This Is All (76 page)

Cal is packing up the gear by the time I’m off the phone and Arry is down from the tree so I give him his hug-and-kiss, which he returns so tenderly while looking at me with such genuine love and admiration – he really is the perfect companion – that I impetuously kiss him properly on the mouth, which he also returns, so passionately in fact that when I realise what we’ve done, I come over shy, because his response has confused me and Cal is watching with greedy eyes.

During a jokey joshing drive home, when I’m teased for being scared now that the ordeal is over, I explain that Dad is preparing bubbly as a celebration and they are invited, which is received with proper enthusiasm, after which I offer to make a meal as a thank-you to them both – yes, please, and quite right too, they say, and how about steak and chips, Cal says, and I tell him he’ll get whatever there is in the house because I’ve no intention of doing boring shopping when
I’m celebrating – but add as a condition that we must all have a shower first, as I feel too grungy to cook, never mind eat, as I’m sure they must too, giving Arry a significant look, hoping he’ll clock that my real aim is to deodorise Cal, though I needn’t have worried because Cal at once says how if I don’t mind he’ll have a hot bath rather than a shower, because he hasn’t had one for days (weeks, more likely, I think), a statement uttered as if the news will come as a complete surprise.

Even before we’re properly inside, Dad is handing round glasses of champagne, Doris following him with bits of things such as cheese straws, which Cal gobbles up like he hasn’t seen food for a month, washing down the straws-and-bits with champagne like a parched man quaffing water, before Doris restores decorum by taking the third bottle from Dad then dispensing the booze with more discrimination than Dad does, while enquiring whether we plan to eat a
proper meal
later, thus providing me with a cue to say I’ve offered to cook and she to tell me there’s cold lamb from yesterday, plenty of salad and potatoes, with cheese and ice cream and fruit for afters if we want it, and that as she and Dad are going out for the evening with friends we can have it all for ourselves, enough, she adds, giving Cal a reproving glance, to feed a starving army.

Fortunately, D&D are in a frisky mood or Cal would surely be quizzed re his antecedents (murky), background (disastrous), current domicile (a van), present employment (rubbish collector, sorry, waste disposal operative, aka a bin man), financial resources (skint), and thereafter been less welcome than champagne and cheese straws, a hot bath, and a full-scale meal would imply, D&D being
in theory
and in their own estimation liberal-minded, tolerant of alternative lifestyles, compassionate re the misfortunes of people’s lives, and advocates of the equality of all humankind regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, colour or creed, whereas
in practice
, they are like me and you and everybody else, an irrational
mix of contradictory prejudices, including in their case, a complete acceptance of Arry, even though he is Irish, impecunious and gay, because he’s articulate, amuses them, and knows ‘how to behave properly’ (in other words, like them), while they are suspicious of Cal because he’s verbally inept, is intellectually challenged, looks like he’s on the skids, is unkempt and smelly, is physically handsome and powerful (therefore a threat), and doesn’t behave like them – a fact, as I think about it at this moment, catching D&D giving Cal a worried glance and then exchanging another of anxious agreement between them, that puts me on Cal’s side and disposes me to play up to him, the more so because by now I’m entering the stage of giddy sentimentality usually called ‘happy’, brought on by the mix of excitement and too sudden an injection of booze into an empty stomach.

Guessing from D&D’s silent exchange that our jollity will soon outlast its welcome, I usher Arry and Cal upstairs to Arry’s room, with Dad calling after us, as much for their ears as mine, how he and Doris are going now but will
only be round the corner
at the Hendersons’ and to let him know if I
need any help
.

How easy it is when geed-up and tiddly to let go and behave, as they say, ‘out of character’, how appealing then to be flippant, and how one hyper-excitement as it fades (which to be honest my tree-climbing high already has, for what after all have I done that’s so admirable?) leaves you wanting another to keep you buzzing (the cause of addiction, I suppose), which explains why when I take Cal a bath towel and find them both already stripped down to their underpants, and I tell them to wait till I’ve taken my shower because I want to prepare our meal while they take theirs, and Cal laughs and says why don’t we do everything together like we have all day, and Arry laughs and says that’s not my style, and Cal says how does he know, and I say he doesn’t, and Cal says, so what about it, all friends together, and I think, yes, why
not, it’ll be fun (and another buzz, though I don’t admit that to myself), and Arry says he’s all for it if I am, and I say we can do it the Japanese way as taught me by Izumi, which is a shower first to wash off the muck followed by a long soak together in a deep tub of clean hot water.

In two minutes flat we’re in the shower, soaping each other head to toe and hosing each other down and laughing and giggling and joking and washing the parts of each other we can’t reach for ourselves, me between the two of them, Arry so enviably sleek and slim, Cal so honed and hunky, I have to admit it’s thrilling to be naked and skin-to-skin with two such delicious bodies, not to mention that he’s hung as generously as Arry.

Just as I’m thinking this, however, I feel Cal’s hands snake round my waist and pull me strongly to him, his erect astonishing penis against my bum, and I know playfulness is turning serious and it’s time to make a move.

