by Simon Doonan
“How unuuuuuusual!” she shrieked with the obvious intention of inciting a riot, “I’ve never heard of a boy wanting something like thaaaat! What kind of lad are you?”
Shriveling with embarrassment, I cast appeasing glances at the rabble of passing shoppers. These were the people who would soon be stoning me to death in the gutter in front of the store while I clutched the broken shards of my decanter and of my life.
Somehow we made it home without being discovered or pillaged.
Safely ensconced in my room, I unwrapped the object of my desire. All the shame and cringing subsided. With one bold gesture, this fabulously useless object turned my room into a groovy bachelor pad. I lay on my bed and stared at it. I was in love . . . with a decorative accessory.
* * *
While I mooned over my decanter, my sister was undergoing yet another gender reassignment. She was becoming a girl.
Under pressure from her hormonally charged school chums, Jim/Shelagh began wearing white lipstick and hipster miniskirts. She switched hairdos, adopting the Tom Jones, an insanely au courant 1960s style inspired by the eponymous movie starring Albert Finney. The creation of the Tom Jones involved a center part and bangs. The hair was then ratted and tied back with a large velvet bow at the nape of the neck. Flaunting her new look, Shelagh started hanging out at the local bowling alley and dating boys.
Soon she was consorting with a devastatingly handsome young man from the suburbs of Paris. Jean-Paul was a Vespa-riding romantic who swept her off her feet with bunches of daisies and whispered endearments. When she wasn’t riding pillion with Jean-Paul, she was locked in her room listening to a 45 of “Je T’Aime” the heavy-breathing hit song by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.
She was no longer Jim. Her name had been concertinaed to Slag.
Like mod and fab and dollybird, the word slag was gaining popularity at the time. Not quite as harsh as the contemporary American skank, slag was nonetheless used to describe a dollybird of easy virtue. My sister, I hasten to add, was not a real bona fide slag: the Irish spelling of her name is to blame.
I applauded Slag’s groovy, new Rive Gauche incarnation. Jean-Paul was très beau. If she could get a cute Frog boyfriend, then by golly, so could I! But my love was the love that dared not speak its name. What to do? I resolved to while away the remainder of my teens living vicariously through my glam and increasingly Eurocentric sister.
Anything was better than living my own life, which was going from tragic to tragique.
If things at primary school had been less than fabulous, they now took a nosedive. Biddie and I were separated. He was sent to the school for clever kids. I was sent to the “other school.” I felt pathetic and isolated. All I had was my decorative accessory, and even that was starting to depress me. Increasingly, that red decanter reminded me of my own freakishness. Nothing seemed to add sparkle to the vortex into which I was sliding. Not even the mysterious evaporation of Boy’s Own Paper.
* * *
One day my mother came home from work and, as was her wont, poured herself a gigantic glass of Château Doonan. She then lit a Woodbine and began to cook dinner. While she cooked and smoked and drank, she regaled us with the highlights of her day at the BBC News Centre, where both she and Terry were now employed.
It was the usual hilarious stuff. Uneducated Betty was a good mimic with a wicked tongue who took great delight in skewering her college-educated colleagues and bosses. She was a natural raconteur who never seemed short of material. Adding to her overall charisma was the fact that she was an active, highly motivated union shop steward, happy to blow the whistle the minute she suspected her girls were overworked, overheated, or underventilated. Betty took great delight in agitating for improved work conditions and would recount, word for word, how she brought her bosses to heel.
On this particular occasion the self-congratulatory part of Betty’s monologue went on a bit too long, and my attention started to wander. I began to flick through one of Betty’s magazines in search of more tidbits about the Beautiful People. Since reading about the Principessa Pignatelli, I had become something of a Beautiful People watchdog. Seen through the glamour-crazed prism of my desperate gaze, every article and every ad seemed to refer either directly or indirectly to the Beautiful People. The adjectives which evoked them were lithesome, radiant, international, jet-setting. They seemed to me like a mysterious, all-knowing force from whom the rest of us could learn so very, very much.
