Christmas At Leo's - Memoirs Of A Houseboy (7 page)

I spent a fortune on votive candles in the hope God would hear my prayers and turn me straight. The priest must have saved a mint on heating bills after I’d paid a visit, due to the number of candles I lit. It was a horrible, confusing and painful time. No child deserves to go through such torment. I didn’t feel able to talk to my mother or to my lucky ‘normal’ mates. I certainly couldn’t talk to Frank.

Getting back on track. I was excited about Christmas the year I was fourteen. I’d begged mum to let us spend the holiday at home for a change. I think she said yes because I’d been so ill and she felt guilty in some way. She stood up to Frank when he objected. He wanted to do what we’d done every year since he’d shoved a ring on her finger and spend Christmas at his mother’s house. His whole clan would congregate under her roof for a ‘family’ Christmas. I detested it from the off. It’s a scary thing for a kid who isn’t used to big gatherings to suddenly be plunged into the midst of one.

Frank’s brother and two sisters had young kids and his mother doted on them. Like Frank, and maybe influenced by him, she didn’t have much time for me at all. She certainly didn’t welcome me as an adoptive grandchild. I was never invited to call her gran or nana. I called her Mrs Morrison.

With hindsight, I can see why I set so much store about spending Christmas at home that year. I was in emotional turmoil and seeking some kind of safety and comfort by hearkening back to the past. I was hoping Christmas would be like the ones my mother and I had spent together before she married the knob.

In Frank’s family it was a tradition for the adult men to go to the workingmen’s social club on Christmas Day and have a few lunchtime drinks. The womenfolk stayed at home with the kids and made Christmas dinner. The men then tripped home, ate heartily, drank some more and then slumped in front of the telly while the women cleared up and made a start on preparing Christmas tea. It was a feminist nightmare.

Come the big day Frank met up with his brother and brother-in-laws as usual for a festive pint. Mum prepared the dinner and set the table and we waited for him to come home from the club, and waited and waited. It went well past club closing time and still no Frank. Mum was getting worried when she got a phone call. It was Frank’s mother. She claimed he’d gotten a bit drunk and ended up going home with his drinking buddies. She tried to make a joke about old habits dying hard.
‘He’s so used
to coming here for his Christmas dinner. He’s like a homing pigeon.’

I didn’t give a shit about Frank not being with us. It was the best possible outcome as far as I was concerned. I was thrilled. It didn’t last.

‘Mrs Morrison’ said it was silly for us to be on our own on Christmas Day, so why didn’t we join them as usual. There was plenty to go around. Frank’s sister would come and pick us up.

Mum knew as well as I did that the whole thing had been engineered. She was annoyed, but said nothing. To my dismay, she allowed herself to be bullied into agreeing to us going over there. I was furious. I told her I hated her and she could go if she liked, but I was staying at home. I ran upstairs to my room, slamming the door behind me and punching and kicking it several times into the bargain.

Mum tearfully pleaded with me to go ‘to keep the peace.’ I suppose she didn’t want to fall out with Frank or her in-laws. I gave in. It was a horrible day as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I felt mum had let me down. She’d chosen Frank and his family over me. It hurt. Teenagers have thin skins in general, but mine was practically transparent. I felt everything to a painful degree.

When we got home that night Frank rounded on me, accusing me of spoiling Christmas for my mother and everyone else with my miserable face and surly attitude. For the first time ever, I bellowed at him to shut his big ugly gob and fuck off. It was the start of open warfare between us. I vowed never to spend another Christmas with him or his family. I never did.

I spent the following Christmas with my friend Lee’s family. Mum was upset, but I was adamant about not going to Frank’s ancestral council castle. As things turned out it wasn’t the only upset I gave my mother that particular festive season. I came out soon after New Year. I was fifteen.

