The Odd Amorous Adventures of the Gay Gingerbread Man

by Alex Roth

  So, he concentrates again on the Lesbian scene. He is successful in finding Robin, another gay lady, and leaves the women in his new job alone. No magic diet, no offers of shoulders to cry on etc. All that is simply off-limits, he has a new purpose in life or so it initially seems to him. Robin lectures at one of Melbourne’s universities. We are vague about the names of the various universities in Melbourne and elsewhere in case someone recognises the Gingerbread Man’s real name, especially if she is or someone who reads this knows anyone he has had a relationship with. By this time the ladies he has known (not in the biblical sense) are somewhat numerous, so his anxiety is real. Robin suggests that he enrol for a doctorate in education. She also believes he is brilliant. It continues to amaze us what twinkly eyes, charm and good legs can achieve! The Margery, head of the university education faculty falls for him as well. She is not gay. She suggests a topic, something on the lines of what will the new technology (computers etc) mean for education. She is so taken with him that she even allows him to stay with her at her house while he works on his degree. This should have raised some alarm bells for our hero. His tale of chastity and his plans to enter the Catholic priesthood as soon as his son is grown up and able to fend for himself has always worked before and he thinks it will work again. He goes to St Paul’s Cathedral on Sunday mornings. He also tells everyone how he regularly attends early morning mass, at a small catholic church nearby. This he does in case anyone wonders why he goes to St Paul’s every Sunday. St Paul’s is the most prominent Anglican church in Melbourne and is sure to impress everyone with his religious outlook. He has not quite converted to Catholicism so going to an Anglican cathedral, between writing his thesis and early morning mass is enough to emphasise his religious bent. It isn’t. She expects something in return for all she is doing for him. She is not put off by his protestations of celibacy. What she wants is sexual favours in return for her efforts. Once she observes his skittish reaction to her invitation of sharing her bed, she realises that he is gay. Nevertheless, his wit and charm still fascinate and she has enough influence to get him that university lectureship he wants. She is intelligent enough to realise that he uses his appeal to bamboozle women, so she makes sure that the position he obtains, although in Melbourne, is not at her university.

  Something rather unexpected happens on his first day there. Leslie, the companion of the late Dinky (remember Dinky?) found that living in Albany brought back too many memories. So, after Dinky’s death Leslie accepts a lecturer’s position at the same university as that of the Gingerbread Man. A bit of bad luck but he brushes it away and attempts to charm Leslie anew. He was initially unsuccessful and finds that now he is even more unsuccessful. He seemingly cannot understand that he can never win over Leslie who remembers his cold- hearted treatment of Dinky only too well.

  Now, at last he has employment more fitting, he thinks, for his many talents. He writes down the pluses and minuses of his life to date. He acknowledges that when it comes to employment he is a bit of a rolling stone, but due to Susie and the lady in the flowing robes he has gathered some moss. So financially he feels successful. He does not quite understand why he changes jobs so often. He is wonderful to so many people, listening to their problems and making them feel so much better. Not only, he reasons, making them feel better but genuinely improving their lives. Their misery has resulted in some of them becoming overweight. His magic diet has done its work. They are now slim (or at least slimmer). Their unhappiness sometimes translates in a neglected appearance. Once they begin to love him, they style their hair, start wearing make-up and in general look much better than before they met him. He regards himself as one who waves a magic wand and changes them for the better. It is not his fault that he is constantly misunderstood. All this is true. The adoration he wants can only be achieved if he pretends to have an interest in them that goes beyond plain friendship. He does not want friendship; he wants deep and lasting love from them and this causes the devastation that he leaves behind as he dumps them and runs away.

  His wished- for relationship with a Lesbian, unencumbered by relatives, has so far been unsuccessful, but he is only in his late thirties and still has time to find his ideal woman. He has had serious relationships with gay women before, so he thinks that this is not an impossibility. True his first engagement ended in disaster, as did his marriage to Linda. Still, he was hopeful that his next serious gay relationship would succeed. Sometimes the ladies he drops do not droop in despair but unexpectedly hit back. There was a rather unpleasant incident while he still lived in Susie’s house, although Susie herself had moved out. This lady (let’s leave her nameless) had found all the items she had given him (except for the watch) neatly stacked in her classroom after the December school break. She was furious. That night, at 2 am she decides to do something about it. She puts the cushions and pictures she has given him in her car and drives to his house. The next thing he hears is thuds as all her presents to him are thrown back noisily onto the roof of his house. This wakes up his neighbours and proves somewhat embarrassing, as he complains to her later.

  There was another time when he found it difficult to rid himself of one of his devoted admirers in Wollongong. She clung to him, despite all his efforts at getting rid of her. Then he thought of a rather devious plan. It went like this: She had been persuading him to join her on a trip she was planning with a girl friend to the Tamworth Folk music festival. He had initially no intention of going, having decided to drop her beforehand. Suddenly he tells her he has changed his mind. He agrees to go. Once there a couple of days and concerts go by and all is well. Her friend for some inexplicable reason is not bowled over by him. This does not happen often, as has been pointed out, but she was a bit eccentric, which might explain her lack of interest in him. He thinks that this is a pity, because he was hoping that his next move will prove embarrassing to the clinging female in front of her friend. He tries his best to enrage the lady he wanted to get rid of but is unsuccessful. Eventually he just packs up and leaves their holiday apartment, giving her no explanation whatsoever.

