Boys will be Boys
In listening to the Dr. Death podcast last week I was struck by how intimately familiar the story and characters felt. Having also grown up in Memphis, I relate to Christopher Duntsch’s teenage football obsession, his Beale Street debauchery, even his relocation to Dallas and the halls of Baylor Plano where he practiced. The accents and speech cadence of the podcast’s interviewees were those of my childhood. But most familiar of all was Duntsch’s unbridled narcissism.
There’s a cancerous level of entitlement that we Americans impart on our chosen — i.e. white, wealthy, Christian, heterosexual, football-loving boys. They are never critiqued. They can do no wrong. No matter what they do and to whom they do it. So it’s no surprise that when they grow up and enter God-complex professions such as neurosurgery that they can’t handle even the slightest humanizing bump on their gilded yellow brick road. I used to think that the South elevated the entitlement of their chosen boys to yet another level entirely, but then the unhinged narcissism of our previous president has made me reconsider.
I was first introduced to the brutal grandiosity of white, wealthy, Christian, heterosexual, football-loving boys when I was twelve. My mother pulled me out of my Whitehaven* elementary school and enrolled me in Memphis University School (aka MUS), a fancy all-boys prep school across town. We couldn’t afford it, nor had I the pedigree to attend, but I secured a scholarship from the company where my mother worked (the company’s CEO, her boss, was a notable alum and donor. I’m sure that helped).
*Note: Whitehaven is a former white-flight suburb of Memphis that according to BetterTennessee.com is named after a pre-Civil War settler and property mogul Col. Francis White who was “instrumental in establishing the Mississippi-Tennessee Railroad line, which opened the area up to the cotton trade” (based on this tidbit, I assume the Col. means Confederate colonel). BetterTennesse goes on to say that, “In 1860 there were 653 white people living in Whitehaven, one free black man, and 1,671 slaves.” Whitehaven, BetterTennesse — the irony, or lack thereof, would be comical if it weren’t so offensive.
Of additional note, Memphis is a predominantly Black city and has been since 1970. When I enrolled in MUS in 1973, every student was white. But I digress.
Given I had grown up surrounded and been often bullied by entitled Southern, white, Christian, heterosexual, football-loving boys you would think I would have been prepared for MUS. But the level of entitlement that wealth added to the mix was staggering. Due to my family’s lower-middle class economic status, one of my many nicknames was coal miner, a moniker that wasn’t disabused by the administration that insisted that we scholarship kids serve lunch to our wealthy classmates. The clear message: I may be allowed to attend MUS, but I was not an MUS boy. Fine by me.
Popular MUS boys could do no wrong. Especially the football players and the lackeys that surrounded them. Many of them had a mean streak a mile wide.
I was targeted immediately. In my first few weeks at MUS some of my new classmates locked me in my school locker and left me for hours until discovered by my English teacher (who was also one of the football coaches), who punished me for missing class. As previously stated, I was no stranger to bullying but the complicity of adults was new to me.
A week or so later that same teacher mocked me in front of the class for having a limited knowledge of female anatomy (after reading aloud a homework assignment to write down the definition of the longest word we could find in the dictionary. Mine was vulvovaginitis. My teacher’s reponse was vicious. The class erupted in laughter). This public humiliation by a teacher / football coach marked me as fair game, and so I kept my head down and tried to disappear. Even this was noticed (blender— MUS vernacular for one who blends into his surroundings— was yet another of my nicknames), though I managed to avoid any additional major altercations. Thus, I spent my six MUS years on the sidelines, observing.
The MUS elite were gods, idolized by everyone — classmates of lesser status, the girls from the neighboring all-girl school, teachers, coaches, the administration … everyone. Their meanness was laughed off as hubris. Boys will be boys, as they say. The years crawled by.
Just before my MUS graduation, there were rumors of an incident inappropriate enough to draw the administration’s attention. Apparently, there had been a rowdy night out with a girl from a neighboring school. There were whispers of a “gang bang.” The girl’s name echoed through the halls with accompanying laughter. I was shocked, but couldn’t confess that to any of my classmates because my sensitivity and naïveté would be ridiculed. The whispers circulated for a week or so, until finally there was a modest administrative rebuke. I don’t recall exactly what was said, but I do remember that it wasn’t the incident per se that was offically frowned upon, rather the fact the some of the night’s partipants made loosely veiled references to the incident in the yearbook. As far as I know, the yearbook commentary remained unchanged and the boys graduated without censure.
