The Public Lie, The Private Truth

When I was a young and troubled teen,
I ached to be accepted for who I was 
but my fizziness was a bad fit
for the tight binaries of moral codes,
derived from fuzzy generalities
which for anyone to live them out
they must be either a machine
or, if actually human, a masochist.

Both choices seemed unattractive.

To find out what Mother thought,
but was refusing to tell me, I read
the 'problem pages' of her magazine
to find out how the grown ups
resolved their problems where choice
made morality a choice of discomfort,
or being an automaton for other automata.

It was a worthy a try but it go me nowhere. 

There was no language for what I felt,
beyond 'beyond the pale', an old phrase
originally assigned to the poorest citizens
of nineteenth century European states
who were confined to hinterlands
far away from all capital and wealth,
where they were kept, never to prosper.

Later on I found P.O. box addresses
that my parents knew nothing about,
where I thought I could write off
to tell them more about how I felt
than my family would ever listen to.

They said I could write as often
as I had something to get off my chest
and with each polite reply
they very gently wrote me off
as they proved too attached
to 'infallible family values'.

They let me keep on writing
which may have kept me
from planning my suicide.

Like the poor of the past
who lived beyond the pale,
I sought my own course
and moved away from those
who confined me to misfortune,

If I had to accept misfortune
it must be mine, and nobody else's. 

My Last New Year Card

'Untitled/Uncertain' by William Hockaday  

 

A Safe Prediction For 2023

And temptation will say is somebody else
whilst it goes about it's business
of deceiving you by other means
for what it thinks is worth more to it
then it should be worth to you. 

 

Signs Of Greater Age (53)

Wanting to paraphrase Mae West,
whilst looking at what is on your shelves. 

'It is not the books in my home,
it is the lives in my books....   '.

Because with age and time
the draw of human company thins,
For all their limits books never refuse you.

Books remain consistent and kind,
to whoever is attentive and generous to them...

My First New Year Card

Albert Gleizes - Composition 1937 - 1938

 

Long Live Sincerity

Because with the depth to which
kitsch has penetrated popular culture
the sincerity with which it is delivered,
whether it is faked or real,
is what makes that kitsch endurable,
though what would be even better
would be an inclusive sense of humour.

The Isolation And Bravery Of The Bearded Lady

A still from 
Tod Browning's
1932 film 'Freaks'

    As a gay man I liked bearded men well before I was able to say that I liked them, and make personal the reasons why I liked them. When I was growing up the accepted markers for masculinity, when I was growing up were the ability to be drunk and demonstrate to the credulous, particularly yourself, that you were sober. 

  As 'an out gay man', aged thirty, I regrew the beard that I first grew as a teenager, and with the 'coming out' came feel that my beard was integral to me, an active expression of my character. The beard has remained an active part of my character over the three decades of 'being out' in which my character has changed.  

  When blogging and Tumblr came along two decades later I started a beard blog. Here it is. Over the ten years plus since I have never stopped putting more beards up. I have never given Tumblr's digital censor much work to do. If what I had was 'a fetish' then it was a remarkably polite as a fetish. I never saw the point in getting pushy about what I liked. I preferred to let the accumulated oddity of the large and singular collection of images explain me, and let any fetish labelling quietly put itself in lower case before appearing to be relatively normal; nothing to frighten the right wing 'normals' with.

  But one minority area to do with my appreciation of beard culture always always confounded me. Generally I am blind to the attractions of women. Their appearance does nothing for me. I like how women are more oriented more consensus than men often present themselves as being, but being fair is not the same as being fun. I was, and am, the same with women as I am about men, including bearded men, in drag. Drag only seemed okay to me if it was done uncompetitively and just for fun. And yes I have been there and it was not a T shirt that I got after and kept either.

  I was blind to that rare handsomeness that happens in bearded women. Allow me to correct that blind spot, somewhat. The above image is from that most celebrated and notorious of films, Todd Browning's 'Freaks' (MGM 1932) where a troupe of real circus actors acted in a horror film that looked all too real, and blurred too many lines between reality and fantasy to be a mere entertainment. Bearded women have to brave in ways I never had to be when I grew my beard as part of my renewed public identity; their beard 'outs' them in a way that they have to be careful how to own the resulting public profile. 

  It is not surprising then that historically they often became circus attractions. They got an income, had somewhere to live, and had their community with the circus troupe, who were self contained and in spite of being midgets and having all sorts of physical differences from normal full height human beings were adults with capable adult minds who valued their autonomy. That they played up their physical differences in public for show and for money, well they had to. How else would they survive outside of being institutionalised by a misbegotten science which mangled the public understanding of mental health, and lied about what genetics actually were to grotesque degree? Such mental health experts and geneticists as there were would have locked up all the dwarves etc without looking at them, and labelled them 'defective' based what other people said about their appearance.

  Finally, Empress of The Blues, Bessie Smith, who I had a voice, a skin tone, physical strength, and an appetite for life that was much fuller than any beard man I could imagine, did the same as those circus troupes of dwarves and other human misshapes, if you will pardon the expression. When she had earned enough she bought her own luxury railway carriage in which she travelled to avoid the outright racism of hotels, who would refuse her entry and where they let her play would have humiliated her by making her play to white only audiences. 

  The road is fine place to live and work if you are an outsider, long may it be there for outsiders who need the income, and the space it gives them away from 'normal' society, particularly for outsiders like bearded ladies.