Being the partial narrative of my life and loves
up until the Festive Season of 1995.
Well, I can't really start this without mentioning the first person I ever really loved and the first person I was intimate with - we should have been at school that afternoon. Her parents hated me. I was everything that they didn't want for their daughter and she fought them valiantly for the right to choose who she would date. In retrospect, the relationship was not likely to survive but, at the time, it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me.
Actually, Sarah wasn't the first person I loved. That place really should go to Mike. I was 12 when I first became aware of him at school. We became friends and then best buddies. We shared our first cigarette together, double dated, he with Michelle and me with her best friend Carol, fought over the same girl, Christine, were the school's best actors rising to stardom in Brecht's Life of Galileo and then having two productions, Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Shaw's Devil's Disciple, mounted around us. He always played the good guy, I got the more interesting parts. One drunken night, I admitted I had feelings for him. Shortly after, I met Sarah and we allowed ourselves to drift apart.
In June 1998, nearly 3 years after writing what follows, I cleared out my attic of all manner of stuff and found some letters from this unknown boy whose name was Clive Harris and with whom I corresponded for over a year after this drama course. I had completely forgotten we had remained in touch. Judging by the content, he was as gay as a goose. I regret even more not having reached out to him and I wonder where he is now.
The name is long since gone and the memory of this only returned in the last few years. It was at a drama course, held at a local Teachers Training College, for 6th form students and based round the English A Level set texts for that year. Sarah and I had both applied to go but had argued weeks before and had a splitting up. On the course, the young women had rooms on one side of the campus, the young men on another. I shared a room with another young man who I'm sure now was gay.
On the second afternoon, between the drama sessions and evening meal, we ended up in our room stripped to the waist massaging each other. I knew it was erotic. I was scared by it. I was so scared I locked the door so no-one would find out.
Over the evening meal, Sarah asked me to come to her room that night. I went and she invited me into her bed. When I said that I didn't have any contraceptives, she said that she had agreed with her parents to go on the Pill because period pains would have interrupted her pre-A Level studies. We made love through the night till the dawn. I staggered, weak-legged, through the blue light of early day back to my room, full of achievement.
When I opened the door to the room I saw the boy lying in bed asleep. And he looked beautiful, desirable. When we woke later on, I boasted of my deeds. He was offhand but I remember now the pain in his eyes. It's futile to speculate but I do wonder what would have happened if I had discovered gay love with a gay man at 17 rather than lying, deceiving and avoiding for another eight years.
First adult male I ever loved, desired, adored - heterosexual, of course. I can still
remember the first time I ever saw him stripped to the waist in the washrooms in our
student hostel. I'm shocked to realise, looking at some of the stills from
Interview with a Vampire, that he looked just like
Brad Pitt does in that movie. Ross was hung like a horse. I wonder if the two of them
are alike in all respects.
We ended up sharing a room and then a bed - his choice not mine. Then two years of self-imposed torment living in the same house with him and his girlfriend, Jan. We still occasionally had sex but it was a strain, being a Jan-substitute. Eventually, I got out the house in the summer of 1976. Later still, I came out.
The last time I saw him was in the Spring of 1977. He'd had some bad personal news and I was the only person he could think of turning to. He turned up on the doorstep of my bedsit in Highgate wanting tea and sympathy. He stayed the night. I put a mattress on the floor for him and he accepted the gesture. It was the first time in my life that I consciously decided I wasn't going to be used.
I got involved with Lynne because I wanted a girlfriend and because I wanted to impress Ross. I lied to her, bedded her, strung her along and slept with someone else. She found out and was distraught. I held her while she sobbed and said "My mummy told me it would be like this". I was her first love, her first sex and her first pain. It's not the worst thing I've done though.
