A horror story, maybe

The empty heart went red and when I clicked I saw the new follower symbol, it was a notification informing me that my father had followed me on Instagram.

WTF was my initial reaction followed by a sense of violated privacy, even though my account was public for all on Instagram to see. Though I had never thought my father, approaching the ripe age of 70, would ever have Instagram.

I considered what he might encounter—confessional sounding poetry, a few nudes. Nothing very exposing. I suppressed the full body blush that threatened to immolate me, before deciding there was nothing I could do about it but put the possibility of my father’s altered perception of me out of mind, hope he would not understand how to use the app and delete it soon.

A couple of days later, I’d done such a good job of forgetting he might see, (or becoming paradoxically subconsciously defiant) that I posted the poem below:

One weekend later, there was an extended family occasion. No sooner than the moment I disembarked the train and greeted my parents on arrival did my father tell me he’d loved my latest poem, and that he’d thought it was hilarious.

Tersely, I replied that my artistic persona was one ‘shaped by the freedom of existing outside the parental gaze’ and suggested he might do me the courtesy of an unfollow.

I recently went to the friends and family book launch of another poet whose father was in the crowd and seated at the front. Her poetry deals with highly sexual and abject subject matter. I was interested by this—the ability or inability of both child and parent, to recognise both the distinction between and total lack of distinction between art and personhood.