The thing Arry doesn’t confess is that he enjoyed ‘the act’. And though he tries to keep his promise, after ten days he can stand it no more. He waits for the young man to leave work and asks if he can ‘go with him again’. They meet often during the next eighteen months. In that time the young man tells Arry he is the love of his life and that when Arry is old enough to do so legally, they will go away – to Holland or Denmark or some country where gay couples are accepted – and live together. Arry believes him. Then one day by accident Arry discovers that he isn’t quite the only love in the young man’s life, that in fact there are a number of others who have been passed off as ‘just friends’. From this he learns the perils of naïveté, of blind trust, of that slippery word ‘love’, and of the unreliability of promises.
By the time he is sixteen the strains of keeping his secret and of pretending to be what he now knows he is not – a devout and faithful heterosexual member of the church, and one of those chosen by God for the priesthood – are becoming unbearable and discovering the lies of his lover is the last straw. He announces that he doesn’t have a vocation to the priesthood. Disappointment is poured upon him like cold cement. His priest actually weeps, his mother accuses him of letting not just God but the family down, his father declares he will waste no more money putting him through school and orders him to find a job, the light of admiration fades from the eyes of his no-longer-adoring sisters. As for his brothers and his friends, they treat him with the scornful satisfaction that people who are mediocre and unprivileged visit on those who are different and extraordinary when they are shown to be no better than anyone else and fall from favour with the powerful.
Arry’s announcement and the removal of his priestly and family protection has another result. A boy of whom Arry knows nothing but who he learns later is a rejected lover of the young man, grasses to the priest about Arry’s ‘relationship’. The priest informs Arry’s father, Arry is confronted, and admits he’s gay – ‘Homosexual,’ his father shouts, ‘let’s call this foulness by its proper name. To think a son of mine is one of those vile beasts, a shirt-lifter, a bum boy, a sodomite. Dear God forgive us, but I don’t know where we went wrong with you, I don’t at all.’ This time, it’s his mother who weeps, his priest who accuses him of letting down not just his family but God, his sisters giggle lasciviously and his disgusted brothers refuse to speak to him. After which there’s no staying at home or in that town, or, Arry decides, in Ireland any longer, a decision his father is so pleased to hear he funds his departure generously. ‘Let the English have you,’ he says. ‘Everybody knows they’re a corrupt nation with a liking for such as you and are already so far beyond redemption that one more lost soul among them won’t be a bother.’
From this Arry learns that in the long run honesty may be the best policy but its side-effects are pain, rejection and opprobrium. He also learns that birth and geography provide no abiding home but that, as one philosopher puts it, ‘Ideas are the only motherland.’ O yes: and it teaches him to trust actions not words, to rely on his own wits and resources, and to be wary of everyone, not least those who claim to love him. He takes to heart the advice he’s often heard read out in church from the Holy Bible: ‘Be as innocent as a dove and as wise as a serpent.’
Like so many of his fellow countrymen before him, he makes straight for London, where in his search for support and companionship he quickly finds his way into the gay scene, but soon discovers he hates the city and flamboyant gay gatherings, and learns that if he doesn’t get out of both quickly, he’ll end up a rent boy or worse.
By chance one day he comes across an advert for a tree college, asks himself why not, he knows how to climb trees, the college is in the country and trees are beautiful. He applies, and obtains a place in the college by charm during his interview and a good reference from the only teacher in high school who stuck by him when he came out. He enjoys his training, doesn’t hide his nature or sexual preferences, but keeps himself to himself and his sexual encounters discreet. For his ‘work experience’ he’s sent to the arboretum, where he meets a schoolboy volunteer called Will Blacklin, with whom he falls hopelessly and for the first time in his life properly in love, a fact he keeps to himself, knowing that Will is committed to me, Cordelia, about whom he talks to Arry with the confessional confidentiality Arry is used to attracting.
From this Arry learns the unhappy truth that there are probably more people who are in love with someone who is not in love with them than there are those who are mutually in love with each other.
At the end of his training Arry is offered a job at the arboretum. Two years later he’s made redundant, a victim of the rule that when jobs must go the last in is the first out. And it’s then that he turns up at my door on what is, frankly, the false excuse of needing to contact Will. He knows very well where Will is because he has kept in touch with him, and knows how severely cut up Will still is by the rift with me.
He comes to me for two reasons. The first is romantic: the attraction of those who have loved and lost the same lover. They find in each other the qualities that the lost lover found in them and so they feel worthy again. The second is practical (not to say opportunistic): he calculates that his friendship with Will might ingratiate him enough for me to offer him a bed and board while he seeks work and a place of his own. He doesn’t expect to be put up for more than a few days. But when it turns out that he gets on very well, not only with me but with D&D, he’s only too happy to settle in with us as one of the family.
From this, he says, which is to say from his friendship with me, he learns as the weeks pass for the first time how to love himself.
