Born to Be Brad (5 page)

My dad built our house in Port Perry, on a tract of land he bought from my grandfather. This photo is memorable because of the pose: This is the beginning of my trying to find myself a s a high-fashion model.

“I taught myself to shave. (And to put on a full face, for that matter.)”

My father loved me. I know that. But he didn’t always understand me. And frankly, I don’t blame him. It was a two-way street. I wasn’t emotionally available to him, and I rarely engaged with him. We didn’t have anything in common. We never had that sitcom moment, like on
The Cosby Show,
where Dr. Huxtable shows Theo how to shave. I taught myself to shave. (And to put on a full face, for that matter.) He was interested in snowblowers and anything with an on/off switch. Everything he was, I was not. I never felt a lack of love from him. It’s just that my mother understood me enough for the both of them. I had such strong female role models in my childhood that I never sought that love and acceptance from him.

I was happiest—or maybe safest—in the basement with my mom. The room had wainscoting running along the bottom of the walls and a border done in muted colors. And we’d sit at her Singer sewing machine in the corner adding plaid patches onto ripped knees. I liked to personalize my clothing even then. The basement was a place where the glue gun was always hot and at the ready. There, I never needed an excuse to put sequins on anything. I later joined the local community theater, and my mom and I would plant ourselves in the basement sewing more and more sequins onto the costumes, sometimes right up until closing night.

My mother encouraged my creativity. There was a period where I wore gymnastic shoes everywhere. I’d taken a jazz dance class, and while the steps didn’t stick, the shoes did. I’d put on my Esprit yellow wool V-neck sweater with the gray, mauve, and white argyle print with my Hollywood brand jeans cuffed high. I’d come downstairs and I could see the worry on her face: What was going to happen today? She wasn’t interested in stifling my creativity. Far from it. When she asked what kind of curtains I wanted for my bedroom, and I asked for sequined Roman shades, she didn’t put up a fight. She didn’t suggest something blue and masculine or something with a sports theme. She went to the fabric store and custom-made the sequined window treatments to my specifications. But like all mothers, she wanted her son to be safe. And at school, I wasn’t always safe.

My parents had questions—about me, about why I liked Barbie dolls and blondes and Debbie Gibson and why I wasn’t growing out of that. They didn’t understand why I was dancing and lip-synching to Madonna singles in the living room. For answers, they turned to a doctor.

When I turned twelve and hadn’t stopped playing with dolls, my parents took me to see a therapist in Toronto, Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a man who felt if he could diagnose me as a gay, he might be able to cure me. His specialty was gender identity, and he wanted to see if I was confused about what I was. (I wasn’t.)

It came on suddenly. One afternoon in the fifth grade, my parents pulled me out of school and drove me into Toronto for what they called “family therapy.” We were all going to this doctor, they said, to deal with the recent death of my maternal grandfather, Harry. He and Ruby had gone on a vacation to Portugal and the night they returned, Harry suffered a heart attack. Three days later he passed away.

I took jazz lessons at the United Church, and here I am at the Christmas concert. I liked the classes. But I liked the jazz slippers even more, and I wore them around the house forever.

It was a devastating loss for the family and it destroyed my mother and sister. The only other person I knew who had died was my aunt Judy. We probably needed the counseling. The office would provide a safe space to talk—about my grandfather, but also about me and my weight issues. (I was eating my feelings.) We talked about the boys at school and the bullying. And sometimes when Dr. Zucker sat with my parents, I went and saw a medical student, Myra. What she and I did felt more like hanging out than anything more serious. We just talked about what my life was like. She was beautiful, which made it easier to talk. It always comes down to someone being pretty.

But these sessions weren’t always so benign. Sometimes it was
me
on display, me seated in front of that two-way mirror, me under observation. Dr. Zucker placed me in one examination room where there was a bucket full of G.I. Joes on one side and a selection of Barbie dolls on the other. He told me he’d be right back, and in the meantime I should go ahead and play with any toys I wished. While my heart desperately wanted to reach for Barbie’s shiny blond hair and Ken’s waxed chest, I refused to give this doctor the satisfaction. And so I sat with G.I. Joe and pretended I enjoyed plastic warfare; it was the longest hour of my life. It didn’t help that the doctor’s office on Spadina Avenue looked exactly like you’d expect a 1980s mental health building in downtown Toronto to look. The floors were white, the walls were cream, and the whole thing felt sterile. I like to think my parents knew, on some level, that nothing would change me. We were there because they felt helpless and because my pediatrician recommended we see Dr. Zucker. My parents wouldn’t have thought of such a thing on their own. Still, there I was. At night, safely back home, I’d sit on my sister’s bed, trying to understand what was happening. “Dr. Zucker asks me weird questions,” I said, breaking down in tears.

