The story of why we were in England in 1989 is a long one with straight forward origins. I’ve written about my mother’s impulsivity before. I have inherited a decent handful of it. Good marketing can bring it out in me. One rough day at work and a trip to Trader Joes and you’ll see how impulsive I can be. And while I welcome change more than most, I have a stick-with-it stubborn side that tends to keep me in one place. At least geographically speaking.
My mother’s impulsivity is probably at the top of the list of why we were there that year. A sense of adventure. The need to escape? Avoidance. The need to be loved. A feeling of never fitting in. Or maybe a true love of life and all things beautiful. All potential influences for why my mother moved us across an ocean when I was 13. Everything we brought with us (including our problems) was magnified in England. Things may have sounded better with a British accent. More refined, even. But they didn’t go away. Especially not my mother’s homophobia.
We spent a couple of days in London and stayed with friends of my new step-father. Led through the streets of the East End, we ate Indian food in secret restaurants in alleys and saw apartment buildings where he spent time with friends when he played semi-pro football in his twenties. It was the ever-so-entertaining “I got pissed and fought with my mate on that corner” tour. My brother and I were amused by his stories and vivid descriptions of late night, post-game brawls. It was a side of London most tourists would never see. And a side of my step-father my mother was surprised to see.