Finally, he looked a bit sheepishly at me. ‘You know, everyone now calls me “lawn boy"13 and I hate it.’
We ended up having a great night.
In junior high, the bullying began because I sounded a bit different. I didn’t fully embrace my bidialectical nature until I was in high school. I continued to be bullied during those years because I was interested in doing things that didn’t appeal to most American boys. Yet I still wanted to become a real American. I think this is one of the reasons Hinton’s The Outsiders was such a profound read for me as a boy. Not because I felt like an outsider, I honestly never did. I had lots of friends and a close adoring family, but I was struggling during those years to figure out what it meant not only to be an American, given my Scottish heritage, but also what it meant to become a young man.
Hinton’s novel is all about male friendships, some destructive, some not, but at its heart the book is about Ponyboy, the narrator, trying to balance peer pressure with personal integrity. Who among us hasn’t been there? Although Ponyboy’s rite of passage is violent and heart-wrenching, to this day Hinton’s book continues to inspire me, and can still make my eyes moisten and my heart swell.
Of course, so can a shiny pair of new shoes.
Personal integrity aside, even as a youth I managed to get back at the Brass Boys and the other Spotty Dicks who taunted me. First payback was the best. I was always popular with girls. Need I say more? Second payback was a biggie, too. During my last year of junior high, aged thirteen, I was asked to be the school’s drum major, which meant I had to lead all sections of the band, including the Brass Boys. I marched in front of the band with military precision in an outfit that looked as if Mr Humphries had designed it in collaboration with Liberace, but ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ never sounded so fucking good.
During those years, I did establish some traits that have remained with me into adulthood. I’ve never forgotten my Scottish roots, and I’m proud to be an American. I no longer collect Star Wars stuff, but I’ve a nice collection of Doctor Who memorabilia. I love to swim, and I love over-the-top night-time soap operas, an infatuation that started in my youth with the American TV show Dallas.
On Friday nights, when the Barrowmans lived in Prestbury, we would go out to dinner at a local Moose Lodge – a name that thankfully had little to do with the menu or the type of customers it welcomed – with our friends Kay and Paul Johnson and their daughters, Juleen, Nadine and Loreen. Afterwards, we’d all gather in our TV room at 8 p.m. to have Dallas parties. I loved the glamour, the glitz, the outrageous behaviour and the general campiness of the Ewings’ lives, and I was completely besotted with Victoria Principal, who played Pam Ewing.
I even spent an agonizing few hours after one of our Dallas nights expressing my adoration to ‘Pam’ in a fan letter – which I eventually sent and, in return, received an autographed picture. For years, I kept the picture on my desk next to a framed calligraphy of Robert Frost’s poem ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’, which features in The Outsiders.
Almost two decades later, I was entrenched in meetings for my upcoming television show Titans, which ran for half a season in the States starting in the autumn of 2000, and was produced by the TV legend Aaron Spelling. I was killing time in Aaron’s office (which looked like a sitting room), chatting on the phone with my mum, when Aaron announced that someone he wanted me to meet had just dropped by: the actress who would be playing my screen mother in the new series. The next moment, in walked Victoria Principal. I couldn’t believe it. I screamed into the phone, ‘Oh my God, Mum, you’ll never believe this. Pam Ewing is my mother!’14
‘I’m going to like you, John,’ laughed Victoria. We did end up becoming friends, enjoying dinner together on lots of nights and spending many days conspiring over how to keep Yasmine Bleeth from her destructive behaviour. While filming Titans in 2000, I bought a condo in West Hollywood near LeMontrose Hotel, and Victoria and I were neighbours for a time.
When you’re young, the periods of hurt and intimidation and the awkwardness of adolescence can seem all-encompassing. But then, suddenly, you’re an adult, and you realize that if you ‘stay gold, Ponyboy,’ as Hinton’s novel says, sometimes the gay guys, I mean the good guys, do win.