Suddenly Betty switched topics and immediately recaptured my attention. While slicing Aunt Phyllis’s food, she gave us the latest gossip from a colleague named Eve. Eve was a snappily dressed young lady who was married to a ballroom dancing instructor. Unencumbered by children, Eve and hubby lived in a nice block of flats and enjoyed a relatively stylish, vomit-free existence. My ears always perked up when their names were mentioned.
According to Betty, a couple of very interesting men had moved into the flat above Eve. They were both bachelors. Always well-dressed and meticulously groomed, these new arrivals had apparently christened their apartment with a wild, all-male champagne party. Eve knew it was champagne because she had heard the corks popping, and subsequent shrieks of delight, over the blare of Motown dance hits.
Betty referred to Eve’s new neighbors as the Nancy Boys.
Over the course of the next few weeks, there followed a steady flow of anecdotes about the Nancy Boys.
One evening Betty informed us that the Nancy Boys had changed their habits. The rattle of cocktail shakers and the shrieks of Diana Ross had, much to the relief of Eve and hubby, been replaced by a strange, eerie silence. She knew the Nancy Boys were still in residence because, every so often, the stillness was broken by a disturbing repetitive noise.
Eve described it as a rhythmic, repetitive rasping, as if someone was walking on gravel. Cheuw! Cheuw! Cheuw!
At other times it sounded like a knife slicing a cabbage or the clearing of a smoky throat, but always very rhythmic and always quite loud, as if whatever was producing the noise was located directly on the floor.
Days went by, and the Cheuw! Cheuw! Cheuw! continued. Speculations about the origins of the noise reached lunatic heights. Eve was convinced that it was some kind of sexual thing. She based this on the fact that the rasping noise was occasionally punctuated by shrieks of appreciation, as in “Oooooh, lovely!”
“Sounds satanic to me,” said Betty as she casually incinerated a tick from Hawo’s furry forehead with the white-hot tip of her Woodbine. “They are probably casting runes and drawing hexagons on the floor.” She warned Eve to watch her back and mind her own business.
A couple of weeks later, Betty held court once more, this time to a smaller audience than usual. The television was broken, which was no great loss, since Betty, postsupper, was always a great deal more amusing. There were just four of us at the dining room table: myself, Hawo the cat, Lassie, and Aunt Phyllis. Terry was working nights. My sister, decked out in her tweed hipster mini and her Tom Jones bouffant had, somewhat scandalously, gone to the movies with a West Indian boy who lived down the street.
Uncle Ken was also dating. In a rashly optimistic moment, his doctor had told him he should find a woman and get married. Ken had promptly washed and shaved and headed out to the “glee club” at the Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory. Here, on his very first foray as a swinging single, he met a rosy-cheeked Christian lady called Pat. They were now engaged.
Hawo, Lassie, Aunt Phyllis, and I were, as usual, in my mother’s thrall. Apart from being fascinated by Betty’s witty repartee, I was desperate for an update on the Nancy Boys. I was much too inhibited to ask any direct questions. Instinctively I knew that by showing an interest in these men I would be giving away something strange and secret about myself.
Finally I plucked up the courage to ask. “Is the Cheuw! Cheuw! Cheuw! still going on?”
Betty yawned. She plopped her bag of hair rollers on the dining room table and erected a small mirror, creating an i
mpromptu dressing table.
“Oh yes, I forgot to mention it,” she said, winding a handful of bleached hair around a pink sponge roller. “It’s all back to normal. The cheuw! finally stopped.”
Betty paused to puff on her ciggie before grabbing another roller. “And the Nancy Boys had another party last Saturday.”
I could not believe how nonchalantly she had withheld all this critical information! I was beside myself for more details. Betty was so annoyingly blasé about the whole thing. Chin in hands, I stared at her as if to say, “I’m assuming this is the beginning of a very long and detailed account of said party.”
She rallied slightly. “Eve said nothing much happened. As usual, it went on half the night. She watched from her balcony and saw more Nancy Boys falling into the rosebushes. One of them was carrying a crocodile handbag. It’s past your bedtime.”
Reluctantly I headed upstairs. As I got to the first landing, I heard Betty yell, “Oh, yes. Eve said that all the Nancy Boys were wearing caftans. It was a caftan party. It’s a new thing.”
