Playing on the Edge: Sadomasochism, Risk, and Intimacy (7 page)

[I had] lots of imaginary friends as a child . . . mostly made up of charac- ters from novels . . . I had that up until college, and to some degree, I still do it. I can’t do it for you consciously, but if I’m alone, watch sometimes. Ever see me talking to myself? I try not to do it in public . . . talking with them. Not creating dialogue—using them as a sounding board. There’s another person there to talk to. [ . . . ] It’s not John Nash, it’s not schizo- phrenia, I don’t see somebody else—I create the space for that person to be there. Most frequent character—they’re all characters [ . . . ] is Val Kilmer’s character from Real Genius. Chris Knight. Because he was— he is—smart, cool, a little older, and nice to the kid who was new and younger and uncomfortable. And I was always the kid who was new and younger and uncomfortable. I skipped two grades.

Self-understandings of intellectual marginality often intersected with bodily marginality. Experiences of nonconformity to standards of the body were shaped by these impressions. Additionally, the identifications themselves contributed to the constructions and maintenance of each other, as Seth illustrates:

I was always pretty bright, as a kid, and so my reputation became as the kid who was the smart guy. You know, geeks are generally not sought after for the looks. And I wasn’t—you know, I really wasn’t a bad-looking kid, but I wasn’t particularly attractive either, as a child. Buck teeth were really an issue. [ . . . ] If someone had simply taught me how to tie my shoelaces correctly, okay, with, you know, with the string in the right way, and the double-loop . . . I would have gotten laid in high school! . . . It lent very much to my slovenly appearance. And since I wasn’t convinced that I was attractive, I put no effort into making myself so. It was a very self-fulfilling prophecy.

The perception of an inverse relationship between geekiness and sexual attractiveness magnifies feelings of marginality for people who viewed them- selves as intellectual outsiders. From this perspective, “too smart” easily trans- lates into “too smart to be bothered” with the trappings of physical appearance, thereby reinforcing the smart/sexy binary by which adolescent social life is often structured in the United States. Seth’s “self-fulfilling prophecy” is an acquisi- tion of two distinct but intertwined marginal identities; geekdom conflates the bright kid with the unattractive kid.

Closely related, and even more frequently, intellectual marginality intersected with incidental androgyny. For those who were accelerated in school, the sense of being smarter than others was accompanied by a gendered marginal position throughout most of their academic lives. Men who were smaller than average and women who regarded themselves as “late bloomers” were comparing them- selves with their peers, who, in these cases, were older. Their advanced placement in school thereby conflated bodily marginality with intellectual marginality. Because they were significantly smaller and less sexually developed than their peers throughout childhood and adolescence, their intellectual abilities contrib- uted to lives lived on the margins of hegemonic gender categories. Sophie, who, like Greg, had been advanced two grades, explained her challenges:

I never had a problem as far as course material went, not only keeping up with my classmates but being at the top of my class, but it was a real pain in the ass emotionally. Being two years younger than everybody and just as I developed mentally, it caused a lot of problems . . . I was always behind, socially and physically. So I was always runty, even if I wasn’t really for my age. And then of course the fact that I was a straight-A student didn’t win me any points either. [ . . . ] So I got picked on a lot. And I lacked the—because I didn’t go through kindergarten, which really, it’s not about learning much except how to socialize with other children, and I had never had that. So I was always massively lagging in basic social skills throughout grade school. It took me a long time to get caught up with that. I always really, really resented the fact, especially by the time I got to high school, that I had been accelerated.

Having made a conscious effort to “catch up” on her social skills, Sophie has social panache that is notably uncommon among the people with whom she now spends most of her time. Pervasive social awkwardness in Caeden includes exces- sive fidgeting, disclosure of highly personal information to strangers, and behav- iors that would suggest an inability or disinclination to listen to others (such

as avoiding eye contact and nodding randomly while engaged in a one-on-one conversation). This social awkwardness is normative in the community, but more extreme examples—what would likely be considered social ineptitude outside of the community—is also common. For example, the tendency to speak one’s mind bluntly and without qualification is typical, and, importantly, usually appears to escape notice. Further, what would elsewhere be called “boasting” is a primary means of communication in Caeden; popular topics of conversation include what the speaker does well and what impressive things the speaker has done. This communication pattern is an accepted part of the discourse of the community; it is not identified as bragging and does not prompt negative responses.

