Unfaithfully Yours (10 page)

To the world I am a successful and well-known filmmaker, but inside I am a very different person. I was the youngest of eight and until I was twelve my mother was unable to remember my name. Even then she quite often got it wrong – most often confusing me with the older sister nearest to me in age, Dorothea.

About my earliest memory is of me screaming, ‘I am not Dorothea!’ greatly to everyone’s amusement.

I was treated, from a very early age, as the lowest form of life. For some years, indeed, this was what my family all called me. ‘Where is the lowest form of life?’ my father, an eminent scientist, would say, and one or other of my brothers or sisters would answer, ‘Oh – he’s in the garden!’ or ‘I think he’s in the cupboard under the stairs!’ a place where I spent much of my childhood. I was always the one asked to run errands or help my mother clean the floor.

It was only when I was sent away to boarding school that I began to suspect my upbringing had influenced my sexual preferences in a way that, at first, I found difficult to accept. Although my boarding school was in North London we had very little contact with the outside world. Our headmaster, a man with an OBE and very little else to recommend him, used to call School House together and warn them, graphically, of the danger we faced from prostitutes.

‘Prostitutes,’ he would say, ‘operate freely in this part of London! And they are rife with disease!’

Our school was in Hampstead.

His most fearsome warnings, however, were of the dangers of homosexuality. ‘If you give your body to a homosexual,’ he would say, ‘you will give away the most precious thing you have!’ He never said what that thing was – although the boy next to me whispered, ‘Your bum!’ and sniggered. All I remember thinking was that giving your body to a homosexual sounded very interesting indeed. It certainly sounded more interesting than hanging around the games field in a pair of ill-fitting shorts or trying to learn Latin verbs with Mr Davenant, who smelt of aftershave and once tried to put his hand on my knee.

‘I need to warn you of Smith-Parker!’ the headmaster once said to us at morning assembly. ‘He is a homosexual!’ Smith-Parker, a squat, spotty boy of about sixteen, sat there looking vaguely smug as the headmaster said this. I remember thinking that Smith-Parker might be a useful person to get to know; but – and this is important – my interest in other men was purely theoretical.

Until I was about thirty-five I thought that having sex with men would be a bold and radical thing to do – a bit like joining the Communist Party or growing one’s hair below one’s collar. But I didn’t think it was something I would actually end up doing.

And then I had the opportunity to observe the mating behaviour of the Amazonian river dolphin – a species that, like many middle-class humans in the south-west London area, indulges in group sex. As you may know, dolphins have a high sex drive and can mate up to twenty times a day – although the act only usually takes about twenty seconds. They also have astonishingly lithe, prehensile penises and they are prone to insert them into anything that looks convenient. Including, on occasions, the blowholes of their male companions. I had occasion to see some footage of two male dolphins indulging in this activity and found it powerfully erotic.

I was particularly struck by the expression on the face of the male submitting to nasal sex. Dolphins, as the Hoeffer-Lübeck study in the 1960s definitively proved, do have a wide range of facial expressions. According to Hoeffer-Lübeck, and, subsequently, Joachim de Ribeiro, although his results have been questioned, they have been sighted ‘grinning’, ‘sneering’, ‘smiling openly’ and ‘looking triumphant’.

The passive male in this footage seemed in a state of ecstasy I have seldom seen in any species. His tail made the rapid threshing movements associated, in the Hoeffer-Lübeck study, with the ‘profound satisfaction and self-worth’ usually found only in relation to fish capture or shoal domination of ‘an extreme kind’. I did not need any scientist to tell me that. This was one very happy dolphin. He was gratifying a powerful male, nicknamed, for the purposes of the study, ‘Big Boy’.

This was a Damascene moment for me. I was, at the time, trapped in a deeply unsatisfactory marriage to a woman who was not my intellectual equal. She and I had been initially attracted because I conformed to the ‘obedient’ stereotype of the kind of man who looked as if he might indulge her need for control. She would bark commands at me, very much in the style my own family had used to do, often shouting in what seemed the grip of ungovernable rage as she said, ‘Take out the bins!’ or ‘Hoover the stairs!’ Woe betide me if I failed to ‘wax the kitchen floor’ or ‘fold the dishcloths neatly neatly neatly’! She very often repeated key adverbs several times as if afraid that I was too stupid to understand their import.

