Kinky?

I hadn’t cried in years when I turned thirty-four.

I didn’t lack things to cry about or have some rare affliction with my tear ducts. I was burying the dead a couple of times a month, I listened to stories of abuse and rape and neglect on a regular basis. But over time, I had adapted to anesthetize myself just enough that I wouldn’t even have to dig my keys into my pockets to feighn stigmata.

It wasn’t that I didn’t feel anything. I had simply spent a lifetime learning all the reasons why allowing myself to feel that deeply only brought one consequence: Pain. I had been life conditioned in the knowledge that emotional reactions only brought one consequence: Chaos.

So I learned ways to cope with the pain and the chaos. I learned ways to pretend it wasn't really there. I learned ways to divert, revert, and subvert so I'd never really have to face what had been stalking me my whole life.

A few years ago I splurged on a Mirvish subscription (Toronto's epic Broadway) even though it was a bit beyond my budget. I had always loved the theatre growing up – improv, comedy, drama, it didn’t matter. I loved putting on a costume and playing a role. It wasn’t something I continued with (on stage) past the age of sixteen. So in an attempt to claim just a little piece of the old me, I splurged.

I hadn’t heard much about Kinky Boots when our tickets arrived. I’d known Cindi Lauper wrote the music, that it was supposed to be incredibly funny, and the drag might blow the minds of some unsuspecting grandpas among us.

However, I was completely unprepared for the ways it would reach into the depths of my soul and squeeze out tears that had not been expected to be found.

At the end of the first act of Kinky Boots, Simon – a beautiful black bonified drag queen – began to sing about the ways in which he could never live up to the world his father expected; but even if he’d had the strength of Sparta and the patience of Job, he’d still never have been able to be who his Father wanted to see in him.

But, ironically, in his Father’s inability to see – in his blindness – as the beautiful ballad goes:

“… the best part of me is what he wouldn't see.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=q6Ups_EU-wE

It was embarrassing in that theatre. Don’t get me wrong, I really was unprepared. People kept looking at me. My breath became uneasy and my heart started to pound, and then all of a sudden, I wasn’t just welling up, there were actual full-blown tears streaming down my face. “What the fuck?” I thought to myself. I hadn’t shed a single tear in four years. Now THIS, this is what unblocks the ducts?

I chalked it up to life as a new father. Because really, how was I to relate? Six-inch heels and more makeup than I’d ever seen before – that wasn’t me.

It was amazing. It was art. But me?

I often wonder if that was the beginning of an examined awakening in my life. This strange moment in time, when I couldn’t understand why I was weeping, or how it was possible I couldn’t control myself – at the theatre, watching a musical about men dressing up in leather and lace.

It still makes me laugh just saying it out loud.
(I’m sure it’ll get many saying many things)

I know Kinky Boots spoke to a generation of men of all sexualities and histories and traumas, and invited us into a world where rejection has reigned a relationship, and divided a father from his son.

I think, as a new Father, coming home to kiss my son before bed, all I could think that night was, "Rory, what if this is you?"