Even more extreme social challenges involve issues of personal space and nonverbal communication. During my time in the field, I frequently found myself unable to communicate effectively through normative bodily cues. Backing away from a speaker who was standing too close often resulted in the speaker closing in on me, and even walking away sometimes led to being fol- lowed by the busily chatting “offender.”

Poor social skills are sometimes interpreted as a general lack of intelligence. Outside the realm of the social, though, the people in Caeden are articulate, well-read, logical, and creative. The problems with “intelligence” measures (and kinds) notwithstanding, many of the members of this community are what we normally and culturally understand as intelligent.

In the narratives of my respondents, this had two distinct impacts on their lives. The first, depicted in the excerpts above, emerged from the external identification of their intelligence, which began early for many. The second impact is the experience of this identification as marginalizing. Specifically, life stories continually reflected the sense that the respondent had always been surrounded by less intelligent people.

Bobby’s narrative consistently returned to this theme:

My senior year in high school I was reading what an American history master’s program [would involve]. I was reading all the books, as my mom would bring those books home, I was chewing through them, at age sixteen to seventeen. And my history teacher in high school had a degree in fashion design. I, hands down, knew more about American History than she had ever encountered. After I took her first exam in my senior year—and again, I don’t want, I don’t talk about this with guys, my senior year at school, I took her first exam, and I ran across the third question, which had a triple negative in it, I said “we have to talk.” And I handed

in my paper best I could, but I went over the grammar of the paper and the intent and the writing that was on there and I said look, and she said, “Look. Let’s not tell anyone else. You’re going to write the exams for me for the remainder of the session. And we’ll just give you [an] A.

Replete with examples of his educators’ intellectual inferiority, Bobby’s nar- rative reveals a frustration that no one else seemed able to keep up with him. Moreover, his teacher’s inclination to deceive the other students did little to restore his faith in education, and his collusion in her scheme served only to reinforce his belief in his intellectual superiority. This provides the backdrop for his rejection of mainstream education:

So I was a terrible college student. I just didn’t follow the protocol. [ . . . ] And I would also challenge; I wasn’t popular with the professors. ’Cause I challenged them. I was much better read than anyone else who was sitting in that room . . . and I’d want an intellectual exchange, and they didn’t appreciate that. [ . . . ] You don’t need college to learn. Once you’ve got the habit, you know how to do it. I read nonfiction, and fiction, and just switch ’em off. And I will go into a store and buy a book on chaos theory or quantum physics, and just, for fun. And I read this stuff. And I don’t know anyone else who does, and I get some looks when I sit at a restaurant and I’m reading a book on quantum theory, but this is just what keeps my mind active. I’m just intellectually curious. And I just wander into stuff.

Bobby was not atypical in his view of himself as exceptionally intellectu- ally capable, nor was his subsequent defiance of what he saw as the intellectual and educational “system.” Laura described herself as being able to “run circles around” everyone she knew, and Jack’s resentment of the inadequacy of his teachers began in second grade. In Jack’s case, this fueled a more generalized and conscious defiance:

I hated the teachers. They sucked. School in general, I couldn’t—there were specific things I hated about every school. In each one there were things I didn’t like. But the general concept of school was something I also hated. I didn’t like the idea of being forced to study, out of a threat to a family unit . . . if I don’t go to school, my parents will be fined, sent to jail, whatever. [ . . . ] Also, the way in which I was being made to study, and what I was being made to study, in every school that I ever went to, was horrible. Horribly chosen and horribly executed, and I knew more than some of the teachers did and I certainly was able to organize [ideas] better than they were.

