Hasta La Gadget!

We were on a dirt road in the cotton fields, sitting in the back of his Plymouth. It had been my idea to stop and look at the sky, but it wasn’t coming off like a sneaky move now, because the moon was full and bright and gorgeous. I’d been playing along, but I wished he would make his move. This was the part that was always kind of boring. He was nice, though, and good-looking, maybe around 35.

It’s a balmy Louisiana night in 1975, and I’m 14 years old.

Everything went as planned, and he got me home on time, so no one suspected anything. But he was a lot more nervous about it than I was.

And that was the routine during my teenage years. I had given up trying to mess around with other boys, because it took forever to talk them into anything, and I didn’t want them to freak out about it. So I got involved in community theater productions during the summer, playing bit parts or working the spotlight, just to be in the company of gay men. Then it was just a matter of getting some time alone with them.

My strategy for getting laid worked with some regularity, and it never occurred to me that there might be something inappropriate or perverse or even criminal about it — at least, it never occurred to me.

People tell me that the criminal ramifications most certainly occur to them. They say I was molested or abused, and that it was the very definition of the word “statutory.” They say I was dealing with adults who had the capacity to know better. And, most bruising to my ego, they tell me that my seductive charms were irrelevant, and that perhaps it was the adults who were doing the manipulating.

Now, 40 years later, I wonder if my teenage memories are trustworthy, and if it set the stage for an adulthood in ways I’ve failed to acknowledge. Before I became a man, before the failed relationships and the sexual compulsions and the drug addiction, there was an adolescent who traveled side roads with strangers and took dangerous walks in public parks. And it is that boy, not the legion of adults I encountered, who fascinates and saddens me.

Was my fate sealed in the cotton fields of Louisiana?

The men I coaxed to those dusty roads aren’t villainous to me, and I still can’t allow them to be left dangling in guilt and shame. I won’t reduce them to simple pathology.

I met Jim in August, right before my freshman year in high school. The summer musical was 1776, and I was a stagehand. It was practically an all-male cast, so it was a busy summer. After a matinée performance one afternoon, I asked Jim for a ride to a pool party that someone was throwing for the cast and crew. Once inside his car, I told him I’d forgotten my bathing suit and asked if we could stop at his place so that I could borrow one. What followed was a pitiful half-naked fashion show in his bedroom and a brief, awkward encounter between us.

Afterwards, I happily got back in the car, but Jim wasn’t talking much. He had become really quiet as soon as we were done. We had driven a few blocks when Jim let out a kind of cough, like he was trying to stifle something and it burst out anyway. I looked over, and his whole face was wet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I had seen men in some personal situations, but I had never seen one cry.

He pulled the car over and turned it off. Suddenly, everything felt quiet and important.

“What is it?” I asked in a careful voice. “Am I in trouble?” He was searching the car console for something and found a packet of Kleenex. He held it in his lap and started to speak while he opened it.

“I’m twice your age, Mark,” he said into his lap. His eyes were little cups of water, spilling. He turned to me. “You’re 15 years old. I’m twice your age. Twice.”

His mathematics meant nothing to me. His expression toward me, though, sad and quizzical, felt like he was trying to read my mind. It made me uncomfortable. I didn’t know what he wanted. I sat there and said nothing.

He turned away and gulped back more tears. And then he asked the most mysterious question of all. “Don’t you… just want to be 15, Mark?”

I had no idea what the man was talking about. I sat staring at him with my mouth open. I was completely stumped. Seconds went by, and the car was silent.

My confusion seemed to disappoint him, because he shook his head slowly and looked back out the window. He was still very upset.

He wasn’t simply crying out of guilt, they tell me now. They insist that he was deflecting his own criminal behavior by blaming me for not acting my age. They tell me that he was the one who had trapped me and I didn’t even know it.

Whatever the case, I think Jim got more than he bargained for. I think he was a little frightened by the manipulative and unemotional 15-year-old sitting in his car that afternoon. And I think it saddened him because he cared about me.

And yes, I felt trapped, all right, if only because I felt trapped in his car in this moment, where things were not going as I’d planned, because after 10 minutes we were still parked on the side of the road, and Jim wouldn’t stop crying. I was staring at my shoelaces, because I couldn’t imagine that a grown guy would want anyone to see him like this. He must have been so embarrassed. And I wished he would start the car, because the party was going on, and there were probably lots of people having fun around the pool, and I really wanted to be there.

