How does a forty-three-year-old straight white man suddenly realize she has always been a gay woman? That question sits at the heart of Sorry I Was Such a D!ck, When I Had One!, a memoir whose outrageous title barely hints at the tenderness, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence inside. Dee McWatters tells a story that feels at once deeply personal and strangely universal, a story about what happens when a life that looks complete on the outside can no longer contain the truth growing inside it.
For decades, Dee lived as Darren McWatters, a husband, a father, a respected professional in the British Columbia wine industry, a volunteer firefighter, a hockey referee, and a deeply embedded member of her small town community in Summerland, BC. From the outside, it was the kind of life that signals stability and success, the kind of life that rarely raises questions. Inside, however, was a constant, unnamed ache, a quiet sense of wrongness that followed her from childhood into adulthood, through relationships, work, and service to others. The memoir does not romanticize this dissonance. Instead, it lets readers sit with the confusion, the denial, and the exhausting effort of trying to be someone you are not, even when you do not yet have the language to explain why.