A short romance but one that stays with me. She was the most gorgeous person and a real pre-Raphaelite beauty. I'd been depressed for some months, contemplated suicide before we met. I was deeply screwed up about living with Ross and wanting him. The first night we slept together, I remember my orgasm was so intense that it hurt. But it was also like a great burden of loneliness had been lifted from me. She had an indentation in her breast bone and I recall that each time we made love a pool of sweat would collect there. She left me for someone else.
Other honourable mentions from this period should also go to
and many more.
Another very important person to me - we still sort of keep in touch. Our relationship was quiet, loving, caring but my internal pressures were building up. As I began to fall apart, Liz stood by me and cared for me though I didn't tell her what the real issues were till later. When we finished, my best friend at the time, Julian, and she sort of got it together. They're still together - they have three sons now.
Again someone who was important at that specific time of my life. Spent a lot of time with him and his wife. Nigel and I tooled around a lot together, did counselling technique courses, Tai Chi, talked politics, attended demos, went on holiday walking the Great Ridgeway. Had sex in a tent during a thunderstorm on that holiday - his instigation, I put a stop to it. We drifted apart after that.
1978 is the great caesura. I crapped out for six months. Call it a nervous breakdown, breakthrough, what you will. I invalided myself out of society. And at the end of it, as I came back together, I wrote possibly the most important letter of my life to Ronnie acknowledging my true sexual identity for the first time - previously I'd gone under a bisexual banner which meant that I portrayed myself as heterosexual but would occasionally go off, get drunk and sleep with a man. Ronnie was both supportive and outraged - I had been the last vaguely heterosexual friend he had.
Gill is the first person in this chronicle that could be said to be one of the great pillars of my life. We met through work and then she invited me to become a lodger in her house. She supported me, bullied me, cajoled me not so much in my coming out as in my opening out.
May 1980, we went on holiday to Crete along with Bill and Barbara. Hot nights in Spinalonga. We shared a bed and a shower. Eight months later Robert arrived. Could have been coincidence. As it happens it wasn't. How do you put into words something about two people who mean as much to me as life itself? Not possible in this medium. I'm sure in life that I'm as poor with actions as I am in words to show how much they mean to me.
Robert was a lovely man, full of vivacity, care for others and naughtiness. Heroically, he acknowledged his HIV+ status and, supported by his partner, Tom, lived out his illness in public. When he died, the funeral was an occasion for a whole generation on Merseyside to begin mourning its collective losses. Within a year he was followed by Doug and so the litany began.
So, Gill bullied me. She then arranged for she and I to have a dinner engagement with Alan and Jeremy, who had been together then, 1980, for five/six years and are still together.
A couple of weeks later I got a phone call from Jeremy asking me to another dinner engagement. No, not Gill as well, just me. Gulp, OK. So, I went and it was a fine and wonderful meal and, about ten o'clock, I said "Where's Alan?". "He's away on business." "Oh." "Do you want to stay the night?" (weak, small voice) "Er, yes, please." And it was fine and wonderful sex as well - both times.
And at 7:30am the following morning the phone by the bed went (it was that sort of house) and Jeremy answered and talked for a while. Then, he said, "Yes, he's here with me now" and handed the phone to me and, of course, it was Alan who was warm and pleased for me and made me an offer I took up some months later when I slept with the both of them.
A&J were there for me and many others for many years to come. They supported Richard and I though our own personal hell even whilst their own lives were undergoing massive upheavals. They couldn't have been better friends.
About this time I met Colin and sometime later, Roland, both of whom have remained close friends till this day, so they have to get a mention as two more of the great pillars of my life. How do you assess the importance of people who are so firmly woven into the weft and warp of your life? Impossible.
Well, here also ought to be mentioned a number of men;
and numerous others.
Karl was my first German lover though it didn't last long. The first night we had sex was at a party at his house. At a crucial moment, we were joined by a 17 year old who had just been jilted by his girlfriend and disturbed us with the immortal line "I don't see why you two should have all the fun." He seemed to have as much fun as we did thus teaching me an important lesson about male heterosexuality.
