Naming & Shaming: Beyond Sexuality

Bob McCune, Herb Lamm 1949, with superimposed text

Growing Pains

Are you... oh I just thought by...oh, never mind...but if you could just...sorry but we're full...yeah, sorry mate, maybe next time...or ...just silence. Going from family trouble-maker, to shamanic oyster via the domestic jungle fka the garden. Bear with me. Shit's going down. I thought I had washed my hands clean of this nearly 2 decades ago.

I resented 'coming out'. So much so that I moved out to live with my sister when I was 16, determined to just be myself and not have to share what I had considered such a private concern. I wasn't interested in the sex lives of those around me, so why was I being nudged towards the platform of what felt like brutal or humiliating honesty?

My mum cried. I remember vaguely her mentioning grandchildren. My dad was silent. And I was a jungle of conflicting emotion, muted. I had the reputation in my family as trouble-maker in my teenage years. Always curious, questioning. Was I creating more trouble now, even against my better judgement? Other shadows lurking around the household felt more pressing; the half-empty packet of something called Prozac in the bathroom cabinet. In earlier years, the episode where bedroom curtain were drawn, and doctors with bowed heads left rooms by closing the bedroom door so tenderly, as if any more force would shatter it;the force of my father's volcanic temper that smashed my sister's enormous CD player. According to the convention, those times warranted no conversation, no apology. Shame, rewarded and inflated by silence.

Trouble-making was the mere spotting that there was a rug to look under, and to consider to dare to lift it up, let alone look under it. And luckily I believed that there was so little there, in many respects, but in terms of nourishing emotional worlds, there were whole galaxies of missed opportunity. Shush-ed. Orbiting in silent space. I wanted to be a grown-up.

And so I did what every normal kid might do. I silenced the trouble-making. I found solace in my bedroom, in magazines, in my sewing machine, in songs. I tried to find my voice by imitating the greats of jazz and blues. I wore my headphones as I screeched, badly, with knocks underneath my bedroom floor. Silence was preferred, was the reminder, regardless of the sound.

My ticket out of this shrink-wrapped world of ultra domesticity of 3 warm meals a day (2 of which were fed to Tara, our Rottweiler) and an annual sojourn to DisneyWorld was fashion college, I tallied. I worked such long hours that summer to pay for my fees and rent in central London. I had been accepted to LCF and my dressmaking teacher, who had created costumes for Danny LaRue (or was it RuPaul?) was thrilled. I was thrilled, in retrospect because it was the the necessity of the piercing of the shrink wrap. It was new breath after the hypersleep of suburbia. I imagined. It turns out that imagination can be so precariously balanced when it sits on top of the landfill of dismissed feelings.

Am I exaggerating? Maybe a little. But the kaleidoscope of the past and the emotional distance it affords allows one to see, in the context of something considered more normal, the true micro-horrors of a childhood or adolescence in which a potential wasn't able to be realised. Not through lack of good parenting - my folks did all within their power to make my sister and my lives comfortable - but through having a gift that I didn't recognise. The gift of causing trouble, it seemed.

Two situations happened this week that have pushed me to re-consider my relationship to responsibility to my emotional well-being. That might be a long-winded way of just saying, I wanna feel OK. And when people heckle insults at me, despite my belief that it is them who are wounded somehow, it's me whose internal playing cards collapse. Insults, specifically insults about my sexuality, are Kryptonite. Why?

The years I've spent attempting to inhabit the freedom I lacked as a shrink-wrapped screwed up teen allowed me to feel a sense of ease. I've been travelling, learned some basics in gardening, taken every course that has appealed to me...eaten everything that seemed good in my path. My mind has an insatiable desire to learn, to experience, to bring more understanding. So what's this sticking point? Why do I breakdown when some idiot calls me a name?

I have kept the same attitude as a teen to not wish to discuss or name my sexuality. Extended family conversations don't include my current love situation. Thank God. In all the places I have travelled, including many villages in the UK, for me the topic wasn't worth being on the discussion table; I was exploring this new thing and so like a thesis writer at the beginning of his investigations, my results were private. I never go to Pride, or really understood why it existed.

And yet, the tables turned when trouble makers looked under the carpet as soon as they sensed and felt and perceived that I wasn't one of them. Who were they? Mostly, but not solely, heterosexual men. They avoided eye-contact. Or just insulted me. And when you're swimming for your school team and the banter happens when you are virtually naked, your body dramatically changing...telling me I was to become a man, and the trauma escalated beyond measure.

