For one reason or another, I was remembering a road trip to Guelph my Dad and I took - I think it must have been 1989 or 1990 - probably in 1990, some time around when I turned 9.

We sometimes took these trips, just him and I. It was the sort of thing that fathers and (then) son-shaped children did. Or at least, I had always heard that. Possibly it began when something inside them might have been a little concerned that something wasn't quite right with their son-shaped child.

That past First Communion season I had been very obstinate (at least by my highly-compliant standards) about the outfit I was to wear, which included a pale yellow shirt with tiny dark grey polka dots and a medium-grey leatherette zipper tie.

Naturally, I didn't want that! I wanted floof! White tights! Patent mary janes! Like all the other girls would surely have.

I was smart enough to keep these thoughts locked up in my mind palace, but I had a really hard time hiding my sense of sadness and disappointment. Raised in a blue-collar family, my received lines about ties, discomfort, and nooses weren't delivered convincingly.

I might have also undermined my poor attempts at keeping my little gender Potemkin village standing when, proceeding to my room at bedtime after the First Communion ceremony with a face so long as to risk being underfoot, I closed the door, and quietly sobbed in envy over the other girls' little outfits.

I knew exactly what I was missing.

It was the previous summer, when my sister and I were being babysat by a neighbour with two daughters after my mom returned to work, that I would steel myself away on the regular to the dress-up trunk and twirl around in a brown Gunne Sax inspired dress. I felt sooooooo good.

I'd tell them I was going to play on the computer, a Tandy 1000 I only had a passing interest in. I wasn't really allowed to (the husband didn't want the kids on it), but the sitter let it pass as I was the only boy-shaped child in her care.

While nobody came to check in on me, I can't imagine my sobs punctuated by muttering about fairness and dresses were entirely unnoticed. Only a single wall divided my bedroom and living room, the TV wasn't up loud (it never was), and it was very unlike me to have the door closed.

Like most things in my family, it certainly went uncommented on and, along with the health of my parents' marriage and my sister's relationship with my Mom, it was kept in the family's subtextual realm, which I think was somewhere between the main floor and basement of our 1930s CMHC design home.

What I do know is that my Dad started being more present in my life outside of organized activities. We'd spend more time together, I'd have to do more man things like woodworking and stuff, and in the early summer he told me that we'd be taking the 8½ drive to Guelph to visit his mother soon - just him and I.

It was a little out of the ordinary, to be honest. While parents usually aren't open about their favourites, my sister and I were clearly divvied up, so if there was a special trip to go on, absent any other motivation, it would have been her.

Nothing untoward happened. I think that if his greater presence in my life had some reactive dimension to it, he was hoping it would be through osmosis. I know they believed in the idea of a healthy "male presence" as being a key prophylactic against boy-shaped children being... "strange".

After my parents separated in my mid-teens and I was trying to find a safe way to tell my Mom who I am, she would instead arrange for me to golf or hang out with an uncle, telling me a healthy male presence was important.

I don't think my Dad was necessarily up to the task.

I have nothing at all to back this up, but over the years, I have been convinced that: (a) he sensed I was some variety of queer very early on (but didn't know exactly which, and didn't know what to do with it); and (b) didn't have an entirely sturdy cishet foundation of his own.

He took that all with him when he died in 2023, but when I look back, I keep getting the feeling that his own performance was as convincing as my own was.

So fas as the road trip was concerned, I mostly remember how much I loved the feel of getting proper south (the feel usually began as we hit the Muskokas and the highway divided), that we'd stop at Weber's (so popular they have an overpass!), and, well, his taste in music.

Especially for those long sections of highway where little radio was available, we'd pop a cassette in. He loved Madonna, and I remember going through I'm Breathless (from the Dick Tracy movie) and Like a Prayer a number of times along the journey. I think he liked her then modern sound more, but you can bet that his copy of Like a Virgin had been very well worn.

Yes, this also meant that he'd turn up the volume in the K-Car when Vogue would play.

July 26, 2026