I can name to the month
when I first had sex in public toilets.
October 1978 if you wanted to know.
My parents knew nothing of a habit
which absorbed more of my time
than I knew I ever realised I had
because I had no words to describe it.
One of my parents knew, he learnt
one Sunday in the Autumn of 1980.
That was when my dad and I met each other
in opposing cubicles, both of us hoping
to meet somebody, anybody, except each other
in the place where we least expected to.
He was drunk enough to be mildly confused
and evasive. I was sober, so maybe I had less excuse.
Though neither of us knew what was excuse enough
to justify our false and naive assumptions of invisibility.
Public anonymity is odd that way,
and familial anonymity in activities
that it was inevitable would be discovered even more so.
Thankfully some of my shame was wiped away
by that public toilet being demolished,
and a concrete TARDIS put up in it's place.
What is harder to date,
because of the anonymity of the sex,
and of the men with whom it happened,
is when one of my fellow cottagers finding out
that I lived alone, and where I lived.
It was one late Friday night, after the pubs shut,
in spring 1982 when he knocked at the front door
that first time and shamed me into letting him in
for only-we-knew-what. I froze every time he knocked.
My consistent lack of response made it easier for him
to insist on the one sided oral sex that he came for.
After that first time he called randomly,
and shamelessly, usually late on Friday nights.
When he had got what he wanted he left,
his silent lack of thanks getting dressed
left me feeling soiled and unimpressed.
As my anti-social sex life of giving invisible men
frozen hospitality in the discomfort of my home
progressed in isolating me I did what came naturally.
I became depressed, and my depression was added,
like it's latest cause, to the long list of problems
that for the lack of any easy to apply resolutions
could never be opened out through conversation.
There was a way out of how depression fed into invisibility
and invisibility compounded depression-leaving everything.
But finding the courage to leave and not look back came ten years later.
when I first had sex in public toilets.
October 1978 if you wanted to know.
My parents knew nothing of a habit
which absorbed more of my time
than I knew I ever realised I had
because I had no words to describe it.
One of my parents knew, he learnt
one Sunday in the Autumn of 1980.
That was when my dad and I met each other
in opposing cubicles, both of us hoping
to meet somebody, anybody, except each other
in the place where we least expected to.
He was drunk enough to be mildly confused
and evasive. I was sober, so maybe I had less excuse.
Though neither of us knew what was excuse enough
to justify our false and naive assumptions of invisibility.
Public anonymity is odd that way,
and familial anonymity in activities
that it was inevitable would be discovered even more so.
Thankfully some of my shame was wiped away
by that public toilet being demolished,
and a concrete TARDIS put up in it's place.
What is harder to date,
because of the anonymity of the sex,
and of the men with whom it happened,
is when one of my fellow cottagers finding out
that I lived alone, and where I lived.
It was one late Friday night, after the pubs shut,
in spring 1982 when he knocked at the front door
that first time and shamed me into letting him in
for only-we-knew-what. I froze every time he knocked.
My consistent lack of response made it easier for him
to insist on the one sided oral sex that he came for.
After that first time he called randomly,
and shamelessly, usually late on Friday nights.
When he had got what he wanted he left,
his silent lack of thanks getting dressed
left me feeling soiled and unimpressed.
As my anti-social sex life of giving invisible men
frozen hospitality in the discomfort of my home
progressed in isolating me I did what came naturally.
I became depressed, and my depression was added,
like it's latest cause, to the long list of problems
that for the lack of any easy to apply resolutions
could never be opened out through conversation.
There was a way out of how depression fed into invisibility
and invisibility compounded depression-leaving everything.
But finding the courage to leave and not look back came ten years later.
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