A Push and a Shove

When I read a great book, I give it a good review on Goodreads (and Amazon if I bought it there), but some books deserve a little extra attention and A Push and a Shove by Christopher Kelly is one of those books. I just finished this book today and I'm still thinking about it. It's the story of a gay man, Ben, who was bullied during junior and high school by a guy named Terrence. Ben tracks Terrence down as an adult and the two men start to become friends. What's so fascinating about this book is Ben's desire for Terrence as a teenager and as an adult. After Terrence torments him day in and day out while they're kids and then pushes him down a flight of stairs causing him to have a concussion, Ben still longs to be with him. Oy! I highly recommend giving this book a read if you can get your hands on a copy. (It's out of print because the publisher went under and it doesn't seem to be available as an ebook either. I got my copy from the library but I also was able to buy a copy online because I really wanted to have my own book.)


While I was reading A Push and a Shove, I kept thinking about incidents of bullying that occurred while I was in middle school during the 1980s. I remember a girl I went to middle school with named Tameka. She was a small girl, but her size didn't matter because she'd just threaten to get her older, bigger sisters to beat other kids down on her behalf. (Thankfully, I was not one of the kids she set her sights on.) One day, one girl she picked on relentlessly just got fed up with it and cut her with a knife, slashing her forehead and leaving her permanently disfigured. You would think that this incident would have made her stop bullying other kids, but it didn't! She continued her reign of terror. I heard a few years ago that Tameka suffered a terrible loss in her family. Her son and some other family members were killed in a terrible automobile accident. As awful as this tragedy must have been for Tameka and her family, I couldn't help but wonder if her years of abuse inflicted upon others were coming back to haunt her.