  It's something of a psychological cliché that the queers amongst us (of which I am a happy member) suffer from parental conflicts. Since time out of mind, such has been used to demonise and denigrate us, to justify our arrest, imprisonment, our diagonsis as sick and broken. Our torture. Take a cursory look at the history of psychology in the West, in particular the use of “insane asylums” and their ilk, and you'll find a grotesque litany of abuses dating back since the inception of the school itself. The insititutionalised psychological and physical torture that was inflicted on LGBTQ men and women in hospitals and asylums throughout self-described “civilisation” is a horror story in and of itself, as grotesquely disturbing as the treatment of women who enjoyed sex or conducted themselves outside of certain patriarchal expectations (and proscriptions). One particularly lovely example was “aversion therapy,” in which gay men and women were forced to watch homosexual pornography whilst being pumped full of drugs that induced nausea and crippling pain, under the absurd assumption that association would re-write the “fault” in our neurological wiring. Of course, all studies and records demonstrate that it didn't work, save to inflict profound P.T.S.D, suicidal tendencies, self-loathing and depression upon its subjects. Some forms of “therapy” were even more extreme, ranging -but not excluded to- voluntary or involuntary chemical castration (Alan Turing, creator of the Colossus Engine, breaker of the Enigma Code, one of the many reason why the UK survived the Second World War, was ceremoniously condemned to this fate. Roar Britannia). The fundamental assumption has always been one of sickness and perversion; that there is something fundamentally incorrect that requires treatment. This has been glacially eroded over time, but is still a lingering cultural problem, simmering beneath the polite veneer of “enlightened” Western culture. The worst of it is, there are issues to explore here. In an ahistorical environment, without the baggage of abuse and oppression, of torture and intolerance, we may be able to look at the phenomena of parent/child friction when it comes to LGBTQ men and women and explore the reasons why -anecdotally- it seems to be so pervasive. LGBTQ men and women generally seem to be a tribe apart from their biological roots, unanchored and cast adrift, either due to tensions at home or by their own inclinations and natures. There is a marked tendency for us to be distanced from our families, to not identify with them as strongly as our straight siblings. Likewise, many LGBTQ men and women emphasise that status by putting physical distance between themselves and their places of origin. Whilst, stereotypically, it might be easy to draw certain conclusions in that regard -LGBTQ men and women often suffer at home owing to prejudice, lack of understanding or acceptance, outright rejection or abuse-, that isn't always the case. There are complexities to the state of identifying as LGBQT that remove us from certain meta-narratives, at least traditionally; those that “family,” by its very nature, tends to proscribe: before the advancements in civil rights made throughout the late 20th century, we were denied the roles of sibling, wife, husband, parent that our straight siblings would be expected to conform to in some way, shape or form, and that still sustains to certain degrees even now. We tend to be unanchored individuals, lacking in clear focus or state or path, because the onus for identity, for existential narrative, is on us. Those that culture itself has provided are woefully inadequate in their restrictions and expectations, painting cartoon caricatures of what we are SUPPOSED to be to make ostensibly straight, cisgender society more comfortable. They are effectively a means of assimilating our existence through the enshrinment of stereotype, which in turn informs the identities and behaviours of those that wish to find a place or purpose in those structures (the serpent eating its own tail). So, it is left to us to build our identities, our families, our sense of place and purpose from the foundations up, often from the ashes up, for those whose home lives are particularly abusive or dismissive. Where we stand, the myths of self that inform us, are largely our own. Our families tend to be extended, cast wide and cultivated from scraps of others: friends, lovers, exes, associates and acquaintances. We are scarred, ragdoll entities in a world that demands we be unblemished and pristine. It's little wonder, then, that so many of us are afflicted with various forms of psychological illness, from the parental issues that stereotype proscribes to depression and suicidal tendencies, we are a peculiarly afflicted tribe when it comes diseases of the mind, though those same diseases are often also the source of our uniqueness and inspiration. The stereotype that LGBTQ individuals tend to dominate the arts isn't entirely unfounded; there's a reason why you'll find queers of all stripe and feather throughout theatre and publishing, cinema and literature, video games, art galleries and practically every walk of artistic life you'd care to name: That status of lacking anchorage, of being apart from society and culture at large, forces expression and outlet in ways that are non-standard, often essentially so, for the sake of our psychological well being, or at least, our continued function beyond asylum walls. This isn't exclusive to LGBTQ people by any measure, but it is peculiar of us; a pervasive factor that is well testified in psychological record and study. We find