Chapter 29 - The Alien Ceases To Be An Alien

For the two years that I lived quietly on Spring Gardens Suzie was a close neighbour, mentor, and friend to me. There was a little of the unintended and confused mother/son type attempts at relating to each other for a while. That came to an end a few months after I moved into Spring Gardens when Suzie declared that she was remarrying for the second and last time. After that she became a more helpful version of 'the ladies who like to be 'innocently charmed'' because of the familiarity of their husbands to me. 

After having the top two floors of a large house on Trinity St the new flat on Spring Gardens was the bottom floor of a more regular sized house. It was an ideal size of place for one person. It was modern and newly furnished with characterful second hand furniture. It had a shower, a galley kitchen, a living room and a fair sized bedroom with a double bed in it with plenty of space around the bed. The ceilings of the living room and bedroom were high, giving the flat a sense of space and light. 

I still saw Mother daily. But in the new arrangement we reversed roles and mixed her being more honest with me being more guarded. I very rarely felt pushed to empathise with her. Because the empathy was more voluntary when it was shown, then it was more genuine. I used to listen to Radio 4 a lot then and one lunch Mother arrived and I left her to listen to 'The Million Pound Radio Show' which was new at the time whilst I made the scrambled eggs and toast. It was too modern and well observed for her, but then again she never listened to 'The Goons' when they were new on The BBC Home Service or The BBC Light Programme, when she was of an age where she might have enjoyed that. Whether it was 1950's or 1980's absurdist BBC humour, maybe it was all too male for her and I did not realise that. The only time I felt seriously stumped in Spring gardens was when we had lunch one day and in a lull in conversation she quietly asked me 'What do you think is wrong with dad?' I answered indirectly at most because 1-it was not my marriage 2-I knew that Mother was not prepared to face life on her own if the choice came to that and 3-I knew dad could never cope with life on his own. He could not cope without somebody waiting for him to be in the house after his evenings drink, he needed somebody to have a mild but daily argument with to not feel lonely because the drink had stopped fifteen minutes ago. If he could not cope without an argument every night of the week then he would feel very lonely very quickly if he lived alone.

Suzie and I became friends and apparently close confidantes for the remainder of her life.  I write apparently, when people write to each other then nobody knows what gets missed out as they write. Mother letters left on the Trinity St flat living room mantle piece were proof of that. 

In Spring gardens my life divided by interest and group quite neatly and with very little effort. Old friends from the life in the previous flat called by on their own and they were always welcome. They respected the new space like the same way they respected the previous space and with each new visit revealed how like me they had moved on as individuals where once they had been part of something that seemed bigger. I had my church life, where I attended the small modern Anglican building where the Sunday service was quiet, the sermons unmemorable. I was bemused by some of the Anglican jargon. There was always a hymn that was sung before the vicar stepped up into his pulpit. It was called 'the gradual hymn' and it was named so because of where it was in the service. The name 'gradual' became of the verbal tics the service to me, I never asked and never learned why the hymn was called that. I often thought that it was called the gradual hymn because it seemed to start slowly and had to speed up to get to the end in time for the vicar to be in the pulpit for the next prayer.

I found belief possible because I took church seriously but church did not take itself that seriously. The church allowed individuals to live and grow their own faith at their own pace. That was what Keith had wanted me to find five years earlier. At times I could not see how such traditional forms of worship still had a viable future. But I soon learned that energetic groups of people often attended traditional services and where tradition considered their energy to be excess to the needs of the weekly Sunday Service then those energetic groups would go off to get their energies renewed and changed at bigger, more spontaneous, regional or national gatherings at different times over the year. The energetic folk were generous to the traditional church with their energy in the ways they organised house groups and other supplementary regular get-togethers that supported the Anglican social structures without trying to overtly change them.  