Karl also taught me another important lesson about the difference between bed talk and real life. Like it was OK to call him My Little Stormtrouper when he came but this was not an acceptable endearment when shopping for clothes.
He went back to Germany and left me with his real boyfriend (oh, yes), who was
who became my first real gay lover and for whom, and to the relief of everyone else around me, I at last smartened up my act. Norman was a music teacher, introduced me to Gamelan, Mahler, Schubert, was the first man I knew who had erogenous nipples. We were only together for a short while but kept in touch for some time after. The last I heard of him he had moved to Indonesia and was into young men in a big way.
The first of the other David's in my life, this David was a beautiful Australian man, a friend of Gill's. I can't say that we had an affair. More a dazzling series of friendly encounters. David died in Sydney in 1991 of AIDS-related illnesses. Along with many people around the world, I contributed to his memorial quilt.
Paul was someone who I met in Manchester, slept with and who cropped up, off and on, for the next ten years at social and political gatherings, eventually including an odd meeting in a bar in Gran Canaria - of all the back rooms in all the world and all that...Richard was outside in the bar having a drink at the time.
If I ever knew his name, I've long since forgotten it. He picked me up in a bar in Manchester and we were both hot to trot. We drove back through a rainy night to his flat in South Manchester and smoked a joint. He smoked another, I refused and we went to bed. Combination of drink and drugs, he wanted to fuck me, I didn't want to, he insisted and I felt too threatened to say "No", so he did. And it hurt and I hated the sex and him. And he fucked me harder and harder till he came. Then we went to sleep.
And in the morning, he gave me a yellow tee-shirt and said he'd see me around. And driving back to Burnley over the moors, I stopped my car and took the tee-shirt and ripped it to shreds. It was my first experience of what would now be called date rape.
Craig and I had a lust at first sight affair, had a first night of the most gently romantic sex where two bodies fit together as though they had been made for each other and then proceeded to spend a period of gazing dewy-eyed at each other that was heartily sickening for everyone else around. The second night we spent together was the night I nearly drowned in the bath during oral sex.
This was the first notable relationship where I confused lust with love. I would have continued the bedding for months but emotions had cooled for Craig by the New Year and he sensibly ended it.
I met Keith at a conference over the Whit Bank Holiday - he was one of the conference organisers. I bedded someone whose name I forget on the Friday night, Keith on the Saturday night, went to bed with Kyle on the Sunday night and was back in bed with Keith on the Monday. I rang into work sick on the Tuesday.
And thus I embarked on my first long distance relationship. Keith lived in London. I lived in Burnley and then Liverpool during the course of our time together. We did manage simultaneous orgasms. He had his in London, I had mine in the North West. Keith taught me about massage and the political (and practical in our circumstances) necessity of having an open relationship.
Mostly, we shagged other people when we were apart. Occasionally, we shagged other people on our weekends together. This led to one occasion when I shagged Peter in Keith's bed while Keith lay in a bed in the next room audibly crying. It's not the worst thing I've done though. We sort of patched things up the following morning with a threesome.
Christmas 1982, we went on holiday together to Paris staying in the apartment of one of Keith's friends whilst she was off with her parents. We did some of the things that I wanted to do like visit the Beauborg Centre but mainly it was what Keith wanted. So, we did clubs and a sauna. The sauna was filled with beautiful people into being beautiful with other beautiful people. I had never felt so rejected by so many people in such a short space of time in all my life. Keith couldn't understand why I was so upset.
I guess it really ended there though the relationship staggered on through a few more months of bitterness and recriminations. Keith's flatmates, Tony and Steven, must have been glad when I took the coward's way out on the phone one night.
Although the first death which touched me was some years off, I first heard about AIDS in 1982. Think about that. It was another three to four years before the UK government did anything to start a public health campaign. The occasion was the conference at which Keith and I met. I attended a plenary session at which they talked about a disease which was killing gay men in America and a virus which became known as HIV but was then known by the name of HTLV.
