ChiangMaiNews.com – by James Austin Farrell
While my blond Eagle Eyes Action Man and I gouged out the tarmac in the street with my dad’s claw hammer, my brother would be playing with his female friends’ dolls: Barbies, Cindys, and of course the innovative nappy wetter. He played the nurse, my mate played the doctor, and I, always the patient. I could beat him in a fight even though I had a three year age disadvantage, and as repayment for verbal abuse concerning my brother’s feminine proclivities by older guys we both knew, I occasionally punished him by throwing his girly toys in the dustbin.
Our parents came from working class backgrounds; from a small minded, provincial, Yorkshire that was not savvy to gender anomalies and certainly not tolerant of homosexuality – which I believe they thought was latent in my brother’s behaviour. Needless to say, his virtuosic Arab springs and nimble cart wheels inspired more criticism than admiration. His acrobatics at school earned him many suspensions when his hair colouring and neo-gothic uniform proved a nuisance to uncompromising teachers. And when after caught stealing from a bus station newspaper shop a policeman mistakenly referred to him as “your daughter” when speaking to my aggrieved mother, she drove home furiously, then held him down and shaved his head with a buzzer.