Crying Shame?

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Devin Quan King and I’m a Trini man who is not ashamed to have emotions.

I’m from Gulf View, La Romaine. We weren’t rolling in (money) but we didn’t suffer. My dad, Cecil, was frugal and was able to afford shelter in a safe neighbourhood.

If people tell me I speak well, I tell them, “My mom, Sharon, is an English teacher.” We’re very close. When I am in San Fernando, I take mom to work every morning. She’s very loving. I think I took after her in my emotional upbringing.

My family is very kissy-huggy on my mom’s side. When I was younger, my love languages were quality time, physical touch. A hug really means something. Dad wasn’t aloof, but his love languages were acts of service. For him, “love” was cleaning the toilet bowl.

Dad would get up early and make you lunch. It was alien to me that that could mean “love.” It seemed inconsequential. I wanted the hug. But then, I wanted the sandwich, too! As I matured, and especially after he got sick and we started making that effort, we were able to reconnect in his last years.

My dad’s way of showing emotions didn’t make him any more or any less of a man but he will always be “the man” in my book. Integrity, standing up for people, helping those around you, charity, making sure what you did was right and good. I would like to live up to his legacy.

I was an only child but not a lonely child. My mom encouraged me to read from quite early. Reading was and still is one of the great joys of my life. I attribute my creative qualities to my love for reading and the vast number of words I’ve put into my vocabulary.

Since I was 13 years old, my favourite book has been The Hobbit. And, yes, I think

Peter Jackson massacred it in the movie!

A Brighter Sun is one of the great books, and not just in Caribbean literature. Samuel Selvon deserves a lot more recognition. I liked VS Naipaul’s early writing, but I didn’t like him. He married someone three weeks after his wife died! That did something to me. I have a highly-developed sense of justice and loyalty and, at least for her family’s sake, give it some time, nuh. But I still love Miguel Street.

I went to Presentation College but that doesn’t make me Catholic – though everybody tells me I “look” Catholic. I don’t quite get that. I guess it’s the fair/Chinese mix with the Gaelic first name. But I am Pentecostal.

I started playing the guitar at 16. I played in rock bands for about ten years. Ascension, Lost Calvary and The Sky is Falling. I wrote the music and lyrics for many of The Sky is Falling’s songs.

If I had to pick one line from all my songs for the papers it would be: Her intensity descends upon me/A fire raging, never ageing/Enveloping but not consuming…

I sometimes do cry in movies. I cried in Click (in which a father dies). But that was more about my father than Adam Sandler’s filmmaking.

Being a man with emotions is no drawback. Actually, being a man with emotions is being a man!

My father told me, “We do not have enough space in this house for you to be sentimental.” So a lot of my favourite childhood books were given away.

Dad was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, cancer in the bone marrow, in October 2010, and deteriorated rapidly. Sometimes you didn’t want to face reality. I regret I didn’t talk to him as much as I should have when he was abroad for that six months. It hurt too much. I became a workaholic because it was my escape.

I tried to work on my relationship with my dad, me being this emotional

sentimentalist. It was difficult. I had a fear of rejection. I remember many

instances of trying to show affection in my way and not having it reciprocated.

But he didn’t realise that was my way of showing love.

Bro Michael, my principal at Presentation and another father figure, always used to say, “Love is a verb.” That was my father’s philosophy. I was a horse of a different colour: I could be poor and have love and be happy.

Especially as he deteriorated, in the last two years of his life, I started making the effort to bite my tongue. We parted on the best terms. There was no doubt in either of our minds that we loved one another. I still get emotional thinking about him. I still miss him.

Some things are just beyond your control. I would have loved to have given my father the joy of grandchildren.

Without my emotions, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t know who I would be without

feeling the way I do. And expressing myself the way I do. That is who I am.

You don’t have to be gay to like fashion. I love fashion. Although you mightn’t be able to tell from looking at me today.

Being judgmental seems to be an inbuilt part of the vast majority of Trini people. But I think Trinis are very skilled at appearing not to be judgmental.

A Trini is a multi-faceted creature. But the most important facet is an ability to eat two doubles with slight pepper at the side of the road.

To me, TT means one of the top ten ecotourism destinations in the world.