I also heard the message of safer sex for the first time. Keith declared this to be politically unacceptable.
I met Andy at a dinner party at Keith's and our lives interweaved personally and professionally for many years. We became friends though never lovers. We shared a passion for opera and enjoyed a good bitching session together.
In the late 80s, he had a series of chest infections culminating in one very bad case of pleurisy. Inevitably, on the phone we discussed HIV infection and he determined not to be tested on the grounds that, whatever the information he gained, it wouldn't change the way he lived his life so he might as well continue without until such time as a change of situation might warrant a re-think. I remember saying something fatuous like "Even gay men who are antibody negative do catch pleurisy."
In March 1989, he went to Warsaw to attend a Ring Cycle there and visited Auschwitz. In the museum, he was moved to find that one of the uniforms on display had a pink triangle attached. It was spattered with blood.
Just before the journey home, he became seriously ill and, on returning to England, was raced into hospital and diagnosed as having PCP. He lived the rest of his life with great fortitude and spirit.
He came to visit Richard and I in November 1990 and they struck up an immediate rapport. As Richard and I were finally disentangling ourselves, Richard suddenly announced that he was giving up his job and moving to London to be nearer to Andy. It was an empty gesture but one that caused a serious rift between myself and Andy.
When we did meet up again, Andy's side of the story was completely different from Richard's and he was appalled by what Richard had said. The rift was healed but we never regained our former familiarity. I heard about his final illness and death only after it had happened and was unable to attend the funeral. Richard did attend. I am angry with myself for not supporting a friend and bitter with Richard for coming between us.
I met Rodney socially and quickly discovered that he shared three things in common with Craig; they had gone to the same school (Rodney was two years younger), they were both architects and the third is mine to know. We became casual friends. His great speciality was giving head - and I mean great. He used to leave me flapping about on the bed like a fish out of water.
Then, one day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from him with the news that he was positive. We kept in contact over the years despite a change of job and address from him and then, when I moved house and job, we lost contact. I don't know if he's still alive or not.
Michael was a high powered executive with an international trading company who picked me up in a dive of a bar in Liverpool one night and who took me through my one night of sado-masochistic sex. During that night, I found out interesting things to do with silk ties, ice cubes and candle wax, how a scratch or a bite delivered at the right moment could cause more pleasure than pain and that giving someone a golden shower was, for me, one of the least erotic experiences of my life. He seemed entirely satisfied by the experience and encouraged me to be auctioned at a slave market. We never kept in touch.
Brian was very special - an English postgraduate, an excellent cook, witty, charming, a generous companion in bed. We sort of picked each other up at a social gathering and had a pleasing affair over the Spring and Summer months. It ambled along and wasn't really going anywhere.
One night, in my bed, Brian said that he wanted the affair to end and to be just friends. Unwillingly, I demurred. The following morning, I tried to instigate sex but Brian didn't want it. I persisted and sex was had. Afterwards, Brian scampered round the room dressing and collecting his possessions, not looking at me. I lay there pleasantly smug over what I thought was a mischievous piece of seduction.
Eventually, I caught his eye and saw there the same hurt and pain I had felt myself in Manchester some three years earlier. To this day, I consider it to be the most shameful thing I have ever done. I, who felt he had been date raped, had done exactly the same thing to someone I knew and professed to care for.
We did become friends, even went on holiday together the following year and eventually lost contact after he moved away to take up a job elsewhere.
One of the great nights of sex of my life. Totally unexpected. He was absolutely gorgeous with one of those lightly muscled, perfectly sculptured bodies. And he just loved being fucked. The second time we met, he asked for money and that was that. He was outraged that I hadn't asked Michael for money.
A great unrequited love of undeniable charm. He saw me as an older man offering comfort and support. I wish he hadn't. He was into younger men and particularly Martin. He accepted counsel and comfort throughout the ups and downs of their relationship and after it ended, messily, he trashed around with a series of teenagers who were mostly out for what they could get from him. He seemed to be out to be done to mainly as he did to his older friends.
