Breakfast on Pluto

“‘Look at Braden the eejit dressed up as a woman!’

Which I rarely was, to be honest with you—although not from lack of desire!—and made do mostly with a pearl necklace or one of Charlie’s mother’s blouses. Still—it was better than nothing! And sometimes she’d bring out a perfume spray to squirt all around the hut and make it smell just fabulous! ‘Nothing like perfume for taking all your cares away!’ I’d say and do a twirl. ‘If this doesn’t stop,’ Irwin said, ‘I’m quitting the gang!’”

Growing up in a very small Irish Catholic community, Braden faces a lack of understanding, derision, and violence. However, the indomitable nature of his spirit is present from his childhood, as he feels no compunction when exploring the boundaries of his gender identity. Even though his friend Irwin proclaims his disgust with Braden’s behavior, he is one the few people and the only male friend from Tyreelin who does not reject Braden because of his behavior. Charlie and Irwin represent the only sense of safety and belonging young Braden experiences, and Charlie even provides the tools with which Braden can explore his gender.

“I know it’s not nice—or healthy, either, maybe!—wanting so badly to see Daddy’s face when he opened those elaborate letters of mine (Yes! There were others! Quite a prolific author I turned out to be, Peeps!) but I just couldn’t help it.”

Since Father Bernard, who impregnated Braden’s mother, is untouchable because he is a Catholic priest, Braden has few means of expressing his feelings of hurt, pain, and fear over his rejection. He decides to use words to hurt or humiliate his father, which he knows is an effective tool because Braden has personally experienced their effect. His desire for revenge is powerful, and the only way to exorcize it is to write pornographic stories to send to his father, knowing they will cause him deep consternation and even fear. Braden struggles with the enormity of his lust for vengeance, which threatens to consume him here and throughout the novel continues to endanger his sanity.

“‘Please kiss it,’ I begged her, oh, so many times. ‘My one-eyed, one-horned, purple people-poking Peter,’ but she just laughed and said: ‘No! Why should I! When all you want is the impossible—a vagina all of your own!’ And to that—what could I possibly say when it was true.”

Through his teenage years, Braden feels close and safe enough with his friend Charlie to express a desire to experiment with his sexuality by having sex with her. This confirms that he contains both the male and female sides of personality—he does not know if his desire to have sex with Charlie is a true sexual desire or only the manifestation of his aspirations for femininity. Especially in youth, Braden is unsure which of his genders will prevail at which time; thus he sometimes uses male pronouns and sometimes female. He is aware of his desire to possess female genitalia, but at the same time, he wants to use his male genitalia, and at no point expresses disgust with their existence.

“And there you are, with your lank and tired hair, a few bad teeth perhaps but behind your eyes, that thing they know, and always have, which through this life sustained them, the thing we all call love. ‘Always you used to say to us, Mammy,’ they’d say, ‘like tooth and nail together fight but outside stick together! Do you remember that, Mammy?’ And would I remember it?”

In this fantasy, Braden is fully female, and she has a family of her own, including many children she has given birth to herself. However, the fantasy has more to do with Braden’s desire to belong and be a part of a family, rather than just to be female. This fantasy indicates that Braden’s desire to be female is inextricably linked with the lack of a mother figure in his life. McCabe thus arguably simplifies the concept of transgender identity by psychologically focusing it on lack rather than identity. McCabe’s depiction is the product of his being a cisgender man writing about this still divisive topic in the late 1990s.

“‘Do you see him…’ and all this rubbish, whispering away as usual.

Which, as I say, was all they ever did about me and Eamon. (Yes! Now you definitely know!) To tell you the truth, I don’t think they were actually capable of understanding us in real, sort of concrete terms, if you know what I mean—I don’t think they could accept that it could ever even be!”

Eamon is a double-dealing politician who takes Braden as his lover and provides him with a cottage and occasional company. He is Braden’s first love, and immediately Braden develops fantasies of a “real,” traditional man-woman family with Eamon. Braden does not want to live as a gay couple, he wants to be the wife of the family unit. In this case, “they” represent the traditionally minded townspeople who, as they have since his youth, gossip about Braden and his lifestyle behind his back. They cannot accept that Braden and Eamon are in partnership, just as they cannot accept Braden in any form.

