Crouching manhood, hidden Barbie
When I was a boy of six or seven, I lived in Gdynia, Poland. It was the summer of around 1995 when I made a friend at the playground behind my apartment called Magnolia. Like me she was half Polish but her other ancestry was half Colombian while I was half Filipino.
My grandad was babysitting that day and I can’t fully recall if he was at the scene or watching me from the house — but I vaguely recall my friend’s dad letting me follow them home because I didn’t have an adult watching me.
If you know anything about kids out for a walk — one of them going home with a stranger is not something you want. I was really excited for the toys Magnolia had — a Barbie mansion the size of a dining table that opened in four directions! A transforable RV! It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen and we played with it for hours.
After a while Magnolia’s dad commented that he wasn’t keen for how I was playing with her Barbies so much and so moved me to her computer where there were some video games.
This first time on a PC, I learned how to use a mouse and keyboard for the first time. And I was missing for several hours, leading to a police search for my whereabouts. It all got resolved but an impression was made.
My parents got on with Magnolias so I went back a few times after that, sometimes with my little sister. I didn’t get to play with the girls and the Barbies much but I was allowed on their computer all the time.
At some point I think Ervin, Magnolias dad, was sick of how much I was hogging his computer and so my parents got me my own. I was a foreign kid in another country so in the absence of friends and familiar things the computer with Encarta 1995 and an adventure game about Incans was my little window to the world beyond.
Thinking about these memories 28 years later, I do think that was one of the first times I learned I could just pass the time in front of a computer. I’ve made the most of my interest and have a long career behind, and ahead of me. Still I gotta wonder what might have been, especially for some of my bigger weaknesses today like expressing myself emotionally and in particular the feminine and softer side.
Being forbidden from playing with Barbies and the girls I’d made friends with is a formative memory. Looking back I can see the misplaced notions of masculinity and homophobia. Today we would call this father’s actions toxic. But this was decades ago — a different time as they say.
Over the years the choices by my friends parents created moments in my upbringing that gave me the idea that being feminine and just different was bad and that if I had those leanings I had to hide them — or risk losing my friends. The culture of computing and being a geek was a way for me to hide my true outgoing gay self and hide it I did — until I was 14.
If I could give any parents and friends of those with children advice for the future — let your boys play with Barbies. Who cares if it makes them gay or fem, there’s bugger all you can do to change who they really are deep down anyway. All you can do is show them love, or the very ugly opposite.
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