Families And How To Escape Them - Chapter Eighteen - A Rest Is As Good As A Change

I started the new decade in the most unpromising and unexpected way. I was sacked from  a job where the pay was low and the shift work was demanding, where what I had hoped for most was a win-win style exit from the job but a win-lose exit was the only way out. In that first few days of being free of the job I could not tell what I should be most glad for, getting the most restful sleep I'd had in ages, or simply having more time to myself. Being sacked seemed like a double edged New Year gift. If two years earlier I thought that I had finally got ahead of the trends by getting work that might last, and I had resolved which came first? Moving address or having the new job lined up? Then I had made progress, but the work had left me too tired to think clearly. I had no plan and unemployment was rising. I said as much in the closing therapy session, where over the previous five sessions the therapist had attempted to demonstrate to me that where I could not have had a plan, then I had the courage to get through a less well planned life.

Even my being on reduced Income Support rates could not take the shine off the shift work ending abruptly. I needed time to think, rather than be driven by the whim of strange schedules that I was in no position to refuse. One item I glad to have for being a newly minted jobseeker was the half price day time bus pass, which made my days of browsing shops in Nottingham City Centre cheaper.

With time and money being as slack as worn elastic, and close friendships being one of the items now off the ration book that had been created by the shift work I was more free within my new economic limits to rediscover Nottingham. The vegetarian/whole food shops in the student sector became the place that I regularly bought my unsliced wholemeal bread. The wholefood stores usually ran as collectives, a form of economics that seemed radical in itself. There was more than one whole food collective, but what they all had in common were shelves with idealistic left wing political lifestyle books for sale. There were always a few books on openly 'being gay and lesbian'. The stock in that section changed little. But the presence of those titles every time I went to buy my bread was a reminder to me of the questions about homosexuality that I had not found the courage to frame, where when church leaders spoke about the issue I followed their creative evasions, rather than have a more truthful courage for myself.

Progress with regard to me more fully accepting that I was gay was going to be slow. One way I saw of trying to change was my quietly recognising the circularity of the arguments people made against me, or anyone, 'coming out' as gay. Since the thinking was circular, then, bit by bit, I had to change the character of the circle, the argument. But that was work for me to do on my own. The progress that most of the people who knew me were more keen to see was me getting nearer to being in paid work. In a left wing book shop I found my answer to these christian concerns. It was called 'Laughing Matters a cartoon anthology'.

It was a book of cartoons originally written for 'The Leveller' an independent monthly socialist magazine produced by the London based Leveller Collective between 1976 and 1983. The articles in the magazine focused in a wide range of subjects, reflecting the open collective nature of the contributors. Here is a slide show of the front covers of all 44 editions that the magazine ran to between 1976 and 1983. By 1990 those publications were long gone, but the cartoons that had featured in the magazine had been compiled into one stubbornly good humoured book that was a reminder of the politics that 'The Leveller' had stood for. Steve Bell, cartoonist for The Guardian, was their highest profile contributor. 

Eleven years of Margaret Thatcher was about ten years too many for me. Whilst I enjoyed Radio 4 for how it opposed an increasingly distant government, the interviews that were conducted with the government of the day got decreasing amounts of traction with their subjects. The public knew that Margaret Thatcher had said 'There is no such thing as society' and '[mass] Unemployment was a price well worth paying [for an improved economy]'. There other quotes she denied too. But pinning the lack of empathy in the quotes to the person who the quote belonged to had become like trying to nail jelly. The joy in the cartoons was how the humour predated the fixity of the ism in Thatcherism, and in 1990 left me still seeing the traces of alternate possibilities. I still have my copy of 'Laughing Matters'. Some of the humour in it still make me laugh.

I was also seeking out helpful and positive male friendships in church with young men nearer my own age and disposition. I was far from alone in my disposition, the churches had their fair number of young men who were economically displaced/unemployed/in temp work and on low pay who were struggling to settle down, as well they might. Being distant from their birth family and not being anchored in marriage and parenthood themselves these young men presented a problem to a church and society that for convenience' sake liked to slot people into fixed places that they would stay. I found a temporary place to slot into with voluntary work, in a weekend night spot run by St Nicholas Church serving espresso coffees and other non-alcoholic drinks. I am sure I volunteered partly to be able to choose the music for the sound system. It being circa 1990 the albums that had most effect and were of the moment were 'Three Feet High and Rising' by Da La Soul and 'What's Up Dog' by Was (Not Was). This was the church reaching towards the world, and not standing on ceremony.

Spyder was a guy I liked a lot who found me at St Nicholas' Church, off Maid Marion Way. His nickname represented how he kept his hair spiked up punk style. He was one of the few people who understood how much what the church said about homosexuality hit an un-empathic note with so many gay men. He very non-judgemental and he got results. He got answered prayers, for his being willing to accept gay men at face value in their being  estranged, and worse, when they felt officially rejected by the church and got a phobic 'don't want to know' response from society. His major interest was music. In his best world he would have been a professional commercial disc jockey/broadcaster. As it was he was a secret pirate broadcaster, and an occasional sound man for bands who played in pubs. I remember going with him as a moral support when he was booked to set up the sound for Nazi Punk band Screwdriver, not a gig Spyder expected to get. He got a good sound balance with their equipment in the pub by late afternoon. But later they sounded terrible. He concluded that they had changed the settings he had made with the amps. It was quite something else to witness and resist the raw distorted sound absorbed by a pub that was packed with Nazi punks pogoing to sing-a-long choruses about how Rudolph Hess lived for thirty eight years in Spandau Prison before ending his life, aged ninety three.

As I write this, thirty four years after last knowing him, I have no recollection of Spyder's first name and sir name. I have no way of tracing him. The best way I have of remembering him is how pleased he was when I gave him the well worn-in punk/biker's jacket that I had been given just a seven years earlier. I decided that as a slightly older person, an older looking wardrobe was better for me. It fitted him perfectly, and he was pleased as Punch with it. It would not be the last trade in of what my youthful self once meant that I would be quietly happy to make.

To be directed to Chapter Nineteen please left click here.