‘Keep your wicked hands to yourself, you naughty boy,’ I say, laughing though I’m not amused, and pull away and out of the shower, leaving Cal to stumble full frontal against Arry.

‘Lucky me!’ Arry cries. ‘Joy at last!’

‘My my, Cal,’ I say as I climb into the bath. ‘Swinging both ways.’

‘Not me!’ Cal says, deadly serious as he scrambles out of the shower so quickly he trips over the step, and lands on his face, not to mention other parts of his anatomy, with a nasty slap that produces a howl of pain.

‘O calamity!’ Arry crows, stepping over him and into the bath, me indicating I want him between me, sitting at the round end, and Cal, who’ll be at the tap end when he recovers enough to join us.

‘Poor guy,’ I say, ‘we shouldn’t make fun of his predicament.’

‘Question is,’ Arry says, ‘is his predicament still in one piece?’

‘Requiescat in pieces, you mean?’

‘Stupid buggers!’ Cal says, on his feet again, his member detumescent, thank heaven.

‘The fact,’ Arry says, ‘that you find Cordelia and me in this position, her behind me, should indicate to one of your experience of the world, dear Cal, that we cannot be engaged in the act you mention, but only that we’re resting in the arms of Lethe, where, if you join us and don’t mind curling your delicious limbs up a bit because there really isn’t much room, you’ll soon forget your unfortunate injury.’

‘Unless,’ I say, ‘you’d rather give it a miss, or no,’ I add, thinking that things will probably go further than I want them to go if I stay, ‘better that I leave you two to play with each other while I get the meal ready.’

‘Whatever,’ Cal says, in a bit of a huff, as who can blame him?

‘Cross, are we?’ Arry says, showing no mercy.

‘You’re a tosser,’ Cal says, but smiling again.

‘And you’re a zymy slob,’ Arry rejoins, as Cal climbs into the bath and I climb out and leave them to their mutual admiration.

>>
History lessons
>>

God

Everything. Nothing.

‘Of that which we cannot speak, let us be silent.’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein, twentieth-century philosopher.

History lessons

If we don’t know our history,

we cannot know ourselves.

– Julie Martin

There is a history in all men’s lives.

–
Shakespeare, Henry IV, Pt 2, III i, 80

History is philosophy drawn from examples.

– Dionysius of Halicarnassus, circa 40BC

The only important thing is that

somehow we all escape our history.

–
Hal Robinson, circa 1982

Ariel McLaren
. Born into a strict traditional Catholic family, the last of six children, two sisters, three brothers, in the south-west of Ireland. Father a businessman running his own small agricultural supply firm. Early in life he feels ‘different’ from other boys, all of whom seem obsessed with girls and ‘pulling them’. He likes boys but not like other boys like boys (he fancies them), and he likes girls but not like other boys like girls (as best friends). He acquires a reputation for being studious – ‘a scholarly soul’, his mother calls him – which he encourages because he does like learning but also because it excuses him in the eyes of other boys from behaving like them.

When he’s about ten his parish priest suggests to his parents that Arry is ‘one of the elect, chosen by God for the priesthood’. From then on this is taken as gospel, another ‘fact’ of his life that Arry accepts, even though he doesn’t feel any desire to be a priest, because it’s stated with conviction by everybody responsible for him and because (a truth he realises only much later) it’s another convenient excuse for behaving differently from other boys. He enters high school and his pubescence as a (genuinely) conscientious student and as (apparently) a devout member of his church. Because of his special status he receives approval, privileges and rewards from adults and closet admiration from his peers, who frequently ask for help with school work and use him as an unofficial confessor of their sins and the kind of problems boys find it difficult to talk about with adults or with their peers. From this he learns how to charm adults and how to manipulate those of his own age who might be a threat.

When he’s fourteen a young man, who works for his father and whom he likes, introduces Arry ‘to the sex that felt natural’. Now he knows what it is that makes him feel different. Nevertheless, the incident confuses him. He is well aware that his father detests ‘that filthy breed of sinners’ and makes no bones of his opinion that they should have their balls cut off or, better still, be hanged from their necks till they be dead. He is equally well aware of the views of the Church: all sex other than within the bonds of marriage and for the purpose of procreation is sinful; and all homosexual sex is doubly sinful. Dutifully, he lists his fall from grace during his weekly session in the confessional. The priest asks for details, Arry admits ‘a man’ was involved, the priest explains that ‘boys do go through a bad patch of this kind’ but that the main thing is to understand it is ‘an unnatural act abhorred by God’. He adds that there are some men who believe themselves to be born ‘that way’, but if they are to be acceptable to God they must shun their evil desires and live a chaste life. He is quite sure, the priest says, that Arry is not ‘one of those’ and that being of a devout nature and ‘chosen by God’, he will avoid all further contact with this wicked man who has abused him, and will ensure there is ‘no repetition of the vileness’. He asks Arry to promise this, and to express his remorse, which Arry does, is absolved and is given some prayers to say as a penance.

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.’