Mind Nomad Writing

Magic Johnson taught me about the ‘s word.’ Not directly, of course, which isn’t to say he wouldn’t have. In fact, I’m pretty sure Magic Johnson probably would have been willing to sit my scrawny punk ass down and share the cold hard truth with me. In fact, I’m almost certain he would have been open to such a feat of humanitarian benevolence. Ironically enough, Magic Johnson gave his time and money to help redevelop a section of downtown Denver south of my eventual college campus. As a result of Mr. Johnson’s generosity, I had the great pleasure of seeing his blown-up smiling face on the walls of the local coffee shop – it was a two-for-one deal for me – I could grab much needed caffeine while being reminded of the birds and bees as I rushed to class.

So, Magic Johnson’s willingness to give back to the community was never the impediment to his being even more directly involved in my sex education. Rather, it was more a feature of timing and setting. I haven’t verified it but I suspect that Magic was a little too busy furnishing his hall of fame career to spend much, if any, time in the middle(ish) class suburban community I was raised in, southwest of Denver. 

For all that area lacked in terms of diversity – diversity of life experiences, skin colors, exciting opportunities – it made up for in the realm of weighty life lessons. In fact, just about one year after Mr. Johnson taught me there was more to consider in my interactions with peers than hugs, coodies, and the Zap game. The local high school taught me there was more to consider than bullies, friends, and honor classes when 15 students and 1 teacher lost their lives inside the walls of the same school.

Flashback to the simpler days of the year before – the year when my nightmares were composed with the haunting images of standing nearly naked in my underwear in front of the girls in my classroom – this was the year of Magic Johnson’s profound influence on my coming of age story. It was during this year that I learned that this basketball legend had contracted HIV. Before learning about this hero’s fate, all I knew about HIV was that these were letters in the alphabet. As a child of the late 80s raised in a conservative household, I also knew nothing of our nation’s checkered past with this disease, let alone the needless lives lost as a result of stigma, silence, and inaction.

Not yet aware of the reflexive hypervigilance customary on these topics – I forged ahead with the seemingly innocuous question to the adults in my life, “Mom and Dad, I heard Magic Johnson has HIV and has to take medications now. What does that mean? Will he be ok? Will I get it too?” What I recall most vividly about what happened next was not the deafening silence of my father. It was not the palpable tension that filled my childhood bedroom. It was not the strange darting motion of my father’s eyes or extreme craning of his neck as he avoided eye contact and treated the situation like some kind of car wreck to turn away from. It was not my mother’s rambling and imprecise description of the act of human sexual intercourse. 

What I remember most vividly is the pace at which things progressed. Within moments of placing the inflection on my final question, my parents – well really my mother – had whisked me and my captive father up the stairs and into my bedroom. It felt both hasty and calculated. It felt both urgent and premeditated. Looking back now, I know it was just opportunistic guilt – a sense of ‘oh shit, we should probably finally get this whole sex talk thing over with, now’s as good a time as any.’

With my concerns about HIV and Magic Johnson’s health unaddressed, I now had a somewhat blurry and vague picture of sexual intimacy painted in my mind. Really, all I knew at that point was that sex involved the act of removing undergarments and that I was not susceptible to HIV as I had not yet involved myself in sexual interactions. I was now left to draw my own conclusions about the act of sex – was it moral, was it safe? The takeaway was that sex is dangerous, certainly dirty, and potentially even life threatening. Powerful enough to harm and maim someone with as much stature, skill, and societal prominence as Magic Johnson.

To be clear, these conclusions were my own. It wasn’t as if my parents told lies about sex. It was just that there was plenty left up to my own imagination. And, the whole pace and tone of this ‘conversation’ communication that these topics – sex, HIV, the sexual exploits of famous athletes – were taboo and would not be revisited. To be clear, my parents did not say this to me directly. It was more of a sense, an intuition, a hearing the unspoken words in between the flood of unclear information spewing from my mother’s mouth and whatever it was that rendered my father’s mouth incapable of making sound. In fact, to this day, I’ve never heard my father so much as utter the ‘s word.’ In some of my more esoteric thoughts, I wonder whether my siblings and I are in fact products of immaculate conception. It doesn’t take long, however, for my head to descend from the clouds. Considering my mother in the role of Mother Mary and comparing myself and siblings to Jesus of Nazareth provides the humor and horror needed to sober up.

Fast forward to the complex future that awaited me just one year later – the year when my nightmares were built on intrusive thoughts and images of being shot dead while walking through middle school hallways – this was the year that two deeply wounded children turned the local high school into the set from a grisly slasher film – the kind filled with gore, loss of life and innocence, and oozing with unsettling and unresolvable fear. The shitty part about this movie was that there was no way to stop it and change the channel to something lighter. The swarming helicopters in the sky over my sleepy suburban community ensured I knew this was reality. This was not some dramatized production on a screen and was definitely not a dream. I was wide awake, becoming fast friends with insomnia.

Ironically, the pace and tone of the parental ‘guidance’ following the Columbine shooting – taking place about 5 minutes away from my childhood home – was reminiscent of the sterling quality of the ‘discussion’ I was ‘invited’ to ‘participate’ in when I asked about Magic Johnson’s diagnosis of HIV. The movement, speech, and behavior of my mother – all frenetic. The voice and instruction from my father – both absent. By this time, I had learned my lesson about how to navigate these kinds of ‘sensitive’ topics with my parents. I asked no questions. It wasn’t because I had none. In fact, I was filled with panic as I wondered how I would survive when I attended middle school the next school year, as I wondered about our safety being so close to the school, as I wondered how I should react if there was someone with a gun in my school, as I wondered whether I would be at risk when I returned to my school tomorrow. I had simply learned that it was best for me to figure these things out myself.

And it wasn’t just the sex talk that informed this conclusion. While the sex talk certainly assisted in arriving at my DIY strategies for managing life, it was just one of several iterations that provided me with the cuts, bruises, nightmares, and perseverating thoughts to help guide me to acknowledgement of my place and situation. If I was going to figure things out, if I was going to pursue sexual intimacy, if I was going to survive high school – it was on me to make it happen. So, I proceeded, relying on myself and the fractured pieces of information I could gather from unknowingly helpful role models, like Magic Johnson. I stumbled ahead in relationships, hiding a level of shame and self-consciousness that I did not know if I could truly prevent myself or others from contracting HIV – though also proud that I knew that any kind of intimacy would likely include a little more than simply removing undergarments. Hesitantly, I traversed the walls of middle and high school, scanning for exits, formulating escape plans for each classroom, and slowly making my peace with structures I feared would become my coffin. I’m certain the mosaics of knowledge I’ve constructed deviate from best pedagogical practices — but they’re the maps that exist within me. 

#Parentify me Capin’