  This was puzzling but what the clinging lady found even more puzzling were the clothes in his suitcase. Obviously, he had planned the whole business before they left Wollongong. He had some Christian Dior shirts and obviously expensive leather shoes in his case as well as a pair of Nike. Now this has not been mentioned before but our hero always starts a new job wearing poor quality clothes. He wears the nondescript beige polyester trousers, the cheap short sleeved shirt and the narrow tie that was the fashion heaven knows when. His shoes are cheap white lace ups. No watch. This was always what one can term, his uniform. Suddenly leather shoes appeared in his case, and a better quality of clothes than he usually wore. What was this all about? It almost overshadows the discarded lady’s chagrin at the cruel way he chose to finally dump her. Could it be that he wore the cheap stuff so that the designated lovelorn might buy him a better wardrobe? It seems hard to believe but then why had no one at his Wollongong school ever seen him in leather shoes?

  Before humiliatingly being dumped, this lady had helped the Gingerbread Man buy a house. This was something that, as we have explained he was now able to do, because for the first time in his life he had his own money, through kind and helpful Susie and the lady of the flowing robes. The money was not sufficient to buy him something impressive. In fact, it was small, old and in need of repair and not up to scratch. Our hero was of the view that he deserves something better. One fine day our Gingerbread Man meets a young, good-looking builder. The Gingerbread man falls in love with him, and to seal their romance, decides to let the builder renovate his small house. Out goes the nice nest egg the lady in the flowing robes got for him. Once the nest egg is gone, so is his lover. Our Gingerbread Man has no use for him after this in any case, his love has cooled and he made sure that the renovations were done at cost price, so he does not care. Unfortunately, the handsome builder gets his revenge. He fails to mention to the Gingerbread Man that the
house had not had a boiler installed. Now not only was the builder gone but also his funds. Where would he get someone to pay for his boiler? This was a large ticket item and unlikely to be obtained from a sympathetic lady without a great deal of time and effort. What to do?

  Inspiration is not long in coming. His parents (everyone has parents, even Gingerbread Men, after all someone must have made him) are not as young as they were. His father has emphysema and has not long to live and his mother is a prizewinning gardener and they are by no means penniless. What a win! He suggests they move in with him so that he can look after them properly. There is the slight matter of the absence of hot water, but no problem, his parents pay for the boiler and other minor unfinished jobs, overlooked in the heat of the passionate affair with the builder, and move in. Mother renders the wilderness round the house into a beautiful garden, father conveniently dies six months later. All our hero must now do, is become so unpleasant that mother cannot wait to move out. With so much practice, he succeeds before the year is out. He now has a newly refurbished house and his late father’s car. All is well with his world.

  Then he looks for another bright woman to help him finish his doctorate. At his new university job, he befriends another soon to be divorced lady. Maryanne was married for twenty years, is not gay, a little tubby and has a son, the same age as his now seventeen- year -old son Nicholas (remember the cute baby!!). The two qualities he seeks (gay and unencumbered) in his relationship with a woman are again not there. He ignores all this because he realises that as a professor, she is in a senior position and would be most useful in fostering his career, in addition to helping him with his dissertation. He has dumped so many women before that another one is neither here nor there (as he mentions to her after he has dumped her).

  Now let’s be fair to the Gingerbread Man. True, he has no intention of having a serious relationship with her or any of the others who did not meet his criteria. However, he does do his bit initially as he always has, in cheering her up, telling her how lovely she looks, that he feels they will always be together etc. Whenever he gets the chance he hugs her, right in front of their colleagues which, being an old- fashioned girl, she finds a little embarrassing. Not only has no-one said or done such things in a long time, some of them she has never heard before. Of course, he gives her his special diet and of course she sticks to it, eats a great deal of cabbage, loses ten kilos and is no longer tubby. Not that he cares. On the day after her divorce he tells her how lucky she is to have this gorgeous guy (himself) to take her on romantic picnics, to the opera or the ballet (all at her expense of course) but still, he is doing a lot for her bruised heart and newly slim looks.

  She helps him with his doctorate, his dead (D.Ed.) as he calls it- he knows that his work is not worth much. In this he is realistic. It is only due to the interest in him of the head of the faculty of education at the other university (even after he refused to sleep with her) that his doctorate is accepted there. It consists of the opinions of five lecturers at the university (all women, naturally) on the effect of technology on the future of education. One of them being Maryanne. She is in the Fine Arts department and knows even less about the topic that do the other four. She protests that she has never given the topic a thought, but he replies that he just wants her to hazard a guess, so she does. She lets him work at her house, a house full of antiques, much admired by our Gingerbread Man. She also does what she can to impress her colleagues with the many admirable qualities that she thinks he has. He gets his doctorate in education.

