Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter by Alison Wearing

“Ta-da!” He had just painted the kitchen a strange beige-orange and hoped I would like it.
    Dad made dinner while I picked my teeth and lounged awkwardly at the table. Then we got out the cards and played a game of cribbage, Dad all plucky with enthusiasm and me suddenly scared by all his pluckiness. It took me ages to workup the courage, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through the night if I didn’t ask.
    â€œSo, Dad?”
    He was busy counting and shifting his cards around. “Yes?” he said without looking up.
    â€œSo, I was just wondering …” I continued, sounding as blasé as I could, “if maybe you’re a drag queen.”
    Dad laughed. Sort of whooped. Put down his cards and fluttered his hands around as though they were little sparrows, which I did not take as a very good sign. “No, don’t worry. I’m not a drag queen. Not all gay men are drag queens.”
    I could have inflated an air mattress with the breath I exhaled. “So why do they do that? Like, why was that guy wearing a tutu?”
    Dad shrugged. “I guess he just finds it kind of fun.”
    Kind of fun
.
    I wasn’t sure what to do with that explanation.
    Decided to pick my cards back up.
    Maybe try for a flush.
    I can’t remember where I used to sleep in that apartment (Dad didn’t live there very long), but it might have been on the couch in the main room. Wherever it was, that night I lay awake listening to the traffic, staring at the city lights out the curtainless windows and carving out a slightly different perspective on my situation. Suddenly, there was something worse than being gay. There was being a drag queen. And at least Dad wasn’t one of those. In spite of the cars roaring through myhead and the strangeness of the apartment, I relaxed slightly, knowing that there were men out there walking around in tutus and saying toodle-oo, and at least my dad was slightly more normal than that.

A RECIPE AND A REVELATION
    While divorce was not unheard of in those days, it was uncommon enough, particularly under these circumstances, that acquaintances in Peterborough were left to improvise the recipe for an Appropriate Reaction:
    1 part indignation, for there was nothing as dissolute as what my father was doing, apparently, especially in
this
kind of town
    5 parts pity, that lumpy ingredient that is such a relief to offload and so back-breaking to receive
    3 parts denial, a highly soluble emotion that gives most situations a pleasingly creamy texture
    10 parts pre-sifted silence, with the neighbourhood taking on a collective strained smile and hush-hush tone, everyone knowing everything but no one actually saying a word about anything.
    Ever.
    Which left me wondering.
    Did my father now cease to exist to everyone but my brothers and me? Would he keep being part of our lives in secret or would he eventually disappear into some epicene vortex somewhere around the Toronto intersection of Church and Wellesley? What would I say if people eventually asked? Would I need to invent an imaginary heterosexual person called “my dad” and talk about all the great, straight things wedid together? What kinds of things did straight fathers engage their daughters in anyway? None of the ones that I knew baked or sang Broadway show tunes over breakfast or went to the ballet or liked shopping. What on earth did these enviable, heterosexual fathers actually
do
?
    The only childhood friend I ever told was Jessica Bell. I was fourteen. I had kept the secret to myself for a year, until late one night when we were lounging on the floor of Jessica’s basement, sloshing ourselves up with a mickey of rum she kept stashed for such occasions. I had never tried alcohol before, but pretended to be seasoned because I longed to be as confident and grown-up as I saw Jessica to be.
    As the spiked Coke poured through me, I felt myself unfurling, my stomach unclenching. The basement