One of our two vacations was to an amusement park. In preparation, my mom and step dad gave seven-year-old-me this talk:
It’ll be very important that you stay close to us. There will be a lot of strangers there and some are very bad people. There are people called perverts and homosexuals who like to do bad things to little boys. On the news, there was a man waiting in a public bathroom for boys who were by them selves and he cut off their penises.
I imagined the amusement park’s bathroom. Behind the door, a crouching man, holding a knife, and a pile of little penises stacked behind him like a pile of potato peelings. I stuck close to them and though all the bathroom stops were terrifying, no one cut off my penis.
When I was twelve and my sister five, we had rare day of getting along. I was sitting the table in our shared bedroom where she was putting makeup on me. Lipstick, eyeshadow, and rouge. She dressed me with necklaces and rings. It was sweet to see her imagination and have physical contact with her that wasn’t our usual antagonizing nudging and pushing.
The thud of the front door meant my step dad was home from work. The roulette wheel spun in my nervous system, anticipating his mood.
Whenever my sister and I fought, I tried to keep our tones hushed because he always assumed I was at fault and yelled at me for antagonizing his daughter. So I imagined that it would please him so see us playing nicely.
He stopped at our bedroom door. He stared. My mind raced for a way to explain what I could see disturbed him. But my sister, unaware of the tension, explained:
I’m dressing him up like a girl!
I realized there is no way he will think this is okay. I was consistently criticized for not living up to manly standards with physical labor or enjoying hunting, fishing, or cars.
I hated it when he was out in the yard working on his car. It was an angry, frustrated affair, with him yelling, swearing, and throwing tools. The wrench would slip and he’d hit his cold knuckles against the hard metal.
Goddamn-it-son-of-a-bitch-mother-fucker!
Or he’d be set off if he didn’t have a tool he needed. I’d be inside trying to get lost in TV to dull the tension of hearing him heat up.
Nathan! Get me a crescent wrench!
Not that I knew what that was. Not that he ever explained the names of tools. I was just expected me to know. I’d quickly jump up and look through the drawer of wrenches. They all looked the same to me. If I had clarity of mind I might be able to read their labels for clues. One of them might have said CRESCENT in big letters. But I couldn’t have read it because my mind was panicking, knowing he’s about to yell and ask what the fuck is taking so long?
This isn’t a crescent wrench, boy. Are you stupid!? Now go get it!
If I eventually brought out right tool, I struggled to guess whet to do next. Stand and wait for another task? Go inside and stay out of his way? Holding the flashlight for him was the same problem as the wrenches.
Goddamn it, I said shine it on the alternator! No, the alternator!
Years later he explained that I didn’t know how to fix my own car because when he was working on his own, I never came out and asked him to teach me.
With eyeshadow and lipstick on my face and these memories flashing though my mind, it was suddenly crystal clear that he would not approve of this and our getting along would score no points. I was surprised when he didn’t yell. Only a stern declaration:
I ain’t raising no fruitcake.
He continued down the hall to his bedroom. I felt ashamed. Not from how I was dressed or the innocent play, but because I failed to anticipate how this would give him yet another reason to see me as vile as whatever fruitcake meant to him. Vile like the pervert with the pile of penises. I added this to my own pile of ways to, at all times, to remember how to behave in order to control his impression of me.
Years later my mom ran across some school work shortly after our amusement park trip. Among the questions about interests and aspirations, it asked:
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I didn’t express fanciful desires to be an astronaut or firefighter or whatever captured the imagination of seven year olds. Or an artist, which was likely what I actually wanted. In wanting to just not be the shameful, vile person my stepdad saw me as, I wrote:
I do not want to be a homosexual.