I could see that my children disapproved of my passivity in the face of her behaviour but I was powerless to alter the balance of our relationship. I should stress that I gained no satisfaction whatsoever from being asked to empty the washing-up machine or take out the recycling bags.

Had she asked me to Hoover the stairs naked, I might have been more interested!

I loved this woman, in a twisted kind of way, but she never really satisfied me sexually. Female domination is a subtle and all-enveloping thing. Male domination of another male is, somehow, clean and simple and straightforward. As soon as I saw this dolphin, nicknamed in the study ‘Nancy Boy’, I knew that his role was the one I craved. I set out on a long – and intensely private – study of homosexuality in the animal world.

I found I felt a great affinity with the five-spined stickleback. The males among these tiny but courageous fish are responsible for the upbringing of the young, very much in the way in which I was always the one designated to do the school run or to pick up my progeny from lacrosse, karate or choir practice. I was intrigued to note, too, the happy way in which a group of male stickleback would rub themselves off against one particular fish, usually the one primarily involved in child care. And one particular fish, designated, in the study I made, Passive Stickleback A205 – yes, he was named after the South Circular Road! – fascinated me. From very early on I noted that he exhibited behaviour always associated in the stickleback family with deep and lasting satisfaction. Stickleback do not, of course, have facial expressions in the accepted sense of the term but, ‘Bo’sun’, you know when they’re happy!

I became very interested in penguins. Long before the celebrated ‘gay penguins’ of Toronto Zoo, I tracked down a pair of male Emperor Penguins in Regent’s Park who were not merely exhibiting the kind of beak behaviour associated with courtship but proceeding to the nearest thing to full intercourse that is possible for these flightless birds. The penguin has no sexual organs as such but each animal is equipped with a cloaca in which waste products, eggs and fertilizing agents are all stored. Usually the female, after a bit of rear-entry pecking – will lie full length to receive the male, and these two penguins, unnoticed by keepers or any of the public, were doing exactly the same thing. ‘Sailor Boy’, as I nicknamed him, would lie out with his flippers extended while ‘Butch Cassidy’, again my own name, waddled up to him and shot his load.

They always, I noticed, chose to do it behind a particularly large rock, which is probably why this couple of lovers were – and, as far as I know, still are – unnoticed by those members of the public, keepers, naturalists and other busybodies who make it their business to spy on the private life of other species.

What I did notice, however, in the three or four months in which I observed this obviously happy couple was the way in which they exhibited all the mating behaviour of penguins – enlarging, trumpeting, walking together – but always in a place in which they thought themselves unobserved. Which, of course, they were – apart from by me! And, when ‘Butch Cassidy’ had finished I was particularly struck by the behaviour of ‘Sailor Boy’, who performed an ecstatic action almost never observed in Emperor Penguins in captivity – the ‘Victory Roll’ in which the penguin jumps up, falls flat on its face and then rotates on its stomach while beating its flippers up and down at high speed.

Passive male animals had a much better time of it than their more ‘masculine’ brothers. ‘Butch Cassidy’ never exhibited this ecstatic behaviour. In fact, after intercourse, he often seemed rather depressed and would wander off to a corner of the penguin terraces and stare at the ground for hours. As I went deeper and deeper into my researches, I found that almost all of the passive males I studied lived longer, more contented lives than any other sexual type in the studied group. One African elephant, who had allowed himself to be penetrated by no fewer than nine other bulls in the course of an afternoon, showed positive signs not only of self-worth and freedom from tickworm,
bula bula
fly and trunk psoriasis but also of improved survival skills, the finding of waterholes, general navigation and so on.

And then, about eighteen months ago, like you, I had a dream.

I had never been interested in anything nautical but in the dream I found myself to be a cabin boy on some kind of pirate ship. My task was to serve food to a group of pirates, all of whom, interestingly enough, in the light of your letter, were heavily bearded. One of them, a villainous-looking fellow with very hairy arms and a large ring through his nose, told me that I had ‘prepared the sprouts all wrong’ and that I would have to go to his cabin for some ‘private time’. All the other pirates laughed coarsely when he said this. I laughed in what I hoped was an innocent fashion but, in fact, of course had a very good idea what ‘Cap’n Bob’ had in mind.