Calvin Bain. Born in prison. Father unknown. Mother a prostitute convicted of the murder of her pimp; dies by her own hand soon after Cal is born. Cal is serially fostered while waiting for adoption. No takers. Grows up in a succession of state-run care homes. Abused from age ten to fourteen by a care worker, who is caught and jailed. From this he learns he can trust no one and that people befriend him only to make use of him.
Constantly in trouble at school for violent and anti-social behaviour. Twice charged with shoplifting. Let off the first time, placed on probation the second time. Leaves school at sixteen with no qualifications. His probation officer persuades the local council to take him on as a refuse collector and finds him a room in a youth hostel, where he survives till he’s eighteen, though not without trouble with the police and periods of time when he lives on the streets. One of the older bin men tries to help him, giving him meals, helping him handle his money, even offering to have him live with him and his wife. But Cal’s mistrust of such help makes him wary and unable to settle down. From this he learns that he ‘will always be a loser’.
When he’s eighteen and no longer the responsibility of the state, he burgles a house and steals enough to buy a clapped-out van. With help from a boy he knew in the youth hostel, who has become a car mechanic and who he pays with money left over from the burglary, he manages to make the van road-worthy. The old refuse worker gives him driving lessons and pays for his test, his licence, his insurance, and the van’s road tax. From then on Cal lives in his van, with interludes when he finds a place of his own, but he never gets on with the landlords or he defaults on the rent and is thrown out. His fleshy good looks and roughness attract a certain kind of woman, not to mention men. Cal exploits them for whatever he can get out of them before ditching them. From this he learns that he can make use of other people just as much as they make use of him.
One evening in a pub he meets Arry. It’s soon after Will leaves for college and Arry is unhappy. He makes a pass at Cal, who rejects him with snarling hatred and threats of violence. Arry doesn’t back off but says, fine, okay, he’s made a mistake, always worth a try, no hard feelings, and offers Cal a drink and a meal ‘with no strings’. Cal, who is broke and hungry, accepts. They eat together. Arry makes Cal laugh and before the meal is finished Cal has told Arry the story of his life. Later, Cal off
ers Arry what he wants; Arry refuses. A week later Cal seeks Arry out in the same pub, openly angling for free drinks and a meal, but doesn’t say that what he really wants is Arry’s company. Arry guesses this, he knows the signs, and feeling lonely himself is glad to spend the evening with Cal, during which Cal quizzes Arry about his life, and Arry explains about his work at the arboretum, which Cal listens to with envy. Arry suggests he teach Cal to tree-climb so that Cal can help out at the arboretum and maybe get a job there. Cal grabs at the idea. (Cal does learn to tree-climb and helps out at the arboretum, but is not offered a job because his reputation with the police alarms the management.) During the next few months Arry becomes Cal’s first trusted friend. From this he learns a first wary trust of another person.
Several times, Arry has to rescue Cal from trouble. Especially when drinking, Cal’s resentments and defensiveness come out in violent rages against anyone who he thinks is trying to use him. These can end in vicious fights and smashed property. Arry learns the warning signs and becomes adept at removing Cal from the situation before he tips over the edge. The morning after these episodes Cal can never remember what happened and Arry has learned not to tell him, because doing so leads to arguments and accusations by Cal that Arry is making it up, and, if proved by other witnesses, Cal’s already low self-esteem hits bottom, he plunges into an aggressive depression and hatred of himself and everyone else that lasts for days. He learns from this that ‘I’m evil, man, no fucking good and always will be’.
It is after one of these episodes that Arry brings Cal home and I meet him for the first time.
>> Judgement >>
Humour / Laughter
Because I’m someone who always has a clear idea of how I like things to be, and how I would like to look, and how I would like to write, and how I would like other people to be, and because I’ve learned that for much of the time none of these things is quite as I would like them to be, I would be dead without humour and the laughter humour causes. By dead, I mean unhappy, depressed, disappointed, cynical, worried, dull, inhabiting neither the perfection I wish for nor able to live in the world as it is. In short: I’d be a very unpleasant person.
Therefore, humour is essential to my life. I’ve tried to write about what it means to me five times now, and I’ve discovered from these attempts that it is impossible to write about humour in a humorous way. I have also found out that there is so much to say about it that you cannot write about it in a stripped-down way. So I have given up trying. Instead I’ll just mention some thoughts about it that are important to me.
Item I don’t like contrived humour. I hate ‘have you heard this one?’ jokes. They are usually so obvious and the people who like to tell them always seem so pleased with themselves, even though they usually haven’t made up the joke themselves but heard it from someone else. Men are THE worst in this, and there are some men who seem able to converse only by telling jokes. I know, because I’ve suffered from them at Dad’s promo parties.
Item I don’t like people trying to top one another with smart aleck remarks. That might be because I am not good at it myself. I think it a superficial kind of humour.