A caftan party! Oh . . . my . . . God!
Red-faced and palpitating, I rushed to my room, threw myself on the bed, and gazed at my decorative accessory.
A caftan party!
Waves of incomprehensible joy surged through my body as I imagined the glamour and fun that must surely have been experienced by all those caftan-wearing Nancy Boys. Instantly I understood the Cheuw! Cheuw! Cheuw! It was the noise of two men cutting out fabric with pinking shears and making caftans!
Betty and Phyllis and Hawo and Lassie would never have been able to figure this out. Nor did they care. They were not Nancy Boys. But I understood everything.
I was a Nancy Boy.
It is hard to fully express the massive significance of the caftan party. At the age of fourteen, and in one fell swoop, I understood who I could become, how I might live, and most important, what I might wear.
Becoming a Nancy Boy was clearly within the scope of my abilities. I knew I had what it took. Unlike the Beautiful People, the Nancy Boys were tangible and accessible. A bunch of them lived only blocks away! My mind raced with a thousand thoughts and questions. Maybe these two species were somehow connected? After all, somebody had to design the principessa’s frock and maintain her bouffant. Who better than a Nancy Boy?
I felt a surge of optimism about life. There was a light at the end of the tunnel . . . and it was on a dimmer . . . and there was a handsome man in a caftan who knew everything about mood lighting.
I began to skip once more.
Being marginal and different had been an increasing source of agony to me. Now, with the right magazines, the right decorative accessories, and a pair of pinking shears, I understood that my freakiness was a huge, raging advantage. Nancy Boys clearly had a lot more fun than non–Nancy Boys!
Uncle Ken would never wear a caftan, let alone sew one. He was not a Nancy Boy, but I was, and happily so. I felt relief to have differentiated myself from Uncle Ken in such a fundamental way. Being gay distanced me from his insanity and misery and cat vomit. Gay or straight, I was still vulnerable to the specter of hereditary madness, but at least, when the men in white coats came to get me, I would be well lit and wearing a caftan of my own making.
* * *
Uncle Ken married the lady from the Huntley & Palmers Glee Club.
I did not go to the ceremony. Betty and Terry had asked me if I wished to attend. I had visions of Narg screeching toward me and biting my neck like Vlad the Impaleress. I declined. Besides, I was busy performing an exorcism.
Ken had moved out, and I was taking over his room. My burgeoning Nancy Boy sensibility was too big for the box room in which I had spent most of my childhood. It would find full expression in Ken’s former quarters. But first I had to scrub and scrape and remove the patina of nicotine and madness with which this room was liberally coated. While Ken and Pat were tying the knot, I was disinfecting skirting boards wearing Betty’s orange rubber gloves.
Though curious about the wedding, I was more than happy to rely on my sister’s account of the proceedings. According to Slag, the guests arrived by public transport at a church hall in the town center. The bride and groom also arrived by town bus. This was not some wacky Carnaby Street gesture. They arrived by bus because they arrived by bus.
Afterward guests repaired to a small, dusty hall, where apple juice was served in paper cups. Ritz crackers were served on paper plates. Every expense was spared. Clearly they should have hired a few Nancy Boys to inject the occasion with a bit of international savoir faire.
* * *
Jump-started by my caftan epiphany, I embarked on a gradual, increasingly flamboyant coming out involving hair dye, ear piercing, outré outfits, and Noël Cowardish affectations, such as using the word wonderful at every possible opportunity.
Betty: Here’s some powder for your athlete’s foot.
Me: Oh! You are wonderful! Thank you sooooo much!
I inflicted my gayness on my family day by day, sequin by sequin, wonderful! by wonderful! I never sat Betty and Terry down and had the big conversation with them. What was the point in having a big showdown when I could dress and behave exactly as I wanted? Betty and Terry—God love ’em!—always seemed mildly amused by my shenanigans. My parents’ loopy relatives had given them both a stratospherically high tolerance for unconventional behavior, of which I took full advantage.
Slag’s route toward Lesbos was far longer and infinitely more nuanced.
One day my sister came home from the bowling alley looking horribly crestfallen.
