Monday, Jul. 01, 2002 - 12:04 p.m.
Saying Uncle

Late last night I went searching through boxes and boxes of handwritten journals in search of specific entries from a few years ago. The writings I sought pertain to a brief painful interlude where, on a visit “home” from Toronto, I found myself hugely triggered by the prospect of dealing with extended family members at my maternal Grandma’s eightieth birthday celebration. My mom has two brothers, John and Graham, neither of whom I’m all that comfortable around; it was homophobic, alcoholic Uncle Graham whom I dreaded encountering the most. Embarrassed by the severity of my fear—I mean, after all, I was an out-and-proud gay adult, seemingly comfortable in my own queer skin—it was difficult to talk about it to anyone, my supportive parents included. As the birthday party approached, I became more and more regressed. It was like I was twelve again, or even six. Attempting to express the how and why of these emotions in my journal was the way I got through it.

Sunday, 9 August 1998

Today is Grandma’s 80th birthday and I am with all the family. And I am feeling absolutely rotten! I am choked up with shame, as bad as I was in January when Mom, Dad, Anne and the kids were in Toronto. Ugh!

This is such a familiar feeling, yet every time I am overcome with it I am caught off guard. With that shock comes an added layer of shame for feeling ashamed. This is extremely painful and I spent so much of my youth completely shut down exactly like this.

I began to contract on the drive here Friday from the farm. Paradoxically enough, while riding in the back seat of Mom and Dad’s suburban I read Yontef’s essay on shame and got a lot out of it. Then we stopped along the way and Mom took over driving from Dad and they both told me I should sit in the front seat and I very reluctantly did so, feeling strangely exposed all of a sudden. I don’t know why. But I had felt so safe and separate in the back seat surrounded by all my books, and being thrust in the front seat really really unnerved me. I felt too self-conscious to continue reading; Mom tried to engage me in conversation, but I was sullen and monosyllabic in response. I could really hear how utterly flat my voice was; I had noticed this at the farm too but this was even more pronounced and this flatness has continued all weekend.

Finished reading the novel about adoption, Swimming Across The Hudson as we approached Grandma’s and this helped me to feel better, to again disappear like that. Meanwhile Mom (in the back seat; she and Dad had switched again) started reading another essay about shame in one of my other books (The Voice of Shame) and made a few interested comments and this perked me up momentarily. For a few seconds, I considered unbosoming my soul to them, talking about how I was feeling, my lingering shame about not being a farmer, my growing anxiety about encountering Uncle Graham this weekend. Opening up. But I did not, and Mom soon put the book aside, said it was too “heavy” for her. (It is, most of it, written in a needlessly jargony style.)

Anyway, I didn’t feel too bad by the time we got to Grandma’s around 6 pm Friday. Uncle John and Aunt Julie were there. Within 60 seconds of arriving, I was in the grips of one of the worst panic attacks I’ve had in years! John and Julie were extremely boisterous and everyone was visiting and rowdy and laughing and I sat there like a bump on a log feeling terrified that someone would try to speak to me in the midst of all this family hoop-la. That I would stammer and stutter and not be able to speak. I sat around the dinner table, next to Grandma who was beaming to have us all there, cringing and stone-silent. My belly was writhing and I wanted to run away and hide. Yikes, it was awful.

And the thought ricocheting through my mind? “They all hate me.” Wow, that’s it, that is the reality of what I was experiencing.

Uncle John has always triggered me like this, and here I am, 32 years old and I still feel like a simpering little sissy boy around him. He is such a man’s man and used to always want to take Dad and I fishing or hunting or some such thing when we would visit. I would always cringe when he would suggest this scarey stuff to do, and I don’t remember but I think I usually managed to worm my way out of participating and I would spend the day at the public library instead.

And I have always believed he hated me. Because I am not a man. And I have never been able to visit with him. I can barely open my mouth around he and Julie—not that there’s much chance to get a word in edgewise: they both hog the conversation most of the time when we are together. They have big, boisterous senses of humor and I have never been able to joke with them. I sit there, frightened and silent.

They left right after supper and I was able to calm down. We went over to their place and for some reason I felt much better and was more comfortable there. Noticed Douglas Coupland’s new novel Girlfriend in a Coma on Julie’s shelf and she insisted on loaning it to me. I felt quite connected with her for those few minutes we were chatting about books.

