Gay Life, Straight Work

by Donald West

  Enjoying the climate, the lush fruit and vegetables, the food and wine, the friendly invitations to partake of sweet mint tea (large lumps of sugar being pushed into the tea pot before serving), and the chance to buy local ceramics and rugs, we never lost nostalgia for Morocco. The availability of gay sex was another story.

  Tragedies of Love

  Partnership with Pietro lasted forty-five years until his death, but genuine mutual devotion was marred by a seemingly irreconcilable incompatibility, for which I now feel a great burden of sorrow and guilt. Looking back on the things we were able to share peacefully together cannot obscure the memory of bitter rows and stressful periods of estrangement when life seemed not worth living and it was hard to carry on working and pretending to outsiders that there was nothing wrong.

  For me, sexual enjoyment had hitherto been uninhibited by concepts of possession. Even when becoming emotionally attached to someone, the idea that sex with others should cease did not arise. Indeed ‘threesomes’ were particularly gratifying. This may seem shocking to many, and especially in someone who, in ordinary social exchanges, is timorous and compliant with convention. However, public image and private sexual conduct are often seriously dissonant. Pietro had appeared unconcerned at sharing a bed with both John and me when I first brought him home, and initially he did not demur when a former acquaintance of mine was invited home for sex, but soon he began to show disapproval in no uncertain terms. His concept of gay partnership was one of strict monogamy. The one or two ‘sex buddies’ I then had were soon put off by his sulks and rudeness towards them. I tried to conform to his wishes, but the urge to resume old habits was too strong. Resentful at having to make excuses, I began to have secret encounters. For example, a highly-sexed and handsome former ballet dancer was a customer of the antique shop and he took to calling in for quick satisfaction in our quarters above the shop when Pietro was out.

  The inevitable detection of my transgressions brought endless recriminations. The depths of misery this caused us both is hard to express, but as with an unreformed drug addict or alcoholic, the urge for sexual adventure kept reasserting itself. Over time the problem took on a different guise. Denied the possibility of open sexual contacts with mutual friends, I took to visiting bars frequented by ‘rent boys’, including one in Soho patronised by the sex murderer Dennis Nilsen.

  Strangely enough, John, who slept with us when we first met, was the only one of my previous sexual contacts that Pietro did not perceive as a threat and was prepared to accept as a friend. Indeed John remained a friend right up to Pietro’s death and beyond. He was critical of Pietro’s violent reactions to my behaviour and never ceased to remind me that from the outset he had warned that we were incompatible. Perhaps he was influenced by his own reluctance to make a partnership commitment. During his sea-going years he sought sex in every port and the only time he tried to settle proved a short-lived disaster. He teamed up with a young man and together they went to work for the lesbian lady friends (mentioned earlier) with the antique and restaurant business in the country. His partner’s behaviour there became so extremely histrionic it led to his admission to a psychiatric hospital! To my annoyance he gave my name to the hospital consultant as his psychiatrist! After this episode John never took up with another partner.

  It was a delusion to suppose, on the basis of ‘what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve for’, that I could continue secret sex encounters without causing upheaval. While doing my best to hide things from Pietro, I hated the situation and was continually worrying about being found out, which in fact happened repeatedly, provoking days and weeks of sulks, recriminations and threats to leave. Pietro did indeed absent himself more than once, sometimes taking to his bed, neglecting the shop and fretting himself into abject and sometimes drunken states. On various occasions I promised to stop and had a sincere intention to do so, but always lapsed. In later years sex between us ceased and he adopted a distant, resentful stance that seemed to assume, correctly, that I was continually unfaithful, although I always struggled to keep evidence of that from him. For better or worse this became easier in later years as our respective employments brought about partial separations. Notwithstanding so much real misery, I never doubted that I was his and he was my most ‘significant other’. We shared our incomes, never counting who paid for what. In the early years I had more than he; later on, because he spent little, I was the beneficiary. In times of illness or other need we helped each other without question.