other places to be, other means and modes of expressions, to author and paint ourselves beyond what tradition denies and meta-narrative ignores. Any factor, characteristic or circumstance that shunts an individual away from proscribed cultural narratives can have the same effect, the particulars largely incidental next to the mutual implications. When it comes to our own states of mind, that analysis becomes problematic: we might be able to vaguely allude to what we think our issues might be and why, but without the benefit of external observation and perspective, we are largely fumbling in the dark. Part of the problem comes from the limitations of analysis: our own minds become both the instrument and subject under question, resulting in a paradox: mind assessing mind assessing mind assesing mind...it's a process fraught with all manner of insurmountable problems. We cannot separate ourselves from our identities and discern the tangled lines of influence that result in this characteristic, this tendency, that reaction, that belief. To do so would, necessarily, alter the subject and instruments of analysis themselves, the process of dissection proving transformative, thereby making any conclusion one might draw flimsy and ephemeral. But that doesn't make the effort or imperative to do so pointless. Far from it. There might not be any conclusion or answer that might derive from the process, but the engagement itself, the transformations that necessarily result, are imperative to self-discovery, insight and transformation. When we embark on this kind of self-dissection, we tacitly acknowledge our own potential for transformation, to consider and even identify beyond the parameters of old assumptions. The process itself can become the source of so much inspiration and material, such a freight of insight, that we cannot help but be fundamentally transfigured by it. This appears to be peculiarly true when those who express and explore outwardly, creatively, return to their own material and realise that they were expressing concerns that they didn't consciously understand or intend to at the time of recording. Those other writers I regularly associate with often express surprise not only at what others see in their works but what they themselves find upon returning to it after a period of absence. They begin to realise that their subconscious expressions have seeped out onto the page, lingering like invisible stains between the words and punctuation, lending texture, weight and significance where it wasn't consciously considered. This is the process through which theme is born, where the unspoken resonance of a text begins to throb and writhe upon the page, making it living, making it vital and resonant. For the most part, this is what readers identify with and feel resonating inside of their own breasts; the unspoken music of a story, that lies on a layer far and beyond the surface narrative or printed word. It's when a story contains such resonances that we identify with it, because it echoes and sings back to us familiar chords and verses, even when we can't understand or express to ourselves their exact natures. Many express sincere shock at the phenomena, that something they thought about and felt so keenly, that they've spent weeks and months obsessing over, has the capacity to surprise them, that these depths and layers of operation even exist. At their most vital and essential, this is what stories are and what they serve; a form of telepathy, of communicating mind to mind, in a manner more earnest and eloquent than we often can in conversation or waking life. When we read the stories of another, it is a strangely intimate process of being invited to walk in another's mindscapes whilst also opening our own to their invasions and the alterations that might result. Every story we read is parasitic, to a certain degree; it worms its way inside and transforms us fundamentally, without us even realising. In significant moments, some of us find our whole worlds turned upside down by what we experience, our assumptions and expectations undone, our sense of self undermined or irredeemably shattered. This can be both traumatic and joyous, agonising and celebratory. Often, it's all of those at once and more, often taking significant amounts of time to finish its work, and even then, difficult to express or define beyond poetry or vague allusion to experiences that, traditionally, have been coopted and jealously hoarded by religion but denied or denigrated in any other walk of life. Writing is, as many describe it, a form of free therapy. Speaking personally, I know that, without it, I would likely either be long dead, destitute and homeless or strapped down and sedated in some padded cell. This doesn't merely relate to my status as one of the aforementioned “tribe of tribeless,” a gay man in a world that, traditionally, would rather we didn't exist (the feeling is mutual, by the by). There are myriad poisons and traumas, scars and afflictions, swilling around the swamp of my skull. No more or less than any other; my own family life, for example, was far, far less traumatic than many of my queer brothers and sisters. By and large, my relationships with my parents are positive and pleasant, I don't have any great abuse or trauma to report in that regard. But that doesn't make the aforementioned maladies any less severe or significant. As many in my circle know, I was an enormously depressed, misanthropic child who became an enormously depressed, misanthropic, self-loathing and suicidal young man; a creature that sought to retreat from the world at large and had absolutely no