“While my heart desperately wanted to reach for Barbie’s shiny blond hair and Ken’s waxed chest, I refused to give this doctor the satisfaction.”

The doctor recommended I spend more time with my father. And so I went to baseball games with him. I chopped wood. I picked rocks out of the new plot of land he bought, so he could build on it. But, like the song goes in
La Cage aux Folles,
I am who I am. People often blame kids who are bullied for bringing this hurt on themselves.
Why can’t you just blend in?
they say.
Why attract so much attention to yourself by dressing weird or talking weird?
Well, I tried that. I wasn’t wearing faux fur in the fifth grade when that blond He-Man called me names. I was dressed like all the other boys, in starched shirts and collars. But somehow these kids could sniff something different on me, something they didn’t like, something they didn’t understand. And I could never please them even if I tried. In the third grade, I lip-synched to “Like a Virgin” on Talent Day in class, and I put my Lite-Brite on the floor pointing up at me like a spotlight. I wasn’t trying to be brazen. I wasn’t trying to stick a big middle finger up to the school. That wasn’t the kind of kid I was. I wasn’t angry. I was just trying to be myself. I was just the kid who loved Marilyn Monroe, whose definition of beauty was defined by Marilyn, and who liked dancing to Madonna because she was the new Marilyn.

This is my favorite overall styling of an entire family photo that we have. My mom looked so incredibly chic and beautiful on this day. It’s one of my favorite outfits of hers. That veil, come on!

In my fifth-grade class, we had a lip-synching contest every Friday. I have no idea why. Maybe because it was the eighties. The other boys would perform things like Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony” and Aerosmith. But I lip-synched to Debbie Gibson’s “Out of the Blue.” I put a bow in my hair and I borrowed a bubble skirt from a friend and I had little lace socks and running shoes. I was visual, so I enlisted five girls from my class to sit up front and blow bubbles at me while I performed. I wasn’t worried what the other boys in class would think of me. I was more concerned that the girls were going to mess up the bubbles. All I could think about was that these girls were going to ruin my act!

“But somehow these kids could sniff something different on me, something they didn’t like, something they didn’t understand. And I could never please them even if I tried.”

That was my childhood. None of it was a response to what the other kids were doing. None of it was a reaction to bullies. I just didn’t know any better. No, I didn’t know any
different
. I was naïve and aloof and I didn’t know how else to be. All I wanted was to turn the lights off in our portable classroom and convince the kids from my class to perform five numbers from the musical
Cats;
for a set we built a pyramid out of milk crates and draped it in old blankets. I had a vision, and even though the trash pile was unstable, and kids were falling off and scraping their knees, we made it work. We wore costumes borrowed from the local community theater. And it was awesome.

I’m sure my mom knew this whole thing with Dr. Zucker might be detrimental, that it might leave the kind of mark you can’t see on the surface but nevertheless festers beneath. At least she knew enough to take me to McDonald’s after. McDonald’s is where all parents take kids when they feel guilty about something.

Years later, as a college student in Toronto, I would show that video of my Marilyn Monroe presentation to a friend. She and I hadn’t talked much about my childhood, and I thought she would laugh. But instead she cried. She saw this cute, chubby, awkward boy showing off his Marilyn Monroe calendar and her heart broke. I didn’t need to say a word. She knew the struggles that a boy like this must have endured in high school. She knew this overly sensitive boy’s teenage years must have been hell. She had no idea.

On vacation in Disneyland, my parents bought me an Ocean Pacific T-shirt. To me, this was a major designer label and a true status symbol. It was also the closest I came to dressing masculine and sporty. My hair here loosely resembles Marilyn Monroe’s (intentional) and Queen Elizabeth’s (unintentional).

2

Anger can be your best friend. Especially when you have no friends.

THE FASHION INDUSTRY IS
full of people who were not “cool” in high school. People who were misunderstood. People who dressed outlandishly because there was no other way to express themselves. No one had it easy. Lady Gaga—then Stefani Germanotta—was bullied for dressing too provocatively. Even Kate Middleton was called gangly by the girls at her grade school. We were all of us misunderstood. Who knew I’d have something in common with the Princess of Pop and a duchess?