  One-off sex with pick-ups from dubious bars carries a more than average risk of acquiring infections. I was unlucky in that, early on in my unhappy sex career, a (then) rare incident of agreeing to anal insertion produced a syphilitic infection. Initially symptomless, my first indication of something wrong was severe pain on defecation. A hospital visit produced a diagnosis of anal fissure and the loan of a dilator. No questions were asked about sex. Then came the rash. I realised I might have had an internal syphilitic sore and be in the dangerous secondary stage of the disease. Reluctant to go to a venereal disease clinic, for I had the not altogether irrational fear (in the late Fifties) that a medical career might be affected by exposure of homosexuality, I was working at Maudsley Hospital at the time and used penicillin from there to inject myself. The diagnosis was swiftly confirmed by an immediate fever – the Herxheimer reaction due to the spirochaeta being killed and releasing toxin into the blood. I took fright and attended a clinic for treatment. Given injection phials, I could continue working, retiring from time to time to the hospital toilet to stab my thigh. Throughout this drama, Pietro, initially shocked and angry, remained a loyal helper, attending the clinic to be tested (negatively) himself.

  Frequenting a Soho bar filled with male prostitutes and pimps and young layabouts seeking a bed for the night, involved other risks. The former ballet dancer I first met as a client of the antique shop lived nearby and had a room he would let me use for taking back pick-ups. Perhaps because I avoided characters who gave the slightest hint of ambivalence at the prospect of sex, I almost never had trouble, believing that an honest, friendly, approach setting out what to expect, including the limited amount of money available, would produce a corresponding honest response. One time I was mistaken. An attractive, well-built Scot came back very willingly, but as soon as we were indoors he changed tone and asked for more money than we had discussed. He picked up a glass beer mug threateningly. Explaining, truthfully, that my wallet was in the car outside, we went together to collect it. As I was fishing inside the vehicle he was looking up and down the street to see if anyone was coming. This gave me a chance to leap inside, slam the door and drive off. On next visiting that same bar he was there, all smiles, suggesting we should try again.

  Dangerous Liaisons

  More damaging to a stable gay partnership than casual encounters outside the home is forming commitments to third parties. The young men who haunt bars looking for older men wanting sex are usually drifters, estranged from their families, unemployed social rebels with personality problems. Although not averse to gay sex, they are not necessarily basically homosexual. When they find someone who is prepared to see them again and again a dependent relationship may develop, the younger seeking material support, the older developing an unintended attachment. This happened to me in at least two instances in which a strong attachment lated a lifetime.

  George, some fifteen years my junior, had a pronounced Liverpool accent. He came from a respectable working-class background, but kept no more than distant contact with his family of origin, trying to hide from them his irregular way of life. He was rather small in stature, but lively and pugnacious, at least in his talk, explaining that to get by where he came from one had to stick up for oneself physically. He maintained that army service had led him into the heavy drinking that eventually killed him. On discharge from the forces, he teamed up with a Canadian homosexual who took him as a companion on sex tours around Europe. Before departing for home, he introduced George to t
he London gay scene. Instead of looking for work, George teamed up with the group of rent boys frequenting the White Bear bar in Piccadilly.

  George was intelligent and capable of finding employment when he wanted, but he was attracted to heavy drinking and an undisciplined life style, and he had a talent for insinuating himself into situations that avoided the necessity for regular work. His sexual service was circumscribed. He boasted that his masturbatory techniques ensured his punters ejaculated at an early stage, avoiding the need to be anally penetrated, which he disliked. I felt what proved to be a futile urge to extricate him from his precarious existence, even finding a small employment for him, but his casual attitude put paid to that. I had more opportunities for travel abroad than Pietro could share or wanted to share, and once I took George on a trip to Morocco to our tiny house in the Tangier Kasbah.

