Appendix C: Francis Bacon
I do a lot of reading Wikipedia as a sort of trivial pursuit, in much the same way normal people scroll through Instagram or TikTok. I don’t know if normal people would call this dorky, but I can’t help what I am.
Reading about mid-20th century artists led me to Francis Bacon, a fellow whose name made me do a double take; and who I could only describe as either a sort of kindred spirit or uncanny valley doppelgänger. I’m not sure which yet. I stopped midway through reading the article to write this because I want to take you with me, on this trip. Let’s look at it together.
Mmmmm… Bacon…
I had a BLT at Cook-Out the other night. I wanted to make sure they put mayo on there by default, and the young hard-of-hearing lady who works the drive-thru some nights said
It already comes with lettuce!
And I’m like… goddammit. Anyway, the ticket had “ADD LETTUCE” printed on it, and they gave me a sandwich with bacon, tomato, and mayonnaise.
Whatever. Anyway, bacon. Francis Bacon.
Francis Bacon was born on 28 October 1909 in 63 Lower Baggot Street in Dublin.[6] At that time, all of Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom.
Ah, right before the troubles. I’m just setting the mood. (Wait… the troubles were later. I need to fix that, but it seems like a minor enough distinction of Irish history.)
His father, Army Captain Anthony Edward “Eddy” Mortimer Bacon, was born in Adelaide, South Australia, to an English father and an Australian mother.[7] Eddy was a veteran of the Second Boer War, a racehorse trainer, and the grandson of Major-General Anthony Bacon, who claimed descent from Sir Nicholas Bacon, elder half-brother of Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, who is better known as “Sir Francis Bacon”, the Elizabethan statesman, philosopher, and essayist.[8]. Bacon’s mother, Christina Winifred “Winnie” Firth, was heiress to a Sheffield steel business and coal mine.
Aristocrats, noblemen… not exactly a have-not growing up…
Bacon was raised by the family nanny, Jessie Lightfoot, from Cornwall, known as “Nanny Lightfoot”, a maternal figure who remained close to him until her death.
Okay, now that’s just stereotypical. I’m picturing this as being like Sterling Archer’s family, and Nanny Lightfoot is like his Woodhouse or something.
During the early 1940s, he rented the ground floor of 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, John Everett Millais’s old studio. Nanny Lightfoot helped him install an illicit roulette wheel there, organised by Bacon and his friends.[10]
See?
Anyway, the kindred spirit part.
Bacon was shy as a child and enjoyed dressing up.
… Oh?
This, and his effeminate manner, angered his father.[11]
Duh duh duh
Duh duh duh
A story emerged in 1992 of his father having had Bacon horsewhipped by their grooms.[12]
That’s sad. It’s hard being born different. This whole planet’s a drag honestly, poor guy was probably just like me.
Shit, man. Why do we have to be so fragile and special snowflakey?
At a fancy-dress party at the Firth family home, Cavendish Hall in Suffolk, Bacon dressed as a flapper with an Eton crop, beaded dress, lipstick, high heels, and a long cigarette holder.
Could Francis actually be transsexual?
In 1926, the family moved back to Straffan Lodge. His sister, Ianthe, twelve years his junior, recalled that Bacon made drawings of ladies with cloche hats and long cigarette holders.
So he’s really into the whole flapper girl thing…
Later that year, Bacon was thrown out of Straffan Lodge following an incident in which his father found him admiring himself in front of a large mirror wearing his mother’s underwear.[14]
Okay. There it is.
I mean, the mirror thing is a little weird. I rather preferred avoiding mirrors until I’d been on HRT for some time. Maybe I shouldn’t think too hard about it, because the shoe certainly fits well enough.
He was sacked from a telephone-answering position at a shop selling women’s clothes in Poland Street in Soho after writing a poison pen letter to the owner.
Oh, this dude’s really into it. And maybe a little crazy, too.
Bacon found himself drifting through London’s homosexual underworld, aware that he was able to attract a certain type of rich man, something he was quick to take advantage of, having developed a taste for good food and wine.
More successful than me at it. Uh. Maybe I should’ve tried to date gay men or something.
One was a relative of Winnie Harcourt-Smith, another breeder of racehorses, who was renowned for his manliness.
So, he’s got daddy issues.
