There are two very loose, self-imposed rules for this column. Do not stray too far from the topic and do not pander to one’s disturbing fixation with male genitalia. But the two come crashing together like a pair of underpants hitting the kindergarten carpet in this instance.
On my first day at school, the teacher muttered those immortal words to my mother.
“Just let him try and fit in.”
Maybe there was a PE class that morning. Maybe there was toilet training (a tad late for three-year-olds, but you didn’t see the kids in my school. The only thing missing was David Attenborough’s narration.) Either way, I decided that the best way to settle in with my new classmates was to drop the underpants and give the tiny tackle an airing.
The kindergarten teacher scampered over and suggested there were more conventional ways of fitting in with the world around me.
And I’ve spent the better part of 40 years trying and failing to learn them.
In my primary years, I was a non-sporty kid on a sporty, working-class housing estate. During my secondary years, I was a smart kid in a less than smart school (for some, the academic ambition at the end of school was merely to reach the end of the school).
In fact, the school bullies took a keen interest in my intellectual prowess, so much so that after one particularly awkward school assembly, where I was awarded every certificate on offer—except PE, of course—I was chased across the football pitch, captured and then had my trousers pulled down.
In fact, the bullies’ modus operandi seemed to involve nothing more than seeing any penis other than their own (their latent homoeroticism was up there with the volleyball scene in Top Gun).
Of course, what doesn’t kill us makes us buy stronger underwear. I followed my kindergarten teacher’s advice—and my mammalian instincts—and tried to fit in.
Apparently, there are scientific reasons for this. Humans have a basic need to join groups, clans and communities for survival. The desire to belong is rooted in our evolutionary instincts.
My desire was to avoid three teenagers pinning me to the concrete and shouting, “Come and see Humphreys’s sausage.”
So, I forced myself to become a part of their world. The drinking, partying and womanising that followed was a predictably, puerile attempt to gain acceptance with my teenage tribe (and when I say ‘womanising’, I mean being rejected by every young woman in the English-speaking world).
Naturally, it didn’t work out. I was faking it. There was a clash of ideas. I wanted to go to university and see the world, and the bullies wanted to take drugs and abuse ethnic minorities (and, look, they got Brexit over the line 30 years later, so you’ve got to admire their tenacity if nothing else).
Being an outsider in working-class England was exhausting. Luckily, a 10,000km trip across the planet gave me a chance to be an outsider in Singapore instead.
The expat thing was never going to work out. Within seconds of arriving, well-meaning Singaporeans were pointing out popular places where British expats lived (too expensive), where they ate (too expensive) and where they hung out (too expensive). Plus, I’d already visited all these places before.
They were called England.
Every effort was made to acclimatise to the Singaporean way of life instead. Learning Singlish, shopping at pasar malams, gambling through Chinese New Year, getting drunk at KTV lounges and enjoying special services at massage parlours, I did most of the above and more to blend in with my new social circles at work and home.
But I was still a white face in an Asian city. I was still an outlier.
No one pulled my pants down anymore, though I once gave permission for a kindergarten class to call their new ang moh teacher Mr Cuckoo Bird for almost a year before a blushing parent pointed out that the little sods were using local slang to call me Mr Penis.
But I was never going to entirely fit in, wherever I lived or worked. Total cultural and social immersion just isn’t possible for many people (thankfully, it appears easier for the digital generations who flit between communities, countries and customs with a click, swipe or download).
And like grief, I practically went through the five stages before reaching that reality. First, there’s denial (“I’m totally fitting in”), anger (“Why am I not fitting in?”), bargaining (“Please let me fit in”), depression (“I’m never going to fit in”) and acceptance (“Yep, I’m never going to quite fit in here”).
And I’m okay with that now. There was no great epiphany, just an increasing acceptance that being outside of established social circles and conventions is something to be embraced.
I fit in nowhere, definitively, but I’m willing to give just about anywhere a try.
Outsiders expose themselves to new experiences and possibilities. There’s less chance of being pigeonholed as being a particular thing or stuck on one default setting. (On official forms, I still don’t know if my occupation should be author, journalist, teacher or public speaker. Does it even matter? To save time, I usually pick ‘bar-top dancer’.)
Outsiders who cannot be easily placed or identified are often dismissed as quirky, unusual or otherworldly, as if such qualities were negative when, quite clearly, the opposite applies.
Groupthink has got us into enough trouble in recent years with entrenched status quos taking simplistic, binary decisions because they were familiar and comfortable.
Trump voters wanted to make America great again because they wanted to fit in again with an archaic, false reality. Brexit voters and other nativist groups echoed similar sentiments.
Growing up, the peer pressure to fit in and look, dress, speak and think a certain way was overbearing. Today, being an outsider feels like a badge of honour. Seeing the world just a little bit differently might give us half a chance of saving it.
But I’m still not dropping my trousers for anyone else.