It happened on a dull January morning before school. Frank was at work. My mother was getting ready for work. I was slumped over a bowl of Ready Brek feeling as if the weight of the world was compressing my spine. I was hurtling towards the end of my days as a schoolboy. Exam pressures were building. I was applying for sixth form college places. Frank and I were getting more and more aggressive with each other and I was struggling with my feelings about being gay. Something had to give. In the event it was my infamous gob. It opened and blurted. “Mam. I have to tell you something. I’m gay.”

Her reaction wasn’t encouraging. I thought she was going to be sick. Her eyes widened and her skin paled. She stared at me without speaking. I repeated the statement. I hadn’t expected flowers and a goblet engraved with my name and a congratulatory message on coming out of the closet, but nor did I expect all hell to let loose. Clenching her fists, she screamed the word ‘NO’ over and over again at the top of her voice. I almost shit myself with fright.

She followed the screams by shouting: “you’re only fifteen. You don’t know what you are! It’s a phase. You’ll grow out of it. I don’t want to hear you mention it again, to me or anyone else.” She then started sobbing, covering her face with her hands.

Grabbing my coat and schoolbag, I fled the house. I didn’t go to school though. I went down to the allotments where Lee’s granddad had a plot. Lee and me often hung out there on evenings, especially in the winter when the shed provided some welcome shelter. Granddad Davy kept the key under a big cast iron boot scraper. We’d hole up and get tanked on cheap cider laced with vodka purloined from Lee’s dad’s booze cabinet.

I sat in the shed and cried my eyes out. My world had imploded. In the back of my mind had been the idea my mother loved me enough to accept me no matter what. Her reaction seemed to prove otherwise. I felt like the antichrist. If she wouldn’t accept me then who would? I decided to kill myself. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. What a fucking drama queen!

There was weed killer in the shed. I knew it was poisonous and decided I’d top myself by drinking it. I didn’t get further than unscrewing the lid. I didn’t like the smell of it. I ditched the weed killer as a self-killer.

I thought about slashing my wrists, but a tiny experimental nick with a rusty old pruning knife changed my mind. It hurt and besides, I hadn’t had my final tetanus booster shot. I didn’t fancy getting lockjaw. I liked having a good old natter even then. It’s hard to chat when your jaws are welded together. I opted for the overdose method, only I didn’t have any pills.

I travelled to town and tried to buy a pack of paracetamol from Boots. The assistant refused to serve me. The store policy was not to sell painkillers to children under sixteen. I claimed I was sixteen, but she claimed I looked about twelve. Being a man on a suicide mission I didn’t have time to argue with her. I rudely told her she looked about seventy and then went to Superdrug and pinched a couple of packs off the shelf. I bought a bottle of fizzy blue Panda Pop and headed back to the shed.

The dosage guide on the tablet box said to take one or two tablets every four hours. I reckoned taking six in less than a minute would constitute an overdose and swallowed them down with half a bottle of the pop.

I think I had a notion death would be instantaneous on swallowing the pills: puff and the poof would be gone. Nothing happened. I waited a minute or two and then popped out another couple of pills. They didn’t get further than the palm of my hand. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. Surely even gay people had the right to live and be happy without imposed shame dogging their every step.

I began to panic about the pills I’d taken. I was thinking of running home to tell my mother what I’d done and get her to take me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped when something did happen. I had an episode. It was probably brought on by stress. It seemed to confirm I was some kind of cursed freak.

Collapsing onto granddad Davy’s deckchair I broke down, sobbing my heart out, as waves of terror washed over me. I was frightened of dying and terrified of living. There seemed nothing for me to look forward to other than rejection and scorn. I was a boy like any other. I wanted love, affection and acceptance, but a society poisoned by religious intolerance decreed I wasn’t worthy of those basic human rights.

The paracetamol combined with the episode knocked me out. I slept for hours, only waking when someone shook me. It was Lee. My mother had called at his house in a state when I didn’t come home from school at my usual time. She got in more of a state when told I hadn’t been at school in the first place and Lee hadn’t seen me all day. She told his parents we’d had a row, but she didn’t say what about. Lee told mum he’d look for me. He guessed where I might be.

