The following is the first of several complete chapters of my next memoir, with more chapters more or less fully realised which will arrive in their own time. So please enjoy this chapter on it's own and be patient with the slowness of the arrival of later chapters...
My 1987 escape plan went that smoothly that what I planned did not feel like the intent to escape that it actually was. After twenty six years of what had seemed like waiting and more waiting I wanted to put my life on a more reliable, footing than the town I had grown up had allowed me. From where I lived, to my education and the work I had done, and other attempts at making commitments, the 1980s had been one false start that led to another. The later false starts were improvements in the early attempts at life, work, and friendships. But I needed something with clarity and energy behind it, to give me the same.
To wind back a little, in the autumn of 1985 I was living in Gainsborough in North Lincolnshire and I was helped to move to a new modern flat by my new best friend, Sue Hethershaw. She did this after I had had some traumatic arguments within my family which made a change of address required for improving my mental health. Sue had been looking out for me before I knew she was, our friendship grew out of us both being secretaries of CND, me being the first secretary, her being secretary a year or two later. After years of waiting to be useful to me I had confided my sense of loss with her after having a horrible row with my mother. Sue tapped her contacts in the building trade and found me a recently renovated flat a few doors down from where she lived. The move was both physical and emotional for me. I was making my first official move away from being emotionally dependent on my mother.
I had been close to my mother for years, as if it was a given. In 1985 new stories appeared about how she brought me up that put the way she brought me up in a bad light. Even with the change of address that improve the term on which we knew each other I could no more stop her from doing my laundry twice a week any more than King Cnut could stop the tide by placing his throne on the shore and bid the waves 'Stay back.' as he reputed had done in Gainsborough 1000 years earlier. I was happy enough to make lunch for both of us when she appeared several times a week. We relearned how to chat as friends again after I had recovered my sense of myself from some of the rather dark and difficult arguments to do with how she brought me that I had she was forced to confess, and would have done anything to avoid admitting but for the letter that proved to be 'the smoking gun', evidence of what she covered up.
I would have liked Mother to be friends with Sue Hethershaw, for Mother to be friends with my friend. They met once, in Sue's house. The lack of interest and disengagement that Mother showed made it plain I was on my own with that wish.
Did I say I was a people pleaser? I should have before now. From the way my family had previously made me behave towards them it was obvious to everyone except me that I was likeable, but I lacked drive. My education was underwhelming, late in being completed and very muddled. I could not drive, or learn to drive and I successfully compensated for that with hitching lifts. With the change of address came a more productive acceptance of my homosexuality than my family had previously allowed me. I would not be surprised if the 'people pleaser' part of me, along with some painful experiences that I had absorbed that I was made to be secretive about, were most strongly expressed through the casual sex of the cottaging, the seeking anonymous sex in lieu of being publicly allowed to be in the relationship of my choice that I could not have. But with a comfortable home. a few men who were uncomfortable with themselves came to visit me, to express their discomfort the better to get it to subside.
Where other people saw me as heterosexual, then to explain the lack of girlfriend, or interest in women, they also had to add to the script that I was a very late, very slow, developer. I.e. I was gay but had no guide in that area of my life beyond support to be more convincing when I had to overtly pretend to be heterosexual.
As a member of a church/Bible study housegroup I was invited to the wedding of two mature people who were key members of the group. They were friendly towards me, so why would I not attend the wedding service? My recollection of the marriage service is as clear as day to me, still. Mostly because of the rising panic attack that I had to suppress half way through the service when I realised that everything that was being shown in front of me, the hymns, the uplift of two people who had been well prepared to declare their public support for each other 'til death do us part' was leaving me feel short of breath and gripped by a terror about how I would never make such vows. All I would ever know would be a semi-permanent isolation and a sense of dislocation where how I was described myself was not who I was. I would never be able to argue for who I felt myself to be with clear conviction.
As a people pleaser my fantasy job was that of being a male nurse, a delusion that the further away from the training for it that I was kept, the stronger the delusion remained. When I finally made formal contact with the head office of a nearby training hospital they dashed my hopes so casually I could barely believe it. After that I was left scratching my beard about what delusion to hold on to most, only for disappointment to destroy my hope with good reason. Removing the delusion of wanting to train as a nurse clarified one point; there was no point in me returning part time to college to study any more 'O' levels, except where attending such studies got me out of the local government works schemes for the unemployed. The rewards of these dud local jobs were Sysphian in scale and approach. I also learnt afresh that the best advice from the local careers office was always more about them keeping their jobs of giving advice than being honest and informative. What they said was very rarely of any help to the person asking them for help. They were lazy and officially in charge, but practically in charge of schemes supported by public money. But in October 1987, I got my lucky break.
To be directed to Chapter 2 please left click here.
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