supposed To cry.

reach me To be a man?

supposed To cry.

— Yolanda

This is a new song that I wrote for my father. He died of cancer I5 years ago,
just as we were beginning To be friends. Thanks for the opportunity To share.

‘A Man Aln'+ Supposed To Cry’

Whefi I W05 YOUVIQ I always wanted fro put my arms around you. There were many
Times when I Tried to - but you didn't know just what To do.

‘Cause you were always Taught that a man ain'+ supposed To cry and you were always
taught how to keep yourfeelings deep inside. You were always Taught that a man ain't

When I was young I was a girly boy. I was always playin with girly -toys. Vs/here Thar
impulse came from I'll never know. You caught me one day in my I"lamma's clorrhes, \/\/hair
else could you do but get mad? I was The only boy you ever had. How were you gonna

‘Cause you were always 'i'augh+ that a man ain'1' supposed To cry-and you were always
taught how To keep your feelings deep inside. You were always taught that a man ain'+

I remember the last day I saw you. You were much To confused to respond to The love
you knew I had for you -rha+'s why every day now I carry you as absparkle in my eye when
I see a man -that looks like you. Laughter in my voice when I hear someone ‘that sounds
like Vou. Tears in my eyes when I see your smiling Face in my mind. Youwere always
‘taught that a man ain't supposed ‘to cry. You were always ‘taught how ‘to keep your feel-
irgs deep inside. You were always -raugh-r that a man ain't supposed To cry.

1

a

— Andrew Smith
_Chin Ho!

June 2000 | Out in the Mountains I21

Your little boy never died.

I saw him when you played with me,

I saw him when you smiled.

I saw him when you laughed with me,
I saw him when you cried.

Your Iirrle boy never died, my dad;
For ‘that, I'm always glad.

And now that you have died. my dad,
I find i-I’ rather sad.

— Anonymous, for IZTF

My father, Harold Smith, was not always my best friend. When I was young and bullheaded, my father and 7
I argued constantly, but now that I'm old and bullheaded, we talk almost every day and seldom disagree.
Through the years, my polite British father has taught this angry young gay American the virtues of patience,
negotiation and compromise without once ever telling me not to pursue the things I found important. My
father has supported and shared my dreams and victories, and he has been there to prop me back up after
my many defeats. And whenever I’ve been ready to pack it in, it’s my Dad who always urges me on. I'd be
nowhere without him. , r « I

— it was typical for me not to see
him in the morning — and I went
to school.

I knew as I was walking
home from school, I don’t know
how I knew, but I did. As I was
walking home, I was passing all
these businesses, thinking how I
would have to get ajob, thinking
“Oh, if my dad died, I could get-
ajob there, or there...”

I got home and figured he
was tired from his trip, so he was
in his bedroom asleep. I didn’t
go in. I got a phone call from an
old friend of his from California.
This man was almost completely
deaf, and thought I was my
father. We had a funny conversa-
tion, and I managed to tell him
Dad was asleep. He said he’d
call back. So I sat down,
watched TV, made dinner. I fig-
ured this guy was going to be
calling, so I should wake my dad
up. That’s when I found him.

I ran upstairs; the two men

who lived upstairs were nurses. I

I was screaming and crying. They

called the police, who were terri-
ble. They tried to be sensitive,
but they were interrogating me
about whether my father had any
enemies, how he’d been feeling.
They didn’t tell me they had
found a note until the end of

b their little interrogation. Finally,

they told me they had this note,
and wouldn’t give it to me
because it was evidence. I was
16 and they were cops —— what
did I know? So they took the
note, and I didn’t get to see it.
Then the phone rang, and it was
this guy... “Hello, Greg?” He
couldn’t understand me. Finally,
I gave the phone to one of the
guys from upstairs and left the
house. The next day, friends
came over and we started pack-
ing up the house and selling
stuff. People were mobilized in
the community; people died
every day in that neighbourhood,

and it was old hat by then.

The note was at the medical
examiner’s office for a week.
There are all sorts of things in it
about why, how he was feeling
about life and about me, and how
it was in no way my fault.

The most important thing to
him was his success as a busi-
nessman. Just before he died, he
was exclusively designing for
men who dressed as women, and
he was very popular. But his
clients were dying, and his busi-
ness went bankrupt sometime in
November. He looked for work.
All he could get was cleaning a
bathhouse; that was pretty
humiliating to him, a man who
had owned stores. He was 52,
and just so beatenby this:

The note also said how much
he loved me. He said part of the
reason he was doing this, taking
his life, was because he-knew I
was all grown up and could take
care of myself.

He kept all of his struggles
inside. That’s why he committed
suicide. He kept it all deep in
there.

***

In college, a couple of years
after he died, I felt disconnected.
When I thought of him, the only
images I, had were of wasting
syndrome or in the hospital. I
didn’t have any photographs of
him, and didn’t think there were
any. I’ve since found a bunch in
my mother’s basement, but at the
time, there were none in my real-
ity. I was plagued by horrible
images, finding his dead body
and so on. I knew I needed a pos-
itive image of him, but I wasn’t
going to find one.

One day, I was sitting at my
desk, feeling sad. There was a
book I had packed up the day
after my dad died; it ended up on
my desk there in college. It was
an art book he had bought me the
year he made the wax sculpture.

I opened it — I hadn’t opened
it in all those years — and out like
a bookmark fell this photograph
of my brother and I when we
were maybe eight and nine, sit-
ting on my father’s lap in front of
the Christmas tree. We were all
smiling and playing. It was the
sweetest thing,sand I knew at that
moment, somehow, that my
father was around. There have
been many similar times when I
just felt his presence. Whether
it’s his ghost cruising around or a
deep subconscious part of
myself, I don’t care. A day does-
n’t go by that in some small way,
I don’t feel his presence affect-
ing my life. I feel like I’m some-
how channelling his love for me
when I’m giving my love to
someone else. I feel like he
taught me how to love someone
else. V