Spent my 40th year crossing off every item on my bucket list. One such dream was to visit the house used for the 1980’s soap opera, Dynasty. It was cathartic to make this homage to my favourite TV show of yesteryear and marvellous fun to edit myself into it – literally.
*Individuals in similar situations should consider the potential impact of such experiences on mental well-being.
A changeable glow emanated from a colossal analogue television that bathed our living room walls with energetic variations in colour and light, giving surreal distinction to the darkness as I was carried into this scene, at five years of age, coddled in the arms of my eldest teenage sister. It was 1983, and awake long after bedtime, burning through my first fever, the evening would unfold to imprint upon my mind, the genesis of a softly dawning awareness – a faint sense that somehow, the far away people on that screen, would imprint and tether with my own sense of self.
The television show they were watching was hypnotic, with rising crests of sentimental music through horns and strings that changed with the mood of the dreamlike people upon the screen – all of whom glided in and out of tall doors, long hallways and luxurious rooms, with huge vases of flowers and elaborate decorations – all to their own sweeping leitmotifs.
My mind sailed high on this arousal, with its fascinating energy of pensive stares, dramatic posturing and wild camera pans into emoting faces. It bled into my reality as they stood off against one another, mirroring my own surroundings – and though I could not have had any comprehension that I was witnessing a ground-breaking cultural phenomena (pertinent to my own future conditioning and trajectory through life) this night was about to imprint on my psyche, for the rest of my life.
The brunette lady, Joan Collins, struck me firstly, as having identical eyes to my own mother – and the same indignant fury stared out from both of their highly glossed beauty and chiffon draped shoulders.
With its simplistic changes in pitch, and surreal acting, Dynasty, appeared to my thirsty blank mind, to be tailored right down to a child’s intellect, and its characters became as real as to me as those who moved about me in life.
This brooding, soft natured boy entered the screen – and before my tiny mind knew what brooding might even be, I was innately on his side, brethren without question with, Steven Carrington.
With his melancholy blue eyes and curly cinnamon locks, there was a tangibility to the poutiness of his lips that was kindness and warmth. I likened him in my mind to the finest Teddy Bear a boy could keep close – yet here he was being abandoned in heated dialogue that I did not understand, but the sadness in his face, one could read perfectly, and I wanted to press his nose, hold his paw, and tuck him in with me at night.
‘I am a man!’ Steven said… ‘Just not your kind’.
My sister’s gentle hold tightened as she stifled sniggers, whilst an almost angry silence pulsated from my Mother and Father, and both sisters squirmed with loaded glances and awkward bites of their upper lips.
I thought he was a man?
The relaxed silence in our living room turn from hypnotised, to a nervousness that thickened the air.
‘I am a homosexual, Dad!’ Steven said.
I must have openly mouthed out the sounds of the phonetics, something-something, of this meaningless word (hommy-seck-ual) and instantly, my father sat up straight with rage in his eyes.
‘He shouldn’t be bloody seeing this!’ he boomed, pointing at me.
The reverberation of his deep baritone was a startle, and he frightened me breathless with the glare in his eyes.
‘I am gay…’ Steven continued, ‘and I want you to face it, and say it…’
There was an tense pause that built confusion and perplexity in my mind – not least because the actions on screen bled out into the energy of our living room, with both fathers, real and fictional, disgusted and on the verge of violent anger.
The brunette lady looked as appalled as my mother, and the blonde lady, though seeped in pity, remained mute, just as my sisters had.
‘Somebody say it…’ he shouted… ‘Steven… is… gay!’
The blonde looked to almost reach to say it, but with reticence she sighed into quiet deflation as the brunette looked down to the ground with a frowning disappointment in her own son.
‘What’s a gay..?’ I asked, slicing through an oppressive density with the frankness only a child can possesses, but my question was ignored, and again, one felt – even as such a small child – the room was ripe to bursting with an energy that was hiding something.
‘Steven… is gay’, said his tearful sister, finally.
Her words lanced a boil, and a swirling crescendo of rising strings gave a lavish injection of sentimental music which broke the narrative of Stevens pained face into emotive acoustics of empathy and heart.
‘Why’s he a bad boy..?’ I asked…
‘What’s a gay?’ I asked. ‘What’s it mean?’
My sister had the nerve to break the silence, with something akin to explanation.
‘It’s an illness where a boy loves other boys,’ she said.
‘I love other boys.’ I said… ‘I love Peter, at school.’
My fathers face blew nuclear. He lunged, grabbing me by the wrist and hauling me through the air, past the agog faces of my sisters. My mother’s reaction was a blur as I dangled past her, hanging by my arm socket as he took me, destination unknown.
My face froze into a paralysing panic as he span me into a tighter grip, and like a rag doll, he hurriedly emptied me into my bedroom, threw me onto my bed and stripped my pyjamas, to let my bare bottom feel the air and repeatedly he thrashed my ass cheeks until his flogging brought bleeding to the surface – over and over, in a frenzy that solidified me into a desperate compliance born of a shock and confusion.
I saw my Grandpa’s face in the blackness of my clenched eyes, but with a swollen wet face buried deep into the pillows, I heard my father as though I were trapped inside the vacuum of an iron bell being rung, and through desperate pleas, I begged for his forgiveness with a muffled compliance that my Grandfather would never have brought out of me.
‘Sorry, Daddy. I won’t love boys. Stop… Daddy. Stop!’
The impact and shock of his sudden machine-like behaviour left me bereft, and with a parting stare at the doorway, he made sure I knew, I was never to say that word again…. but I could now give the name ‘gay’ to this rage and shame as he banished my siblings from comforting me.
Mother never came to check on me – I could only hope to block it out, and vow never say this cataclysmic and dangerous word ever again.
So, yes. I spent my 40th year crossing off every item on my bucket list, and it was a dream alive to step into the Carrington mansion, the very house where a bizarre trauma bond with a fictional family all started.