To find my tribe, I would sneakily watch TV programmes on gays and transsexuals. I was always fascinated especially with transsexuals reported to feel wrong in their bodies. I strongly identified with that as girls were my homies. My big sister was my best friend and in sleepy suburbia, we played with the other girls. We made yucky faces when boys went past. We thought they were dirty and silly. The horror that hair grew on my legs and face as I past 12 years old is something I fail to find the words for. My physicality defied my inner sense of sorority.

A recent story of a trans chap (from female-to-male) attracted attention because his male look was criticised as too cis-gendered, a term which describes a man born a man who has the archetypal look. Say, a jock. This guy got pumped at the gym, he wore a baseball cap. He had that kinda James Dean raised-eyebrow look in photos. A year ago, I too opted for a baseball cap in TK Maxx. Red. Flattering to the shape of my face. And something under which I could approach cis-gendered. As much as possible. So I could walk anywhere and not be 'seen'. Until last Monday. "Oh, guy in the red hat..." and you know the rest. The same yesterday in a supermarket car park.

After all my yoga and body work, after all my readings into emotional intelligence, after all my supposed ease in my body, mind...after years of working on communication and smoothing the lines of family ties...I shatter. Right there. In fact, I felt so overwhelmed on Monday that I couldn't bear to cry because crying was admitting not only did I suffer but I was still resource-less to handle it. And I was confounded to remember that my first reaction to the comment, had I been closer to the source of insult and armed in some way, would have been to attack and maybe even kill him. As if that would resolve it.

Violence doesn't solve the emotions raging in me during and after these situations. I know logically that this guy's outburst is a result of something unresolved within himself. And my inability to hear and dismiss it as a silly comment, points to something unresolved in me. Hence the fireworks and imagined homicide. What am I not naming? And by not naming it, am I shaming myself?

As I look for work next month in a new town, I realise that I have a stark choice before me; carry on as always, or actually name this. Be creative with it. I have to name what people perceive me as. And while I am happy in my own world and see beauty in colours, flowers, trees, music, lyricism, song, movement, pattern ... as well as find men sexually attractive, it's the former things that shape my manner, my gait, my melody of voice... and point to the assumptions of my sexuality. The logic defies my reasoning. Except I know that it's true. and who said...is it better to be kind, or right? I'm choosing kindness.

My logic now is this - if I own this perception of my sexuality, it has the consequence of showing others that I have confidence in who I am (or supposed to be..?!) and tells me that it's true. I used to find this way of thinking over-looped and ridiculous. Like the outfits that I wore to fashion college. But these 2 incidents are showing me that my lack of assertiveness around my sexuality allows a barbed and confused narrative to go on within me. Are other people interested in who I sleep with? No. Are they signalled that I am 'different' to them? Absolutely. And so far, I can't articulate those differences but they obviously exist to the extent to which they are visible and almost physical.

How will I choose to use this? Ideas so far? I am going to find out how to make a Queer Garden in my new town. Why? Because for those people who are visibly or perceptibly different to whatever the norm is perceived to be, they need a safe space. I never thought I would think that; I dismissed it as a cliche that they should just 'get over it' - surely, it's 2017 and no-one cares any more? And if they did, that's their problem. But those things are only true in a place that has finally come to terms with indifference around differences. The journey for that isn't over. Evolution, emotional, spiritual...hasn't reached some parts of people, some parts of the country; entitlement rages around people who consider it their right to not only notice something then to remark on it, and remark in a way that is intended to deride, humiliate and offend the person on the receiving end. This is beyond sexuality...it is a basic human right. We all want peace, safety, loveliness and to accomplish those things, we need an equal starting point.

The Shape of Things To Come

The Guardian.com

Wow gosh golly, what a year 2016 has been. And what a day it has been today. Rarely, I spent the entire day creating. It is wonderful and strange to re-visit that old sensation of exhaustion from a totally different kind of energy expenditure. In contrast the past few months have been so physically demanding, most often under the glare of the sun, getting to grips with gardening in the Mediterranean. Dealing with the dislike of the very thing that motivated me to find a new life abroad was terribly confusing.

I've been back home now in the UK with the folks, for about a month. Sigh of relief. And today the attempts at nesting have finally reached a climax - fairylights in my bedroom, a dinner for the family after a day using lots of the scraps of strange fabrics and materials from the little caves of the past.

