Pigs don't read, write or watch TV

But for his California tan and penchant for casual clothing, my 85-year-old father, with his flyaway white hair, sparkling blue eyes and wiry torso astride short, bowed legs, could easily be mistaken on Dublin's streets for the Irish farmer he is directly descended from. His parents emigrated from Connaught in the late 1800's and ended up in Boston where they met at a Hibernian dance. I wonder if what drew them together on that faraway foreign shore was that they were born and raised in rural townlands in neighbouring counties.

My father, a late lamb born when his mother was 49, links 135 years of history, little of which I knew before coming to Ireland. Family details are easily lost in America's vastness, especially in itinerant California where my family moved 12 times before my seventeenth birthday. Was it rootlessness that imbued me at an early age with the desire to live in Ireland where sense of place remains so strong? I am still amazed my Dublin co-workers know the counties of origin for everyone in the office.

Being transgendered heightened my sense of dislocation. Ask any queer, it's difficult to feel you belong when you know that if you reveal your deeply-held secret, family and friends may reject, condemn, disinherit or even assault you. Young gay and transgendered folk nowadays have a better chance at acceptance. And when they aren't, they can turn to the internet for community. Widespread intolerance kept me from coming to terms with my identity until in my 40's. I'm lucky, my father never wavered in his support despite the challenges my identity posed to him over the years. A devote Catholic who rarely misses Mass, he never let dogma come between him and loved ones.

I've yet to come out to my Irish relatives, none of whom apparently read the Village. I first met them on the farm where my grandfather was born. Until recently, life there was third-world tough. When young, they walked to the well for drinking water and lit the small three-room cottage with gas lamps. In 1975 when my dad visited, they had no car nor telephone.

They've now replaced the ancestral farmhouse with a modern home, own several cars and are linked to the larger world via landline, mobile phones, the internet and television. I really like my cousin and his wife. They're well informed, articulate, and humorous. They work hard and sacrificed greatly to keep the farm. Sweethearts since their teens more than 30 years ago, they still clearly enjoy and treasure each others' company. He loves wild birds and spoils his obese Black Labrador, who gobbles up leftovers and dog food indiscriminately and sneaks inside on wet paws every chance she gets.

Which only makes it harder to understand the following. When we passed the church my grandfather attended as a boy, my cousin remarked he no longer worships there. He and his friends had put two and two together, he said, and realised the priest was gay because he makes a pilgrimage to San Francisco annually around the time of the "gay festival." Equating gays with child-molesters, he also forbade his 18-year-old son from attending.

Later that night over a pint at the local pub, my cousin started telling a joke. "Why did they bury Freddy Mercury face down?" I interrupted, "I don't think I want to hear this. I liked Freddy and Queen and I lost a lot of friends to AIDS."

Ignoring me, he ploughed on to the punch line. I didn't laugh, instead I told him about living in San Francisco during the height of the AIDS epidemic. One good friend lost almost his entire peer group before succumbing to the virus himself. If he'd lasted only months longer, he'd probably be alive today thanks to new drugs. "There are good and bad among all people. Gays, straights, blacks and whites," I said.

After a thoughtful pause, my cousin responded. "Let me tell you why I feel the way I do." He explained that, as a farmer, he knows cows, pigs and sheep never behave "that way." I argued back that many animals exhibit homosexual behaviour. "And anyway, humans are different," I said. For days afterward, I thought of further responses. "Cows don't drive." "Pigs don't read, write or watch TV." But that night, I was at a loss for words.

Later, I lay in the dark with the unfamiliar farmhouse settling around me and couldn't sleep. Outside, a thick mist shrouded the countryside, visible through double-paned glass. No matter how high I cranked the electric blanket, I couldn't stop shivering. "What would he do if he discovered I'm not only queer, but transsexual?" I kept wondering. Surrounded by sleeping kin, I still didn't feel I was home.