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Cursed From The Start
Some young males are cursed, doomed to an early, violent demise. I’ll leave the “profiles” to the psychologists and sociologists, but the fact is, some of us are simply ill-equipped to survive and predestined to self-destruct. I will say this: the number of human males so doomed is likely predictable, constant, and inevitable.
My parents moved our family to a small blue collar city just outside Boston when I was eight. Within a week, I’d been in a few scrapes, moving my way up the established order. I was a rugged little kid with no quit and dispatched all takers. This put me in a nearly permanent position in the “chair” in Principal Fortunato’s office at North Beverly Elementary, staring at the clock long after everyone else had been dismissed for the day. One day, after my eventual dismissal, I walked out of school to find a bunch of kids waiting for me. I’d reached the end of the line; Timmy wanted to settle things. Timmy was a problem child: smart and athletically gifted, but reckless, unruly, surly, and unrepentant. I was selected as his next victim, somewhat strange as I was more than a year younger than he was; but I had so upset the established order, I had been launched to the top of the list to be vanquished.
At the time, I knew nothing of this kid. I sized him up as nothing special, no bigger and likely lighter than me. I could tell he had a reputation given the crowd he’d attracted. He launched after me like a wild animal and I took him to the ground. He refused to give in, so I choked him out.
After serial high school expulsions for a long list of offenses, Timmy quit school and took up crime full time. He died in jail before he could legally buy liquor. He was cursed.
My dearest friend’s older brother, Chuckie — two years my senior — introduced himself to me by killing a frog I’d captured. He shot the poor creature with an arrow then laughed as it suffered and died, but not before he threw the skewered amphibian high in the air to splat on the hot asphalt. Like Timmy, Chuckie was also removed from public high school and offered either reform school or a private high school. His parents sacrificed and selected an expensive, stern, rod-brandishing Catholic all-boys’ high school, but even the Jesuit Brothers could not tame Chuckie. They kicked him out, and soon he faced a choice of jail or Vietnam. He chose the Marines, was dishonorably discharged, and soon after his return home; he died of an overdose and exposure after he was dropped off in a snowbank in front of a hospital emergency room in the early morning winter darkness. Chuckie was also cursed.
Billy was from a tough part of town. He was a big kid for his age, a factor exascerbated by the fact that he was slow of wit and kept behind a year in school. Billy was also a bully and sadist who took pleasure in hurting others. Some kids were drawn to him — probably to reduce the risk of being another victim — and at least pretended to enjoy Billy’s depredations, giving him an audience and attention. Billy never bothered me and I was never one of his sycophants. I’d earned exemption for being too difficult to torture; I would put up too much of a fight. As Billy grew older, he grew bigger still and his antics became much more random and violent. He would beat people for no reason, brag about it, and admit to being a racist.
Billy quit high school to work as a thug and collector for a local crime boss; rumor had it that he’d moved up in the organization. He was murdered before he reached the age of thirty. He was also one of the cursed.
Here is the truth about some boys: they are predestined to live short and violent lives. It’s likely that poor Michael Brown and Treyvon Martin both suffered more from this curse than from anything else. Folks like to blame these violent ends on racism, police brutality or unfortunate circumstances. It’s not that at all. The curse is indiscriminate, and knows neither skin color nor paternity. It robs a certain number of unlucky young men of an adequate sense of right and wrong, proportion, caution, and any sense of self-preservation. This leads to anti-social, violent, self-destructive behavior — almost always — to an early violent end.
Some boys can never be tamed or civilized.
Published in General
Billy, above, *was* a curse. The only sign of God’s mercy in the story is that he perished before he destroyed more lives. “Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell”.
I do not believe this is a female problem.
I wholeheartly disagree. The level of severe pathology and personality disorders in women is starting to become more apparent within clinical circles. The Feminist ideology many clinicians believe in forces them to subvert, minimize, and/or discount the fact that women are just as likely to be self destructive as men. It may not be necessarily be in a violent manner (although that too is a growing problem) but the self destruction in seeking dangerous and damaging lifestyles has only grown. I believe it will take a catastrophic and continuous instances of female pathology for society to truly accept that women can be deeply disturbed individuals capable of horrifying acts.
I think “cursed” is too strong a word. I think “momentum” or “free fall” would be better. Things can be turned around but it takes a lot of brakes and breaks for this to happen. It is a cliche but there is truth in it “The acorn does not fall far from the oak.”
I would like to focus on the positives. Some of us have been blessed with imperfect but intact families, fathers who were men of honor, and mothers who sacrificed and loved. I like the following quote.
Values are the re-bar of our lives without it no matter how solid a person looks cracks will form and things will crumble.
I’m not sure I would use the word “cursed” as it comes across as being a bit supernatural. (In preschool Little Jimmy opened the mummy’s tomb four doors down from his house and was cursed from the get-go…)
What I would say that we are all born with flaws and imperfect. What determines our outcome is the level of love and support we get along the way. God knows I shudder to think what my life would be like (if I still had one) had my wife not entered my life when she did.
Which is one of the most exasperating thing about modern life and its politics. Liberals are always harping about setting up “support structures,” all the while they work fervently to destroy the most natural, basic and successful support structures ever conceived: marriage, parenting and the church. But the state can never offer the intimacy (and that’s not a word to be confused with the word “sex”), the strength of bond or the hope of those three.
Henry Thoreau said that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation” and I think that’s true. We all need help to assuage our fears and insecurities. It starts with an intact family, carries on to finding love and starting the process anew, and ends with our faith assuring us that it wasn’t all an exercise in futility. To do those things is hard under the best of situations.
Now it’s a miracle they happen at all given the fact that we give voice and credence to a band of miserable people hell bent on tearing it all down.
Re comment # 34
Your comment is moving and so true.
I have a son who–I swear–would be in prison or dead by now if he hadn’t met a beautiful woman coping with a disability who needed his love and protection. The way he has been changed by the relationship is nothing less than a miracle. They’ve been together 14 years, at least, and have 2 children.
Funny, everyone thinks of all he’s done for her, but I know his relationship with her saved his life.
I’m of the belief that civil society rests on a feeble fulcrum: ready to tip at the slightest pressure. How else can we explain the chaos that ensued post Katrina, the riots in Fergusson, the cruel depredations of ISIS. Men are capable of the most horrific cruelty and some of us lack an innate ability to set aside these tendencies for our own and others’ good. The boys I described came from modestly challenging circumstances that others seem to easily overcome. The first, Timmy, was an intelligent and beautiful boy from a large, loving extended family. Chuckie was also a handsome boy and was said to be intellectually gifted, an assertion I don’t doubt. His too younger brothers, great people, were also very bright. I knew Chuckie’s parents like family; they were gentle, generous and nice people; they didn’t have much, but they were hard working and they too had a large, loving extended family. Both Timmy and Chuckie’s families were faithful members of local churches and dedicated, loving parents. I knew less of Billy’s upbringing and it was likely a bit harder, yet his siblings were very nice.
I don’t know what ingredient was missing that made these boys so antisocial and self-desrtuctive, but I believe it was innate and nearly impossible to overcome.