A Voyage Round My Father-In-Law.

I've spent a lot of time with my Father-In-Law over the last month. Not all of it good, due to his new-found freedom in swearing, but some of it has been extremely fun and funny indeed. He loves swearing. More than me even. But it's OK coming from me because I am a child, albeit a 40 year old one. He's a grown up and should know better but, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, he definitely doesn't. Over the years he's been the very dictionary definition of quite conservative, polite, clean-cut American now it's all fuck, shit and, one one occassion, red cunt hair.But it's not just this incredible release of swearing that's brought a brand new sparkle to his life because over the last two days he's really been enjoying a love of homophobia. I hate homophobia. The very thought that a man can hate another man just because one of them MIGHT find the other attractive is just baffling and more than a little horrible. I say horrible, when it comes from my Father-In-Law there's almost an old-world, innocent charm about it. It's not like he goes into gay bars with a machete, it's more like he giggles at the very sight of any man who is either slightly effeminate or even just well dressed. They don't have to be actually gay, they can just be neat and tidy and still suffer the intense wrath of my Father-In-Law making his hand go limp and talking in a "whoopsie" voice. Basically, it's like Dick Emery has entered his body, something my Father-In-Law would hate because a man in another man is a bit gay, I suppose. My favourite piece of his homophobia is his learning of the word "bender". Apparently that's not used in America and he'd never heard of it until he came over here. It's certainly not a word used in his hometown of Greenville, Illinois which is a dry town, in other words alcohol is illegal there. I hate homophobia but not drinking seems a bit gay to me, but if he's happy then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with not drinking. I mean, we all experimented with not drinking when we were young, right? So he has nothing to be deeply ashamed about. Actually, coming to think about it, surely visiting England is seen as gay by a lot of Americans so maybe he is experimenting after all. The great thing about his love of the word "bender" is the fact that he can't remember it. He keeps going around calling well-groomed, good looking men "bangers" which just make him sound like he's interested in them. "Look at those pair of bangers", he would say. They were very handsome, I'll give him that.