Anyway, so I felt a lot better by the time we went to bed at Grandma’s Friday night. Had a decent visit with Grandma yesterday morning out on her deck. Showed her pictures of my birth father, and talked generally about my life back in Toronto. Felt good, but I was still feeling somewhat shut down as I began to prepare myself to face Uncle Graham.

So what’s the story with Graham? He is about 50 years old, a really bad alcoholic, and he barely speaks to anyone in the family. Lives [in another province] with his 15 year old daugher Carol. Don’t know exactly how he learned I was gay a few years ago but I think it was Great Aunt Lillian’s daughter Sandy who told him. Since then he has made several drunken homophobic comments about me to Grandma: there was one particularly bad incident a few years ago when he and Great Uncle Walter (Grandma’s brother who died maybe a year ago) both really upset Grandma horribly with their comments. Uncle Walter said something about how Dad mustn’t have been a good father to me, or something like that.

Anyway, so this is why I have always been so apprehensive about seeing Graham. He always gets falling-down drunk and usually by the end of the night he is mouthing everyone off. I have had this nightmarish fantasy that he would call me a faggot in front of the whole family.

As the day progressed yesterday, I had myself worked up into a horrible panic. My insides were churning and I could barely speak to Mom and Dad as we went out shopping for cards and flowers for Grandma. Finally, as I changed clothes in our motel room yesterday afternoon before we all went over to John and Julie’s (where the party was, where Graham would be showing up eventually) I made the decision that I would leave the party if Graham got too drunk or I got too uncomfortable, and this decision made me feel more calm. I told Mom and Dad about my decision, told them I’d been having panic attacks about this ever since we’d arrived. They thought my decision was a wise one, and were sorry to hear that I was feeling anxious. Dad said this must be why I had been so quiet ever since we arrived in town, and I said yes. Mom said everyone was probably going to be uncomfortable to have Graham there, which was true.

So I felt not so anxious to arrive at John and Julie’s. Grandma arrived about a half hour later with Graham, Carol, and Graham’s buddy Larry. Graham had a 20-pack of Coors Light beer under his arm and looked half-cut. More than that, he looked exactly like Mom had described him from Uncle Walter’s funeral last year: rotten teeth, weatherbeaten face, disheveled, old jeans, untucked wrinkled t-shirt. As unruly and unkempt as Relic from The Beachcombers.

I shook Graham’s hand after Mom insisted on giving him a hug. (I noticed that Graham did not hug her back.) We had this inane conversation about how long it has been since we had last seen one another. (It was at Walter and Peg’s 40th wedding anniversary in 1985.) Beyond that, I never spoke to him yesterday. And I probably won’t. He sat in the living room looking sullen and uncomfortable for about 10 minutes, then he and Larry went out in the backyard for the rest of the evening. They came back inside a couple hours later for 10 minutes to watch Grandma open her cards and gifts, then Graham went right back outside (past the unoccupied bathroom, I might add) and through the window I watched him go take a piss behind Julie’s trees in the backyard.

I did not go outside and smoke very much because I did not want to be around him. But beyond that, it was fine. I did not visit very much with anyone; I sat there my usual quiet self but I did not feel panicky. John and Julie’s boys, Will and Nathan are both very outgoing, humorous young men (21 and 24 now) and I felt a bit envious of their sense of belonging to this family, the way they regaled everyone with their boyish jokes in a way I’ve never been able to do. And I didn’t know how to talk to them.

Grandma really enjoyed the get-together: that was the main thing.

These family get-togethers really do a number on me. They always have. I was drunk through my other Grandma’s 100th birthday celebrations two years ago.

Interesting parallel between Graham and I, that is not lost on me. Thank God I am no longer drinking. It would have made yesterday a lot easier to have been drunk myself, but I am a hopeless alcoholic, and I’d be as bad as Graham by the time I got to be his age. Mom said he has been drinking like that since he was 15.

By the time I came back to the hotel around 1030 pm with Mom and Dad, Suzanne and the kids, I had a splitting headache. Mom thought it may be stress-related and I’m sure that’s partially true.

