Redefining Realness by Janet Mock Read Free Book Online Page A

soon we became desensitized to “The Fag One.” I took the name-calling with ease because 1) I was under the illusion that I deserved it because it was probably true; and 2) part of me felt guilty for not being a better big brother to Chad. He liked boy things, and I did not, but Derek and Rob did. They were the stand-in big brothers Chad deserved, the kind I couldn’t be. While the guys played games or watched sports, I’d sit in the room quietly, trying my best to go unnoticed.
    At the time, Dad drove a city bus, the only job I remember him having. I beamed when he’d sit next to me at the kitchen table wearing his AC Transit uniform, mirroring the childhood photos I have of our family, which show Dad in his Navy fatigues and Chad and me with our diapers on; surely Mom was behind the camera. He looked like a man with a plan and purpose.
    He brought that sense of order to the kitchen table every weekday afternoon, helping us with our homework, the first thing we were required to do when we got home from school. With an Oreo in my mouth, a pencil in my hand, and Dad serving as what I believed to be an all-knowing source to my second-grade assignments, I basked in the ease of our interactions. Homework became neutral territory for my father and me. We were allies there, in the same way that he and Chad seemed to be teammates.
    “You always gotta be a step ahead,” he would say to me with a wink after explaining long division when my class was just learning basic division.
    I believe Dad’s diligence with my homework was his means ofbonding with me, and his coaching took me beyond the classroom’s agenda, helping me excel in school while instilling a sense of structure and discipline and confidence. With Dad teaching me to do the work every day, I felt that nothing in a classroom could conquer or deter me except my talkative manner and undying need to be told I was exceptional.
    When my teacher asked our class what we wanted to be when we grew up, my classmates chose respectable occupations. There were a dozen doctors, lawyers, and basketball players, countless cops and rappers, and a few firemen and teachers, but there was only one standout. “When I grow up, I want to be a secretary,” my sassy eight-year-old self proclaimed. I knew my peers were weary of me raising my hand with the right answer, even in this subjective challenge.
    Despite liking the way the word secretary rolled off my tongue and the number of syllables it boasted, proving my intellectual prowess to my peers, I chose it as my grown-up job because I understood it to be a woman’s job. In nearly all the films or series I watched, I noticed that every man of importance had a secretary, an attractive, efficient keeper of his schedule. That’s so me , I thought, attracted to the elementary hyper-feminine, submissive depiction of womanhood—a sharp contrast to the masculine world where I lived with my father. In reflection, I roll my eyes at my youthful understanding of gender roles (the man in a position of power, the woman his servant), how limited my views were. Little did I know that I actually wanted to be Clair Huxtable. It’s a testament to how pervasive these images were—accessible to even a second-grader—and how these flawed and limited views of what was expected and encouraged of men and women shaped my understanding of what was possible. Thankfully, the idea of womanhood that I reached for in adolescence and adulthood was one that came from a place of internal power and accountability to one’s own dreams as opposed to aiding a man in the pursuit of his dreams.
    “Does everyone know what a secretary is?” our teacher asked the class, holding a knowing glance in my direction as my peers shook their heads. “Charles, can you please explain to the class what a secretary does?”
    “A secretary sits outside an important man’s office and takes care of things for him, like what time he needs to be at a meeting or the name of his new