  On the fine stretch of Tangier’s sandy beach there used to be several famous bars patronised by gay male tourists attracting and surrounded by a plethora of young Moroccans obviously available for sex. In this atmosphere of seeming libertinism, George’s rash conduct was near catastrophic. Driving along the crowded promenade in Tangier, with George and a Moroccan boy he had taken a fancy to sitting in the back, to my horror, they were kissing each other openly for everyone to see. We were stopped and questioned by the police. Knowing the consequences of expulsion and a marked passport, I was terrified. In Morocco at that time the authorities were relaxed about what happened with tourists in private, but public displays were taboo. The boy was taken away, but we escaped with a warning. George insisted on trying cannabis, which he consumed in solid form. It did not take immediate effect and, against advice, he swallowed more and began to have alarming hallucinations. He remained acutely psychotic all though the night, with several young Moroccans trying to calm him and restrain his terrified shouting. On the return journey, we stopped off at a small hotel in Paris, taking a tiny room with a double bed. George was restless and went out in the middle of the night, sneaking back with an Algerian. George, who professed radical ideas derived from the thoughts of Chairman Mao, said his principles would not allow him to leave someone stranded when we had a bed. The receptionist saw the Algerian making an exit in the morning. I was threatened with the police, but finally allowed to recover our passports and leave.

  These experiences should have taught me a lesson, but I persisted in seeing George and introduced him to Pietro, who took an immediate dislike to him. One reason was his drinking, which meant swigs from the whisky bottle when unobserved and trying to cover his action by surreptitiously diluting the remaining contents with water. At one stage George made friends with a young gay man who occupied a flat in the fashionable Harley Street area, provided by an older lover (who, by coincidence, was a prominent member of the SPR). George stayed there and was allowed to entertain men. I called one afternoon to see him but arrived early and found him in the company of Mr W, a businessman from the Midlands, about my own age, who was much embarrassed. Nevertheless, we became friends, and Pietro and I used to exchange enjoyable social visits with Mr W and his wife, at which the topic of homosexuality was never mentioned. George maintained his contacts with Mr W, who was clearly in love with him and invited him to come to stay at his home, hoping to rescue him from prostitution. George maintained that both Mrs W and their adult son were sexually attracted to him and that the situation was becoming emotionally fraught. When Mr W found a place for him in a colleague’s firm, George failed to turn up the first day, and simply disappeared. Mr W repeatedly asked me privately if I had any news of him, but in fact I did not see him again for some years.

  Meantime, George had married and fathered children, but deserted them to live with another woman with whom he set up a home, utilising some bank finance they obtained fraudulently. He then fell ill and was hospitalised for treatment of Hodgkins disease. When discharged, he resumed contact with me hoping for help. The woman he had been living with had cut him off and the house having been put into her name he was destitute. He had me drive him to see her in the country town where they had been living, but she refused to open the door and he was left crying on the doorstep. Sex with George had ceased and Pietro, although disapproving, did not try to prevent me helping him obtain lodgings in Cambridge or allowing him to visit us occasionally.

  Remarkably, George found a job, but it proved no solution because his salary had to be paid directly into a bank account where it was automatically seized as repayment of his debts. At this point he was desperate, ill with chronic bronchitis, still drinking and about to be evicted from his accommodation. I sought the help of an influential friend, who negotiated for him a local authority flat and appropriate welfare benefits. He was also registered with a GP who himself had alcohol problems and who treated him sympathetically. There was some hope that George might settle down, but his drinking was out of control and his health deteriorating. I was due to go abroad for three weeks and rang his GP to explain that I thought he was quite ill and there was nobody to see to him while I was away. The locum doctor I spoke to said she would call, but she did not. On my return I went at once to the flat and found the entrance door unlocked. Inside, he was lying dead on the floor in his underpants, in front of a still burning gas fire, in a pool of vomit, with empty cans and bottles strewn around. The body was still warm and rigor not fully set in. I ran to the pub next door asking to be allowed to ’phone 999 as there was someone dead in the flat. I was greeted with disbelieving laughter at first. (It was not a good neighbourhood).

  The police, ambulance and doctor arrived, and after giving them his mother’s address in Liverpool, I left. Having a key, I returned next day to clear out the bottles and cans before his brother arrived to arrange removal of the body to Liverpool. That was the last I saw of George. It was found that he had died of untreated meningitis. For some years I received Christmas messages from his elderly mother, thanking me for having tried to befriend him. George’s story is a sad example of the near impossibility of changing an ultimately calamitous lifestyle if the person is not motivated to do so.

