[Breeder] All About My Mother

[TheBreeder]

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I've written about my father a couple of times within the pages of this journal. I'd like to give my mother a little space. I'll warn you from the start, however, that there's no sex in this entry. If that disappoints you, you've my archives to paw through.

So here's something you don't see written very often: my mother wanted me to be a female impersonator when I grew up.

It’s not an admission you hear from the lips of most men. Even the thorniest of Mama Roses might have blanched a little at such a revelation. But there you go. When I was six, my mother took a trip to England with her mother-in-law. It was the only time she was ever able to venture out of the United States, other than the time she won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas for winning a nationwide contest on why, in twenty-five words or less, she liked Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. (She didn’t really like macaroni and cheese that much. I did.)

While she was abroad, my mother made a point of visiting all the places she wanted to go, snapping photos of everything, and coming back with a hundred colorful stories to tell. Among them was the announcement that she’d found the perfect profession for my first-grade self. She’d been to see Danny La Rue at a cabaret show in a London hotel, and come away with an epiphany. “Female impersonators aren’t women,” she explained gravely. “They just dress up in women’s clothes, look beautiful, sing and tell jokes, and then they’re men again afterward. It's very lucrative. Doesn’t that sound like fun? It’d be perfect for you, don’t you think?”

I did not. I never did. I wasn’t a sissy boy by any means. I didn’t play with my mother’s old purses, or wear her heels, or prefer sewing to other hobbies; I didn’t have a Barbie. But perhaps I wasn’t exactly the picture of robust boyhood that you might find gleaming on the cover of a Cub Scout manual. I disliked team sports, though I later excelled at swimming and tennis. I didn’t like running around outdoors like a hooligan, but instead spent my outdoor time in private spaces I’d clear beneath bushes, hiding quietly with a book. I was quiet instead of loud, thoughtful instead of reckless. I was the kind of boy who didn’t mouth off in school, or ever get in trouble, or make mischief, or disobey a teacher. I was thoughtful instead of outspoken. I can’t say it got me very far, but I’m sure my elders appreciated the peace.

No, I wasn’t an effeminate child, and I was actually shocked at the notion that my mother—my own mother!—thought the best career choice for me was professional female impersonation. She didn’t push it on me, to her credit. She didn’t begin buying little organdy frocks in my size and leaving them suggestively on the bed, or anything. Every now and then she’d float the test balloon in my direction, though, and I’d roundly shoot it down. However, I think it took all her willpower, years later when Victor/Victoria, one of her all-time favorite films, was released, not to turn to me and say, “I told you it could be lucrative.”

By that time she’d already chosen another profession for me. “You should be a chef,” she announced when I was in the third grade. By that time she’d already conscripted me into making easy meals for myself when she and my father were both teaching—by middle school I was the short-order cook of the family, which was fine with my mother, since she hated spending any time in the kitchen. “In Europe, all the chefs are male. It’s very highly regarded,” she announced.

I didn’t believe her. The late nineteen-sixties and seventies weren’t like today, when men crowded the culinary schools so they could get a shot at getting their own show on the Food Network, or a spot on Top Chef. The only male who cooked in that era with any visibility was the Galloping Gourmet, and I'm very sorry, but Graham Kerr was not exactly the most masculine of men. In my horrified eyes, chef was only one shade of lavender butcher than the option of female impersonator. Scarier was the fact that I was actually really good in the kitchen.

It’s unfortunate that my mother embarrassed me a little with her choices, but I recognize now it was her early acknowledgement that she realized I was different. Perhaps I wasn’t a sissy, or a tomgirl, but her instincts told her from an early age that I was not like other boys. I think by managing to invest such enthusiasm in the prospect of my becoming a female impersonator or a culinary artist, long before these heady of Rupaul's Drag Race and tattooed bad boy chefs, she was telling me that whatever I was, I was perfectly okay. And so would be whatever I chose to become when I grew up.

I might not have grasped the nuance, but I got the message clearly enough. My path through life hasn’t been typical. I don’t always take the easy choices, or the most lucrative paths, or even the most logical routes to an end destination. I’ve always progressed in fits and starts. I try different lives and see if they suit me; the artistic career that I love is something I wandered into because I was too afraid to hope for it. I'm convinced that my wayward journey keeps me young, and keeps me interested. I was not your typical boy. I’m still not your typical man, much of the time. I have doubts and fears, like anyone else. Sometimes they're paralyzing. But because of my mother, I have a deep inner conviction that not being typical is perfectly fine.

When I came out to my mother while I was in grad school, she wasn’t surprised. She’d grown up wanting me to be a drag queen, and then a chef, and then in high school had decided that it would awesome if I horrified my father’s family by marrying a black woman. My revealed sexuality, to her, was a shiny silver medal, not a consolation prize. It was as equally capable of horrifying my father’s family, and it gave my mother a too-short chance to show the world what a cool, liberal mother she could be.

I miss my mom. It’s kind of comforting, in a way, to know that if for some reason I’d decided to become a professional drag queen, I would’ve had her total support.

And probably unrestricted access to her false eyelashes.

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