“As I sipped my coffee, throughout from Jojo those furtive glances sailing. Stop it, Jojo! You’re embarrassing me! But—honest question! Did it stop me preening? It most certainly did not! I couldn’t stop thinking: ‘He’s all dressed up tonight—is it for me? I wonder what he thinks of me in my skinny rib and two-tone flares!’ Not to mention my gorgeous brass hoop earrings! Which all Cavan had stopped with cries of: ‘He’s wearing weemen’s earrings!’ To which I replied: ‘Affirmative, darling sweety-pie!’”

Braden is unapologetic about his androgynous appearance, even though he is aware that in such a small town it is an almost unbearable provocation. In fact, some men understand there is something attractive about Braden and his androgyny, which further angers them. In some ways, this is the true challenge of Braden’s existence. Jojo is a regular small-town man, not used to grand feelings or verbalizing his thoughts. His admission of admiration for Braden is an act of poignant courage for him, which is why Braden accepts and respects him.

“But I wasn’t bothered about any big speeches or get-togethers like that. All I wanted him to do was say: ‘Hello there, Patrick,’ once in a while. Even nod, for heaven’s sake! But he couldn’t even do that much! As a matter of fact, any time he saw that I was sitting on the summer seat, he put his head down and made a detour around by the back of the chickenshed.”

For Father Bernard, Braden’s existence is a constant reminder of his sins, and the nature of that reminder is even more frightening because of Braden’s “eye-sore” behavior. Feeling immensely hurt and betrayed from birth, Braden is unable to understand how his appearance only further alienates his father, who, in other circumstances, might be able to accept his son in some subtle form. Braden’s behavior, as much as it is a necessity for his nature, is also a deliberate disruption of traditional values and accepted moral weaknesses of the society.

“Guess Who was on the cross as usual. Looking down to say: ‘Ah, Paddy.’ ‘Ah, Paddy, what?’ I said and shook my head. What was He on about? As long as I could remember, there He had been with His crown of thorns, just hanging there, ah this, ah that, ah what. That was the question I had been meaning to ask Him. ‘Ah what? Ah what??’ So I asked Him. ‘What are you aahing about?’ I said.”

Although deceptively brief, this quote holds one of the essential ideas of the novel: Braden’s fleeting communication with the crucified Jesus in the church embodies the magnitude of his rejection of his culture’s tradition, religion, and customs. The Irish are largely devout Catholics, and displaying such a sense of derision toward the symbol of their faith and human suffering depicts Braden as a heretic. However, it also brings into relief the amount of suffering Braden is experiencing on a daily level and that there is no point of possible connection between Braden’s real-life struggle and the metaphorical suffering of an idol. Braden is aware of the general cultural disapproval of his very existence, but he is also a fighter and has no need for someone else to suffer for his sins. Additionally, because religion—and therefore Jesus—is the root cause of the conflict that is ravaging his community, Braden’s disdain for the crucifix also trivializes religion as the cause for such pain and suffering.

“I would really like to be able to say that, like everything else, time began to pass and eventually my wounds they healed. But, I’m afraid, getting throttled by the likes of Silky is not something you get over quite so easy. Particularly when you have to go on earning your living and are afraid every time some tootle-merchant puts his lips to your ear or says, ‘I love you!’ it’s just a pretext and very shortly you will find yourself lying on a dump somewhere.”

Forced into prostitution in order to survive, Braden barely escapes when a client almost strangles him during an encounter. Yet, Braden’s trauma has no room to grow or wait for examination: He must continue living, and that means plying his trade, even though the danger is real and all-present. This is a metaphor for Braden’s whole life lived under constant threat for contradicting tradition and “safe” normalcy. While Braden often minimizes the trauma he experiences in his life outside the norm, this is a rare instance in which he acknowledges the deep wounds of his experiences.

“Probably if I hadn’t been used to dressing up as a matter of course, I wouldn’t have agreed to her scheme (which started when we were pie-eyed one night) with the shorts and the Shaunie suit and everything. Believe it or not, I was even a little bit embarrassed the first time we did it, and I’d had at least four gins too! But after a while I got more than accustomed to the little grey jacket and the short trousers and really began to get excited when she asked me to call her ‘Mammy’ which, apparently, because of his dad being Irish, was exactly the way Shaunie pronounced it.”