For he was – I realized, in the way one realizes things in dreams – the captain of the ship. It was only when we got to his cabin, which was decorated in pastel colours and, to my surprise, contained a large double bed equipped with a fluffy white duvet and an assortment of freshly laundered pillows, that he told me he was ‘only behaving like that in front of the other boys because of peer pressure’ and that, deep down, he was a sincere and kindly individual who only wanted to make me happy. I told him I did not know what would make me happy. He said he thought he knew. I replied, ‘How could you possibly know?’ Although I knew – as one does in dreams – that he did know and that he was about to show me.

At this point in the dream he started to undo his belt and lower his pirate breeches and I had an orgasm.

I think that was the moment when I realized I might not be a fully heterosexual man and it was not long after that I placed the advert in the
Putney Free Sheet
to which you replied. I must say that, from the tone of your letter, we may very well be suited and I would very much like to meet as soon as possible. I am based in Putney but could easily come up to the West End if necessary. Anything east of Fleet Street is, however, taboo as far as I am concerned.

Perhaps, ‘Bo’sun’, you will allow me to sign myself, ‘Cabin Boy’.

From:

‘Bo’sun’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

14 September

To:

‘Young ’Un’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

Dear Cabin Boy,

What a wonderful letter!

I read it with a mounting sense of excitement! I really felt that we were two people who might have ‘larks’ together! Even if we do not rise to the heights achieved by ‘Butch’ and ‘Nancy Boy’ (or was that the dolphin?), I am sure we can share some good masculine time together and achieve some of the things of which we have both, so long, only dreamed.

I suggest we meet in a pub called the Spotted Cow on Putney High Street. Next Tuesday? 2000 hrs? They used to have a good quiz but I do not imagine that you and I will be answering too many obscure questions about Tamla Motown!

We have things to do, Cabin Boy! Let’s get aloft. You will easily recognize me as I have a large beard!

Your new friend

‘Bo’sun’

From:

‘Young ’Un’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

18 September

To:

‘Bo’sun’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

Dear ‘Bo’sun’,

I really look forward to our meeting. I feel sure I will know you instantly.

Your obedient

‘Cabin Boy’

From:

‘Young ’Un’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

22 September, around 11 p.m.

To:

‘Bo’sun’

c/o Box 1001A

The
Putney Free Sheet

Dear ‘Bo’sun’,

We must have missed each other! These arrangements are so hard to make.

There were no fewer than six men with beards in the Spotted Cow this evening. One of them was obviously not you since he was sporting a goatee and a small moustache. I did think, however, that he was looking at me in a suggestive manner. Indeed, all the bearded men who were out tonight seemed to be taking a definite sexual interest in me – though that could simply have been to do with the fact that I was in a state of considerable anticipation as a result of the letters we exchanged.

Were you the one with the army fatigues and the George V ’tache and beard – a style I have always found attractive? Or were you the very tall, thin man with the side-whiskers and pepper-and-salt square cut?

If you were either of these do please get in touch. It wasn’t possible for me to make contact as I met a very old friend, whom I have not seen for years, in the pub and was unable to avoid conversation with him. He is a thoroughly nice person and I spent several holidays with him many years ago but whatever else Sam Dimmock may be he is certainly not ‘Bo’sun’. There is nothing gay about Sam. He is, actually, happily married, as you say you are, and his relationship has always seemed to me an exemplary one. His wife is perfectly nice, even if she has delusions of being artistic.

Sam, as it happens, does have a beard as well – and a large one. It is one of the kind that sprouts out in every conceivable direction and I think it may well be one of the most hideous things I have ever seen in my life! Although, apart from that, he is rather a good-looking chap. Funnily enough, I had always thought he was from the north of England – although, in talking with him tonight, it emerged that he was brought up in the same part of the world as you, i.e. the West Country. That must be about the only thing he has in common with you, apart from the beard.