I finally looked over at him, and he was blowing his nose. Maybe that means we’ll get moving again, I was thinking. Jim didn’t say anything else, but he did finally turn the ignition, and the car rumbled to a start.

I was so relieved. I really wanted to see what was happening at the party.

Amma is a spiritual leader who says her religion is love.

She is well known for her embraces and apparently tracks them, with 32 million embraces and running.

She actually has a counter to keep track of them.

She began this hugging marathon as a young girl in India but was told it wasn’t proper. She did it anyway because she felt a calling to comfort others. I admire people like her who do things anyway, even when it’s not considered proper.

At any rate, I have a friend who was determined to get one of those hugs so I went along for the ride curious to meet this robust hugger. Anyone who can embrace people for 20 hours straight has my respect for sheer endurance alone.

When we went to collect that hug, we got a closer look at this spiritual leader’s doings and how she has done so much for so many. Her work includes disaster relief, housing for the homeless and health care.
Once asked by the BBC “Why do you hug people?'” Amma replied: “That’s like asking a river ‘why do you flow?’ It simply flows because that’s its nature …”

If you ever doubt that one person can make a difference in this world, just think of Amma and all of her charitable work. And if that’s not enough to convince you, toss in her 32 million hugs.

Check out our inspiring video at www.gratitudereport.com.

Nicholas Wade has taken to The Huffington Post to respond to criticism of his book. In his response to comments by me, Jon Marks and Jennifer Raff, he does not take on any substantive aspect of the debate; rather, he misrepresents the science again and takes a shot at our credentials as scholars. Wade is wrong when he says that “opposition to racism should be based on principle, not on science.” The study, understanding and assessment of race must involve science.

Here is a very quick response to Wade’s comments, in hopes of correcting the record and getting this debate back to the science.

1) There is a biological basis (measurement and definition) for race. We can measure it by comparing populations within a species — and by that measure, the entire species (all populations) of Homo sapiens sapiens (us) currently falls into just one biological race. This is not an assertion that biological races cannot exist, or a political statement by left-wing academics. This is an accurate assessment of the current biological and evolutionary data.

2) This does not mean that what most refer to as “races” (“white,” “black,” “Asian,” etc.) don’t matter. They do. These are real categories in our social and political lives. But the ways these categories are created and defined are not scientifically valid biological categories; they are constructs that are put together based on social, historical, economic, and political features, and then superficially and erroneously linked with certain selected biological features (skin color, facial form, clusters of alleles, etc.). This does not mean that they are not socially relevant and a real part of our society; it just means that they are not biological categories (and thus are not the products of evolutionary histories).

3) Wade asserts that his critics “are heavy on unsupported condemnations of the book, and less generous with specific evidence.” This is wholly untrue. For example, I challenged him on specific studies (that he cites in the book) and asked him to engage with the analyses of the data and the ways in which it is interpreted in those and related studies. He refused to do this in our webinar and simply repeats that refusal here (and avoids mentioning the webinar altogether).

4) Ironically, Wade suggests that my criticisms of his book are weak because I do “little primary research,” and that my academic reputation is not very good. But how much actual research has Wade done? Has he had to go through the tenure and promotion process based on peer-reviewed original work? I did. I have current primary-research fieldwork projects in the areas of human-primate interactions (including behavior, population genetics, disease transmission and ecology), and I have an active research project looking into recent human evolution (over the last 300,000 to 400,000 years) and the development of complex social cooperation. I have a number of other smaller projects ongoing as well and have spent more than 26 years doing fieldwork and labwork and publishing peer-reviewed articles and books in anthropology and biology. Wade should have at least had a look at my CV before questioning my credentials.

5) Discussion about race and biology need to be focused on what the data are and what they mean, and they need to reflect current understandings of how the science works. Wade shows his continuing ignorance of biology and genetics when he states, “Unlike identical twins, we are not all clones.” If he had a grasp on current genetics, he would see how absurd this statement is. Twins are not identical to clones, and even clones with the same DNA can have strikingly different morphologies. Science matters, and getting the science right is the core of any discussion about race. Humans vary biologically, and we are not all the same. But there is only one biological race at present in our species. Understanding that, and the science behind it, is critical.

I stand by my (and others’) scientific critiques of Wade’s use and misuse of the data from human population genetics and human evolutionary studies. I am convinced that this can be a meaningful and intelligent discussion. If Nicholas Wade ever wants to sit down again and this time actually discuss the research, the data, and the complex reality of human biological variation and human evolution, I would be glad to do it.