The reason Martin and I fought so much was I never gave into his crap. If you were black, you hung out with the black kids.
There were clicks at the school which were mostly split along racial lines. He was basically my age, maybe a year older? The both of us were active in intramural sports and played on competing teams. One of cadet I would constantly get into fights with was named Martin. I knew guys who were relentlessly bullied for showing just the slightest hint of weakness. The minute someone smells it, it’s game over. You see when you go to an all-male school, it’s all about appearing tough and not showing any fear – not even a little. If I had a dime for all of the fights I got into I’d be rich. And even then, trouble had a way of finding you. So at Bryson you learned to keep your mouth shut and do as you were told. Some are in jail right now others are dead – no joke. In fact, several of the guys I went school with moved firmly in that direction. Here, I’m talking about young men who were on the knife’s edge of becoming criminals. But unlike me, a few of the boys could be classified as “at-risk”. Like me, most of the guys came from difficult homes. My first few years at the academy were difficult. Plus, it would be my first time being around nothing buy guys. My brother did too.īut secretly, I knew that going to Bryson would be way better than running the streets of a large city.
And I threw a fit when they broke the news. A lot.Īnd so being sent to an all-male school was almost a dream come true. I was still a “virgin” but I didn’t need a sexual experience as confirmation – I liked guys. At 15, I knew deep inside that I was and probably younger than that. What my family didn’t know when they shipped me off was that I was gay. I think my family thought Bryson would be a good place for us because the school offered three things that were sorely missing at home: Responsibility, Respect and Self-Discipline. The bulk of the money that allowed the place to operate (and still does) came from private donations and charitable gifts. In case you are wondering, Bryson offered a sliding scale fee so that any family could afford it. But as the years went on and times changed, it morphed into an “academy” a place that boys from broken homes were sent to. When it was originally founded, it was called Bryson Reform School. It’s a military boarding school that has been around for over 100 years. So after that happened, my mom’s side of the family held a pow-wow and decided it was best we went to “Bryson Academy*”. The tipping point happened when my brother and I got busted joyriding in a car we hot-wired. If we weren’t causing problems in the neighborhood, we were getting into trouble at public school. Without going into it, I’ll share with you that we were a handful. But it was better to live with her than dad because he had his own issues with alcohol and drugs. Today, it’s not as big of a deal but back in the 80’s, it still was frowned upon.Īnyway, once our p’s split, we ended up going with our mom a woman who could barely take care of herself, let alone teenage boys.
That’s a polite way of saying that our parents ended up getting divorced. There were numerous reasons for this, including the reality that we came from a “broken homes”. In fact, my brother and I both ended up getting sent away. When I was 15-years old, I was sent to a military boarding school.