Robert Hoge - Ugly: My Memoir

T HERES A SPECIAL CLUB FOR UGLY PEOPLE .

It doesnt have an official name. You cant flash a membership card to get discounts. There are no annual general meetings; no president; no chairman of the board. It just exists. Members dont pay a joining fee or pledge allegiance. We dont need a special handshake. Our membership is writ large upon our faces in bumps over coarse brows and in scars that look like a blind mans dot-to-dot.

The ugly club welcomes all without regard to race or gender or class or nationality. Or age. Members join for all sorts of reasons. Some arrive courtesy of a bullet or a car crash. Others through a more subtle mismatch of bone, skin, tangled mind and tangled limb.

Theres power in the corridors of the ugly club. It arises from knowing the defining characteristic that grants you entry to the club recognising the truth of it and realising hope can spring from that knowing.

If this story is about anything, it is about that.

All stories have beginnings. Its a writers job to make you believe they have begun their tale at exactly the right moment, as if there was no other possible point from which to begin. Many instances in my life could be called defining moments. I could start this story with a slice of life that showed me conquering my disability. I could start with a story of a family squabble that perfectly summed up my personality. Or perhaps by showing a schoolyard in suburban Brisbane where I was battling a bully or making a new mate. I could start with the details of anguished nights filled with thoughts of a dozen women who would never love me, or of the few who did.

But none of these starting points feels true. For members of the ugly club who joined at birth, that day stands out above all others. Its the day paths are chosen and destinies set. So I will start this story on 23 July 1972.

Actually, to tell it properly, the story needs to start two days before.

On Friday 21 July 1972 my mother, Mary Hoge, went into labour. It was 11.30 pm and my father, Vince, was at work. Marys contractions were five minutes apart.

There was no phone in the house, so Mary went next door to call Vince, who was a labourer. He came straight home; I was their fifth child, and it would be a challenge to get Mary to the hospital before I was born. The drive from their Manly West home to the Mater Mothers Hospital in Woolloongabba would take the best part of half an hour, meaning they had no time to waste.

The drive was uneventful until they came to Norman Park. While stopped at a red light on Wynnum Road, several hoons jumped in front of the car. Vince, who towered over six feet tall and had boxed his way to a Queensland championship, wanted to get out and have a go at them. Never mind the baby, as Mary put it.

By the time Mary was admitted to hospital her contractions were two minutes apart. At 2 am on 22 July they stopped dead. The doctors were concerned and said they might have to induce labour if the contractions didnt restart. Mary was sent to the ward to wait. At 5.30 am on Sunday 23 July her contractions resumed. It was a long, difficult labour for a fifth baby and I was born at 12.35 pm.

Had Mary then chosen to ask, Is it a boy or a girl? she may have been able to bask a little longer in that moment of perfection when a baby is born.

Instead, maternal intuition made her ask, Is my baby okay?

No, Mrs Hoge, the doctor said. He is not okay. He has a lump on his head and something wrong with his leg.

The lump was a tumour that jutted out from the top of my forehead and ran all the way down to the tip of where my nose should have been. It was almost twice the size of my newborn fist. It had formed early during my development and run rampant across my face. It pushed my eyes to the side of my head. Like a fish.

That wasnt all. Glancing down you could see both my legs were deformed. The right leg was three quarters as long as it should have been and had a small foot bent forward at an odd angle. The foot had four toes three if you counted the two partially fused. My left leg was even shorter and had two toes. Both were malformed.

Mary assumed my life was at risk and asked that I be baptised straight away. A priest was rushed to the theatre and I was baptised Robert Vincent Hoge. Later that day, Mary found out the priest administered last rites immediately after baptising me.

Mary didnt see me before I was taken and put into intensive care. But Vince had visited me by the time he saw Mary again. He described me to her, and together they cried.

Perhaps hell die, Mary said.

No chance; hes too strong and healthy, Vince told her.

Growing up on his parents farm, Vince had birthed plenty of calves and lambs. He knew I might be an ugly baby; a baby with a tremendous number of problems. But he also knew his son was a fighter.

Its impossible to know all the feelings going through my parents minds at that time. Grief, bitterness, sorrow, horror and despair, for sure. On top of all of that, my mothers feelings were shaped by one extra factor: 24 July, the day after I was born, was her birthday.

So there I was. What should have been a wonderful birthday present was instead a little baby boy who was monstrously deformed and surely impossible to love.

Welcome to the ugly club.