Braden is a walking reminder of life’s “abnormalities,” and he attracts the attention of other people who carry inside of themselves seeds of non-traditional or “perverted” behaviors. In Braden’s openness with his transgenderism, they read an invitation to reveal their own fantasies, and they often project onto him their own needs (Eamon for his mother, Jojo for gentleness, Silky for murder). Louise’s profound grief for her dead son results, when combined with Braden’s flaunting of his “perversion,” in a development of a fantasy that is harmful for both participants: It does not help Louise heal but instead prolongs her suffering, and it demeans and humiliates Braden. Braden’s openness is remarkable, especially in this era, yet unfortunately it always brings with it the wrong kind of attention from people who take advantage of him.

“Moping about in my silly old housecoat—actually I don’t think he’d be all that surprised, to be honest with you! ‘I think the truth is, Patrick,’ I can hear him saying, ‘is that maybe you always secretly wanted to become her. Eily. After all—she could hardly walk away then!’”

This presents one of McCabe’s main psychological premises when it comes to Braden’s ambiguous identity: He is experiencing an identity crisis because of the lack of a female, motherly presence in his life. This indicates the idea that transgenderism is not something one is born with but something one acquires through specific psychological circumstances. We might consider such a view problematic from today’s perspective, yet to a certain extent, Braden’s lack of motherly love certainly does influence his personality in key ways—only perhaps not to the extent of making Braden transgender.

“I was standing in the shop queue and he lifted up my dress with a bicycle pump. I was sure it was all a joke you see and that the people were well-used to me by now. (I was wrong, of course—I can see that now. The only reason the ‘Hello, honky tonks’ and ‘Ooh, you are awfuls’ had stopped was that they wanted absolutely nothing to do with me.)”

Braden at times expresses a naïve credulity and lack of realistic perspective—one of the reasons why he becomes a patient at a psychiatric hospital. However, this naivete does allow Braden to continue existing in a world that has little room for him. He subconsciously chooses to disregard the everyday taunts as something non-threatening, but he does understand that his whole existence is threatening to others and their small-town sense of what is moral, proper, and normal. It is also possible that Braden truly wants to believe the town has adapted to him—that the possibility for his incorporation into their sense of normalcy is still viable.

“As he moved closer to me and put his strong hand in mine. Some people might think—like with Brendan Cleeve later on—that I am sort of a sex maniac because I say things like that. Sex was the furthest thing from my mind when I thought of it, his hand being strong. It was like it was gripping me and saying: ‘You’re down here now—rock solid! And this is where you are going to be strong! For this is where you’re going to stay from now on, Patrick! And that’s the way it’s going to be!’”

The presence of Dr. Terence is a source both of a sense of safety and betrayal. Since McCabe chooses to portray Braden’s line of thought as a combination of reality and fantasy, we might even wonder if Terence really exists, especially as his only presence is in Braden’s memories, not of specific events, but of words he shares. Regardless, Terence’s presence is so important in Braden’s life that long after his disappearance, he uses him as his auditor, even his confessor. Here, his firm hand represents the calm and collected authority he exudes for Braden because he accepts him as he is. Terence offers him a sense of solidity he has never had before but has long craved in a male partner. For the first time, instead of floating off to Pluto, Braden wishes to remain on Earth. Here Braden also explicitly explains that the desire for a strong male companion is not necessarily sexual in nature, but reflects his desire to feel safe and grounded.

“‘You’ll have to learn to forgive,’ he said. ‘For if you don’t, you know what will happen?’

‘What, Doctor?’ I croaked, for my outburst had exhausted me.

‘It will destroy you,’ he said as he handed me the tea.”

As mentioned before, Braden’s inability to surrender his feelings of hate and sense of injustice threatens to compromise his sanity. His desire to take vengeance by degrees consumes his sanity, especially as he faces new hardships every day. Here again we see Terence as the wise voice of reason, real or not, who serves as a counterpoint to Braden’s hysterical urge to destroy everything that has shaped his existence.