A few years ago I pulled out my senior yearbook to peruse its pages and see if my MUS experience was as bad as I remembered. I opened its cover and saw a sad, scant smattering of a few classmates’ signatures — not the tiny scripted, text-to-the-magins, note-filled pages one expects. (Interesting that as I write about MUS, I use words like peruse, scant, and smattering. Maybe I’m still trying to prove myself).
One note stuck out: Drew, I’ve admired the way that you’ve put up with the things people have said and done to you. I shut the yearbook and haven’t revisited it since, except last night to take the below pic of said note.
My Memphis upbringing was not the only thing I have in common with Dr. Death. When the second episode of the podcast detailed Duntsch’s move to Dallas, I recalled my 68-yr-old, severely bipolar mother’s move from Memphis to Dallas and her psychiatrist at Baylor Plano, where Duntsch practiced. In her long battle with the disease, she had been treated by myriad doctors at various institutions, including a 6-month stint at Silver Hill psychiatric hospital. But her new Don’t-Mess-With-Texas psychiatrist thought he knew better than all those who came before him. He deemed that she wasn’t bipolar, just overmedicated. He took her off her mood regulators, which sent her flying so high that when she finally came down, the embarrassment of her extreme mania compelled her to forever swear off all other treatments. She chose instead to waste away the rest of her life in a deep depression.
Anyhoo, as the Dr. Death podcast became increasingly gruesome, I was struck by the fact that nothing about Christopher Duntsch’s life surprised me. Growing up as a revered football star in Memphis. The Tennessee college system that let him graduate with a fraction of surgical participation usually required to graduate any medical residency, let alone neurosurgery. Practicing in America’ most individualistic state where the rights of the individual — especially the wealthy, white, credentialed individual — far surpasses that of societal well-being.
I wasn’t even surprised with Christopher Duntsch’s incriminating email about his “building an empire” and being “ready to … become a cold blooded killer” just as I was not surprised by Trump’s “grab them by the pu$$y” locker room banter or his bragadocious, “I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” I have seen firsthand how coddled hubris thickens the entitlement of the chosen, transforming it over time into narcissism and ever-increasing savagery. And we Americans love it.
I do not mean to stereotype the all Southern white, wealthy, Christian, heterosexual, football-loving men as amoral sociopaths. Some of by best friends are Southern white, wealthy, Christian, heterosexual, football-loving men. Not that many, but some.
No, it’s not the South, its politics, or its racial dynamics that I’m primarily reflecting on in this post. It’s the level of unmitigated entitlement of the chosen that I experienced during my childhood there. Entitlement that is cosseted and groomed by family members and friends and churches and schools and all the other supportive players and institutions of the system that surround and feed its insatiable hunger. Entitlement that goes unchallenged for years until one day, far too late in life, it is finally challenged and those big, vulnerable, narcissistic egos that have never been critiqued and have no capability for introspection or personal culpability resort to denial and blame. And ultimately, outright delusion.
While I had a hard go of it at MUS, I appreciate the consequences of my time there. My MUS education was far beyond that of the Memphis public school system at the time and my experience there thickened my skin and led me down a path of utter self-reliance. Which led to confidence, social acumen, business success, a loving husband, and ultimately to a very happy life. And while I don’t want anybody to experience the level of bullying that I did, I also believe that overcoming challenges early in life builds character and resilience. Those of us who are destined to be othered — by our race, gender, sexuality, or whatever differences our peers deem worthy of derision — encounter such challenges in the natural course of our childhoods. Some way more than others. If we are able to overcome these challenges, we thrive. The entitled chosen ones who sail through their childhoods with nothing but praise and gold stars often masking their true mediocrity … well, let’s just hope they don’t become neurosurgeons. Or presidents.
Postscript
In the fall of 2019, Just before the pandemic, I took my husband, Nick, to Memphis for the first time to attend my 40th highschool reunion. We toured the city and visited my childhood home in Whitehaven as well as the MUS campus. He was shocked by the disparity of the two. As he was by the opulence of my classmate’s 190-acre estate (smack dab in the middle of Memphis) where the reunion party was held.
I saw friends I hadn’t seen in years—I did make a few—and did not blend into a corner. Instead, I mingled with the chosen, former football players and all. It took immense effort; it’s crazy how deep our childhood scars run. At one point during the party the photographer called “the boys” outside (remaining inside, Nick had to explain to the female spouses—all white like their husbands—that he was also a spouse. And thus we became the extent of the party’s diversity).
The atmosphere was jocular and just before the shoot, one of my classmates said, “We haven’t been this boisterous since …” and then they said the name of the girl who had been rumored to be gang-banged 40 years prior. I reeled; the totality of my MUS experience came rushing back. Though newly disgusted, I was no longer shocked. Boys will be boys.