The work that the energised put into meetings outside of Sunday Service, to supplement the Sunday service often seemed rather human and work-a-day rather than something dramatic delivered from on high, that seemed fine. It had to be made to feel human to be made humanly understandable. As part of church life I even attended what must have been one of Billy Graham's later tours of England, in Sheffield. It would have been easy and quite credible to believe that the sheer size of the crowd was the reason for their enthusiasm. But even if the size of his rallies was the cause that made them events of recommitment, then the presentation still took skill and effort to create and how the individual responded was still their own choice. Many people who attended his rallies in football stadia across England were people who never went into a sports stadium normally. Anything, sport or rally for a given cause, that courts live audiences of stadia size and proportions almost automatically makes the size of the crowd enthuse on their first article of faith, their reason for being there.

The grander the cause is, the more important it is when it comes to converting the cause of the rally into permanent changes the individual makes at home. Whatever the cause, using the energy of renewal at mass gatherings to change how the individual lives is slower work, I experienced some of that slowness and I was glad of being able to receive it. After attending the Billy Graham rally I attended a sane and safe house group/Bible study on Friday nights where I was still a bit of a misfit/mascot but my place there was as just that. When two of the study group married and invited us to the ceremony was the only time I felt uncomfortable. Whilst watching the couple and observing the ceremony I realised that I would never marry. I took a quite severe panic attack whilst they were taking their vows and because I was not the centre of anyone's attention nobody noticed. Maybe there was nothing to see. I remained the oldest member of the youth group. One time I even invited some of the youth group back to the new flat where we were all sociable and I played them some strange hippy hypnotic instrumental music that was gentle but obscure to them and they liked it without knowing why, or what it was. It was not a trick, I was always moving around the boundaries between the secular and aesthetic and the religious and what was 'safe'. 

My work options remained the same as before. The choices were the Community Programme, twiddle my thumbs and read lots, or go to college 'one last time' yet again. I preferred college option, coupled with some voluntary work apt for my future plans. I was no better or worse financially and I believed that if I was capable of organising my time for myself then why would I want it organised for me, or for somebody else to organise it solely for their benefit. In theory there was middle ground between being organised for other's benefit and organising myself for my own benefit, but finding it was difficult. I devised my own plans and activities. If they got me nearer the job that I might want to do okay. If the activities got me no nearer work then the gain and advantage was personal instead. I still had the plan to train as a nurse.  I returned to college for one more 'O' level and chose to work as a volunteer for one day a week in my local hospital. They were surprised at a volunteer coming forward, the times were not public spirited, and they had no official to credit volunteers, but I believed that the time volunteering was well used however it was used up and whatever reference I got for it, or did not get.

When eventually I looked at the forms and the details for nurse training I was horrified and realised straight away that I'd never do it. There was a new streamlined and higher pressured training programme for nurses called 'Nursing 2000', 'more like 'Death Race 2000', I thought. 'Death Race 2000' was a popular glossy dystopian thriller that required relatively few brain cells and a high tolerance to blood and gore to enjoy it. I was taken aback at the plan of being a nurse finally definitively being crushed like one of the cars in the dystopian fantasy film I compared it with. But hope was at hand, and as ever it cam in an unexpected way.

I wanted to have a job in another city and leave the small town but every time I looked at the ideas I would have to work through to do that I was stumped by the 'chicken and egg' logic of how it should work out. I could not work out which came first and which came second. Anyone who wanted to move had to have savings, check, Mother had made me careful with money, and it was a good skill to have whilst unemployed. But converting being penny wise into being pound wise was going to be a test. Eventually I settled around for the person to be able to move they had to line the new address up simultaneously with the new job. But how to find either when I so often felt that what back up I had was to make me stay where I was, it was not designed to help me move. And if I could find a place to live in another town or city would the landlord accept me being on housing benefit? and what if I arrived and I was not working and did not know enough about how to network for work and where to live? It all seemed too difficult to pin down to a single sequence that would get it all done in the right order. When some people moved from one rented accommodation to the next they know where they want to move to, and get themselves 'top in the list' for when the place they desire next comes up for a change of tenant. I was under prepared for making any such plan for both accommodation and work to be co-ordinated together.    

