by David Rees
‘Oh. . . no reason.’ My parents, faced with such a situation, might possibly react in a similar way if nothing was pushed aggressively in front of them: of course, we didn’t do that kind of thing, but the young don’t have the same approach to organising their lives, what with the pill, and so on. It wouldn’t strike them as abnormal; it wouldn’t be such an affront to their morality that they would weep and faint, threaten to kick me out of the house for ever. That’s the bloody problem with being gay; the difference of treatment, the discrimination! God! How it hurt just looking at Leslie and hearing him mention — almost as a triviality — those enviable things that were forbidden to me! It hurt! It hurt!!
Parents not minding you having a loving, stable relationship. Letting you bring your girl-friend back home, including her in the events and routines of the family. And if you got married, presents to help furnish a house. Hold hands anywhere. Kiss in the streets. Book a double room at a hotel and no eyebrows raised. But me? Others like me?
‘I think I’d better be going,’ I said.
‘Why?’ He was astonished. ‘You’ve only just come! I haven’t seen you since Christmas!’
‘I have to do what you said you were about to do here. Start cooking.’ I wasn’t going to tell him the real reason: that just talking to him for five minutes upset me beyond endurance.
‘See you tonight, then. Let’s go out and get pissed. Well. . . at least have two or three pints.’
‘I’m broke.’
‘I’m not. I’ll pay.’
‘I. . . might have to go somewhere with Mum and Dad.’
‘Ewan! What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
I hurried out of the house. An old man, taking his dog for a walk, went slowly down the street. Leslie, indoors, preparing his mother’s evening meal, knew only a little more about me than that old man. Could he imagine to himself what I’d been through? Everyone is alone. Particularly when they’re in pain.
I changed my mind and went out with him that evening. Despite his ability to make me suffer, I thought I’d suffer more if I felt I was meekly obeying my parents’ injunctions. Honour thy father and mother — or discard your oldest and closest friend. That made me want to be with him when, for other reasons, I might not have bothered. I decided on a full-frontal collision with Mum and Dad: I simply said where I was going and with whom. Which was greeted by complete silence from both of them.
Leslie had moved on. All that male teenage talk about sexual frustration, about girls who cavorted on the sand in brief bikinis being such a temptation, such a cause of agony that a law should be passed forbidding it, had been superseded by details of conquests, the length of the chase, and who was best at it. ‘Doing my utmost to add to the copulation explosion,’ he said with a coarse laugh. He’d grown up, in a way. Not in a very attractive way, though. Was it all true, I wondered, this boasting? Probably. But what of the girls as human beings, what about his own feelings? I knew Leslie well enough to realise that he was giving me a very distorted picture; being a sexual athlete wasn’t his driving ambition. He was a one-girl person, basically. So why all this rather boring stuff? He hadn’t adjusted from typical macho talk with his building-site mates, I guessed. Was there a female equivalent? I couldn’t imagine Louise in the women’s room swopping notes with Linda on the quality of orgasm. Girls were nicer than boys. More caring, more loving. Or were they? I had no more real idea of what went on inside the women’s room than the old man I’d seen walking his dog' had of what went on inside me.
On the third pint my tongue was loosened, and I felt both a need to share confidences and a sensation of not being worried about the dangers of doing so. What was a best friend for, if you couldn’t talk to him? Leslie wasn’t easily shocked. The only thing that would unnerve him would be if I told him I fancied him. So I left that out. But I said all the rest.
His reaction was the same as Louise’s: ‘You must leave home!’
‘I intend to.’
‘You often intend, Ewan. But you hardly ever do.’
‘Balls.’
‘No.’
He was right. But he had no experience of the problems: in my shoes he would be the same. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ I said. ‘I’d decided not to.’
‘I’d guessed. Some of it.’
‘How?’ He turned away, embarrassed. ‘I was getting something out of it that you weren’t?’
‘Yes.’
On the fourth pint, when the room was beginning to spin, I said ‘Do you wonder if you might be bisexual?’
