Milwaukee author Tim Clausen
A friend on social media recently shared one of those sentimental social media memes. It read “My Dad died before I could make him proud & that kills me everyday.” It was a timely post as I was immersed in a book on the very subject of father-son relations. The dynamics of that constellation are complicated in any context but they are magnified many fold by the addition of the gay factor. Milwaukee author Tim Clausen authored the book I was reading. Entitled Not the Son He Expected: Gay Men Talk Candidly About Their Relationship with Their Father, it explores the intimate feelings of gay sons as they tell their personal stories.
Clausen’s own story serves as the preface for the collection of 25 essays that follows. Written by a diverse spectrum of adult men of all social classes and demographics, all are based on a series of questions that are included in the book. A valuable exercise unto itself, the questionnaire allows male readers to make their own assessment of their feelings vis-à-vis their fathers. In fact, the questions can be easily transposed to fit any parent-child relationship.
The reader will see patterns throughout the collection. One frequent behavior, after the initial “coming out” reveal and the inevitably shock wave it creates, is the gay son’s inclination to reconcile. In the many stories that include this scenario, it is the son who feels compelled to reestablish a relationship with his father even if it requires sublimating his identity to accommodate the father’s comfort. Often this creates the bond that should have been there to begin with.
Ironically, this act of being the bigger man in the context of our social obsession with the traits of masculinity is, in great part, the crux of the matter. The fear of not making a father proud, of not living up to expectations, real or imagined, are a significant part of the son’s trauma in dealing with his sexuality. Unfortunately, America’s definition of masculinity measures the value of a boy, gay or not. The young gay boy’s struggle with this dilemma is frequently ignored because parents (in these cases the fathers) are too preoccupied with their own feelings to be aware of their children’s. Another common theme is the recovery process, one which includes devalued self-worth and its turn to substance abuse and other unhealthy behaviors.
Who should read this book? Certainly, parents in general, fathers in particular, and anyone who may find themselves in the conflicted position of how to love a child, male or female, who is dealing with coming out. The book’s revelation may be in the lesson that kids have feelings, too. Theirs may, in fact, as a real existential struggle, be at least as worthy and important as those of the parents.
Of course, those sons in the position of having to come out may also find solace in the message that, for the most part, the process can have a positive end. And, if it doesn’t, one can move on, and be fulfilled, with or without the burden of making a father proud. Or, perhaps, making him the proud father he should have been.
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