Here’s the truth: homophobes like Uncle Graham bring my own homophobia to the surface. That is the truth. Yesterday I saw a lot of mouthwateringly beautiful young men out and about and instead of feeling lust I felt shame churning in my gut. Never has the connection been so visceral before. On some level I am still ashamed of being a faggot.

But there is hope and healing being able to realize that.

Tuesday, 11 August 1998

I am feeling somewhat guilty about writing right now because Mom is going to paint the fence some more and I feel I should be helping her even though she said it was fine. I am feeling like I don’t want to write, that it shouldn’t be important to me, that I should be helping out instead. There is always something I should be doing and I feel foggy about what I NEED. I feel at this precise moment that this is the trance that has prevented me from writing, period. Again, now that I am back here on a visit my thoughts return to the age-old yearning to write. This almost always happens when I go away somewhere, and then once I am back home the gestalt muddies and I do not write. (I mean here “creative writing” as opposed to “journal writing”.)

Well it is too warm out here on the deck at the farm so I shall continue writing inside.

So now I am on the couch in the living room.

I have so much I want to write about. Let me start by recording a dream. This morning I had a dream in which I was seemingly back at Grandma’s in current time, “processing” all my anxiety about being around Uncle Graham. And as I dreamt I “remembered” a meeting with Graham 3 or 4 years ago (which never occurred in real life), where we had a great visit standing naked in a public shower room. I was very comfortable standing there with him, silently admiring his big, long penis and beautiful body.

And that’s all I remember. But in the dream I was “remembering” this incident and completely reinterpreting my relationship with Uncle Graham in light of it, feeling that my current anxiety about him had been unnecessary.

Very interesting. One memory I do have of Uncle Graham from when I was probably 4 or 5 was being at Grandpa and Grandma’s and Graham took me with him one afternoon or evening and we went to visit some ladyfriend of his. What I distinctly remember is that this woman had no steps outside her house, and Graham had to lift me into the house. A less clear memory is being left alone in the house. Graham and the girl had vanished and I went looking for them and found them in bed together, no doubt having sex but of course I didn’t realize that then. I do sort of remember Graham smiling at me, and I sometimes “think” I can recall being in the bed with them.

So, yes, every once in a while I wonder whether something bad might have happened to me that day, whether I might have been molested in some way. But it’s all too hazy. I do know I have always been both drawn to and scared of Uncle Graham.

I got through the family function without the verbal assault from Uncle Graham I was so dreading, but I did not get through it unscathed. The disapproval and hatred I was so worried about him expressing, I in fact unleashed on myself. Realizing this was a powerful—and, for someone who’d been out of the closet for a dozen years, a humbling—reminder that the process of overcoming self-hatred is life-long.

I’ve not seen Uncle Graham since; typically, he did not show up for my parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary last summer. At that family gathering, I noticed how much more comfortable I was around everyone, especially and including Uncle John and Aunt Julie. I wondered if I might finally be moving past some of this.

Last night, I was sitting around here visiting with my old friends Matt and Trevor, who are in town for a week staying at Joey’s. We spent the day together, having a blast; I have a handful of light-hearted anecdotes to write sometime about our adventures.

But as we visited back at my place, at around 9 pm the phone rang. I rarely answer the phone when I have company, but I checked the call display.

It was Uncle Graham’s name.

“Oh my fucking god,” I shouted. Matt and Trevor wondered what was wrong; as the phone kept ringing, unanswered, I confusedly explained my (non)relationship with my uncle. “Why is he calling me?” I exclaimed. “It wouldn’t be because Grandma died or anything; Mom would call, not Uncle Graham. What on earth would he be calling for?”

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Matt asked.

“God, no!” I said. The call went through to voicemail. Uncle Graham did not leave a message.

So, yeah, I’m a chickenshit. I didn’t feel triggered by the fact he was calling me, but I am completely stymied. He often calls Grandma late at night when he’s plastered, and far too often in these inebriated chats he spits cruel words that upset her. I certainly had no desire to enter such a dialogue.

Does he know that I’m a recovering alcoholic? Heaven forbid, might he actually have been calling for some support?

I have no clue.

Should Uncle Graham call again some time—some time when I’m alone and without the excuse of having company—it remains to be seen whether or not I’ve sufficiently exorcised the bullyish, sissy-hating Uncle Graham inside me to pick up the phone and speak man to man.