Christmas 89 passed with no communication or salutation from him. A number of us were puzzled. He attempted to charm his way out of it by telling us he'd run out of time and the classic "Well, you know what I'm like." By that time we did and a lot of his former friends, myself included, drifted away.
and more.
Nigel fell in love with me and I was his first love. He was sweet, elegant, slightly fey, studiously knowledgeable about classical music and very, very innocent. I was flattered by the attention and endeared by the rapture of the newness of it all for him. Autumn passed into winter and Christmas came and went. The day before New Year, I rang into work sick from his bed and enjoyed illicit nookie. It was all delightful.
But I knew in my heart of hearts that it wasn't going to last. The mismatch in our temperaments, our range of experience, our needs, our ages was too great. By Valentine's Day, I knew that I should either have to end it or the arguments would start and I knew that Nigel hadn't got the emotional reserves to stand up for himself and to stand up to me. So, I broke his heart, quite knowingly, because the alternative would have been worse. I think I did the best thing but there was no right way to do it.
He never stopped loving me and we remained friends and he sometimes turned to me when later relationships hit problems. When I moved in to live with Richard in the autumn of 1990, he and his partner moved into my house as lodgers. And when Richard and I blew apart and I moved back to my house dramatically on New Year's Eve, he got caught up in the emotional whirlwind and, equally dramatically, decamped from my house with his partner on New Year's Day. So, I ended up destroying his happiness twice.
His partner never forgave me. Nigel and I achieved a sort of reconciliation one afternoon in 1992 over coffee but, by that time, we moved in completely different circles and have never seen each other again.
Richard and I knew about each other long before we ever set eyes on each other. On 30 December 1987, I was sitting in a bar talking with some people I knew when he walked in, I beckoned him over and so it began.
From the first, it was an extraordinary relationship. We rowed, we fought, we challenged each other but we struck sparks like I've never experienced before or since. We were everywhere, on holiday, partying, clubbing, attending any major event that had to be attended, being involved in political campaigns. The energy we generated together was breath-taking.
It was everything I'd ever wanted. Someone to fill me with fire, send me forth to achieve great deeds and be there to console, comfort and support me. Someone who was fierce in their individuality and as involved in their own personal projects as in our joint endeavours. Richard was a damaged person, bad early experiences after his father died, and that vulnerability underlying the passion made him all the more desirable. We were like fucking princes and we were glorious.
By the autumn, we discussed having a more open relationship. The ground rules were agreed. Three days later, Richard slept with someone else and I exploded. The deal was off, then on again, then off and finally on. Christmas came and went. This was already one of the longest relationships I'd ever held down.
1989 brought increasing stresses and strains. The arguments were more frequent and oft times fuelled by alcohol. Unhelpful and hurtful words were said and taken to heart. Chris appeared on the scene and I fell in love with him as well as Richard. The struggles were intense. However, the energies persisted. I organised a major national conference at this time with Richard's help.
There was continuing sexual experimentation and we enjoyed a number of threesomes - most notably with Roger, a former partner of David, and Ian, who was one of Richard's long term extra-curricula activities. In fact, I rather liked Ian and he seemed comfortable about the set-up.
We went to Glyndebourne with Alan and Jeremy during the summer and then in the early autumn, Richard's inner demons and the strains of our relationship got the better of him and he had, I believe, a nervous breakdown. He was off work for nearly four months and I went into Florence Nightingale mode coupled with occasional bouts of being Torquemada. Too proud to admit the limitations of my own abilities, I chased and harried him into his own personal hell insisting that he should go into counselling to sort out his damaged past.
November brought my trip to Köln and Richard's entry into psychotherapy. Both were catalysts for strife. When I flew out from Manchester Airport, Richard promised to meet me on my return, to have sorted my house out, to have purchased some food and generally to be available to pamper me.