Bacon had a difficult relationship with his father, once admitting to being sexually attracted to him.[16]
Okay… that’s a little weird. I really thought he was another “me” until that part.
So, the mirror thing was a little weird, the daddy thing is a little weird… I don’t know, maybe he has the “me” thing with some other stuff going on. Though I have been questioning whether there are different types of trans people lately…
He spent two months in Berlin, though Harcourt-Smith left after one: “He soon got tired of me, of course, and went off with a woman … I didn’t really know what to do, so I hung on for a while.”
Okay, so he’s bi. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Bacon, then 17,
Whuuuuuuuuuuwhweee. This kid is only 17 years old. Daddy disowned him for wearing his sister’s clothes, he’s kicked out of the house and fucking this “I can’t believe it’s not butter” version of his dad, he moved to Germany during the inter-war period…
And he’s almost an adult. This dude
Lived. Fast.
I’m a little envious, honestly. If I wouldn’t have been better off with his fate, I’d have at least been more myself. I was out of the closet and in denial by that age; almost as if I’d been subjected to a sort of Bladen County “conversion therapy”.
Dude. My life is sad. Fuck. I probably could’ve been doing everything I ever wanted to do if my head weren’t stuffed full of such bullshit at such a young age.
Anyway, this guy. I’m glad he made it out.
Bacon moved back to London in the winter of 1928/29 to work as an interior designer. He took a studio at 17 Queensberry Mews West, South Kensington, sharing the upper floor with Eric Allden – his first collector – and his childhood nanny, Jessie Lightfoot.
See? He still has Woodhouse…
He visited Paris in 1935 where he bought a secondhand book on anatomical diseases of the mouth containing high quality hand-coloured plates of both open mouths and oral interiors,[22] which haunted and obsessed him for the remainder of his life.
I suppose he had a different sort of oral fixation…
Bacon and Hall in 1943 took the ground floor of 7 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, formerly the house and studio of John Everett Millais. High-vaulted and north-lit, its roof was recently bombed – Bacon was able to adapt a large old billiard room at the back as his studio. Lightfoot, lacking an alternative location, slept on the kitchen table. They held illicit roulette parties, organised by Bacon with the assistance of Hall.
Okay, this dude really is Sterling Archer.
He was ‘adopted’ by Belcher as a ‘daughter’, and allowed free drinks and £10 a week to bring in friends and rich patrons.
Might be trans.
In 1952, Bacon met Peter Lacy a pianist and former RAF pilot from a similar social background to himself.[38] Lacy was a violent alcoholic who was disliked by Bacon’s contemporaries but was also described as the love of Bacon’s life. The pair engaged in an off and on relationship which had a significant S&M aspect where Bacon would deliberately provoke acts of violence from Lacy.[39][40]
… Senpai?
Their behaviours eventually overwhelmed their affair, and by 1970 Bacon was merely providing Dyer with enough money to stay more or less permanently drunk.[47]
Okay… so he went from fucking his dad to fucking Mr. Lahey from Trailer Park Boys.
#TODOThat’s pretty much it. What a guy.
We’ll probably never know for sure if Francis Bacon was really transsexual. What I do know, is that I’m still craving a BLT after writing this. I probably should’ve gone to Cook-Out before they closed for the night.
Francis was obsessed with the crucifixion. In the hours after finding this Wikipedia article, I’ve found myself obsessed with Francis’ obsession. Because, I feel like I understand them. It’s personal, I guess.
So, you’re raised Christian. And, there’s this thing you hear over and over again, when you’re raised Christian.
Jesus died for our sins.
Jesus died for our sins.
Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
Jesus died for our sins.
He died on the cross for your sins.
Jesus died for our sins.
He died a tortuous death, so that you can be saved from a tortuous existence.
He died for our sins.
Jesus died for our sins.
So you’re a queer kid at the turn of the century, and you keep hearing about how much Jesus loves you. Okay. Whatever. I’m just now learning about the world. I’m a fucking kid.
