Father and son

Returning from coffee at Ae's yesterday, Hn asked me about my interest in football. Gay men are not thought of as being into sports usually. There are in fact plenty who are interested just as there are professional footballers who are gay although generally they do reveal themselves until after their careers have ended.

This conversation got me thinking to my childhood when I had no interest in sport whatsoever and how that changed completely from about the age of fourteen.

When my parents discovered my sexuality - and I was very young at the time - their initial reactions were, what I believe now is regarded as typical. They wondered where they had gone wrong. This included each 'blaming' the other for what their son had turned into.

Dad believed that Mum had been 'too mothering' of me. Well mothers and their sons do tend to be very close especially when the son is an only child and I must confess my mother in many ways is probably my oldest and closest friend. Mum on the other hand felt my Dad was too remote and had not done enough to influence my behaviour and development. Indeed my Dad had been of that generation that did not show their feelings and therefore on the surface seemed distant. Whilst I never doubted his love for me it was only much later in our lives that my Dad gave demonstrative indication of his love through words and touch.

Anyway, at the time there was much finger pointing and my parents pursued a number of strategies to repair, as it were, their homosexual son. One strategy was that my father started to take me out every weekend in winter to watch a football match. It is not as though my father was already a football goer. I don't think he knew much more about what he was taking me to than I did but that was what my parents thought would help 'fix' me.

At first we used to sit in the grandstands with his workmates. This exposed me to adult male hetero behaviour as they skulled their beers and became increasingly leery and noisy. As I was too young for alcohol and not interested anyway, this was a very strange example to set which I ignored.

Initially, I was baffled by what I saw happening on the field. I didn't know the rules, or the teams or the players or even how the scoring worked. But it didn't take long for me to develop an interest in the games and to look forward to each weekend's outing.

My father no doubt imagined at the time that I was being drawn into a natural hetero liking for manly activities but what initially was attracting my interest was actually the beauty of the men playing, their sexy physiques and the wonderful glimpses of their bodies. Unlike footballers in America who seem totally covered by their football uniforms and protective gear, the rugby, soccer and Australian Rules codes of football provide plentiful glimpses of skin and occasionally much more.

Indeed back in those days, Aussie Rules footballers used to get down on one knee and urinate on the field during the quarter time breaks in full view of the crowd. You can imagine how un-hetero was my interest in this activity as I viewed it through binoculars. Unfortunately but understandably this practice now seems to have been banned by the authorities.

Anyway what was at first an interest for the beauty of what I was seeing developed into an understanding and then enjoyment of the context in which it was presented. It was through my parent's attempts to turn me into a hetero that my homosexual inclinations transformed this gay boy into a sports fan.