Becoming Ted

read for free on the pigeonhole

it's not you, it's mebut it's also kind of you

I know there are some people who will read this and rate it 5 stars. It's a book that definitely has an audience, but that audience is not me.

Becoming Ted centres on Ted Ainsworth, a 43 year-old ice cream maker from a fictional seaside town in Lancashire. Ted is a middle-aged white gay man, and the book very much looks at queerness through a white gay lens. The story kicks off with Ted being dumped by his husband, a man he's been with for 20 years, and this event is the catalyst for Ted to make changes in his life; losing weight, finding love and becoming a drag queen.

The amount of references to RuPaul's Drag Race was ridiculous. We get it, that's how you know about drag, but again the drag that's shown in this is a very specific kind of drag. It's more middle aged gay white men with a particular sense of humour that they think constitutes ‘reading for filth' and singing songs from 20+ years ago. The newest cultural reference I can think of was Roar by Katy Perry, a song that came out 10 years ago. It just feels very dated even though it's set now (the pandemic is referenced several times). I know there are people out there who will deeply relate to Ted, and I'm glad this book exists for them, but it very much feels like Matt Cain is simply writing what he knows from also being a middle-aged white gay man from Lancashire.

Both of Ted's romances were not great. Giles is by far the worst character in the book, and he's meant to be to help the reader root for Ted moving on and for his new romance, but it made me wonder why Ted was with him for 20 years in the first place. How did they last that long? How could Ted put up with him? How did Giles not cheat and leave sooner? It didn't feel entirely believable. The same was true of his romance with Oskar as well. Oskar is a 33 year old gay man from Poland, but you could easily change his name and where he says he's from and absolutely nothing about his character would be different. He doesn't feel Polish, he doesn't feel like an immigrant, he just doesn't feel developed enough full stop. Their romance is very much telling and not showing - for a book that's 466 pages long, I don't feel like they interacted enough. We're told that they love each other but we barely see them together so the admission seems quite sudden. It's the same for Oskar's sudden switch of supporting Ted doing drag, to saying he doesn't like it and that he wants Ted to stop, to then supporting him again. It's addressed that Oskar has internalised homophobia, but his actions because of it don't feel consistent.

Pretty much everything within the book seems to happen on a superficial level and it made it hard for me to connect with any of the characters or what was happening to them.

It's revealed in the story that Ted's best friend had an affair with Ted's dad 20 years ago. This is revealed slowly throughout the book in a series of anonymous notes, but it doesn't actually add anything to the story. I liked the themes of putting yourself first, doing things you enjoy and being comfortable in your own skin, but that's pretty much one of the only reasons why I didn't rate this one star. A lot of humour as well were essentially jokes putting other people down. It wasn't funny to me and in some cases felt a bit mean-spirited which diminished my enjoyment as well.

Also Ted does 2 drag shows and decides he wants to go full time with it which is fine. The fact that he doesn't seem to have any plan on how to do this and basically quits his job didn't seem sensible. But it's all okay because he does his first pro show and then is invited to go on tour straight away, which is of course totally realistic and how it works for people who are new to drag. It just honestly all seems too easy.

For as book as long as it was, it genuinely felt like the different elements of the book could've been fleshed out more (though who knows how long this book would've been if that had happened). Becoming a drag queen itself could be one book. Getting over his ex and finding love again could be a book. Having both going on and not balancing them properly means neither lives up to it's possible potential.

I think Matt Cain very much has a certain writing style and going off this book, it's absolutely not for me.

Other notes:
- The word ace is used way too much
- Boys do not have to be gay just because you think they're effeminate
- Men also don't have to be gay because they like Steps and interior design
- Sorry, but some of the ideas of what it means to be gay were really stereotypical