‘Because of what we did? The idea’s never entered my head! To be quite honest, I wouldn’t swear on the Bible that I’d never, in the whole of my life, do it again. . . but. . . it doesn’t appeal, exactly! I like. . . penetration.’
‘I have experienced that too.
‘With Louise?’
‘Paul.’
He stared at me, a variety of different expressions flitting across his face. I had shocked him now. It’s the hardest thing for straight people to accept: what gay men do in bed. His next remark was curious. ‘Which way round? You. . . screwed him?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t want to hear any more!’ He ruffled his hair, agitatedly. ‘I can’t. . . stand the thought of that!’
On the way home the conversation was all about surfing. Had I lost him now; would we inevitably drift apart? I felt uncaring: the alcohol, probably. I was burning my boats, and it didn’t matter. Being alone was no longer a misery. There was a kind of strength in it. Friendship with Leslie, with any heterosexual man, wasn’t a delightful road stretching into pleasant, undiscovered country: it was a cul-de-sac.
I told my parents I wanted to go to London to find a job. ‘Is this some mad scheme of Leslie’s?’ my mother asked.
‘Nothing whatever to do with him! Why should it be? OK, he lives in London and he’s working there. But I’ve been thinking about this for ages!’
‘I would be surprised if you hadn’t,’ my father said.
I had not expected him to be an ally. I said, cautiously, ‘What do you reckon, then?’
He didn’t answer at once, but made a great business of folding up newspapers and emptying ash-trays. ‘Have you thought what you might do when you get there?’ he asked, eventually. ‘Where you might live? Do you even know what the big city’s like?’
‘I’ve been there.’
‘I’m not having you living with Leslie,’ my mother said. ‘Or with that whatever his name was. . . Paul.’ It was the first time since they’d found the diary that she had made any direct reference to what she had read in it.
‘I have no intention of living with Leslie,’ I answered. ‘Or Paul. I haven’t seen or heard from him. . . since. . . ’ I turned to my father. ‘Dad, what do you say?’
He cleared his throat, took his pipe out of his mouth and put it back again. ‘If none of that other business had happened, I’d probably say it was a good idea. Young though you are, and lonely and upset though your mother would be. But now. . . I’m not sure.’
‘Do you think it’s fair to keep me on the dole for ever? Because that’s what I’ll be condemned to if I stay here!’
‘Something will turn up,’ my mother said.
‘Pigs might fly!’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Dad said.
I didn’t really care if he thought about it or not: I had decided to go. If he wouldn’t give his blessing, I would wait till my next social security giro arrived, then cash it and leave. Note-on-the-kitchen-table stuff. Hitch-hike to London. I could sleep on Leslie’s floor to begin with, till I found my bearings. I didn’t want to do that, not one little bit, but I didn’t know anywhere else I could stay. Nor did I want to leave against my parents’ wishes: the anguish it would cause, particularly to my mother. Christ! How adults manipulate their kids! Using the love and affection children feel to hang them in chains! But my love and affection, I was beginning to realise, had certain clear-cut limits.
A few days after this conversation, Dad said ‘I’ve been in touch with an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen him for two or three years, but I’ve known him for ages. Frank Sutton. He’s a fireman. Three kids; girls. . . the eldest, Tina, married six months back and left home. So they have a spare room. If you still want to go to London, you could live with them. You’d have to pay them some rent, of course. Nice people. You’d like them.’
‘Whereabouts do they live?’ I asked.
‘Richmond. That’s West London.’ I knew the name, but I had no idea where it was exactly. ‘What do you say?’
‘I say yes!’ I smiled and laughed. It was the first time I’d felt happy in his presence for weeks. ‘Thanks, Dad!’
‘Go and make peace with your mother. She’s dead against the whole thing.’ I was aware of that. I’d heard them arguing, through my bedroom wall at night, and though I couldn’t follow what they were saying, the tone of her voice was usually querulous, his even and reasonable.