“It’s a bad scene. Is there a cup of tea on the go?” she said, yanking off her velvet Tom Jones ribbon and hurling it onto the Caravaggioesque mound of fruit which Betty kept on the sideboard because it was life-enhancing.
Almost overnight, Slag had an entirely new group of friends. While her former chums ratted their hair and wore gobs of mascara and white lipstick, the new ones were more Existentialist. They wore dark clothes and combed their hair in long, center-parted rats’ tails à la Joan Baez.
Slag and her new sisters rarely gamboled outside. They locked themselves in her room and listened to Buffy Sainte-Marie and Bob Dylan. They spewed feminist dogma at anyone who would listen. The new Slag ceased to resonate with my inner Nancy Boy. I preferred the girlie Tom Jones years.
Betty was less than pleased that Slag had elected to let her hair hang limply to her shoulders and would have preferred an upswept style. She did, however, applaud the irate, opinionated aspect of the new Slag. Feisty, disgruntled rhetoric of any description appealed to her Northern Irish temperament.
The following year Slag left home for college and disappeared from my view into academia. Years passed. I disappeared into the world of fashion and window dressing. Slag and I lost track of each other’s ideals and hairstyles. She disappeared further into academia, devoting years to the study of bizarre green worms and acquiring a Ph.D. in marine biology. I moved to America and got a Ph.D. in hedonism.
* * *
Fast-forward to 1986. I am living in a high-rise apartment building in New York, a great pad for a caftan party. The phone rings. It’s Slag. I am slightly anxious. We rarely call each other. I brace myself for the possibility of bad news.
“Slag! How are you?”
“I have become a lesbian. And don’t call me Slag anymore. It’s a bit sexist, don’t you think?”
Gulp.
“Congratulations!” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster.
I then barrage her with questions. I have to get to the bottom of her story. The call to lesbianism is, after all, not an invitation to a life of glamour and caftans. It is more about oatmeal, hiking boots, and fanny packs. Where is the payoff? While gay men are often feted, lesbians continue to be regarded with suspicion. There seemed to be, to my gay male eyes, no dangling carrots which would prompt a gal to plunge willy-nilly down that Well of Loneliness.4
Shelagh’s answers to my frenzied questi
ons formed a crazy collage.
She blamed her slow emergence first and foremost on The Killing of Sister George. This grotesque 1968 lesbian movie, though undeniably hilarious, is not exactly sensitive in its handling of the subject. The lead character, George, is a stereotypical bossy, drunken dyke who wears thick tweeds. She intimidates her ultrafem girlfriend, named Childie, by making her eat her cigar butts and threatening to force her to drink all of her bathwater. Shelagh had seen this movie at a sensitive moment in her late teens: the histrionics of Childie and George had caused her to remain in Hetero Town.
Feminism and activism followed. In 1982 Shelagh participated in the historic peace demonstrations at Greenham Common.
“A revelation! Nine miles of women holding hands around a U.S. army base,” recalled my sister of this emotionally charged counterculture womyn’s moment.
Betty traveled to Greenham Common to check in on her only daughter. She arrived just in time to see Shelagh and her feminist friends lie down in the street in front of massive, revving trucks carrying the thrusting phallic Pershing missiles. (Quel irony!)
Though basically quite right-wing, Betty quickly entered into the spirit of things. She shared her cigarettes and some Second World War stories with Shelagh’s new chums. A wonderful day was had by all.
“Okay, I understand the feminism and the Sapphic camaraderie, but when and how did your interest in men evaporate?” I asked in the shrill tone of one who could not imagine losing his interest in men. Betty had kept me up-to-date on the steady string of boyfriends—a sheepdog trainer, a schoolteacher, a Lebanese pastry chef, a Jesuit priest—who had captured Shelagh’s heart at various times in the intervening years. How and why had she given them all the heave-ho?
By this time my sister was getting slightly irritated.
“Okay. It’s really quite simple,” she barked, sounding quite tough and dykey and a tad like Sister George.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes!”
“You see! Women . . . actually talk to each other. Most straight men are not interested in having a decent two-way conversation!” said Shelagh with the relieved air of a woman who had just realized she would never be bored to death by a bombastic hetero-male ever again.