“Young testosterone has gusted into my home”

Saturday, June 30, 2012

THERE HAVE been gender happenings in my home.

These events have strengthened my conviction that gender — whether it’s in the genes, socially conditioned, learned behaviour or a mix of all these and something else besides — exceeds the limits of the purely anatomical.

Right now, if I look through the hall to the sitting-room, I can see a pair of giant feet hanging sockless over the arm of the sofa: my son, back from a study year abroad, snoozing off his jet lag. From outside come the sounds of frenzied barking and shotgun rounds of laughter: my daughter’s boyfriend, recently acquired, is swinging in demented loops on the long-forgotten tree-swing, while the dog runs in crazed circles beneath him.

All of a sudden, there are boys in the house. Young Testosterone has gusted into my home — where for the past few years, Young Oestrogen has been percolating exclusively. It’s boffed its way in, like amyl nitrate up a nose.

There are many points of parity between the genders — such as leaving towels on floors, teeth-marks on cheese and fridge doors open, for example. Or saying “Whadeva” in place of slinging a few adjectives, prepositions and verbs together, despite the fact they all did sentence construction at three, and Debating Module in TY. But the recent gender hoopla has focused my attention on the differences; several incidents have occurred in the past couple of weeks which, for reasons that are tricky to pinpoint, made me think, “Somehow or other, this — this moment right here and now — is a Boy Thing.”

Here are a few examples:

1. My son is eating an unwieldy-looking sandwich. When I ask him what he’s put in it, he says, “Reggae-Reggae sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, HP, relish, gherkins, cheese, black pudding and ham.” He asks me if I want a bite. I decline immediately, for it looks like someone has died in it.

2. When my husband says, “Fancy a fry- up?” to Boyfriend or son, the party-popper effect it produces puts everyone in a good mood for the day, including my daughters, who hate fry-ups.

3. Boyfriend is telling a story he heard about a man who wanted to eat another man, who contacted a man on-line who, conveniently, wanted to be cannibalised. Boyfriend, with a straight face, swears blind this story is true. The story reaches a conclusion, whereby the man cuts off the other man’s penis and fries it for breakfast. This tale also puts everyone in a good mood for the day.

4. Boyfriend keeps erupting in sudden, maniacal outbursts of laughter when I least expect it — in such a way that is good for anyone’s heart but might not be the best thing, long-term, for a person’s nerves.

5. I ask my son for his considered opinion on the cultural differences between America, from where he’s just returned, and Ireland. He says, “Umm, the average American is more loser-ish than the average Irish person because they don’t slag each other over there. In Ireland, if you’re being a langer, your friend will say, ‘You langer’, whereas in America, they don’t, so people carry on being langers. And also, in America, every week you see someone and think that is the fattest person I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”

6. We are reading menus in a pub-restaurant. A basket of home-made pork scratchings arrives at our table. Boyfriend’s never heard of them before. When I explain what they are, it’s as if two fluorescent light-emitting diodes have been switched on — FLICK, FLICK — bang behind his irises. After eating them, his gratification is so intense that I think he might pass out. Later, he gives crème brulee a miss and orders a second basket for dessert.

7. My son emits cabbage flatus in the car without shame.

8. My son asks me if he looks smart enough for a job interview. I look him up and down. He turns around. “You might want to think about a belt,” I say. “The interviewers might count an arse, clad in boxers covered in bananas, against you.” He says, “Meh, I’ll be sitting down”.

Gender stereotypes rarely communicate accurate information, so on the whole I try to avoid perpetuating them. It’s more sensible to look at the wider evidence, which points towards the bigger picture. However, this is the smaller one. Draw from it what you will. Home