So Me

by Graham Norton

  I am grateful to this school for two reasons. The first is that I had two teachers who were inspirational. Typically for teachers who influenced lives, they both taught English. One was called Cally and was feared by all. Her full title was Miss O’Callaghan, and, like all great teachers, she threw her whole being into her lessons. At times we didn’t get on – I could be spikey and rude but I think that was probably because I was jealous of her. She was young and sexy and obviously had a life. The rest of the teachers had seemingly uneventful lives like mine and my parents’, and who wanted one of those? I knew I didn’t. The other teacher was Niall MacMonagle who was a substitute teacher when Cally was off having a baby. Niall has since become a good friend, and it’s hard to imagine that he was ever my teacher, but he was and he was brilliant. What Niall brings to the classroom is energy and enthusiasm to burn. He loves books, and his blinking incomprehension of anyone who doesn’t share that love is infectious.

  What both Niall and Cally gave me was permission to question everything. They taught me that there were no right answers. You simply read the text and you got out of it what you could. They also both encouraged me to perform. There was no tradition of regular school plays or drama clubs; Bandon Grammar School was strictly a rugby or hockey sort of place. I had tried to fit in early on – I had donned my rugby costume and clattered down to the pitch with the rest of them. But of course I was fooling no one. Those boys simply knew that I could not throw a ball. They were like a pack of animals who sensed weakness or who had smelt blood. It doesn’t sound like much, but it did make me feel excluded and lonely – it’s very hard to understand how alienating it is for a boy who can’t do what boys are meant to be able to. And this isn’t about being gay or straight, it’s just about belonging.

  However, once in a blue moon a play would be put on, and this was when I had my rugby moments. Suddenly I did feel comfortable, I felt confident about what I was doing. Whether it was a strange Irish one-act play or a production of The Importance Of Being Earnest with furniture borrowed from Niall’s flat, I loved being in front of an audience, and although at the time I thought that what I was enjoying was the acting, looking back it was probably more about the laughter coming from the audience. Debating was the other school activity that I did well at. Mind you, it was fairly easy to win. I remember once having a debate against the convent school team about punk rock. Now, as you can imagine, this was not a musical and cultural revolution that had really taken Bandon by storm – we didn’t have bin-liners in our bins, never mind in our wardrobes – but I successfully argued that Jesus Christ was the first punk rocker. How I did this I’m not sure, as I don’t remember a lot of gobbing in the gospels or any parables about pogoing, but the judges bought it and we won. The girls from the convent were livid: how dare a little Protestant boy teach them the great lesson for living in Ireland? You can’t win an argument with someone who has God on their side.

  Although it was never mentioned in the prospectus, Bandon Grammar School also provided a rudimentary sexual education. All the boys who boarded lived in a separate building, a large old house called Roundhill, which was full of bunk beds. Out the back there was a room for our tuck boxes and our shoe-cleaning kits, but there wasn’t much else. Because my parents were still living in Castlecomer, I was a boarder for my first three years at the school before my parents moved back to Bandon and I could become a day pupil. As I write this I can hardly believe that I spent three years of my life there. I’m sure that in any boys’ boarding school a certain amount of sexual activity goes on, and Roundhill was no exception – we ‘practised’ kissing, and taught each other how to wank. As the years went by the games became more complicated – who could come the furthest was the most popular, a game invariably won by the same boy, who I really shouldn’t name, but if you were in the grammar school at the same time as I was, he had curly brown hair and his initials were P.L.

  I know it’s hard to believe, but even I needed tips. From an early age I had exploited God’s great gift, my penis. I had developed an extremely special and slightly medieval way of playing with myself. If I got an erection I would deliver a series of brutal karate chops to my member until I got that ‘funny feeling’. This led to great discomfort and some quite bad scarring, so imagine how delighted I was to have that technique made obsolete by the teachings of those wiser than me in the dorm.

  It is important to remember what innocent times these were. I can’t imagine boys being so open with each other now, but we were like a big house full of puppies. It’s only in the telling that it takes on a creepy feeling; at the time it was definitely sweet.

  It is against this backdrop that a relationship between two boys, both called Charles, took place. The Charleses were from small remote farms in far-flung corners of the country, and they shared a bed every night for the six years they were at school. It is so difficult to explain why everyone from the cruellest bullies to the teachers’ pets at our school indulged this eccentricity. I think in the end most people were just quietly in awe of the strength of their feelings. I often wonder what happened to the Charleses after school. At the time, the only thing these boys might have known about being gay was that it rhymed with hay. I imagine each one is spending his life as a bachelor farmer, living with his mother or sister, working hard all day, maybe having a pint down the pub but not talking to people much. There must be times, though, as they lie awake late at night listening to the creaking of the house, when they can remember what it was like to be wrapped in the arms of another warm body, to be surrounded by love. When I finally told my mother I was gay, her first response was, ‘Oh, it’s such a lonely life.’ For the Charleses I’m sure that is almost certainly true.