I was grateful. I could go because I was permitted to: which meant I could come back. As for Frank Sutton and his family, I didn’t have to stay there for ever. If Dad had told them about the diary, and they tried to impose all sorts of restrictions on my movements, my stay wouldn’t be long. But at least I wasn’t doomed to be one of the teenage homeless, one of the thousands of unfortunate kids who drift to London hoping to find the streets paved with gold, and who discover instead dirt, poverty, drugs, despair.
I left one bright morning at the beginning of April. Not thumbing a lift with a few possessions in a rucksack; but on the coach, my fare paid by Dad, my clothes and personal things packed in two suitcases. Mum had been depressed and tearful since Dad’s phone conversation with Frank Sutton. She’d, convinced herself to a certain extent that my diary recorded a temporary lapse, that I regretted the folly of my ways, that I wasn’t really like that at all. She now worried about drugs and drunkenness. Or was it a rationalisation of more profound feelings she didn’t dare speak aloud? That the idea of being separated from her Ewan, her only child, her baby, was quite intolerable? She saw, I guessed, a life ahead of her that would lose some of its point and purpose, though the routine of things wouldn’t be much different. She still had her work at the shop, her friends, keeping the house spick and span. But no Ewan: it was a savage wrench.
Though not for me. I was as excited as an eight-year-old at Christmas. On the day of departure, yes, some pangs, some butterflies in the stomach, even a moment of ‘What the hell am I doing? I don’t want to go at all!’ Waving goodbye. Mum a small bleak woman standing on the vast expanse of coach-station tarmac.
Bude disappearing in the distance. Ahead, work and money. And other people like me. Bude out of sight. At last I could grow up!
Six: The Swimming-Pool Summer
Other people like me were thin on the ground. That’s probably not a true statement: I mean I didn’t go looking for them. Why not? Too much activity at first. Getting used to the bewilderment of London — its sheer size left me with a sort of permanent jet-lag — and trying to find work, trying to fit in with the Sutton household, and being a tourist gazing at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower, etcetera, etcetera. Paul had mentioned pubs and clubs and discos and their names had stayed in my head, as well as his comments about which were a good scene, which bad. Perhaps I didn’t dare, yet. What would they expect of me, those other gays? Going out deliberately to search for them was quite different from the sheer chance of my meeting with Paul. I felt unable to initiate. And if someone else was the initiator and I didn’t like him, how did I refuse? How could I avoid difficult, perhaps dangerous, situations? I was scared. Of people, I suppose; of relationships. Paul’s legacy? Sex, quick and anonymous, would have been preferable. But I had no idea where that might be found. So I remained as chaste as my parents would have wished. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was still attempting to please them by not putting myself in a position where, if they knew, they could pronounce me guilty.
Life with the Suttons was, superficially, tolerable. Dad had told them: that was the fly in the ointment. They didn’t mention it, but
I was convinced it was not my imagination; there was something a bit too obvious about the serious, silent way Frank Sutton looked at me, the fussy anxiety his wife showed if I didn’t turn up at the exact moment I said I would be back. At night I was supposed to be in by twelve, but I never gave them any worries on that score. I hadn’t found anything likely to keep me out after midnight; most evenings I was in their sitting-room, watching television. Though, when I could afford it, I went out for a drink, and, on two or three occasions, to the cinema with their daughters. Mandy was my age; Natalie a year younger. Dull, humourless, unattractive girls who spent most of their time doing their homework — they were both still at school — and who, when we did venture into the bustle of London, seemed as bewildered as I did. I decided that as soon as I could I’d get a bed-sit of my own. I resented the Sutton parents knowing, and I remained as aloof as possible, short of being impolite or surly. Mrs S. was the friendlier, but I didn’t respond. There was little in her conversation, which was mostly about local gossip, the plants in her garden, and the behaviour of the Richmond Borough Council, to which I could respond.