When I returned, I got off the plane full of love to find myself entering the Arrivals Hall to be greeted by a sea of faces none of which belonged to Richard. He was half an hour late. He also announced that he was booked in for the first of his counselling sessions. He had no time to pamper me, had been nowhere near my house and there was no food in preparation. He dropped me off and sped away.
I went straight round to a friend's house and sobbed my heart out, blubbing time after time "But he said he'd take care of me, he said he'd take care of me". Richard hurt me many times previous to that and many times afterwards but that was the one of the few times that he made a lesion on my soul. I'd wanted for years someone to protect me and look after me. I'd thought that Richard was my safety net. And I'd closed my eyes and thrown myself into the void only to be dashed to the ground. I never allowed him to hurt me in that way again and at some level I never trusted him again either.
By mid-December, Richard was feeling much better but then he suddenly started disappearing for odd nights here and there. I thought nothing of it at first but then he told me he had been seeing someone else in Oldham, regularly. I told him he was going to have to make a choice, convinced that he would choose me. He didn't. I pleaded and I begged as I've pleaded and begged for nothing else in my life but he was adamant. He wished for a full break with me to take up with his new man.
It was sunset when I was delivered back to my house still sobbing so that he could travel to Oldham. I sat through the rest of the evening in shock. Then, at one in the morning, the phone rang. I picked it up and a small voice said "I think I've made a terrible mistake." I should have put the phone down immediately but all I wanted was to have him back.
We reconciled over the Christmas period and in the New Year, out of a small suggestion I made that we should mark this new start in some way, we held and event of which I am still proud. At Alan and Jeremy's, house in front of friends such as Colin, Roland, Gill and Robert, witnessed also by my parents and Richard's mother, Richard and I exchanged rings and made a series of affirmations about our future conduct and commitment to each other.
Six weeks later, after a blazing row, Richard rang Jeremy in tears and told him that he thought he'd made a terrible mistake. Jeremy's response was "I think that it's a bit too late for that now." We started counselling with Relate.
Some weeks later, early in the week I went to the fridge in Richard's kitchen and opened the door. Inside the door were two bottles of vodka, one half empty. Neither was of the brand that I'd seen him buy on the Friday. And I froze as some awful truths clicked into place. Whatever else had been going on, alcohol had played a more than integral part in the proceedings for quite some time. I don't know what it was I should have done but it was not what I did. I confronted Richard openly and called him an alcoholic to his face.
Easter brought a trip to Dublin and a row and more alcohol abuse from Richard and more scenes of horror during which I was slammed up against the support pillar of a railway bridge and forcibly molested whilst being told how much I was loved. In the morning, Richard told me that he was cutting the holiday short and flying back to Liverpool that afternoon. I told him to do as he wished and then there were tears and a reconciliation during which Richard fucked me. And that was the last occasion on which I have had unsafe sex.
By the summer, the issue had become whether or not I should move in to live with Richard. I hesitated. There were arguments. I moved in. Three weeks later Richard told me to get out. I went back to my house. More arguments. I moved back in. And we continued to tear each other to pieces. Neither prepared to let go. Both loving the other to distraction. No trust. All suspicion. And fear, all the time, fear of when the next explosion from either person would come.
Intimacy was destroyed but Richard wanted sex as proof of our enduring relationship. So, I pretended and, in his bed in his house, I let him have his way with me because it was just one more fight I couldn't have. And I used all of the experience I had gained over the previous decade to make it as good as possible for him so that it would be over as quickly as possible for me. And night after night, he failed to recognise that what for him was an act of love was for me an act of abuse. Though, can I blame him for not seeing through the disguise when the betrayal was so complete and the deception so accomplished?
The end came suddenly and over something quite trivial. Richard had promised to have a meal ready for when I arrived home from a workplace Christmas party. When I arrived, there was an answer machine message to tell me that he had met some people and had gone for a drink and would see me later. Some small last thread of will that compelled me to endure snapped. It was just one last time that he'd promised to be there for me and had let me down. Three days before Christmas, I walked out. A saner person would not have borne the abuse that we had both meted out to each other beyond the first week.