I was cold and cramped. Being January, it was pitch dark outside even though it was only about half past five in the evening. Lee lit the paraffin lamp. It cast out a pungent sickly glow in keeping with my mood. He asked me what was wrong, cos I looked like shit. I confessed I’d taken an overdose of paracetamol in an effort to kill myself. He looked stunned and demanded to know how many I’d taken. I told him.

“Six?” He stared at me. “Our Cass takes more than that when she’s on her period.”

“Not all at once.” I glared at him.

“You fucking bell-end. You can’t die on six paracetamol.”

“I’ll take more next time.”

“Don’t be daft, Gil. Why do you want to kill yourself? Life isn’t that bad is it?”

I started crying.

“Howay, Gilli, man. What’s wrong? Tell us. Is it the fight you had with your mam? What was it about? Is fuck-face Frank getting at you again?”

Screwing up all my courage I whispered the dread words. “I’m gay.”

There was a long pause after my revelation, then. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m fucking sure. Why else would I say it? I’m a nance, a poof, a queer, a shit stabber.”

There was an embarrassed silence.

“Don’t worry. It isn’t catching.” I struggled out of the deckchair. “You don’t have to be friends with me anymore.”

“Sorry, Gil. I dunno what to say.” He raked at his hair. “Do you fancy me then?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Cos you’re fucking ugly. Look, Lee. Being gay doesn’t mean you fancy every lad you clap eyes on. You don’t fancy every lass you meet.”

“True.” He took a breath and then punched me on the shoulder. “You cheeky get. I am not ugly.”

“We okay then?”

“Yeah, we’re okay.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I suppose things could be worse, Gil.”

“How?”

“You could have come out as a Millwall supporter as well.”

We cracked up, laughing like idiots. When we sobered we talked. He asked tentative embarrassed questions, which I did my best to answer. At the finish, he said it didn’t matter what I was or who I fancied, as long as it wasn’t him. I was his best mate and mates stuck together. It meant a lot to me.

And so I came out as a gay boy. It wasn’t an easy process and it never will be, not until society sorts itself out and starts affording GLBT people the same rights as everyone else. I didn’t shout my sexuality from the rooftops, but I didn’t deny it either. I researched and read about other people’s experiences of being gay. I joined a support group and met other young gay people. I tried to tell myself I deserved to live and be happy just as much as anyone else.

When I went home that evening, my mother looked shattered, as if she’d been crying all day. I felt awful. I didn’t mention my feeble suicide attempt. I told her I was sorry for disappointing her. She said she was sorry for her reaction, explaining she was afraid because she knew life would be more difficult for me. All she wanted was for me to be happy. She suggested I talk things through with Father O Gormon, to see if he could help me ‘get over it’. It hurt me more, implying that what I was going through could somehow be corrected with a few good prayers. I knew it was shite, because I’d tried.

Things returned to normal, on the surface at least. She and I never discussed my sexuality again. There’d been a faint crack in our relationship ever since she’d married Frank. After coming out I was conscious of it widening. She seemed more distant. If we consult our old pal Retrospect he’d say the distance came as much from me as from her and in some respects it was a natural part of the growing up process. The teenage years are a crossroads for kids and their parents, the point where the tracks begin to diverge.

Frank’s reaction when he found out was toxic. He shouted about it being typical of me to cause trouble and bring shame on the house by leaning in a different direction to everyone else. He also said me being a filthy queer was no surprise to him. He could have predicted it with his eyes shut. He’d always thought I was a snivelling Nancy boy. My mother got angry and told him not to call me names. He claimed he was doing me a favour because name-calling was something I’d have to get used to as a back door bandit.

I’d catch him looking at me sometimes and grinning as if he was enjoying a private joke. It got on my nerves. The aggression between us accelerated at a rate of knots. We couldn’t be in the same room without shouting insults at each other.