I 

knew 
I 
was 

attracted to men 
before I knew I was 
Attracted To Men. 

It began at my summer 
camp, 
a 
small 
wooded 

refuge 
tucked 
away 
in 

northern Wisconsin. There, 
one or two hundred boys or 
so, from age 9 to 15, played, 
swam, 
canoed, 
sailed, 

crafted, cooked, gathered, 
laughed, cried. I crushed. (I 
did those other things, too.)

I didn’t know how to 

describe it, so I didn’t. I 
let it smolder, carrying on 
summer after summer as 
I 
approached 
hormonal 

adolescence. We had our 
social with the girls’ camp. 
I flung a frisbee around 
with my friends. We talked 
about girls back home. “Ah, 
I’ve got no one,” I said.

I had my eyes on the older 

kids and, more commonly, 
the counselors — those 
who were spending their 
first one or two summers of 
college in rural Wisconsin, 
often 
sweating 
and 

shirtless. In recent months, 
as I sorted out my sexuality, 
both privately and publicly, 
I realized that maybe the 
reason why I didn’t like 
camp as much as the others 
was that, quite simply, I was 
surrounded by people I was 
attracted to. That’s pretty 
hard for the 36 weeks in 
total I spent as a camper 
there.

There’s a strange little 

movie that came out in 
the mid-1950s called “Tea 
and Sympathy,” which was 
adapted from a successful 
and 
controversial 
play 

that set its aim on crises 

in masculinity and gay 
panic. 
When 
the 
film 

moved from the stage to 
the screen, MGM, which 
had won the buying frenzy 
when the film’s rights were 
up for sale, struggled to 
adapt the subject material 
to something that would 
pass the stringent censors. 
Ultimately, 
the 
film’s 

focus changed from a gay 
student at an all-male prep 
school to an effeminate, but 

ultimately straight, student.

I don’t want to pass 

judgment 
on 
the 
film, 

mangled 
by 
the 
stifled 

politics of the conformist 
1950s, 
but 
“Tea 
and 

Sympathy” 
portrays 
a 

spirit and mentality rarely 
captured so painstakingly 
accurately. Protagonist Tom 
Lee’s crippling interiority 
— he is psychologically 
tormented 
for 
his 

femininity into submission 
and silence — far exceeds 
in severity my experience, 
but there are some similar 
strands. I kept to myself, 
feeling 
psychologically 

terrorized by the presence 
of the hyper-masculine.

And like Tom, I found 

myself in a strange place 
in a homosocial setting. 
I was rarely the object of 
derision, yet I couldn’t help 
but feel out of place in my 
cabin. Everyone was so 
straight. And not only was 
I not (though I didn’t quite 
have the word for it, and 
I didn’t grasp it), I was an 
introvert in a small space. 
There wasn’t much room 
for me.

One of the centerpieces of 

“Tea and Sympathy” is the 
very homoerotic (or at least 
sounding) hazing sequence, 
in which the older boys 
at the school run around 
and tear off the pajamas 
of the new students (how 
heterosexual!). Tom, called 
“sister boy” by his peers, is 
“protected” at the event by 
those who are quicker to see 
him as a woman than a man. 
I was included in activities, 
to be sure, but often my 
avoidance came from a 
sexual fear I could not at 
that time articulate. On 
the final evening of camp, 
my penultimate summer 
at least, the ninth graders 
(the oldest campers) played 
a naked basketball game. I 
avoided it at all costs.

That’s why, after watching 

“Tea and Sympathy,” I was 
surprised to find myself 
gravitating more toward 
another film, “Everybody 
Wants Some!!” Put simply, 

though the two films take 
place in similar settings, 
“Tea and Sympathy” is 
told by an outsider and 
“Everybody Wants Some!!” 
is told by an insider, a 
freshman in the baseball 
house at a Texas college 
enjoying his welcome week 
in 1980. Jake is the perfect 
freshman for (most of) the 
guys in the house: He is 
jovial, funny, pokes fun at 
the older jocks and hangs 
with the cool older guys. 
And yet he knows his place: 
He submits to the hazing 
rituals of his house, at the 
risk of losing his ability 
to have children, and he 
follows 
the 
older 
guys 

around.

But Jake thrives. And the 

best part is: He does it with 
his reserve. After the older 
guys strike out flirting with 
some girls moving into the 
dorms, one, played by Zoey 
Deutch, approaches their 
car, points to Jake and 
notes, “I like the quiet guy 
in the back seat.”

“Everybody 
Wants 

Some!!,” 
perversely 
I 

suppose, was a sort of wish 
fulfillment — an alternate 
reality in which I was 
well-liked, I was the heir 
apparent to the masculine 
reign, instead of the quiet 
kid in the corner who was 
largely 
ignored. 
It 
was 

fantasy, it was fictional, it 
was false. It was freedom.

2B

Managaing Statement Editor:

Lara Moehlman

Deputy Editors:

Yoshiko Iwai

Brian Kuang 

Photo Editor:

Alexis Rankin

Editor in Chief:

Emma Kinery

Design Staff:

Michelle Phillips

Hannah Myers 

Emily Hardie

Erin Tolar

Emily Koffsky

Managing Editor:

Rebecca Lerner

Copy Editors:

Elizabeth Dokas 

Taylor Grandinetti

Wednesday, November 15, 2017 // The Statement 

The picture stays in the kid: ‘Tea and Sympathy’

BY DANIEL HENSEL, DAILY FILM EDITOR

statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | NOVEMBER 15, 2017

ILLUSTRATION BY ERIN TOLAR