  Due to her efforts, he is given a chance to do a two-week course, all expenses, paid to Boston in the U.S of A. We have yet to understand why gay men are so dismissive of him. One of her fellow lecturers at the university is puzzled that Maryanne has anything to do with the Gingerbread Man. Marc is in a ten-year relationship with Roy, they live in a large heritage listed house, tastefully furnished and would not dream of befriending our hero. Why not? Who knows, he is just not up to their standard. It appears that when they see him in action in the centre of an adoring circle, they are not impressed with his duplicity. Maryanne is blissfully ignorant of his gay side and they do not go as far as enlightening her.

  Once the Gingerbread Man knows he is off to Boston, he dyes his hair bright blonde, puts on an ear ring and is ready for action. As usual his luck with gay men in Boston is as minimal as it is in Australia, but he does meet Charlie. Now Charlie is the equivalent in many ways of his unhappy ladies. Charlie’s life companion has just died. We are not quite sure of the cause but it was most probably from Aids. Charlie is still grieving and thus for our Gingerbread Man, grist for his mill. He persuades Charlie to buy a dog to help him overcome his grief. They choose the little puppy, a boisterous Jack Russell together. Charlie is grateful to the Gingerbread Man and buys him a watch. But not grateful enough to ensure a permanent relationship. Still, the Gingerbread Man does not initially lose all hope. He has always dreamt of living in America and does not quite give up on the relationship. He likes having more than one string to his bow and as luck would have it, on the same course in Boston he meets Alison. She has short spikey hair, is wearing belted denims and a man’s shirt. She is also quite large. She is a lesbian but unfortunately has a large family but fortunately, they all live in Boston. We are lost in admiration! Who but the Gingerbread Man could get two relationships going in two weeks!!

  He then returns to Melbourne. However, to keep these relationships going it is imperative that he goes back to Boston. Luckily his sabbatical is just around the corner and off he goes again. That’s all very well but what does he do about Nicholas, who is once more living with him? No problem. Jennifer, a new lady appears, a lady in distress. Her husband has just run off with her best friend and she is all alone in this large and impressive mansion, not far from his son’s high school. He thinks she is in love with him, she must be, everyone always is, but then something unexpected happens. It seems that she does not love him. She is still in love with her husband and wants him back. Our hero is taken aback at this news but dismisses it when he finds that she is fond enough of him to agree to look after Nicholas until his return from America.

  So off he goes to tie up the loose ends he left there namely, Charlie and the large lady with the spiky hair. Once he comes back, he has a few problems to sort out. The first is how to get rid of Jennifer, the lady who so kindly looked after Nicholas for nearly a year. He brings her back a present, a pair of gold earrings, small 9 carat earrings. She understands how money is tight and that he has financial problems (why do they never go away?). He tells her all about Leslie, a lecturer he says he knows at the university who has so many interests in common with Jennifer and who is still mourning her lost partner. Now that Jennifer’s husband has deserted her she needs new friends and new interests. Why not give her a ring? Jennifer bedazzled although not in love, listens to his advice and she befriends Leslie. At her next birthday party, she invites both Leslie and the Gingerbread Man. Big mistake. He is angry. How could she invite Leslie, who has told everyone a few facts they never knew about him, among them the revelation that he has had two wives? He never tells anyone about his second marriage, it makes him appear less chaste and does nothing for the image he wonts to foster. By inviting Leslie to her party, Jennifer betrayed him. He likes a bit of drama now and then, making her crime serious enough to break up their friendship. Women who are not in love with him and serve no purpose are not worth keeping. Another problem solved.

  Now he must work on his second and more difficult problem: How to get rid of Maryanne, the lady who got him his trip to Boston and helped him with the doctorate. She imagines that all is well. She never expected more than a couple of hugs, being old-fashioned, so she has no idea that he is gay. He has told her that his family think he is a “poof.” She is indignant about the family making such unwarranted assumptions, not realizing that he trying to tell her the truth about himself. He hopes this will mean the end of her affections but it does not work. One day he
is in bed with flu. She brings him chocolates and flowers. He is a bit drowsy (having taken a couple of Panamax Forte) and says to her, “you are so kind to me and I will be so awful to you.” She is both surprised and alarmed, what can he mean? She must have misheard and dismisses the incident.

  She should not have been so hasty. The scenario now repeats itself. First, he tries to get her to lose her temper. This does not work. She is an admirer of Marcus Aurelius. The Roman emperor was a Stoic, a system of philosophy expounded in his book Meditations.Here Marcus Aurelius makes it clear that losing one’s temper in anger reduces one to little better than a general low life. She thus never loses her temper and this ploy to end it all fails. He then does his usual, namely, he neatly puts back in her office everything she has given him excluding the expensive Omega watch and the Christian Dior shirts. Then he plans how best to humiliate her in front of her colleagues. He tries his old methods, saying fuck off in the common room a couple of times, he complains about her chasing him and makes up the most embarrassing and untrue stories about her and the advances she has made to end his chaste status. He is forced to do this because for the first time, he can’t run away. Unlike his previous adventures he can’t abandon his university job because he knows that his poor CV will ensure that he won’t get another one and he would hate the humiliation of teaching at a school again.