‘Don’t Fence Me In’
The summers of my American youth were glorious ones. By the late seventies, Carole no longer lived at home. She was a student at Northern Illinois University. Andrew was in high school with his own circle of friends, so he wasn’t around the house much either. I don’t want to suggest they had been cramping my style, but it seemed like overnight I went from being the baby in the family to becoming essentially an only child, and I experienced the kind of childhood everyone deserves.
We were living in Prestbury at that time and I spent May until late August in my swimming trunks. I’d pull them on in the morning, grab a towel, and head to the pool, where I’d meet two of my best friends at the time, Laura Mickey and Mike Molina. The lifeguard was on duty at the pool until 6 p.m., but we’d hang around later and whenever any adults came in, we’d ask if they’d let us swim with them taking charge. They always agreed. Prestbury was a secluded community at that time so everyone knew each other, but today, sadly, no matter how private and quiet the neighbourhood, no one on either side of the Atlantic would take on the responsibility of watching someone else’s children, never mind leaving them alone at a private swimming pool.
When we lived in Scotland, Carole, Andrew and I always had set bedtimes and curfews. Naturally, Carole was allowed to stay up the latest, Andrew went to bed an hour earlier and so on. Problem was, I didn’t need much sleep. As a result, I’d be sent to bed first and I’d still be wide awake, singing to myself in bed, reading or playing long after Andrew and Carole were fast asleep. Therefore, once my parents had adjusted to the cadences of an American summer, bedtimes and curfews shifted and were enforced only when my parents needed to lock up the house and go to bed themselves.
Did I take advantage of these loosened rules? You bet I did. My friends and I were little hellions, and not just in the summer. The roads and pavements of all the homes in Prestbury were bordered by a concrete culvert for water run-off and, during the winter of 1977, I learned how to ice skate on the narrow channel, which circled the entire neighbourhood and then drained into Prestbury’s man-made lake. Skating on that lake in the winter was like skating through Narnia. The ice was punctured with trees piercing through its smooth surface, and I’m sure my friends and I looked as if we belonged in a Christmas special as we’d swoop along the culvert in a line and then burst one by one on to the expanse of the lake, breathless from laughing and skating so fast. I learned some of my best moves on the Prestbury lake in the seventies, although when I first skated for Olga during training for Dancing on Ice, she wasn’t nearly as impressed with them as I was. Somehow, they seemed more spectacular when I was ten.
In the spring, when the ice melted, the water would run off into a creek that ran behind my friend Laura’s house. From there, it flowed into a more secluded section of the culvert, through a concrete tunnel under the road, and finally, in a rush, it would recycle into the lake. In the late spring and early summer, when the water draining into the creek was at its fullest, Laura, Mike and I would sneak behind her house, throw ourselves into the rushing creek and let the current carry us along the culvert into the tunnel – where the water would be flowing so fast we’d pick up speed, get flipped over a few times, swallow a few litres, pop to the surface and then ride the speeding current out of the tunnel into the lake. This became our own personal water slide. If I ever thought one of my nieces or nephews was getting up to something like that, I’d have them grounded for life. But, hey, it was the late seventies and children played with reckless abandon.
Maybe a bit too much abandon at times. Once, through a rather unfortunate baking incident – you read correctly, baking – I had an early experience with the highs of, let’s say, ‘organic materials’. One afternoon, I was at a friend’
s house and we unwittingly ate a whole batch of laced brownies that a much older sibling had left on the kitchen counter to cool. My friend and I treated ourselves to the entire plate of chewy delights – and then spent the rest of the afternoon stoned out of our fucking minds, watching Scooby Doo cartoons and thinking they were the best episodes we’d ever seen. Even Daphne looked good to me. I remember going home that night and hoovering every morsel of food off my plate at dinner and a few off Murn’s too. My mum and dad had no clue what was wrong with me, and for most of the duration of the accidental high, neither did I.
It was during one of my idyllic Prestbury summers that I was finally able to take revenge on my brother for his years of tormenting me with a song he’d made up when we lived in Scotland. I know it sounds a bit Monty Pythonish that the biggest threat he could inflict on me was to torment me with a song, but it’s true. Andrew would sing his ditty, ‘Up the park, there was a man, and his name was—’ and then he’d stop. The man need never be named because whenever Andrew wanted to blackmail me into doing something for him, he needed only to sing those first few lines. Singing the song served as a warning that if I didn’t do what he asked, he’d snitch to my parents about something I’d done ‘up the park’ while we still lived in Scotland. This song haunted me all the way across the Atlantic.
