Not My Father's Son

by Alan Cumming

I told this story at my brother’s wedding. (His third, incidentally. We Cumming boys love a wedding.)

had been very happy to discover via one of its ancient tomes that we Scots were the first to ever catalog the word fuck!

I lie there for a while in the dusk, then make a decision, little knowing how it will affect every facet of my life and fiber of my being for the rest of my life: I say no to shame.

am happy to have all those qualities. Had I not had the childhood I did, would these traits not be so at the forefront of my personality? Who knows? All I know is that I am the product of all the experiences I have had, good and bad, and if I am in a happy place in my life (as I truly am), then I can have no regrets about any of the combination of events and circumstances that have led me to the here and now.

I have a bit of the devil in me, you see.

My father told me I was worthless, my mother that I was precious. They couldn’t both be right, but they evened each other out and I began to make my own mind up, not just about myself but about everything that was going on around me.

That was the phrase I kept hearing, kept repeating to myself. You have to sort yourself out, Alan. By such and such a date you need to have sorted yourself out.

Sometimes the lowest common denominator is a positive thing, and people can bond over their love of pop trash.

I was beginning to understand who I really was. Such a huge part of my psyche had been closed off for so long, and now I was embracing the fullness of my life experience for the first time.

For the first time in my childhood, but certainly not the last, I encountered an upsetting experience and decided the best way to deal with it was to pretend it had never happened. And so it didn’t.

I had lost a father but found a grandfather. One of them had never sought the truth and lived a life based on a lie; the other’s truth was hidden from us because society deemed it unsuitable. Both caused strife, and sadness. But now, both combined to reinforce for me what I knew to be the only truth: there is never shame in being open and honest.