  Tom was of similar age to George and they were friends. I can no longer remember our first encounter, but I think I met Tom first. He had a more troubled background than George. His mother was said to have married ‘beneath’ her to a labouring man and heavy drinker who turned out to be an abusive husband. They lived in North Wales in a country town where Tom’s father, always living on the edge of the law, was a professional poacher, especially of salmon, which he sold to a local luxury hotel, the very one where I was often taken as a child when on motor tours with my father’s wealthy business friend. Tom had a close attachment to his father, who taught him a love of fishing. When Tom was a teenager they worked together on itinerant jobs. Tom had never felt close to his mother. She probably thought he was taking after his father. Tom spent some time in the army as a bandsman, which he enjoyed, but he seems to have lacked discipline. He went absent without leave for no good reason, for which he served time in a military prison.

  Tom was a more reliable friend than George and although hardly admitting it to myself I was in love with him. He recognised that for me Pietro would always come first and was willing to play along with any contrivances for our clandestine meetings. I tried introducing him to Pietro as a useful acquaintance to do odd jobs for us, but that produced only animosity on Pietro’s part, which Tom never reciprocated. At various times Pietro insisted I should stop seeing Tom, and I tried to do so, but invariably lapsed.

  Tom was averse to regular work and preferred to get by with the help of a somewhat older friend, Bill, who lodged in the same house and was a freelance handyman living off householders wanting jobs done cheaply for cash in hand. Bill was quite knowledgeable, but had few scruples about overcharging for patchy repairs that might not last. He led a slightly more stable existence than Tom and indeed advised me that by giving Tom money at times of crisis I was not helping him to find a job. Tom was a binge drinker and went through a period of
heroin abuse. He was intelligent enough to realise his addiction was getting out of control and at my instigation he applied for admission to an addiction clinic. At the last moment he decided to try to come off the drug without help, and actually succeeded in doing so gradually. In later years he admitted he was still dangerously tempted to buy a fix when feeling low, but he limited himself to cannabis, which he used persistently, almost until his death.

  Tom’s marriage was an eventful episode. He and George had both stayed with me one night in Hampstead when Pietro was away. The three of us went strolling in the West End the next day. Two girls looking invitingly out of a bar window attracted Tom and George’s attention and they made swift contact while I made myself scarce. Tom became immediately infatuated with one of the girls. She was just turned twenty while he was already in his thirties. Full of good intentions to find regular work, Tom married her. No doubt pleased by this turn of events, Pietro agreed to let the couple stay in the Hampstead flat while we were away on holiday, so that they would have breathing space to look for accommodation. They had not succeeded when we were due to return and I had to put down a deposit to enable them to move into temporary lodging. Afterwards, they found a room in Earls Court, near the Boltons, Tom’s favourite pub, which was then a haunt of gays, drug users and petty criminals. Soon his wife had a baby. Tom strove to provide for them, going so far as to take part in thefts of metal from empty houses.

  I helped out a little, but tried to maintain only Platonic contacts with Tom. His wife was happy with a Bohemian life with plenty of men around, which made Tom jealous. The situation worsened when she left with the baby, ostensibly to join her mother in the North, but Tom suspected it was to renew contact with a man friend there. When she returned, Tom managed to secure a job on a pig farm in the country, which gave them accommodation in a small tied cottage. I drove them there. Tom was in his element working with the pigs, but she was utterly bored and urged him to find work in town. Accordingly he left, taking with him cash stolen from the gas meter. The farmer, who knew I had brought them, gave my name to the police who visited me to find Tom’s whereabouts. I could say truthfully that I did not know, he had not contacted me. Meantime, his wife rang Pietro, tearfully complaining that Tom had deserted her and she was threatened with eviction. Of course that confirmed his worst opinion of Tom. How the situation was resolved I cannot recall, but eventually they were back together again in Earls Court, but not for long. The wife left with the infant for the last time and Tom took an overdose of barbiturates (popular as ‘downers’ among drug users in those days) waking up in hospital. He was genuinely depressed, having been devoted to his little girl as well as being in love with his wife. He never fully recovered.