Island that carried them.
My parents were a constant presence in the bleachers and on the sidelines at my games from little league to high school, regardless of the sport. My father’s expectations for performance were evident in his urgent and high-volume exhortations to me and his vehement critiques of the officiating, which could always easily be heard above the din of the game and other crowd noise. At times it was so obtrusive and embarrassing that in the midst of playing I’d yell at him to stop. On at least one occasion the referees kicked him out of the gym altogether. My father offered to coach my teams in youth sports, but given how conflicted our relationship often was, I didn’t want him to. When he later coached some of my younger brother’s teams, I remember feeling a mix of relief, envy, and sadness.
That ambivalence hit the heart of the relationship I had with my parents. There were many instances when they were available and nurturing, and yet, overall, I felt emotionally rejected and abandoned. Although I had an abstract cognizance that they loved me, the impression that they didn’t like me was tangible.
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