  It was also in Bandon that I spent my teenage years, mostly watching TV and reading. I loved being whisked off to the highways of California or the glamorous apartments of New York. At the time there was only one television station, called RTE, which started its broadcasts around 5.00 p.m. and then packed up shop around 10.30 or 11 p.m. As a result I watched everything that was on with no content or quality filter. True, I enjoyed Charlie’s Angels a lot more than Mart and Market, the weekly programme that reported the price cattle had fetched in various markets around the country while showing cows walking in a circle, but I watched them both with equal attention. I even sat through An Nuacht, which was the news in Irish. The only four words in the whole programme that I understood were ‘Agus anois an aimsir’, which meant ‘And now the weather’ and signalled that the end was nigh and soon I could be enjoying Farrah Fawcett or Carol Burnett.

  I wasn’t popular at school but nor was I unpopular. Memory has a way of distilling and distorting things, but my overall impression of those times is of waiting – waiting to leave. I had looked through the windows of books and television and immediately decided that the life I was living, this life of marriages, funerals and the price of land, was not my beautiful life. I’m not sure, but I think that if anyone remembers me from school, they wouldn’t say I was unfriendly or unhappy, just a bit distant, unengaged.

  The first time I felt anything approaching ‘life’ happened to me was when I ventured out into the world in the summer of ’79. The intermediate certificate, the Irish equivalent of the O levels, was over and it would be another year before I left secondary school, so in order to improve my French my parents agreed to have an exchange student to stay with them as part of a school scheme. The plan was that the student would spend a month living with my family, and then I would head off alone with him to spend a month in deepest, darkest, ‘this tastes funny’ France. I was terrified at the idea.

  On the day of the exchanges’ arrivals, Cork airport was full of parents with sullen-looking children holding up hastily made name-boards. Mothers conducted hushed conversations (‘I just hope they’ll eat something’, ‘I know someone who had one last year and he refused to eat anything but cheese for a month’). When the étudiants finally shuffled through the arrival doors we held our breath a
nd gripped our clumsy signs. Leather-jacketed greasy yobs and teenage girls wearing enough make-up to cover the presidents’ faces on Mount Rushmore announced themselves to nervous families. There was no sign of our student. But then, like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, Jules strode out, blond and clean, as polished and perfect as any model in an ad for Farrah slacks. It seemed impossible that we, the Walker family, had won the French lottery, but we had.

  In truth I don’t recall much about our month together in Ireland. I’m amazed it was a month, because in fact the only things I can remember are that he ate everything, annoyed me by criticising the way I laid a table and laughed till I thought he might vomit at The Benny Hill Show.

  But somehow a month passed and it was time for the return visit to France. We went back to the airport (‘Weetabix, that’s all I could get down him the whole month’, ‘She went missing for two nights with some fella from Cork city. We had the guards out’). My mother looked very smug as she shepherded St Jules towards the departure gate. My dad gave me a wad of francs, and Mum kissed me and said, ‘Eat everything you’re given.’ I nodded grimly. This was a question of national and family pride. I would be swallowing pig gristle for the Walkers and for Ireland.

  I decided that I would keep a diary of my first trip abroad. Now, I can’t be certain but I’ve a funny feeling I might have been reading a little too much Jane Austen before I left. Remember I was seventeen years old and had never been out of Ireland before:

  Day One.

  We arrived in Lourdes following the plane journey during which I discovered I enjoy flying. Lourdes proved to me once again that Roman Catholicism must be the least civilised religion in the world. Also, surprisingly, it is falling down. It’s quite common to see the Virgin’s nose or left big toe missing where lumps of plaster have fallen from the wall. But Lourdes did have one advantage, I met someone who could speak English; an arts student from Hong Kong. Somehow it wasn’t quite the same as having a chat.

  All of this on Day One!!! I pray this pretentious prig unleashed himself only on the page and that I wasn’t quite so bad in reality – surely my mother brought me up better than that. Speaking of my mother, here’s another snippet from the diary that she might have written herself.

  The house is obviously decorated with taste, but it’s not mine. Enough said, suffice to say the stairs don’t have a handrail.

  And in answer to your question, no, I have no idea what I was talking about either.

  The diary documents the month fairly faithfully. In it I describe the heat, moan about the food, and report endless games of ping-pong. There is the odd joke that has stood the test of time, such as:

  But now lunch is calling. They might have at least knocked the thing unconscious before we ate it.

  There are also frightening violent outbursts about Jules’s parents, who I in fact recall very fondly:

  Madame, hang on to your pink bri-nylon dressing gown ’cos you’re driving me up the wall! Madame has packed for me and taken charge of my money and passport, but still no word about what she intends to do as regards compensation for the trousers she wrecked. God bless her little heart, may it break in two and rot behind her knees. Tra La!

  The father didn’t escape my wrath either:

  Jules cooked lunch and there was no noticeable change, except that there was no cheese for a second time and I was able to avoid it in the salad. This afternoon I wrote a few letters because the father more or less asked me to, and as you know I’d do anything to please the dear man. Greasy old pig, may he rot in hell!

  It was only a couple of days before the end of the trip that things took an unexpected twist. The following entries are exactly as written. Imagine if Adrian Mole had been gay.

  August 28th. Night.

