Queer As...?
My desire was banished into the attic.
This followed a pattern already established whereby I atttempted to be my parents' Golden Boy, forever reflecting back at them the image of me that I thought they wanted to see, and hiding what I thought they didn't. I became adept at this. I think on some intuitive level I knew that they needed me to be a Golden Boy, that somehow, for them, I had to prove something, or compensate for something... So, although happy, although loved, I was a bit of a Midwich cuckoo, annoyingly precocious and peculiarly burdened. The kind of loner who strove to be good. The good son.
Take this, for example. I knew Santa Claus didn't exist. On Christmas Eve, at my Grandma and Grandad's house, I saw my parents creeping into my cold room (this was before the ubiquitousness of central heating) and putting presents at the end of my bed. I'm sure I remember peeking out from under the blankets and seeing their breaths coming out in chuffs of cotton wool, lit up by the bare light bulb on the landing. (Lampshades would have been not for the likes of us, a sign of poshness, profligacy, perhaps even sin - though my grandma relented in later years... no wonder she now suffers from cataracts: it was all that puritanical squinting). In the morning Mum and Dad told me that Santa had been. But I knew. I knew it had been them, not Santa. But I went along with it, for their sake!! I feigned innocence, I think for the next couple of years, so as not to upset them. What an odd child I was!
So my desire, when it came, had to be banished. Because golden boys don't desire. In fact, my theory is that it was bound, by default, to become, eventually, a 'gay' desire, simply by virtue of being banished. If something's labelled 'forbidden', it becomes forbidden. As any teacher knows, if someone's labelled 'naughty' that someone becomes, behaves, 'naughty'.
Is anyone essentially 'gay', or, for that matter, essentially - one might say naturally - 'straight'? The desire inside us is the only essential. Desire finds a myriad of modes of expression. It's like water washed down from the mountains, finding its course. And some water will always go underground, find difficult, peculiar courses, emerge in unexpected places...
I was 26 when I outed myself to my friends, and 33 when I was outed, by my ex, to my parents. Outing's like having the roof of your house blown off. I'm 38 now. Maybe I'm still outing myself. Maybe the roof's still being blown off. A slo-mo explosion which could go on for years...
You'd think, following the logic of what I've just said, that once the roof was off, I'd no longer need to be 'gay' because my desire would no longer be concealed/banished.
But hey, old habits die hard...
I had my civil partnership a year and a half ago. My 'shameful' secret has thus not only been accepted (largely) by my parents, it has been accepted by The Law Of The Land, no less. If the slo-mo explosion of 9/11 did anything, it made me value - like never before - the liberal democratic ideals which those extremists oppose and which have allowed me to live openly and fully in the way that I do.
Without shame.
And all that's miraculous. Astonishing.
But...
Forgive me, but now, from my liberated, priveleged, happy, accepted (largely) position in society, this position dreamed of and fought for and for centuries thought impossible, I feel... well...
bland.
And consequently I'm coming round to the idea that I'm not gay, after all. But queer.
Because I'm the same as everyone else. But, quite evidently, NOT the same as everyone else.
Because now, from this position, I realise that that desire, that madwoman banished to the attic, had an energy and a bravery which was not the norm, which was different to the norm. She scared me to death. I hid from her. But now, ironically, I want to reclaim her, resurrect her, bring her out into the light, become her. From an artistic point of view I feel I must step into her shoes and start dancing, and start scaring anyone who'll listen...
It's almost a duty.
And bring that underground water, which is the sweetest, to everyone's lips...
And besides, being gay, is, like, SO last year. Here's my brother-in-law. Take it away, Andy...