My 'being gay', like everything else in the life I had in the flat on Spring Gardens, seemed mostly benign. If I ventured out and waved my willy in public toilets now and then it was because I was slow to realise that I was bored. When boredom strikes men often think of sex. I still did not know how to process the idea that sex becomes random and anonymous because it is prompted by boredom, it seemed too simple and straight forward. I got stuck at what was behind the boredom. That apart even random and anonymous sex was better than an abstinence forced by sheer loss of choice and I no longer needed to hide that I did what I did from myself. I also realised that boredom and opportunity were why a couple of men called on me. One of them was very hairy farmer who was sort of retired. His son had an antiques shop in the town and I could go in and browse and if the father was about cruise/tease him. The usual inarticulacy about sex aside, the only down side to sex with the farmer was that he was always clean but he always smelt of manure. It was as if the smell came from under his skin, it was much more farce that secretive tragedy when he visited.

The other gentleman was my 'one that got away'. he was nicknamed 'Manchester Al' and he actually came from Liverpool. I first met him in 1980 at the Blood donors when she sat us together for our tea and biscuits after giving blood. He kept the accent so sometimes he had to speak slowly to me for me to understand. He was my age, handsome with his moustache, naturally muscular but well proportioned, ex-army fit, and more than adequately endowed. The downside was that he was a drifter and a drinker. I would be getting on with life in Spring gardens and he would call by as out of nowhere and say 'I have been away'. He could have been telling the truth, but had this knack or habit of making what he said sound like travellers tales. Stories told to entertain that after Al had shared them with me the tales proved to have holes in them, and seem less credible. I bigger problem for me was that the drink kept him comfortable in his closet and would not let him out. I was one step ahead in so far as I had less to keep me in my closet, but it made me resist his charms. Every time he visited he visited for sex and he was always a mix of being evasive and direct about it. Sometimes I resisted his charms and made him work for them. When he had the time to share then shower sex was one thing I found I liked, and he was happy to lead me into it. That worked for both of us and it got me beyond my resistance and made more direct and less evasive. If he had visited when absolutely sober, had asked directly 'Can we go to bed' I would have gone to bed with him in an instant. But he always thought he could not ask direct, only work around asking indirectly, sometimes absurdly so. I was not commanding with him. If I had been commanding he might have liked it at first, and he would have appeared more often, and appointed times to visit and kept the appointments, but still he would have been a drifter and retreated eventually.

One friend, who was not gay, was called Richard and he dropped by to visit his family in the autumn of 1987. I had not seen him for ages. It as good to have the catch up. He shared that he now lived in Nottingham, and he talked about his life there and at some point he said 'When did you last go swimming? That is where I am going next.'. I had never learned how to swim. Any pool that I was allowed into, the teachers were more intent on watching for health and safety than using the time to teach pupils how to swim so the children were inherently safer by themselves in the water. I could swim a few stokes, but I did not know how to breathe as I swam, as he could see from my panicky attempts at swimming. There was an odd bit of swimming pool etiquette where I was mildly in the wrong when we went to The Leisure Centre. I discovered for my first time as an adult that real men change on their own, they do not share changing cubicles. I mistakenly half thought he wanted to share a changing room with me. He didn't. Once we got over that misunderstanding on my part we were fine, and the time in the pool did what it was meant to do. At the end when we had dressed, left the leisure centre and walked down the hill he suggested to me that if I wanted to be in the care/nursing industry and could not train as I had originally intended to, then why didn't I apply for a carer/nursing type place on The Community Programme in Nottingham, which was what he had been on for a while. He gave me the details of where, how, and to whom, to apply. I thanked him for the advice.