Work was no easier to find than it had been at home. I hadn’t expected to stroll immediately into a job which gave instant satisfaction and five thousand a year, so I told myself to be patient. Something will turn up, I kept thinking, echoing Mum. I explored more of London: Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, Soho, Oxford Street, Kensington. I began to get acclimatised, to accept London’s vastness: the fact that you couldn’t see country on the horizon, and that beyond the horizon you would still be unable to see country. Richmond Park was a reasonable substitute; almost beautiful in late April and the beginning of May, with new leaves uncurling, deer grazing in the distance. I even got used to the noise. The first days and nights it had been impossible; Richmond was directly in the flight path of planes coming in to land at London Airport. To see Concorde, only a few feet — it seemed — above the Upper Richmond Road, was exciting, awesome: but night after night the planes disturbed my sleep. Eventually, however, I shut them out. As I did the constant roar of traffic.
And I discovered a gay pub in Richmond. Not one that Paul had mentioned; I found it by accident. I realised as soon as I’d ordered my beer: men looking me up and down, assessing my potential, I suppose. I didn’t mind that. I did the same, every day, perhaps every hour of the day, walking in a crowded street. Just as straight boys do with girls they pass. At first, in the pub, I was nervous, then, after going in three nights running, disappointed. Nobody, not one person, spoke to me. In a sense that didn’t matter: the man of my dreams — whoever he might be — wasn’t in there. None of them measured up to Paul or Leslie for sheer good looks and sexiness. But the fragments of conversation I overheard gnawed at me inside: envy once again, gripping like a human hand. Parties, discos, boy-friends; who’d just fallen in love; who’d quarrelled irreconcilably: a whole complex mesh of relationships was hinted at, a way of existence that wove in and around the bigger, evident pattern of heterosexual living, but which remained unknown and unseen, except in here.
At the end of May I found a job. A job! Incredible!! Lifeguard at the local swimming pool. The superintendent was actually impressed by my qualifications. Nobody else employed there, he said, had life-saving certificates and first prize in a surfing championship. The pay was good, more than I expected. Soon I’d be able to find my own room! Freedom! Adulthood! And, I guess, a kind of job-satisfaction: Leslie and I had always been water babies; neither of us was very happy when we were away from the coast for long. I experienced pangs of regret whenever I thought of the beach at home: I could, at this moment, be surfing. Leslie probably was. He had said he would go back to Newquay when the summer came, work in a hotel and spend all his spare time in the sea as usual. Well. . . Richmond swimming bath wasn’t the sea,
but it was water: and the chance again to feel sun on my skin. My first job since the cafe, the summer I left school. It seemed light-years away!
It was not so glamorous as I had imagined. Life-saving duties were only a small part of the work, and on the days when the weather was dull and showery, there were few people to rescue; in fact, during the whole time I was there, only one person got into difficulties, and as she was at the deep end of the pool and I was at the shallow end, somebody else on the staff dragged her out. And rather enjoyed, from what I could observe, giving her the kiss of life. Like all the other attendants, I was a sort of odd-job man. Weeding flower-beds, picking up litter, emptying bins, making tea and coffee, painting doors and a variety of other tasks filled my day. There was little of it spent strolling along the edge of the bath, watching the swimmers and pretending to be big and butch. Pretence it was: the other employees were huge hunks of bronzed beefcake who seemed to be perpetually adjusting their crotches. I was easily the thinnest, apart from Robin, the cashier. That was the only job we didn’t do, taking in the money. The best activities were being a lifeguard when the sun was shining, and swimming in the pool when it was closed to the public. But picking up litter was nasty: after a hot, busy day, the discarded ice-cream cartons, bottles, plastic mugs and rotting bits of food were distinctly unattractive. Worst of all though was cleaning out the lavatories. The pipes from the cistern that flushed the water into the men’s stalls had to be polished every morning with brasso. Not nice, when you thought of the hundreds of males who had urinated on them the previous day. Mopping the floor. And the lock-ups: often there was an absolutely disgusting mess that made me want to puke. And wonder that people should behave like that: they certainly wouldn’t leave their own lavatories in such a revolting state. The morning of my eighteenth birthday started with that particular job. But on the whole I enjoyed being at the pool. My skin darkened with the sun, and I swam every evening, length after length — on one occasion thirty lengths — thinking of the right wave, on the beach at home, to go in the tube or ride till the sand ground me to a halt.