Uncovering Silent Secrets: The Untold Conversations in “What My Father and I Don’t Talk About”
Heather Sellers’ “You Knew About That” fascinated this reader with a depiction of her teenage discoveries of (and efforts to ignore) her father’s heterosexual affinity for transvestism. In an era happily saturated with seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, it is easy to understand Ms. Sellers’ initial conclusions that her father was secretly gay, but as I learned during my years in Japan, transvestism is not an exclusively queer phenomenon, nor does the desire to wear clothes associated with a different gender always connect with a transgender identity. What was most captivating about this essay was not the author’s deeply honest reactions to her father, but how, in the final analysis, her father assumed she never knew about the brassieres he wore, the fingernails he painted, or the dresses in his closet. The reader might therefore wonder: Are the secrets we keep from our children, our parents, ever truly secret?