The details Richard gave me were for a Leonard Cheshire home for people with Parkinson's disease and similar conditions in Lady Bay, in Nottingham. I spoke to them and applied directly to go onto the Nottingham Community Programme through them. They were surprised at my plan but said 'Yes we we will take you on but you have to have your move to Nottingham lined up'. The Leonard Cheshire home gave me The Community Programme code for their scheme. As part of keeping the official paperwork correct I had to present the code to my local job centre. They had never seen anything like it in their careers. They reacted as if their local Community Programme scheme, organised by the mighty Bob Rainsforth, was the only Community Programme scheme that anyone local should ever think existed. But they processed the code and everything worked. I went to Nottingham for one day for a couple of days in December, to get the local press and go through the rental section at the back of the local paper and trawl it for somewhere to live.

At first I could not tell a good offer of a house share from a bad one except by the look of the place, though if I met a landlord who I thought was anything like Mr Lloyd I knew to politely distance myself from the offer. On the second visit, after a few near misses, I found the house that I thought I wanted to share, and I made arrangements where we fixed the date of my arrival and the financial terms. It was all word of mouth, but when the landlord got the money and I go the key then the deal would be on. I chose my first Nottingham landlord. He was younger than me. When we first met I could not see how arrogant he would turn out to be. I certainly found his arrogance out as we attempted to get to know each other. 

With the December visit confirming I had somewhere to live I confirmed a date for starting work with the Leonard Cheshire home and I had my last small town Christmas where if the event seemed tame then the real changes, ten years of new year's resolutions to leave, were actually happening. I had cracked the chicken/egg, job/place to live, sequencing problem. I did not know what I letting myself in for, nor was I aware that in six years I had gone from Mother creating my chances for me with the Beaumont St and Trinity St flats and them both being flawed experiments in how to grow as a person, to my now good friend Suzie creating choices for me with the Spring Gardens flat, to me working out and choosing for myself the next set of changes to make because that was the only way there was of doing things. Only time would tell if I had chosen wisely.

But Gainsborough had one ace left for me that was a sign of opportunities to come. My last night in Spring Gardens was unusual for me. It was a Thursday night and I was packed with some things to move locally in the morning. My transport was arranged for the following afternoon, some of the older members of the youth group had a large car and volunteered to drive me to the new address. Late that Thursday evening there was a knock at the door. It was Manchester Al, the man who I thought was handsome but unhaveable because he was unstable. He was reasonably sober. I let him in, we chatted, he was surprised and delighted when I invite him to my bed. The sex was exploratory rather than great, but he felt firm which I liked, and we were both tender and willing. It felt good. He left in the morning without explaining where he had come form or what he had been doing since we last met and I did not tell him that that night was my last night of small town life, he would find that out when he looked for me and I was gone. 

His arrival very strange and very welcome, beyond any sort of coincidence of timing that I could have imagined or engineered. What had been withheld from me for most of a decade, that\I really wanted, had appeared for one night only, the last night. I was leaving the following day. Early on the Friday afternoon my friends from the youth group who had the car and could drive packed everything I owned into and off we went. When my friends saw the landlord they thought 'This tenancy will be a short one' and they were right. But by then they also knew that if I had got this far then I had the wherewithal to get myself out of any scraped that I got into. So even evidence of trouble ahead was far from being bad news.  

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Finally, to end this memoir. Suzie was the person who first believed that I could write, even before I imagined that I could write anything longer than a long letter. I wrote her many over the two decades that we lived apart. One of the comments that she must often have thought but held back from saying to me on the phone about my letters was 'I wish you were a better editor'. But then if I were a better editor in writing I would surely have wished that I had made a better editor of my own life than I seemed to be in Gainsborough. Maybe this account of me, from life in an attic bedroom aged sixteen where the room was actually a store room and my life there was about trying to explain to myself the parental double-think, to me leaving the town of my birth where there many new starts to be found where I went after, serves both counts.

This memoir is dedicated to the memory of her faith in me, which became the substance of both our hopes, though this memoir was started long after she was around to see the idea bear fruit.

Please find the Afterword here.

Please find the introduction and chapter guide here.