  I’m faced with a difficult decision; whether to keep this a glib record of my little days, or to give an honest account of what is actually happening. I will choose the latter.

  I’m here nervous, tense and terrified. How to write about this I find difficult to know, I’ll just start and hope it sounds the way it’s meant to.

  This afternoon, changing for windsurfing, Jules stripped completely and when I took no notice, he pointed at his erection and said, ‘It is starting.’ I gave my usual noncommittal little laugh, but then with the use of gestures and words he asked me if I masturbated and told me every day in school they did it in a group. He virtually asked me to go to the toilet with him. I was surprised by how much this revelation affected me. I suppose it was just the fact of it being clean, proper, smiling Jules. I felt physically sick and my mouth went dry. I just kept asking myself why, why he had to go and do this now the holiday was nearly over? We couldn’t be the same again. But it was over now. I prayed we’d have no more.

  When we got back to the house I’d recovered a little. I was going to take a shower. Jules went into the loo. I went into the bathroom, but no towel, so I was just about to come out to ask Jules where I could get one, when he called me. I opened the door and there was Jules standing naked on the landing, masturbating.

  ‘Comme ça,’he said smiling.

  ‘Je sais, je sais.’

  ‘You do it?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes, in the shower.’

  He walked towards me masturbating all the time. I shut the door and waited until I heard him go into his room. I felt like crying. It was the most blatant attempt at homosexual seduction I’ve ever encountered. But why did he do it now? Can it be we are going to have a little group session while camping in Luchon? I pray not. Will he try again in the morning? It is an awful sort of fear because I can’t trust myself.

  I’m quietly impressed that I had the insight and the nerve to write that last sentence. Of course I was shocked and upset by everything, but part of me was also thrilled. The following day the saga continued:

  August 29th. Afternoon.

  I survived the morning. During the night I thought of a good way to describe this time; a harrowing experience. In a way it’s absolutely hilarious. I imagine him lurking naked behind every corner. Yesterday at the clubhouse when he started to show and tell, all I did was ask him what it was called in French!

  Xavier [a friend of Jules’] was here this morning and we put up the tent we have for Luchon. It’s a two-man tent; me and Jules! Oh God, what will I do? There isn’t room to turn in the damn thing.

  This afternoon, tennis – a newspaper took our picture as I stumbled around the court – and then table tennis at the ‘Club de Voile’. Things were fine, all was forgotten. When we got back I had my shower without incident. When Jules came into my room he was fairly conspicuous but he did have a towel thrown around him. I was just starting to make up a poem about how discretion was back in style, when I heard a sort of shout. He can’t have got dressed by now, I thought, and I was right. He pranced in naked and at his physical peak. He had with him something along the lines of Playboy.

  ‘Have you a magazine like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. It isn’t wise to be naïve. I hear that’s what they want.

  ‘At your house?’

  ‘Yes. What’s the title of yours?’

  He showed me and then gaily pranced out again, no doubt scattering scented rose petals all around as he went. I may be flippant, but in reality I do feel sick all the time. It’s totally changed my attitude to Jules and to everyone we meet.

  Jules and I – how obscene that sounds – dined with Grandmère and Grandpère. Very nice, but I felt a bit tipsy all evening after all the Ricard and wine. We packed the tent and stuff into the car and then played a bit of ping-pong and now I lie here, for the second night, terrified.

  Doors that were shut

  Now open sway,

  And the happy blue summer

  Is now sweaty and grey.

  You know things are serious when the poetry starts, and then the inevitable finally happened.

  August 31st. Night.

  It is my last night in France and words cannot expres
s how much I’m looking forward to being able to talk English and to the familiar food. I find in the following piece there is no way I can make myself the hero, for I know that I’ve done wrong. Oh what the hell am I talking about? This is beginning to sound like ‘Song of Bernadette’. So what I couldn’t hold out in a tent? So I pulled a guy off with my mouth? So I felt like an infatuated first year? I felt no guilt immediately after, and none now, though a little in between. I don’t care, it was enjoyable and I did get my cheap thrills.

  Jules wastes no time. I hardly got out of the room in time after collecting a few odds and ends for the morning and already he was on the bed rattling away and I’ve just found I’ve forgotten my watch – I daren’t go back.

  A couple of days later I sat at the desk in my bedroom back in Bandon. At the other end of the house I could hear my mother clinking plates and rattling pans as she put them on the stove. My father was watching the news.

  September 2nd. Night.

  I have arrived home safely and indeed have already survived an entire day of school. It was wonderful to see Mum and Dad again and see all the old familiar things again. This is the end of my account, no matter what happens after this. I find I have ended up so that I find it impossible to be glib and flippant about Jules any longer. Images of he and I and he alone haunt me. They chase me about in my head and I must jump from one idea to the next to avoid them. I feel decidedly odd, depressed and tensed up.

  You the reader must find a tremendous difference between the start and the finish of this, but what could I do? I couldn’t predict what would happen.

  The bastard, he planned it all. I saw him pack the hankies to go to Luchon and I wondered why so many? Then he handed me one in the tent, so that when we ejaculated we could mop up. He’s packed one for me. He’s known all along, the cold calculating bastard.