“At least a minute had passed before it dawned on her that she wasn’t dead too. ‘I’m not dead,’ she said, and touched her lipstick with the tip of her tongue. She couldn’t taste anything. ‘Strange,’ she mused to herself, ‘I can’t taste anything at all.’ It was only then she noticed her Christian Dior tights were torn to ribbons. All around her, she slowly began to discern, lots of things were flying. There were particles of sawdust, grit and scraps of paper. If anyone had been observing Puss, they would surely have said: ‘Why is she laughing, for heaven’s sake? Doesn’t she realize she ought to be dead?’”

McCabe chooses to utilize third person female perspective for the key scene in the novel where Braden survives a bombing and briefly becomes the main suspect. This indicates Braden’s disassociation from the event and the hugely traumatic impact it has on him. Instead, Braden becomes a third-party observer of the “strange” woman who is laughing amid carnage (though she does so glamorously in lipstick and Dior tights). In this event, the two main preoccupations for the novel come together: Braden’s identity and the political turmoil between Ireland and the UK. That the police count Braden’s drag as part of a bomber’s disguise is both comic and tragic.

“‘Mammy!’ I would say to her as down the street in sunshine we two made our way. ‘Do you think I’m the way I am because Daddy’s work it makes him wear those dresses?’

Which would make her laugh and say: ‘Of course not, silly! You simply wear them because that’s just how you are!’ And what would I say then? ‘How’s that for a mammy!’”

In this quote, McCabe delivers through Braden’s question the idea that the absence of a father in his life, and the fact that his father is a priest (and wearing a cassock), might have contributed to Braden’s gender fluidity. However, in this instance, the fantastical figure of Braden’s mother delivers the judgment that Braden is ‘just how he is.’ Although clearly part of Braden’s desire to see his self as free of the psychological burden of history and circumstance, this might also bolster the idea that transgenderism is not (solely) caused by external influences, as indicated earlier in the novel. However, the author offers this idea as part of Braden’s fantasy of a perfect mother, rather than a clue as to Braden’s transgenderism. Regardless, the exchange represents Braden’s desire to be perceived as normal, just as he is.

“‘O no!’ she hissed, ‘I’m not your son, correct, my father, because what I am’s your daughter or hadn’t you noticed you gorgeous man in lace and serge, you’ve passed me on your journeys,’ raising her hand to gouge his eye as back across the candle flames he fell and begged for mercy just as ‘Ah!’, poor Saviour on the cross, did plead for some, but none it came I fear, not one scrap was to be found, as out in the night a bad bitch burned and burnt it to the ground.”

The latter part of the novel deals with Braden’s protracted fantasy of revenge while he is in prison after the bombing of the disco-pub. This quote essentializes many of Braden’s concerns: his need to be recognized by his father, this time as a daughter in her own right, and the proof that religion cannot offer a salvation in the form of practical help. The burning of the church acts as a symbol of destroying oppression—not just Braden’s, but that of the whole country, with its staid morality. Also, only in Braden’s fantasies does he become fully female, and all traces of the “he” pronoun disappear. This indicates that Braden as a man is not personally able to accept the reality of his femaleness at this stage.

“[…] although I did dream a lot of nutty stuff and get real vengeance thoughts and trails of retribution into my head, at least in jail the sedatives weighed me down a little and I didn’t feel like I did the very minute I got outside—yes!—stuffed into a ballista and sent rocketing a couple of million miles across the sky with not the faintest idea as to where I was going to land, and worse still, knowing when I got there, my legs would be like string again and there’d be someone there to say: ‘What do you want here?’”

Braden feels safest in prison, where he, largely left alone, is able to abandon reality and fantasize. The image of Braden’s existence as a projectile flung across the universe is powerful and poignant as it invokes a deep sense of inability to obtain free agency or ever fully integrate himself into society. Wherever Braden lands, his legs would be “like string again,” which indicates a lack of sturdiness and ability to stand on his own, an experience with which he seems indelibly familiar. The question posed implies that wherever Braden lands will also be a place where he does not belong—and this is Braden’s life story.

“(Was it the whole town who had it in for you and who arranged to do such a terrible thing to the dog?)

