I Was a Teenage Alien

Form III-S, Poole Grammar School, Dorset. 1969

(Motto: "We Are Better Than You.")

There is a huge difference in academic curricula between British and American schools. At around age fourteen, American students are still struggling with English, while British students have already moved on to Latin and French. Since I was to spend the equivalent of the 8th grade in a British all-boys prep school, I had to be tutored in French and Latin before going over. That was how I spent my entire 7th grade summer vacation; amo, amas, amat – il porte un rouge cravat.

On arrival, I was excused from third-year French and did poorly in second-year Latin, so the other boys readily assumed I was stupid. Coming from a deeply liberal American family, I was also exempted from Chapel and Religious Studies, so I was further assumed to be a Stupid Heathen.

The variance in educational custom was so great, I was bound to err at every turn. Everything I said or did was wrong, provoking the masters’ ridicule, disgust, and thwacks on the skull with heavy signet rings. This example spread to the general population; the other inmates made me for a chump.

I didn't know the first thing about the simplest procedure, so I was the perfect butt of all pranks. Especially regarding vernacular since I didn't yet know the difference between general British idiom and schoolboy argot. On the first day, in gym class, I desperately needed what I would have called “The Bathroom.” I didn't know if I was permitted to leave without being excused, or how to request the excuse, so I asked the boy next to me. He explained.

A few moments later, as I walked toward the instructor, a wave of urgent whispers followed behind me, silencing the noisy gym. Everyone was watching. Feeling much too conspicuous to speak loudly, I approached the man rather closely and, toe-bouncing to distract my bladder, I lowered my voice to a pubescent stage-whisper. "Please, sir," I recited, "can I have a wank in the bog?"

If that sounds implausibly gullible to you, consider that I had only just that day learned that fries were chips, and chips were crisps, and sneakers were called "Plimsoles." Daily life was full of words I'd never heard before, I was simply trying to assimilate. I suppose it was my absolute sincerity that made it so awful (and so funny to everyone else). It was also the thing that saved me, as the instructor understood at once exactly what had happened. He was kind to me and he punished the class. Their chastening did not redeem them, it became a focal point of inspiration to punish me anew in other ways.

The whole school seemed to have the story by the next day, and thereafter I was called "Wank" or “Frank the Wank” or time permitting, "Frank the Wank, You Bloody Yank, Go Back To Vietnam." I was taunted a lot about Vietnam, it being my fault and all. Not only was this decidedly unfunny to me, it was terrifying. I had friends with not-much older brothers who had been killed there. Ultimately, the draft ended just a few months before it would have been my turn to go, but I spent my entire teen-age dreading it. At the time of this taunting, I was certain that my high school graduation present would be that very trip to Southeast Asia, while these particular boys would be sipping tea at University.

In the interest of international relations (and being generally afraid), I took it all in stride and silently endured months of being tripped up, shoved, kicked, wrestled, pinned, intimidated, humiliated, and verbally abused whenever possible by any boy older than me. Surprisingly, no one ever actually hit me, it was only a lot of anti-climactic posturing, shouting and shoving.

The manner of expression in these confrontations was inspired by showdowns in American movies, western movies, gangster movies, war movies -- anything American that represented hostility, which was a lot even then. But I never fought or spoke back. I thought if I remained calm they might get bored and leave me alone, but they never seemed to tire of picking on me for being a hostile, barbarian Yank.

My cell-mate was an equally out-of-place and unpopular boy from New Zealand. His name was Alan, but he was called "Droopy," for his downtrodden look. He'd got that look the year before, having been tormented in his turn about being a Maori Aboriginal, which he clearly was not. As the Incumbent Alien, he was pleased to see me arrive to take over the hot seat. He would commiserate with me in private, but any time trouble arose, Droopy would remember a pressing engagement elsewhere, knowing that as soon as my shit was done, he was likely to get some next.

One day Droopy left me in the clutches of some older boys, surrounded by a circle of onlookers. Two of them held my arms and a third was jabbing his finger at my face, shouting something about John Wayne. Now I don't care what anyone says about John Wayne, I found all the rest of it unpleasant.

I began to struggle blindly and got myself twisted around. I gave a spastic jerk and pulled with all my might against one of my captors. Suddenly, my right arm came unstuck very forcefully. It had a fist on the end of it, and a lot of momentum behind it, and it struck the finger-jabber smack dab on his solar plexus, with more than enough force to knock the wind completely out of him.

He dropped like a sack of potatoes and lay there motionless, seemingly dead. All the other boys gasped and stepped back in horror. I was the last one to understand what had happened, but I was the only one to know that it was an accident. He started to come around as I approached him to apologize. When he discovered himself injured, on the ground, in the middle of a circle with me standing over him, he scrambled away in a very satisfying panic. I turned to the circle of onlookers, and they dispersed.

I would like to say that this made me a beloved popular hero, the underdog who finally said, "Enough!" But I was now perceived as dangerously unpredictable, some crazy guy with a knockout punch and a hair trigger.

After that, the main offenders regarded me with anxious smiles and gave wide passage wherever I went. They made sure to never step within arm's reach, lest I smite them unconscious with my barbaric American pugnacity. I always smiled back, and I never threatened anyone, but I let them go on fearing the punch that never came again. That one accidental blow was enough to end the harassment for the rest of my stay.

When I had behaved peacefully, they despised me for my presumed native hostility. Yet once they had finally goaded me to hostility, they behaved in a most submissive manner. I was forced to become their stereotype before they would stop torturing me as their stereotype.

Since there were no teenage girls to be found anywhere on my earth at that time, I spent all my evenings watching television. My sense of humor was inspired by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in "Not Only But Also..."; The Spike Milligan Show; the Dick Emery show; "Carry On --" movies; and the premiere season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And while his classmates were worshipping French and studying God, the Stupid Heathen Barbarian spent every one of those hours in the school library, poring over collected volumes of Punch magazine.

So I came back to the States a funny adolescent, in more ways than one. Unfortunately, due to completely natural attempts a camouflage, I had gradually acquired a slight English accent that I could not hear myself. Now the American kids all assumed I was English. I was once again a teenage alien -- this time in my own home town. So the boys began taunting and bullying me for that. And for my Carnaby Street swishy-mod outfits.

But I didn’t care because suddenly the girls – the same teenage girls who never noticed me at all two years prior – didn’t recognize me at all on the other side of puberty and they now followed me around in a giggling entourage, begging to hear me talk and wanting to know everything about me.

In that sense, being a “foreigner” worked out pretty well for me. For a while. I was invited to lots of parties and dances. Until my younger brother spilled the beans and told them who I really was. From that moment on, no girl at that school ever spoke to me again.