"The Truth About Me..."

The year my sister got this, I was far more thrilled than she was

Christmastime always reminds me of my childhood and the things that influenced me and made me who I am. Toys I played with, films I watched and books I read all gave me escape from the unhappiness of realizing how different I was from other boys including my older brothers. I was a lonely child, even though my sister and I were only a year apart in age. My little sister was born in the midst of the women's liberation movement and although she had lots of girly toys, my mother didn't insist on her adhering to old gender stereotypes. She was happy enough letting me play with her toys if I let her play with my boy toys. The truth is I baked far more cakes and cookies in her Easy Bake Oven than she did. And as a result, I discovered that I liked cooking and baking. It was far more likely that I'd be the one in the kitchen helping our mother prepare meals. By the time I was 10, I could cook entire family meals with just a little help from my mother. No one in the family was surprised when I declared at 17, I wanted to be a pastry chef.

Yule Log I made for Christmas this year

Inside: chocolate sponge roll moistened with wild cherry brandy and filled with whipped cream

And of course, as a child it wasn't Christmas without the Rankin Bass stop motion Christmas specials.  My favorite character was the abominable snow monster, I could identify with him.  Like me, he was different, he was an outcast and in the end he redeemed himself and found acceptance... But even more significantly, I recognized early on that Rudolph's friend, Hermey the elf was a gay character. I think almost every gay kid realized this eventually.

Another thing about me that I now realize made me stand out as a weird kid was my love of old movies. Even before I was 10, I loved to watch old films from the 30s and 40s. I'd sit i front of the old black and white tv and cry at all the emotional points in the stories. I watched It's A Wonderful Life this weekend and it made me cry just like it did when I was a boy. I pretty much liked every genre of old films and I especially enjoyed British films. Just the other day, out of the blue, I remembered the intro of the J. Arthur Rank Organisation's films and how seeing them was a secret pleasure of mine as a boy... You've probably seen it, it's a muscular naked man striking a gong (talk about young gay boy fantasies, this was far better than anything on the men's underwear pages of the Sears catalog).

It's funny to think about all of this now, but clearly I was exhibiting all these OGTs* and nobody ever called me on it except my brother Darrell. I now think everyone else realized, but just chose not to question it. No wonder, that for the most part when I came out at 40, my family's reaction was pretty much, meh...

* OGT: Obviously Gay Trait