Of course it wasn’t! A small minority was responsible for that—the sort of people who weren’t happy themselves and seemed to have nothing better to do than dedicate their lives to making sure no one else was either.”

The killing of Charlie and Braden’s dog, Squire, is one of the final blows for both of them. Despite this ultimate cruelty, Braden shows clarity in hindsight and an understanding of the miserable nature of the lives of those who harm others. He also recognizes that it is not necessarily the entire town that harms him, but only a small portion of it, which seems to be an evolution from his earlier perceptions. However, this does not exculpate them, and Braden’s understanding of their motivations does not reduce his hatred and anger.

“I was so depressed after that I can’t tell you, so bad that even Charlie could see I was worse than her, putting her arm around me and saying it would be all right but I knew it wouldn’t be all right, if it was, why were half the young girls of the village going around pushing buggies, with babies they never bothered to wash, never even lifted them out to cuddle once in a while, why because they didn’t want them!”

Braden’s fixation with young mothers and their unwanted children is a logical product of his own conception and subsequent life. Having experienced such a lack of love and care, Braden is deeply, even obsessively, worried for the future of so many babies conceived without a plan and against their parents’ wishes. Through this, McCabe offers a critique of Catholic society in the 1970s, which forbade abortions yet allowed older men to behave in predatory ways that led to such pregnancies, while young girls internalized patriarchal values and believed they were special when desired.

“It’s just that somehow I’d managed to work it all out so perfectly in my mind, with him and me together at last in the house I’d always dreamed of, our Chez Nous picture on the wall (‘this is our little home’) with its lovely twining flowers and everything spotless for him when he’d come home from work, putting his arm around you with a sort of definite-ness that said: ‘You belong here! Here and nowhere else!’ instead of brown glass marble eyes that bored right through you and said: ‘Who are you?’ No! Said: ‘Who or what are you?’”

Braden’s fantasy life again begins to encroach upon reality, leaving him stranded somewhere in between reality and imagination. His mindless passion for Brendan is not real; it is a signal of Braden’s final loss of touch with reality, as he flirts with him openly in a full bar, causing an uproar. This event will lead Braden to finally leave Tyreelin behind for the last time for a life that might not be easier but at least offers a sense of calm that would never be possible in such a small community. In the fantasy he concocts here, we witness both reality—that the community, including Brendan, is so disarmed by him as to ask “what” he is—and his truest and seemingly least attainable desire, which is simply to be told he belongs.

“I had to concoct a story about him (Squire) running away and even went out looking for him with Charlie for I knew it would break her heart. I think she must have sobbed so much that night as there we lay in one another’s arms, she sobbed enough for a thousand deaths. If you were to pinpoint the moment of Charlie’s gradual recovery, I think it would have to be then—as if by now she’d suffered it all and there was no other way she could go.”

As mentioned above, the death of Squire (together with Braden’s dangerous obsession over Brendan and setting fire to Tina’s hair) brings the trauma and instability of both Charlie and Braden to a crescendo. It is through this final, climactic break that they are finally able to heal. They realize they must leave the past behind, starting with the town in which they were born, so they can start to piece their lives back together. Charlie’s “gradual recovery” is more traditionally successful because she naturally adheres more to the typical way of life, and, having grieved Irwin’s death and the loss of her imagined artistic career, she can move on to create a “happy” family of her own.

“Now that time has passed, however, I’m glad I didn’t, because I still do love him in a strange and special way. Just as I do anyone who takes me in his arms and says: ‘Pussy? You do know something, don’t you? You know that you and I are going to make our home in this world together, don’t you?’ Which I most certainly do—except that it never happens!”

Even though Terence disappeared from Braden’s life abruptly, leaving no trace other than Braden’s memories of him, Braden cherishes the thought of him and what he was able to achieve with him through their work. (Terence is especially significant as the motivator of Braden’s writing, which forms the text of McCabe’s novel and is therefore its spiritus movens. The writing, in turn, brings Braden relief and a way to externalize his experience.) Braden also continues to offer himself to anyone willing to give him a moment of attention, and Braden willingly participates in the fantasy of “forever” because it sates his everlasting hunger for belonging.