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Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
Tue 04/02/2002
Mestizo
There have been times recently when I've startled myself by looking in the mirror. I will be brushing my teeth half awake/half asleep in the morning and suddenly I see my father looking back at me.
The older I get, the more I resemble my father.
This is something I have been hearing from friends and relatives as I work my way through my thirties. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but after spending most of my life being told I take after my mother's side of the family, it is not something I am used to hearing.
Resembling my father means that I am slowly gaining the stereotypical rounded Southern Mexican Indian facial features, or rather, that what is already there is now more noticeable. My features are simultaneously becoming both more sharper and more softer. No one will ever look at me and go "Hey, that guy looks like an Native American," but I am starting to see a hint of a resemblance.
My father's people are from Michoacan and look it. If you have seen a photograph of an average Mariachi band, you have seen my family. The men are invariably solid and the women sturdy.
There is a family story that a Great, Great, Grandfather of mine was a sailor and brought a Samoan bride back to Mexico with him after one of his trips. Supposedly this is the origin of the physical strength and fortitude that flows through the female members of the family. My sister jokes that our primas are all Amazons. Considering that they all tower over me, there is some truth to the statement.
In the extended family there are Craftspeople and Factory Workers, Restauranteurs and Musicians. Related more closely, are a large number of tias, tios, primas and primos who no longer speak to my side of the family because we are not born again fundamentalist Christians. These days, we usually only hear from them due to the occasional death or marriage. Considering that I am a lapsed Catholic and worse, openly gay, I don't spend too much time worrying about this lack of communication.
My mother's people are from Northern Mexico. She is fond of telling an inappropriate joke which essentially relates that through our veins flows the forcibly mixed blood of German Mennonites, French solders, Spanish conquers and at least one of the native tribes of Chihuahua.
One of my Great Grandfathers fought with Pancho Villa. A supposed embarrassment north of the border, but a strong source of familial pride south of the border. More recently, the family has produced Lawyers and Teachers, Ranch Hands and Doctors. The family has also slowly spread out from Mexico northwards, reaching to the Dakotas.
The marriage of the two families has resulted in me. Someone who was a skinny, relatively pale boy, with chocolate brown eyes and straightish, black hair who has grown up into a not so skinny, light medium brown skinned man, with chocolate brown eyes and wavy black hair.
A man who occasionally sees history when he looks into the mirror.
More later,
nico
Music:
an odd compilation of random sixties British pop songs.
Want:
A bowl of cantaloupe and lime sorbet
Elsewhere:
Writing men