Jed Wolf

Brunswick School for Boys was founded in 1902 Greenwich, Connecticut to prevent the “softening” of privileged masculinity. By the 1960s, when I attended, their Victorian ideals persisted. Behind the motto “Courage, Honor, Truth,” the Brunswick Bear logo’s unspoken mission was to prevent boys from becoming “fags.”

We marched single file through creaking hallways in brown uniforms and identical haircuts, passing like hushed trains. Teachers enforced rules with knowing smirks, using sticks to keep us in line. The “boys will be boys” ethic sanctified bullying, while tears marked you as prey. Some stayed twelve years if they played enough football and properly tormented underclassmen.

The locker room was its own theater of cruelty. Spontaneous erections drew ridicule, lingering teachers drew suspicion, and boys like me who tried to keep on our clothes were stripped bare. When my parents finally noticed my shredded dignity, they transferred me to public school. I traded penny loafers for go-go boots, brown corduroys for pin-striped bellbottoms, and began dreaming of bears.

No longer logo Bears – these dream creatures pursued me through darkness. When caught, they’d ask why I always ran. Therapists called them my power, but I kept running until last night’s dream: In a hardware store, testing a bear detector, I watched through an old fashioned screen door as a young bear climbed into my apparent horse’s corral. As I shouted, the bear attacked, then shape-shifted into a boy. “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop what, faggot?” it answered.

It’s the fifty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall. While friends head to St. Augustine Pride, I’m writing this in the car through Ocala National Forest, passing signs that warn “Watch for Bears.” Dave and I made these gay campground reservations months ago to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary.

I realize now I’m living Brunswick’s precepts after all: the Courage to skip Pride without guilt, the Honor to follow my own path, and the Truth that I’ll find more joy among real bears than imaginary. The best transformations take the longest time.