It's been so wonderful and nourishing. I've churned out paintings, a futuristic sculpture inspired by the film "Metropolis" (the main image of this blogpost) as well as working on some simple designs for tote bags. The work sprung from inspiration offered by a theme from a friend's future display in her marvellous new gallery space. And so now everything is lacquered in metallic shades and catches the light wonderfully. Even the gelatin. Who knew the brittle leaves of gelatin could lend themselves to couture finishes? Just hoping the moisture of the North keeps at bay or the lucky buyer may end up with a slightly less couture finish...

It's felt so good to loosen the grip on finding the right path, the right job, the right vocation, the right place to settle. I left for Spain originally 4 years ago next month...trained up speedily in London, met my fellow interns (there were 7 of us) then spent 3 months living and working in a new place. That place was Ubeda, northern Andalucia and the rest is history.

I stayed finding any work I could, often sharing cluttered over-stuffed rooms with people from all over the world before finally settling at dreamy intense Sunseed for almost a year. Life-changing indeed..and then time to move on again. And through it all, looking looking looking and hoping for a place to settle yet never feeling settled. Always sizing up the new place for a quiet space to meditate or read or practice yoga. I was driven and determined to find this utopia I'd invented, and riding the gas of idealism. Yet a month ago, that gas began to clonk and chug. I didn't sleep well. My dreams lost their loveliness. I lost my resistance and my happiness for a bit. What was I doing?

It's not just in the eyes of social media that one wants a semblance of light-heartedness and fun; it's natural in any relationship to apply the best face. It's normal as we try everything on for size. During these 3 years of travelling an insane amount of kms and meeting an even insaner diversity of people, there were such life-affirming moments, life-long connections made, wild swimming, parties and of course sunshine galore...but besides those things, just a person and his simple desire to find a place to call home.

I didn't, and so I'm back at home...where I have spent most of my life. Such relief. The white knuckle ride is over.

It all still feels so new especially in the sense that I need to be back at Square One and loosen my idealist grip on finding something out there. Previously I'd never understood when other travellers have told me they've missed their home land but this time, I got it - I felt it in every cell of my body. I was sometimes checking flights on my phone in the middle of the night wanting to return. 

And after a drive to simplify, to go low impact, to release all the shackles of the modern world, I've realised that I need them. At least some of them. They created me and while I can be incredibly creative within those limits, I'm understanding why those limits exist. A major theme apparent in many people I met travelling was this sense of finding a new world, cutting ties with the old, sometimes with bitterness or despair. I think everyone can relate to that, at times. But I need to find a middle ground. Familiarity is the umbilical cord to the old world. As well as reaching out for something new, we can be running away and missing the nuances of uncertainty or interpreting them in a specific way which fuels our idealism. I certainly was.

I don't know how long this feeling of 'ahhhh' will last but I know that having such distance from Blighty has made me fully understand how lucky I am, and we are, to live somewhere where water is on tap, trains and buses cheaply take us anywhere, people speak my own language, I am warm indoors and I generally just know where to find everything like stamps or phoneboxes or good coffee...an appreciation of these things to a person who hasn't travelled must sound so cliched and a tad ludicrous. But the exhaustion that ensues when those basic things are consistently being re-arranged is very unsettling.

I used to think that in order to galvanise, toughen up, I had to keep testing myself. I had to keep on until finally, I'd be some kind of spunky modern adventurer that would have no problem with making a bivouac anywhere where I happened upon. I wanted that experience that so many young men crave, (think Brad Pitt's character in "Legends of the Fall"...the wild child who rides horses and takes ships to unknown lands). Fiction after all is today's myth-making and we are all looking to hook into the myth that fits.

Adventure means many things to many people. As someone who lives so much in imagination, through colour, smell, through symbols...and not the type who climbs trees or wild swims in January, I must befriend myself and be kinder, more accepting that crafting, learning, dancing, singing, practising yoga, making music, reading, cooking and studying are my kinds of adventure. That's the cloth that I'm cut from. 

Catch examples of my work soon at the delicious boutique, Arcanum, on Market Street in Hebden Bridge.

And...why not order a veg box and collect it from Veg Box People at the University of Manchester every Tuiesday? You will find awesome bread there, too, from Trove bakery in Levenshulme.