Thus Jack spent the remainder of his formal education (which lasted until he was sixteen and able to arrange alternative schooling) refusing to do as instructed. He changed many of his assignments to things he thought were more logical or productive, and completed them so well that none of the four schools he attended was willing to give up on him entirely.

In her study of identity projects in three different youth communities, Amy Wilkins finds that the Goth scene she studied consisted largely of former geeks (2008). For her, geeks “are marked by over investment in adult middle-class values—studious, industrious and often technologically adept” (2008, 27). In this view, geeks are a contemporary incarnation of the “nerd” of the eight- ies. The self-defined geeks in Caeden are neither studious nor, in many cas- es, particularly industrious. Perhaps the mainstream stereotype that captures geekiness as I intend it here, distinct from Wilkins’ geeks, is that of the gamer, then—well-read in particular realms, technologically proficient, but academi- cally and socially less so. Geekiness in Caeden is characterized by a resistance to conformity and rule-following, at least in regard to education.

Despite their rejection of conventional approaches to intellectual develop- ment, most of my respondents identified as “good” kids. When Frank identified himself as a misfit, I asked whether he was one in high school. He responded: “I was too good to be a true misfit. But don’t forget, I was a misfit because I was fucking since I was thirteen.” Similarly, my respondents generally viewed themselves as cooperative and rule-abiding:

I think I was a pretty social kid. I mean, generally I was the brain kid, amongst the crowd. I was totally—at least I felt this way—I felt total- ly awkward as a child. But. . . I was somewhat of a klutz and a brain and I was awkward and wickedly sarcastic and alienated, and I probably would’ve become Goth if Goth had existed. But I was too straight-laced. You know, any opportunities that I had for drinking or drugs, I was like, no, I don’t do that. (Interview transcript, Seth)

[When I tell people I’m a good girl] it just sounds geeky. I was a good girl. I was a very good girl. I was a good student. I was a good daughter. My brother has some developmental issues, so I was the perfect child also. [ . . . ] Even if I was an only child, had to get the grades, never got below a B, you know, did as I was told, I’d say 98% of the time. (Interview transcript, Leah)

There were exceptions, however. Jeri, Jessica, and Shane all had histories of poor performance in school and drug use.
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Jeri, who was overweight and identified as a lesbian, is also of mixed identity. She recalled:

I’ve always been an outside the box. I mean, literally, no matter what it was. In high school, you know, I was a smoker, I did drugs, you know, whatever was outside the parameters of normal society, I always did that. I got a tattoo, I got a nose piercing, I—whatever.

Feelings of social marginality among American children are not unusual, but the collective marginal experience of the people in Caeden is profound. Distinct in scope from typical adolescent angst by bodily nonconformity and social awkwardness, many people in Caeden did not feel like outsiders merely at an awkward point in their lives; they were outsiders throughout their lives. Emerging from their preadolescent years without “corrections” to their geeki- ness and incidental androgyny, they were outsiders, and they remain outsiders as adults—quite apart, at least it would seem, from their interest in SM.

Throughout their lives, the members of Caeden have inhabited non-normative bodies, have maintained incidentally androgynous presentations, and have— always—felt much too smart for social acceptance. Even beyond these char- acteristics, however, interview respondents’ narratives of marginality included feelings and perspectives about their families. More than half of them felt that, during childhood, it had been necessary for them to take care of themselves, their parent/s, or a sibling. In most cases, this reflected the circumstances, most commonly, a parent with addiction, bipolar disorder, or depression, or a sibling with a developmental disorder. In other cases, the adults in the home could not be trusted to care for the children; five of my respondents disclosed either physi- cal or sexual abuse in the family. In addition, six had experienced the death of a parent at a young age, and three others had parents who divorced. Of the twenty people who participated in formal interviews with me, only one did not fit at least one of these profiles. My conversations with members of the Caeden scene even outside of formal interviews revealed similar family histories throughout the community. These stories are filled with tumult and trauma, leaving many of the people in Caeden deeply convinced that their lives were vastly different from the lives of everyone else, and feeling profoundly socially isolated.