Let me explain. One afternoon, when we lived in Mount Vernon, I was playing with a frisbee in the swing park at the top of Dornford Avenue. I can’t remember now what the provocation was, but for some reason one of our neighbours confiscated my toy and so I screamed at him to give me back my ‘fucking frisbee’, or something close to those words. I was about six or seven at the time, and it didn’t matter that I’d probably learned the phrase from Andrew in the first place. I was too wee to swear and certainly the offence was further aggravated by the fact that I’d said it to an adult.
Andrew witnessed my verbal outburst and he swore he’d never tell Mum and Dad. He was my brother and, of course, he kept his word. Yeah, right. In retrospect, I’d have been much better off telling my parents, but I made the mistake all younger brothers make at least once in their childhoods: I trusted that my big brother had my best interests at heart.
For years, and I do mean years, any time Andrew wanted me to do something for him, he’d begin to sing ‘Up the park, there was a man, and his name was—’ to a tune of his own making. After a while, he didn’t even have to finish the phrase. He’d just open his mouth and say ‘Up’ and I was his slave. That is, until the summer of ’77, when revenge was mine – and it tasted oh, so very sweet.
Andrew was in his mid teens when ‘Episode III: The Revenge of the Sib’ occurred. He and his friends often borrowed1 Prestbury’s pontoon boat, a boat that anyone – well, any adults that is – could use. Andrew and his mates would let the boat drift over to the island at the centre of the lake, where they’d spend long chunks of their summer days drinking and smoking. How did I know? Because my friend Mike’s brother often hung out with them on the island and he had a big mouth.
On the lazy summer afternoon when I finally got my revenge on Andrew, my brother and his buddies were on the Prestbury island as usual, when Andrew decided to show his friends how well our family dog, now known as Pagan The Transatlantic Pup,2 could swim.
Before I go on, I must take this opportunity to offer a caveat,3 especially for my younger readers. Boys and girls, there are three things you should never ever do if you’ve been drinking – actually, if you’re a boy or a girl, you shouldn’t be drinking in the first place, but I’m digressing in my digression:
Never drive.
Never get a tattoo.
Never take your dog swimming. This rule also applies to cats, hamsters, little bunnies, and anything in the furry rodent family.
Alas, Andrew had not learned the third lesson. After considerable fanfare, he chucked Pagan The Transatlantic Pup into Prestbury’s lake. Andrew and his buddies cheered and then they cheered again in anticipation of Pagan The Transatlantic Pup bobbing up from the watery depths and paddling across to the island to be duly congratulated. Problem was, no one told Pagan that was the plan, so that after about thirty seconds, it was clear to Andrew and to all his friends that Pagan wasn’t bobbing anywhere except maybe under a floating gravestone.
Andrew jumped into the lake at the same spot he’d tossed the dog. Down he went, frantically searching for Pagan The Transatlantic Pup. After five minutes of fruitless hunting, Andrew was in full-blown ‘I’m so screwed’ mode, as were his friends, who were quickly evacuating the scene of the crime. Sadly, still no sign of Pagan The Transatlantic Pup.
What Andrew didn’t know – and I did because I was watching all of this from the opposite shore – was that Pagan The Transatlantic Pup did indeed have exceptional swimming skills and like any smart hound he’d decided, quite rightly too, that he’d had enough of Andrew’s game. After getting chucked in, he swam directly under the boat, surfaced on the other side, paddled to the shore, spotted me, accepted a quick rub of his ears, shook himself off, and then trotted home.
At that very moment, a song broke into my head: ‘Up the park, there was a dog, and his name was Pagan The Swimming Pup.’ Whistling the same tune as Andrew’s song, I turned from the panic on the lake and followed Pagan The Transatlantic Pup home.
