I m 36 years old now, which feels strange to admit in these pages. I ve taken to bleaching my hair, while I still have some on top, in defiance of the creeping grey that is showing itself, now that I ve ceased shaving my head daily. It looks good. A bit punk retro, a tad arty, a touch of the sad 70s rebel about my eyes, but a little eight-year-old boy in my building said it was wicked . That s alright then.
Why don t I just settle down and go with the flow and be happy with the way I look? Grow old gracefully? Bollocks. Not for me the role of responsible thirty-something father, escaping from the baby powder and the relentless wonder for an occasional quick pint with friends. I ve no-one to look after except myself, and that s not a task I ve been doing that well before. A policy of casual neglect has been in force for too long now. It hasn t stopped me complaining, though, as loyal readers need not be reminded.
I ve been thrown into a vivid meta-view of my life, surveying the 20 years since I was at school, comparing how I am now with how I was then, because I ve had the most wonderful gift, in the shape of a bolt-from-the-blue e-mail, and subsequent long transatlantic phone conversation, with someone I haven t seen, or heard of, in 20 years. She and I were both part of the same gang that hung out together in The Summer I Discovered Sex and Drugs, 1979.
I m not going to tell her story here; what she and I managed to cram into a couple of hours telephone conversation cannot do two decades justice, and, besides, all the people in my life aren t fodder for my insatiable journalistic appetite. Only the select few who offend get that special treat.
I hope she does get to write about her life, if she hasn t done so already; she s travelled all over the world, and has done so many amazing things, that I know there s a book and film there somewhere. But here s the thing: she and I parted over a particularly explosive, and painful, clash of values. Both of us had newly-acquired exotic badges of identity at 16. For her it was religion, me, sexual politics; it seemed, back then, a matter of ginormous importance that those identities were defended to the death. It matters, at 16.
She says she remembers distinctly the horrible things she said in the telephone conversation that ended our friendship back then. I don t. I remember feeling so threatened by what she was saying that I was seething with an impossibly disproportionate rage, which I tried to disguise with a pained rationality. My confusion lasted for many, many years; it took me over 15 years to stop wanting to disembowel other members of her religion when I came across them. I saw her as a victim, ensnared by a cultish force that offered redemption, but squashed her individuality, and demeaned her sexuality.
gay tribe
How different to the choice I made, then, to join the gay tribe. As a teenager, I went to hear my own gurus: American speakers visiting Dublin, enthusing about the lifestyle of endless sexual adventuring, challenging the heterosexual orthodoxy. We would be free of the oppression of the defunct nuclear family, and would stand with our feminist sisters against the horror of heterosexual man, and save the planet from annihilation in the process.
I defined my individuality by buying my first pair of Doc Martens at the age of nineteen; I have not been without at least two pairs since. Docs, Levis, t-shirt; my individuality really shines through in that uniform. My sexuality I used, and abused, as a way of combatting loneliness, and escaping feelings. I didn t know how to say no to the anarchy of deregulated gay sex, or even why I should bother; any reluctance or fear on my part was equated with a patriarchal shame-based attitude to sex.
Religion was the enemy it said we were bad, so we thought it was bad. The fact that I felt bad on the inside, the more sex I had with men I didn t know, was irrelevant; I didn t really see the connection for years. Then when I did, I put it down to the damage the Church did to me when I heard what the priest said at Mass, when I was a weekly attender at 15, about the abomination of homosexuality. And I carried on seeing myself as a victim like that for nearly two decades.
Enough. What was true 20 years ago is no longer true. My friend and I have lived lives that have arced gently in, over the decades, from the hyperbole of rigid dogma to the richness of experience. She sent me a picture of herself in outrageous costume in this year s San Francisco gay pride march, where she was visiting with friends.
Although her faith is still important to her, she s not 16 any more; she doesn t have to prove anything. And I, training as a Psychosynthesis counsellor, am attending classes that are influenced by the self-same spiritual teachings that I found so threatening from her as an adolescent. And I m beginning to wonder if I have ever been deeply sexual with anyone in my life; that sort of intimacy and trust that comes from really knowing someone, not just finding interchangeable partners to play games with. Perhaps that tender side of me can be allowed to grow, now that I m no longer afraid.
I m glad I m not 16 anymore. n