love for it whatsoever, harbouring no plans for the future because it seemed perfectly self-evident that it didn't have or want one (that this thirty-something sits in its place now, expounding on its experience, would likely have appalled it). What writing has done for me, nominally writing in horror specifically, is provide an arena in which those states of mind, those despairs and dissasociations, can be explored. Going back to read my first short story collection, Strange Playgrounds (Dark Moon Books, 2013), I find expressions of anxiety and concerns I didn't even realise I had (amongst the storm of myriad mental health issues that afflicted my younger self). The collection ostensibly began while I was at university, a student, largely reclusive, out of love with a world that seemed perpetually on the verge of disaster (climate change, pollution, pandemics, economic collapse, fuel shortages, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, riots, protests, civil unrest, amongst others), that seemed so unworthy of engaging with when compared to the absurd disturbia inside my own head.  Stories that coalesced with very particular conscious intentions (the title story, Strange Playgrounds, for example, was originally an attempt to write a story with the same starting premise as Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, but to take it in a very different direction) clearly express something far deeper and more abiding than I originally intended: there are themes of abandonment and isolation, of being torn from the assumptions of one's life, here, as well as abiding horror at being cast into unknown and unknowable circumstances, flailing out of all control, the breaking down of all we know or assume. It's strange to find that, after so long; to understand that there were fears and concerns consuming my younger self so utterly but that were beyond his conscious expression. This was before he'd sought any genuine psychological help, which would become essential later in life, the stories likely providing his only real outlet for those crippling anxieities and bouts of depression. Other stories explore existential anxiety in a more contained manner: the story The Last Sane Man -based on the old cliché that “If you believe yourself the last sane man in creation, you're likely the lunatic,”- involving something intimately familiar to me; a routine and tradition as old as I can recall: a short train trip between Derby and Birmingham, that I used to take both as a boy to my Grandparent's house and then, later, as a student to and from university. It revels in the familiar detail and sensory qualities of that experience before turning them upside down and inside out, wrenching any comfort away from the protagonist by causing some fundamental mechanism in reality to break down, the train endlessly cycling along the same stretch of track, which other passengers don't seem conscious of, condemning the man as a lunatic, demanding that he sit down, be quiet, until anxiety and despair overcome him utterly. I didn't recognise it at the time, but so many of my own anxieties are expressed through that story, from my terror of being trapped in routines and regimens to the social anxiety that was eating my mind alive at the time of writing. To think that they could express themselves so clearly and yet so unconsciously was surprising, to say the least. That the dead boy writing those words didn't realise how essential it was for him to express them shudders me to my core. Lacking the help that he did at the time, I find myself wondering: what would have happened to him, had he not had that outlet, that form of therapy? Then I begin to wonder: what about those who are born to similar circumstances, similar class structures (in my instance, working class, low income, comprehensive education) but who aren't fortunate enough to find some sort of voice, some mode of expression? Returning to the original topic of friction between children and parents (which is inevitable in any household or family structure, no matter how cohesive, nurturing, provisional etc), beyond whatever issues exist between me and my parents (articulated and otherwise), one thing that has arguably shaped me and my state of mind more than any other is my Mother's love of media in all its forms and the unrestricted access to it I was granted as a boy: I was lucky enough to be reading actual books by the time I went to school (primarily British fantasy such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings etc) and had graduated to adult literature in all its forms long, long before I started high school. Books and film and music and video games have always been my life lines, my manna, my raw nourishment. They feed my mind and swell my imagination, provide the fodder it needs to keep from cannibalising sanity and itself. What if I'd never had that? Then, other issues migth have become more prominent, overwhelming. I wouldn't have had diversions from the diseases in my mind but also would have been denied the means of identifying, articulating and fighting them. Graduating to telling stories of my own came quickly, again, largely as a matter of circumstance: I used to write stories down with pen and pencil, but my Grandfather passed down to me an old type-writer, which I adored and upon which I penned the first coherent stories I ever wrote (largely fan-works and derivations of whatever book, cartoon, comic or video game obsessed me at the time). What if that hadn't come to pass? What self-mutilating specimen would be sat here now, in my place (assuming that anything might have survived this long)? Other