They nestle latently in the present, in nooks and crannies where, against all odds, people are successfully manifesting the queer care commune. I grew up in a white-collar, white, multilingual European nuclear family that on the whole seems to have been unhappier than most. I fought both my parents like an anguished zoo animal from the age of twelve or so, and fled that household as soon as I could, hoping to escape, even if just partially, the mind-warping pain of the majority of the relationships it housed.
I have returned physically as a visitor to the house three or four times it is only Dad who lives there now , but basically I have never gone back. My brother, for his part, stayed behind and became, among other things, uncannily familiar with the paramedics he would have to telephone, alone, during the worst years, to report yet another apparent maternal suicide attempt. I wish that he had fled too. Daddy was fatter, and cuddly, when we were young; his bewildering childishness, competitiveness, and spite almost amusing.
I remember with affection our sofa, on which we would fart, quip, and sass one another while watching a family-favorite VHS cassette Four Weddings and a Funeral ; the breakfast table, where in-jokes, wit, camp, improv, and hilarity would flourish. There were even some moments of joy, heartbreakingly, during the hell-years. Suffice to say, for a lot of the time none of us except Dad wanted to be alive.
My dad taught both his children by example to treat Mum with contemptβand this, I later realized, was of course also a profound form of contempt for us. I will not, whatever I imagine to the contrary, have exorcised it simply by writing the above paragraphs.
I will burn a cord this weekend, with my friends, and meditate, once more, on letting go. But my suspicion is I cannot, in the end, stuff all my hurt into a sacrificial body and watch it go up in smoke. Rage has instead to be folded into everything else we may simultaneously feel; it does not simply burn itself out.