A few years later, when I was about thirteen, my dad accepted a promotion to become Plant Manager of Caterpillar in Joliet, and we were on the move again. He and my mum tried hard for my sake to find a neighbourhood that matched Prestbury. The closest they could find was Timber Estates, which was lovely, but it lacked any private neighbourhood water amenities. To make up for this, my parents joined a club that had a pool. In Prestbury, my circle of friends had always included a fairly even mix of boys and girls, and in Joliet the same was true. Our escapades at the club were limited only by my dad’s charge account – and even then, not until the damage had been done.
My friends and I would hang out at the pool all day, swimming, diving and sunbathing, and I would order vodka tonics for the entire group; our age didn’t seem to be a great concern. I was signing for lavish lunches and decadent desserts … until my dad cottoned on to this, which wasn’t hard for him to do since one week I charged over $1,000 on lunches alone. My dad’s charge number at the club was 007 and, man, did he use his licence to kill that day.
It was the summer before we moved to Joliet when I realized for sure I was gay – although I’d really known I was in my gut, or thereabouts, since the age of nine, when I’d seen my first girly magazine and been more interested in the male bits than the female bobs. I’m not saying that coming of age as a gay male in the late twentieth century wasn’t difficult for many boys, but, honestly, at least for me, it was no big deal. I’d grown up with parents who were sure of themselves as individuals, very comfortable in their own sexuality, and open and frank in how they approached the issue with their children. They raised Carole, Andrew and me with the knowledge that we were valued human beings, loved completely and unconditionally, and nothing we’d do would ever be so bad that we couldn’t come home. When the time came and I needed to say the words ‘I’m gay’ aloud, I flew home to my family to say them.
It was 1992 and I was playing Raoul in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera in London’s West End. I was ill. I had a persistent cough, a low-grade fever, and stomach cramps twisting my gut every few hours. I’d been sexually active. I panicked and feared the worst. I headed home to America to face up to the truth. My parents and I sat at the kitchen table and with very little preamble I said, ‘I’m gay and I need an HIV test.’
I then told them that no matter what happened, I knew I was going to do great things with my life and I hoped they’d continue to be an important part of the journey I was on. However, if they couldn’t accept that I was gay, I would leave and do it all without them.
My dad was quiet for barely a beat. He looked at my mum, who was still reeling a bit from the HIV part of the statement, and then he
leaned forward and said, ‘John, honestly, it’s none of my business what you do in your bedroom, just as it’s none of yours what we do in ours, but I have to say that we’re hurt you’d think that because you’re gay we’d not want to be part of your life anymore.’
That night, we went out to dinner and they both admitted that my news had not really been a revelation. The next day, I had an HIV test. As the doctor was a family friend, he put a rush on the results. Nonetheless, the wait was interminable. Sheer panic kept me from sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time and dread was a brick sitting in the pit of my stomach.
While I waited for news, I travelled north to Milwaukee to visit Carole and Kevin, and to spend some time with Clare and Turner, then aged five and two. They had just moved house and the rooms were filled more with boxes than with furniture. I stayed the whole day and played hide-and-seek and kick the can, then Clare, Turner and I made forts with the boxes, and to round off the fun we ate pizza sitting on the floor.
I briefly explained to Carole and Kevin that I was home because I was sick. I told them I was having some tests, although I didn’t elaborate as to what kind of tests or why. I withheld this information, in part, because it was clear to me that they really already knew. The other reason was that Clare and Turner wouldn’t leave my side for a minute and there was no opportunity for any real discussion. When I left, I promised to call with the results.
During the long wait, I also phoned my brother, who was at a business seminar, and had a similar conversation with him to the one I’d had with my mum and dad. Like them, Andrew’s response was very much: ‘It doesn’t change anything.’
Ultimately, the test came back negative for HIV. I did, though, have a gastric infection and a chest infection, and both were working together to create my general exhaustion. I called Carole and told her I was going to be fine. Then I admitted what the test had really been for, and the reason I’d been so worried about contracting the virus. Her response was pretty much, ‘Ho hum – and what else is new?’ It seems all my family knew I was gay before I told them – so much for my bombshell news.
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