After weeks of cold, rainy weather, we finally had a nice weekend.

So I biked over to Golden Gate Park to lie in the sun.

Terry, my friend who also happens to be my hairdresser (I have to be careful with my p's and q's because Terry reads my page), told me, not for the first time, that I "went for the natural look" in the way I dress and do my hair. I argued back that there was no going for any kind of look, it just came natural to me to be unaffected in my habits. I think what Terry meant by "natural" might be "straight- acting" but he was too polite to say it. Either way, he maintained that it took just as much effort to look natural as to look otherwise - you have to think which pants to buy, for example, to complement the natural look.

Well, I didn't have a good argument ready at the time, though I bridled against the idea. Back home, I realized that I'm also a natural man in the way I keep house, and basically for the same reason - laziness. Not to mention that my apartment is definitely low on ornamentation. I think Terry would say that it's because I'm scared of color, and style. But really, the decor of my apartment is more of a reaction against an upbringing amidst High English working-class frillyness. Oh, the carpets, the three-piece suites, the huge Parisienne faux Matisse, the coy china figurines that my parents loved.

Then I got to thinking of all the little tricks we learned growing up. Things like how you hang a new roll of toilet paper. With the loose end coming over the top, or under the bottom? There's a whole load of little practices we follow that we somehow absorbed in our early years. But we never talk about them. Like, for example, how to apply roll-on deoderant. Am I the only one who applies it to both underarms using the same hand? (Or am I just lazy?) Or the way I wipe my bottom. Okay, some things are better left under a veil of obscurity.

I've been continuing to wonder why my Dad told me that he'd contemplated suicide a while back. Just like personal hygiene habits, emotional states is another taboo subject. At least between fathers and sons. At least between English fathers and sons. I've always kind of blamed my Dad for this. As if, were he not so closed off, I'd regularly unburden myself to him. Doubtful. There are many reasons I keep my emotional state to myself. Fear of his judgement, for one, if I'm to be honest. I don't want to tell him, for example, that I've suffered major depression in my life, and then have him think me some kind of failure (there's a much larger stigma attached to depression in my father's generation).

But I can't help wondering what would happen if I did open myself up to him. And tell him, perhaps, about the (very few) things he said to me which left deep emotional scars. Things that have made me, for good and bad, what I am today. Might telling him of these things be an avenue for personal growth - maybe for the both of us? Maybe, yet my experience with my Dad tells me that the cost of such revelations may be too high on him. Whenever I've attempted to push the boundaries a little on the gay thing, he's become physically ill.

I see that I've meandered quite a bit here - starting off talking about my natural hairdo and ending up contemplating letting my hair down with my Dad. Is there a connection here?