So you get into the double digits, and now it’s really obvious that you really want to be a girl. You want to wear girl’s clothing. Maybe it makes you aroused. Maybe it just makes you happy. I’m a queer kid. I don’t really know what I’m feeling. Except, good. I’m feeling really good about wanting to be a woman really badly. And, we’re all kids. Learning about the world, engaging in petty high jinks… I’m feeling pretty bad sometimes, because I really want to be a girl and I can’t be one. They’re trying to tell me about resisting temptation, but we aren’t even tempted by the same things. It’s easy for them to say the devil’s tempting me into being a faggot. What if I said the devil’s tempting them into having a girlfriend? Isn’t it the same thing? I was obviously just born a little different, right? I mean, I never asked to be tempted by what tempts me. And, you never asked to be tempted with the prospect of having a normal, heterosexual girlfriend when you were my age.
Do you people just not… get it?
Maybe you’re starting to wonder if you weren’t born on the winning team. Because, there are an awful lot of holes in all this weird Christian ideology. We’re forgiven for our sins because someone decided to murder their only son? What if the CEO of Chase was murdered by his father? Would they forgive my mortgage? This religion that I’ve been raised into obviously makes no sense. And then there’s the part where
Oh, right. I almost forgot. Why do they hate queer people so much? Something about Sodom and Gomorrah? Do they even understand the Bible? Does anyone understand the Bible? They get to casually debate what people like me are, before going back to their uncontroversial heterosexual girlfriends. But me…
I mean, what the fuck temptation are they resisting, anyway? They’re sleeping around, breaking all those silly little Jesus rules they teach you in Church… they just get to “ask Jesus for forgiveness” for their transgressions.
So dad eventually caught you crossdressing in like 8th or 9th grade or something, and he was pissed. He starts beating the piss out of you. He never treats you the same again, and you never really treat him the same again. The dude tells his jockeys or whatever to whip the shit out of his faggot son repeatedly.
So I’m into BDSM, and you really don’t use a horsewhip on people. I wouldn’t be surprised if this experience left him permanently disfigured.
So you watch as your friends get drunk and swear and have premarital sex, and if they ever do get caught doing those things they get a slap on the wrist, because at the end of the day we all grew up with this one little comforting fact.
Jesus died for your sins.
He died for our sins.
So, you ask Jesus for forgiveness for cursing like a sailor and spending your weekdays sloppy drunk. Okay.
This dude’s getting the shit beat out of him. For, uh… wearing his mom’s underpants? I mean, maybe it’s a little weird, but…
Oh come on, dad! What, have you never been tempted to try on your mom’s underpants?
Oh. You, uh… haven’t. Because, if kiddo had been caught eloping with some flapper girl, or hiding a fifth of whiskey or something dad would’ve just been like “Oh I understand, son. You gave in to temptation. Just ask Jesus for forgiveness. He died for our sins, you know…”
And now, you’ve got to be wondering what this kid’s thinking. Did Jesus not die for my sins, too? What about me? And, what’s even so bad about wearing mom’s underpants, anyway? It’s like, these crazy people are violently pissed off at me for not resisting some temptation they’ve never even felt.
What. The. Fuck.
And now, at the age of 15 or something, this poor little queer kid has found. Jesus. Because, he is Jesus. Getting the piss beaten out of him, for what frankly amounts to somebody else’s sin of not listening and not understanding.
The queer kid and true believer must now be asking himself, “What did Jesus even die for, anyway?” Because, as one grows from a queer kid to a cynical queer adult, the crucifixion story sounds less like a heroic triumph of good over evil, and more like a story of senseless torture in a world full of senseless torture.
And, here I am. Getting senselessly tortured because I was born in a way people don’t understand. Too young to even know what hit me before I find myself exposed as some panty-wearing demon spawn. Maybe still wondering if dad really does feel like me on some level. Really confused about what the big problem is. Because in a world full of Christian forgiveness, this poor kid seems to have found the one thing most Christians will never forgive you for.
Being a raging fagot.
We have a saying in the queer community.
There’s no hate like Christian love.
Eventually, this poor traumatized queer kid gets kicked out of the house. And, it’s probably the best thing for them, scary as it must’ve been.
It’s this point when the young artist would’ve found Antijen. He’s a homeless queer youth, hobnobbing with other homeless queer youth. It’s actually a pretty big subculture. Maybe if my mom loved me more she would’ve let me be a homeless queer youth. Shit, that sounds weird to say. It must be scary, but also a bit freeing. Especially once you find some sense of stability, and you know your dad is never going to have his men beat the shit out of you again for being a weirdo.
I swear, I’ve met queer kids with basically this same story. Some days it feels like not a damn thing has changed on this planet.