It was good to be back. One of the long-term members reported that his sister died last week, suddenly, in the big city about two hours away. She was younger than he was, which gave him pause on top of his normal grieving. And he said that since then a large number of synchronicities had been tumbling out of the woodwork at him — apparently meaningless coincidences one after another after another.
Later, as we discussed something else, he explained further that his sister had been born as his younger brother Barry, grew up as a man, had kids — the works. But they were never able to talk. Barry always answered questions with just a word or two and always seemed very angry at the world. But about ten years ago Barry traveled to Thailand and came back as a woman ... and as my friend's sister she had a totally different personality, much more open. My friend said that he had more and deeper conversations with his sister in the last 10 years than he had ever had while she was his brother in the years before that.
Later, as we discussed something else, he explained further that his sister had been born as his younger brother Barry, grew up as a man, had kids — the works. But they were never able to talk. Barry always answered questions with just a word or two and always seemed very angry at the world. But about ten years ago Barry traveled to Thailand and came back as a woman ... and as my friend's sister she had a totally different personality, much more open. My friend said that he had more and deeper conversations with his sister in the last 10 years than he had ever had while she was his brother in the years before that.
As I drove home I remembered my father said more than once that when he was a young man he was for many years "very angry at the world." I know I've questioned that. Isn't anger something that flares up in an instant and then dies just as fast? Isn't it more likely that he was afraid of the world for all those years, and that he concealed his fear (as we often do) behind a mask of anger?
But last night I wondered something else. Did he secretly want to be someone that the world wouldn't let him be? That "someone" might have been a woman, or it might have been a man who didn't have to do all the masculine posturing that was required of boys in the 1940's and 1950's. A man who could love the theater and music and cooking without being ridiculed as effeminate ... a man who could even have had sexual contact with other guys in his youth without obsessing over it for the rest of his life. For the record, my father did love the theater and music and cooking. I don't know for a fact whether he ever had sex with another man; but it's a hypothesis I've come to over the years to explain things about him.
For example: When my brother and I were growing up he was always terribly concerned that we turn out "normal" (heterosexual). He insisted that "gays recruit". And he had a specific scenario in his mind that he would talk about over and over, that sometimes a young man has a "formative early experience" that makes him think he's gay when really he isn't. All of this sounds to me like he was wrestling with his own memories. What's more, in many contexts he womanized almost aggressively ... not (I think) because he wanted someone besides my mother (whom he worshipped) but as if he were trying to prove something. See, I'm as straight as the next fellow!
What would he have been like if he had had the opportunity to become someone totally different?
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