stories in the collection reveal my concerns and neuroses regarding adult relationships (which, in traditional form, have always been massively problematic for me): The State of Lovers describes a Frankensteinian effort by one woman to dream into being the perfect lover, one who does not frustrate or disappoint, one who fulfils and completes her, but which reveals, in his perfection, more unflattering details about her state of mind than his own. She comes to realise that what she's committed is a form of slavery, that nothing can occupy the contradictory and ambiguous requirements she holds without tearing itself apart, and that, in order to heal, she must let her creation go, and turn the powers she has realised on herself, in order to reshape herself and be born anew. Dissatisfaction with one's state and self, broken assumptions, defeated dreams and a yearning for transition pervade the collection, speaking deeply of my own disatisfaction and dysphoria; not one relating to sex or gender, but my humanity, in which I've never felt comfortable and have had to learn to accept as inalienable (a sense of imposter syndrome amongst my own species has always been very strong, and sustains to this day. I've always felt more like a monster in a human suit than something legitimately belonging to the species). It's a frightening experience, to be the audience for one's own art, a little like being present in some astrally projected state at a particularly invasive surgery one is undergoing, seeing parts of oneself that should probably never be visible, that are far from flattering. A deep dive into the bone and entrails, the boiling muck of subconsciousness, where we can either be smothered and poisoned or coccooned and reborn.  Returning to later works, such as the collection Essential Atrocities, proves equally revealing: stories such as Lost Moments prove to be expressions of frustrations and parental friction that comes from being the “older brother,” tensions which I remember keenly as being traumatic and devestating to my child self and his small, self-contained world. Likewise, The Breaking Down is a somewhat spiteful expression of a desire to see the world built and extolled by our parents torn down, literally invaded and undone by inexplicable calamity, monsters ripping through the stuff of reality and turning it upside down, inside out, reducing their world to rubble whilst their children abandon them, flocking to the monsters with the same glee and enthusiasm as the children of Hamlin to the Pied Piper. There are tensions expressed here that I find difficult to acknowledge or explore in any conscious space, that my mind isn't the equal of outside of the rawly imaginative. Without that expression, it's likely those tensions would have boiled over long ago and either poisoned or destroyed otherwise fruitful relationships, not to mention my own state of mind. Whilst not all of the stories are overtly queer in subject, as other readers have expressed to me, there's little denying the queer tone that runs throughout almost all of them. Whilst the identities and relationships of characters vary, there is a certain fluidity to sex and sexuality within those stories as there is to species, state, even identity and assumptions of self. Metaphorically, the stories express not only a desire for transformation, but a celebration of otherness, of being on the outside, rather than a lamentation of it. It has taken me a long time to realise that in myself, and the writing of these collections has been a key component of that process. With regards to whatever issues and tensions existed and still exist between my parents and I, from the grander, generational conflicts and misunderstandings that are part of cultural meta-narrative to the particular, personal issues that derive from specific events and circumstances, the creation of stories has allowed for an expression and exploration thereof that has proven far more healthy and productive than allowing them to fester inside my mind, potentially becoming cancerous to self and sanity. As for those suffering similar issues as I once did -and still do, from time to time; such diseases don't go away, they merely change shape and become easier to contain-, my only advice would be to find something, anything: a form of expression, a form of reflection. It doesn't have to be as specific as writing stories or painting. Anything that allows for a shift in states of mind, for moments of quiescence and consideration, focus and inspiration will provide the medium and arenas by which the phenomena of “self” might be explored, in which insight and introspection can be practiced. That process in and of itself allows us the means of self-reflection essential to identifying and undoing diseased states of mind, the parasitic illnesses that intertwine themselves with the tapestries of our identities and make themselves inalienable, inextricable. Most lack the means or the imperative; they're never provided the contexts by which such explorations can take place or taught why it is necessary to do so. As such, disease becomes assumed, insidous; synonymous with assumptions of personality, leading the suffere to identify with and defend their own cancer. The means of identifying that phenomena are essential, as essential to the health of our psyches as physical exercise and nutrition are to our bodies. The lack or denial of it ultimately leads to the death of both, all we are or might ever be. Take care of yourselves.   THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORRORComments are closed.
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