ADVERTISEMENT
The environment at home provided a complex backdrop to this burgeoning sensitivity. His father, a man who believed in the traditional virtues of toughness and discipline, viewed his son’s frail nature with a mixture of concern and frustration. He wanted a son who could stand tall and defend himself, a boy who reflected the rugged expectations of the era. His mother, though a source of kindness, often seemed to exist in a different emotional orbit, leaving the boy to navigate the friction of his father’s expectations largely on his own. It was this tension—the desperate need to please a demanding father and the innate desire to express his own fluid nature—that led him to a crossroads that would change his life forever.
