Thanks, Dad

My father was a beautiful, angry, complex brown man. Closeted and married to my mom, somehow trying to survive 1980s central Massachusetts' racism and economic disaster when he would've much rather been in London or Kuala Lumpur or some decolonial brown queer land with great fashion that didn't exist yet. He yelled so much I cried throughout my childhood, didn't fuck my mom and they didn't have a partnership that made either of them very happy, but he did give me some things. He gave me visits to the comic book store where he was a collector, stories about Sri Lanka that I didn't care about as a kid but would grow up to be my everything. And he gave me something maybe the most precious: his brown, mixed-class femme masculinity.

My father taught  me how to find a Brooks Brothers suit on quintuple markdown in the TJ Maxxx in Auburn, MA. His closet is filled with 80% off exquisite ties and beautiful madras and batik shirts that were one of the only ways he could stay close to backhome. He searches for them in central Mass thrift stores every weekend, and tries to tell me about madras as a South Indian fabric art form, but I am 11 and all I know is that he yells the rest of the time, so I ignore him. When I want a pair of hot pink Reeboks at age ten at the factory outlet, he shakes his head  and tells me that the navy blue is more classic and goes with everything, but then realizes that he had a ten year old girl on his hands and relents.

My dad was the ultimate dandy. It won't be til I am grown, queer and out of the house that I look twice at his pink button downs and knee-length crisp shorts, his Boy Scout uniform that fit him at 6' 3” and age 46. That I realize that not every father spent every Sunday pairing his knee socks precisely and rubbing lotion and polish into his shoes like he was praying.

I grew up feeling ugly as hell and totally unsure of how to fit into Worcester, MA. But as I turn 40, I live in Brooklyn, Toronto and Oakland, cities with Black and brown people who love fashion. My closet is as big as my dad's, with my racks of clothing swap dresses and my vintage slip collection, my thrifted and found-at-Ross lingerie and pencil skirts, my carefully tended leather gear and rows of pretty thrifted and Amazon-purchased shoes and high quality (and expensive) Fluevogs. I have six pairs- one bought when I had a fat paycheck in the middle of a terrible year, one bought on a deep discount sale, four found for me in a Value Village or yard sale by friends and passed down. They sit next to my pair of Frye boots a femme of color found in a Goodwill and sold to me at 75% off to help her make rent, that I have worn on tours all over the country and have been classic and comfortable from the subway to the plane.  He would approve.

 My father taught me to thrift, and how to go through an entire discount store's inventory several times looking for the gems. But he also taught me that there are beautiful things in the world that cost money, and if you have room on a credit card, even if you have been out of work for three years and your wife will scream at you til the roof comes off the house when she sees the bill, when you have lost so many beautiful things you can't get back - your country, your queer brown lover, your sense of being one of many brown bodies in a country that is yours - it is so worth blowing your  credit card (if you have one, for a moment) on gorgeous, well-made things you will love forever. Those beautiful shoes, they will hug you and your color and gender when nothing else around you does. He teaches me: spend your money on your teeth and your feet. Those are the things that keep you alive.

So, thanks, Dad. I wish you'd known how not to yell and freak out, but thank you for teaching me about layaway and color, about fine clothing and splurges and the thrift store. Thank you for giving me a model of femme brown masculinity that was deeply queer and immigrant and classed, that I would grow up to fall in love with, in myself and my love. Under and next to all the bullshit, you gave me something precious and revolutionary: a femme, clothing loving, brown queer way of being a man.