http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=9311

Unlikely trajectory brings two men together

By PAUL LUNGEN
Staff Reporter

Matthew Boger, left, and Tim Zaal [Paul Lungen photo]

LOS ANGELES — With his muscular build, missing teeth, goatee and shaved head, Tim Zaal
still has the appearance of the skinhead street brawler he was in his youth. So, it’s fair to
say he stood out like a sore thumb at a barbecue hosted by Matthew Boger for a group of
his closest gay friends.

Zaal’s presence at the party sparked plenty of questions: What was he doing there? What
was his connection to the host and what were all those tattoos on his arms?

Zaal and Boger – a Hollywood writer could hardly have scripted an odder couple – are
colleagues now, friends even, and so Zaal’s presence at Boger’s home was only a natural
development in their relationship. But some 20-plus years ago, things were a lot different.

Zaal and Boger told their hopeful, yet stranger-than-fiction stories to visitors at the Museum
of Tolerance (MOT), the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. They often
lecture young people about escaping the poisonous effects of intolerance.

Zaal was a very angry young man, pumped up in a steroid rage, running with skinhead street
fighters, looking for gays to bash.

Boger was a 13-year-old runaway, thrown out of his home by his Bible-quoting mother
after he came out and told her he was gay.

Zaal grew up in eastern Los Angeles county but at an early age, his family picked up and
moved when the neighbourhood’s character threatened to become more racially diverse.

He idolized his older brother, who rode a motorcycle and was the epitome of cool. When the
family moved, his brother chose to remain in the neighbourhood.

He already felt prejudice towards African-Americans because of his parents’ influence; that
attitude was reinforced when his brother was shot. “I was led to believe that the majority of
African-Americans went around shooting people,” Zaal recounted.

He developed a fear of minorities, coupled with toxic feelings of anger and resentment.

As he entered his teen years, he developed a taste for punk rock music, which, with its
slam dancing and abrasive in-your-face lyrics, fed his violent tendencies.

Violence was part of the scene, he said. As if slamming into each other on the dance floor
wasn’t enough, after concerts, punks often started fights with each other.

It suited his personality at the time. “I was a very angry person. The best way I can
describe my mindset was that anybody who got in my way was a possible victim,” Zaal said.
“You had a chance of getting hurt.”

Zaal’s anger and resentment towards minorities led him into the racist skinhead
movement and at one point, he served as one of white supremacist leader Tom Metzger’s
main lieutenants in California, responsible for recruitment and propaganda.

Gays were a favourite target for skinheads, and he and his buddies knew where some
gays boys hung out – a local hamburger joint. One night, Zaal and his buddies decided
to pay them a visit.

Boger picks up his story with a description of an unusual youth in northern California, near
San Francisco. His father was a Hells Angel, one of the group’s key organizers in northern
California, and all his uncles were bikers.

He described his neighbourhood as white and religiously conservative.

One of five boys and two girls, Boger and a brother were sent at age 12 to a performing arts
school in San Francisco. There he discovered other youths like him and he became aware
for the first time why he was different – he was gay.

Discovering many other gay boys was a revelation “and I felt good about it.”

When he returned home, he told his mom the good news. She responded with unexpected
severity. “My mother said, ‘If you’re going to live your life in sin, you can’t do this in this
house,’” Boger recalled.

Thrown out at 13, he headed to San Francisco where he was homeless. “I did things on
the street to survive of which I’m not proud,” he said.

A few months later he drifted to L.A. where he continued his life on the street. “Even as
street kids were trying to survive, we were planning how to get out,” he said. “We knew
we were throw-away kids.”

He and his gay street friends would socialize at a hamburger stand and fantasize about
meeting nice Jewish men. “We heard they were caring and would take care of us.”

They knew there was a skinhead group out there that bashed gays, and they tried to avoid
them. But one night at the hamburger stand, the skinheads found them.

Boger recalls seeing the skinheads “coming at us with so much anger in their eyes.”

Although he tried to escape, he was caught and beaten.

“The last I remember was a steel-toe boot to the head.”

He was unconscious for some time – it could have been a minute or 10, he can’t be sure –
and when he came to, he was a bloody mess.

Calling the police was not an option. He knew if they got involved, he likely would have
landed in foster care until he was 18, a fate he wished to avoid.

Instead, he found a service station washroom, and cleaned himself up as best he could.

The physical healing took months, the psychological healing took longer, he said.

For years he lived in fear of public places and only in the last few years, the 40-something
Boger was able to go out normally.

In 1998, he heard about a 22-year old gay man, Matthew Shepard, who was lured out of a
bar, beaten, tied to a fence post and burned alive. Shocked by the murder, Boger eventually
approached the MOT as a volunteer, hoping to do something to promote greater tolerance.

Zaal, meanwhile, recalls the hamburger stand incident differently. Where for Boger the incident
developed slowly as if he was moving in molasses, for Zaal, it felt like an adrenaline rush.
“For me, it went really fast. It was literally like a drug,” he said.

It was a jolt to his system that “made me feel better. I believe it made me feel good about myself.”

He recalled that his family had belittled him and that was one way of dealing with the anger.

The gay men he pounded were nameless and faceless victims. “They weren’t human beings.”

For Zaal, the incident at the hamburger stand was not an epiphany. There was no sudden
realization that he was on a dead end path.

Instead, a gradual evolution drew him away from the skinhead movement. Becoming a
father was a key development. He became concerned when his son’s first words were
mommy, daddy and heil Hitler.

“I knew in the back of my mind I was destroying this child,” he said.

He broke up with his wife and moved for a few years away from the entire California hate
scene. Eventually he met and married a Jewish woman and moved back to LA. He contacted
the MOT after he saw one of his former skinhead associates speak for the museum.

It was at the MOT that Zaal and Boger – now the MOT floor manager – met again and
exchanged stories. They quickly realized they had both taken part in the same incident
so many years before.

“We came full circle here,” Zaal stated. “By being here, I’m apologizing on a daily basis,
not only to Matt, but to society.”

“It’s not easy to forgive,” Boger said. “But to move on and heal, I had to let go.”

And include his new friend at the barbecue.

Paul Lungen recently visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center offices in Los Angeles as a guest of the Center.