Item I like humour that arises naturally from being in the midst of life and seeing what a mess it is. I find it especially funny when something that is carefully set up, like a very formal occasion, goes completely wrong. I might not think it funny at the time but I think it funny afterwards. For example, I now think it was very funny when Will arrived while Izumi and I were in the middle of a facial, though at the time I was furious. Remembering how furious I was is also funny now.
Item I hate practical jokes, but I like the humour which is caused by inappropriateness without anyone being humiliated. For example, we all enjoy teasing Julie at school when she comes on rather pompous about a poem or the way we are behaving (i.e., badly in her opinion), because she takes it so well and teases us back, and then the whole business descends into giggledom.
But I’m not so sure about the day when the head came into the sixth form assembly to speak to us about the dangers of drugs. She must have been to the loo just beforehand, failed to noticed that her skirt was trapped in the top of her knickers, and paraded through the room displaying to one and all her knickerbockered backside and podgy legs in lace-top suspender-belt stockings. We all tried not to laugh but the boys let us down and we couldn’t keep it in. The head asked why we were laughing, we couldn’t tell her, she got annoyed at our silly behaviour, and Julie had to whisper to her about her skirt. Instead of seeing the funny side of it herself, which would have made it all right, the head went into paroxysms of embarrassment. She had to leave the room and couldn’t bring herself to return to harangue us about the danger of drugs until the following day. That was unquestionably funny, but I didn’t like the humiliation of the head, even though no one was responsible. The incident makes me laugh still but leaves a nasty taste in my mind as well.
Item Anyone – like Julie – with high ideals is a bore if they don’t have a good sense of humour. But equally, people who just lark about and don’t have high ideals are also boring. I think humour at its best springs from a serious person who is aware that nothing is really that serious when all is said and done, and can laugh at themselves for being as serious as they are, without that stopping them from being serious about important matters.
Item I hate people roaring with laughter for no good reason and guffawing loudly. There is a pub two streets from our house and on a summer night when the pub garden is packed I can hear people baying like demented hyenas fit to deafen a person on Mars. If you get close enough to make out what they’re saying you find nothing is being said of any wit or humour. It’s the booze that’s talking.
Item I very much like the wit that can be got out of playing with language and ideas. I am not very good at it, but I love listening to people who are.
Item I think humour is like an orgasm. You give yourself up to it, at its climax it seems to possess your whole body and you can’t think of anything else, and when it’s over you return to yourself feeling tired but refreshed and enlivened.
Item I think the human body and its functions are very funny. I mean, would anyone without a sense of humour have invented the male genitalia or sexual intercourse as a means of procreation and of obtaining one of the best pleasures in life? Who would have invented ears or the nose who wasn’t witty? They are both ridiculous to look at. Yet eyes and the mouth can be two of the most beautiful features ever designed. Not to mention the humour inspired by pooing and peeing. What could be sillier functions than those? Not witty but certainly bizarrely funny. Etc.
Item I have always used humour to soften the harshness of life. The best humour is a very private matter (like sex). It is a private language shared between two people. It is about a private shared view of other people and of life itself. If you don’t build a private language of humour with your lover I think your love cannot be very deep and certainly won’t be permanent. (There is something about Will that embarrassed him very much indeed but which, when I found out about it and he saw I accepted it, became a source of wonderful humour between us. It is so private, I won’t even mention what it is.) For me, if there is no humour, no laughter, I cannot love, because to me, humour is a way of saying to another person: I love you and I love all of you and I accept you the way you are, including the parts of you you don’t like and have to put up with, which I put up with also and make bearable by treating with humour. Humour is a great way to recycle the unbearable into the bearable.
Item Sometimes I look back on my sadnesses and find them funny. As for example, the day Will rejected me. Which is still a very painful memory but at the same time I can see the funny side of it – me being so pitiful and him throwing up into the river just at the thought of me going with an ‘old’ man, and me weeping rivers after Will had run off and left me. People in love are the funniest of all, because their behaviour is so silly but they cannot see that it is at the time. Things have to
be full of intense emotion to be found funny afterwards. In fact, I think this is one of the most important things you can say about humour. At its most profound and most amusing it springs from a deep emotion, even if the emotion and the humour don’t coincide in time. The deeper the emotion, the greater the humour.
This is getting terribly po-faced and boring, so I’ll stop. Goodnight.
Icon
(by Julie)
Dearest Cordelia, Sorry I was too tired yesterday to explain about my icon. Sometimes I think I’ve reached my sell-by date, I’m so sick of school and the endless round of correcting coursework and pointing out the difference between a comma and a full stop, not to mention the semi-colon, which, as you know, I’ve now instructed the ‘punctuationally challenged’, in other words most of the school, to avoid entirely. Or perhaps I just need some sun to build up my stock of melatonin while I sit in the garden and read something for myself.