Tiktok Post 49

Post 49 – Posted Saturday, January 11, 2025

      In his memoire, Not My Father’s Son, multi-talented award-winning actor, Alan Cumming, described his nightmarish childhood. His father’s maniacal rage issued from his certainty that Alan was not his son. He was sure this boy was the product of his wife’s infidelity. Alan wrote of his father’s hair-trigger temper and the ire that was always vented in his direction. “My father had only glanced at me across the kitchen table as he spoke, but I had already seen in his eyes the coming storm. … I knew speaking would only make things worse, make him despise me more, make him pounce sooner. That was the worst bit, the waiting I never knew exactly when it would come, and that, I know, was his favorite part. …You see, I understood my father. I had learned from a very young age to interpret the tone of every word he uttered, his body language, the energy he brought into a room. It has not been pleasant as an adult to realize that dealing with my father's violence was the beginning of my studies of acting.” Alan detailed a remarkably vicious episode: “This day was the first time I truly believed I was going to die. I looked into my father's eyes, and I could see that in the next few moments I might leave the planet. I was used to rage, I was used to volatility and violence, but here was something that transcended all that I had encountered from him before.” Fortunately, Alan ultimately survived the years of abuse. In the end, he marshalled genetic proof that his father’s dark, narcissistic projections were fantasies of his own making. Alan was indeed his son. Is it surprising that Alan Cumming is another who, after failing to bond proudly and lovingly with his father, sought affection and belonging through eros in the arms of other men?