A thought provoking poem which when I first posted it on the GB list got two
thought provoking comments, one from Dr.Ajit and one from our late, much missed
friend Quentin. I've added them both at the end:
Squaring Up
When I was thirteen and crimping my first quiff
Dad bought me a pair of boxing-gloves
In the hope that I would aspire to the Noble Art.
But I knew my limitations from the start:
Myopia, cowardice and the will to come second.
But I feigned enthusiasm for his sake.
Straight after tea, every night for a week
We would go a few rounds in the yard.
Sleeves rolled-up, collarless and gloveless
He would bob and weave and leave me helpless.
Uppercuts would tap me on the chin
Left hooks muss my hair, haymakers tickle my ear.
Without gloves, only one thing was clear:
The fact that I was hopeless. He had a son
Who couldnt square up. So we came to blows.
Losing patience, he caught me on the nose.
I bled obligingly. A sop. A sacrifice.
Mum threw in the towel and I quit the ring.
But when the bell goes each birthday I still feel the sting
Not of pain, but of regret. You said sorry
And you were. I didnt. And I wasnt.
Roger McGough
I notice that when gay guys talk about their parents its mostly about their
mothers. This is admittedly a cliché, yet it does seem that its our mothers
we're closest to.
Sometimes they're loving and supportive, sometimes they're hysterical drama
queens threatening to commit suicide if their sons don't get married, sometimes
they're bitchy, sometimes rabidly religious, sometimes they're sweet, sometimes
surprising in their reactions. But nearly always they are there looming large
in the foreground of our lives.
Fathers by contrast seem to fade into the background. They are tyrants and
bullies sometimes and other times they are friendly and helpful (as I think
I've written in the past, it amazes me how much readier fathers are to accept
gay friends, even lovers, possibly because they just classify them as 'pals'
and don't think of the sex). Mostly though they're just in the background,
disengaged and seemingly indifferent.
I sometimes wonder if this is because the revelation of our sexuality so
fundamentally shatters an image they have of us, that they can never relate to
us the way they did before. And this image is of themselves leading the life
they did, or more likely, the life they would have wanted to. All parents do
this, I guess, but with fathers the identification is all that more because of
the same gender.
Its no great psychological insight to say our mothers love us and have hopes
for us and their anger or sadness when we come out is because they think these
hopes are being shattered. But fathers almost literally imagine themselves _as_
us, and the revelation of our sexuality then comes as this sudden abrupt line
beyond which they can't go. A rift is set in place which can never be crossed
and they then retreat into polite friendliness or indifference, with never the
emotional identification again.
I sometimes get this with my father. He's not cold or uncaring - on the
contrary he loves me very deeply and doesn't mind showing that. When I came out
to him the first thing he said was to reassure me that he would always be there
for me. Subsequently he's occasionally made awkward jokes or acknowledgment of
my sexuality without ever really wanting to find out more about it. Quite
unlike my mother whose reactions are anger, love, a sense of betrayal,
protectiveness, bitchiness, refusal to deal and definite curiosity, usually all
at once.
And yet while superficially my father is more accepting, I feel that deep down
there's a more profound disappointment and sadness that perhaps he feels guilty
about and tries to compensate for by being supportive and protective. In some
very fundamental I feel I've let him down. And I am really sad about this,
because I love him and hate having disappointed him. But I don't regret coming
out to him. It was something I had to do, and doing it I feel stronger whatever
the sadness.
I think this poem - finally! - mirrors these feelings very closely. (Though my
father thankfully never tried teaching me boxing? But he did try teaching me a
number of useful fatherly things like driving a car, and understanding
machines, and managing money, none of which I've managed to do with much
success). Its not necessarily a gay poem, though if one wanted to take crude
stereotypes then the image of macho boxing father versus unathletic 'sissy' son
obviously works in a gay context.
Luckily I don't think McGough means this at all. The contrast he seems to be
setting is of a father who's a traditional 'man' - strong, physically oriented
versus a bookish, intellectually oriented son. Perhaps there's also a class
angle - the father is working class, delighting in a working class sport and
sees it his duty to teach it to his son.
But the son's books will be taking him to college and away from his working
class roots, and when he tries connecting with these roots it doesn't work. The
father bobs and weaves and runs circles around him, until finally he runs out
of patience. He hits his son on his nose, the son bleeds, the mother acts
umpire and the fight is over.
And the son has won. He may have got blood all over his face, but he's the
winner. Because by losing he proved that he can't and won't compete on the
father's terms. He'll compete on his own terms (the poem in that sense is
literally his knockout punch back).
Which is why while the father is sorry for what he did, the son is not. The
rift had to be drawn for the son to escape and now he has, and he can't
apologise for it because it made him independent and that he had to do and
exults in it. The last line of the poem is triumphant: "You said sorry/And you
were. I didnt. And I wasnt."
Vikram
My father, who learned to box in the (pre-independence) Indian Army, broke my
nose when I was seven. I had to have it rebroken and straightened inside
surgically when I was fifteen to correct breathing problems.
Recently, my father told me he had to learn to box in the Army because he is
Anglo-Indian. If he wasn't an obviously muscular and competent self-defender,
he would have been beaten up by the white blokes. He also told me he had to
learn to drop his Anglo-Indian accent, and speak like a white man, and drop all
his Indian and darker Anglo-Indian friends. He was a hunky man, as can be seen
in his one and only picture of himself during his early Army days, arm in arm
with his best friend, an Indian guy.
Boarding school and the Army taught him to lose his voice, and to hit. Yet he
is an extremely gentle man.
My Mother was a loquacious and racist English born white woman. In marrying a
coloured man she married beneath her, and like the good Dr in Pygmalion (My
Fair Lady) set out to better her inferior. Her main strategies were criticism,
and driving him from the factory floor to trade teaching. And correcting his
English.
They fought verbally incessantly. My mothers violence always bested my father.
She would excoriate him with her tongue, and denigration of everything Indian
was a frequent weapon, whether it was my Cochin Grandmothers bad cooking (read
- Indian), their accents, their lack of wealth, their bad manners (read -
mixing up curry and rice, or stew into the mashed potatoes), and so on.
I was not a powerful boy. But I developed a queens tongue from an early age,
and replicated my mothers verbal aggression. One day they were arguing together
by the back door. My father was nearly in tears. My mother shouting so loudly
she was spitting. She said something about how my Grandfather must have been
relieved to burst his aorta the day he was to leave Bombay to migrate to
Australia, as he was saved the pain of seeing his families failings. I must
have repeated something similar, attacking my father on my mothers side. I'm
sure he wanted to hit her. But he broke my nose instead.
I hated him for years. But later I realised we were all the victims of our
circumstances.
Quentin
Amazing poem, yet once again, very analogous to the gay situation. Vikram,
you rightly pointed out the stark difference in relationship of gays with
either parent. While the relationship with the father may not be one of
hostility or hatred, in many cases it is one of indifference.
One of the earlier, widely accepted, works on homosexuality by psychiatrist
DJ West spoke largely of the 'dominant mother', 'indifferent father' model as
being one of the commonly associated environments for gays. The word 'dominant'
here of course refers to the influencing part of the mother as a role model
while the indifferent father could have been dead, staying away, hostile or
plainly indifferent. Though this may not be universally true for all gays, I
have noticed that quite a lot of us fall into this skewed environment. Of
course, once again, it has to be pointed out that the environmental influence
is but, one of the factors leading to the homosexual orientation as there are
other factors like the genetic basis not yet clearly elucidated and understood.
Ajit
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for
your freeaccount today.