We trashed Christmas for ourselves, for our families (they were due to come to our house for Christmas dinner) and for many friends around us and, though it was finished, the death throws continued for some months yet. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally, finally over.
Why did I stay? Out of love, yes. Because I had made a commitment, that too. But more and more out of pure, bloody stubbornness not to give in.
He craved the security, stability and fidelity that I promised. I craved the energy, glamour and danger that he promised. Neither of us would forfeit our dreams despite the bad behaviour of the other. We damn near ate each other alive and took chunks out of a few innocent bystanders as well. For three years, we provided the best soap opera in town.
When I had a financial crisis after I moved into Egerton Street, I advertised for a lodger and Andy turned up. He was a lovely lad but quite heterosexual. We had lots of good times together and many long chats in the kitchen.
Eventually, he confessed to a couple of incidents but, whilst he was a lodger, we maintained a strictly hands-off policy. Then, he moved out and, a couple of months later, we celebrated his birthday with Ruth in a manner that would lead one to believe that he's more bi than he likes to admit.
At the time that I met Chris, Richard and I had agreed on an open relationship. In Richard's case, this meant that the relationship was not so much open as gaping. I hadn't slept with anyone else. Just didn't want to. Then Richard was away for a weekend and I met this kindred spirit and felt an immediate rapport. We didn't sleep together immediately but, when we did, there was an instant communion between us.
I told Richard all about it, thinking he would be pleased. He had, after all, been encouraging me to take advantage of our agreement. He threw a complete dizzy fit. The argument went something like.
"You sleep with loads of other people".
"Yes, but not in Liverpool and not when you're around. You're just rubbing my face
in it".
"But I've only slept with the one person and he's really nice".
"Precisely, I have one-off sex with people I never see again".
"Only because you're always so drunk".
"Can you imagine how it makes me feel when I see you sleeping with the same
person time and time again and obviously really care for them?"
"Can you imagine how it makes me feel when every time I turn my back you're off
sleeping with loads of other people".
"Yes, but not in Liverpool and not when you're around..."
Ad nauseam.
But I persisted. Chris even shared a bed with Richard and I. On that occasion, I fucked Chris. It's the only time I have. Richard watched and witnessed a qualitatively different sexual encounter to those between he and I. He went apeshit.
Chris went back to Köln. In the May, he came to my 35th birthday party. Richard packed us off back to my house to sleep together which is exactly what we did - much intimacy but no sex. Richard copped off with and shagged someone else. I visited Chris in Köln that November with painful consequences.
New Year, Chris and others from Köln came to visit which passed pleasantly. Following April, Chris came to visit on his own. I fell ill and went to bed. Richard and Chris went off to see Batman and then back to his place where he had sex with Chris. Later, Chris described the experience to me as a rape. In the summer, Richard and I went to Köln but, from there on in, Chris detested Richard.
By the time I saw him again in Köln in April 1991, Richard and I had finally split and Chris had met Petr, his partner. We talked long and hard about everything that had passed. He told me of the sex he had had with Richard and how, whilst being desperately worried for me as a result, felt he had to let me make my own decisions. At the time, this fed my belief that I was the righteous injured party. But I was far more complicit than I really wanted to admit then.
If the circumstances had been different initially, who knows? I might have struck out and headed for Köln to be with Chris but I stuck with Richard rather than throwing in my lot with Chris. I even forgave him falling asleep one night during our love-making.
We keep in touch by e-mail and have seen each other a couple of times since. It's a long term, long-standing relationship that has survived much punishment.
John and I never had an affair, I suspect Richard may have but he was Roland's partner. Their relationship mirrored mine and Richard's in its ups and downs. But for all Richard's wildness and wilfulness, he never had John's sense of desperation or self-destruction.
Eventually, the patchings could not heal the situation. Shortly after I returned from holiday in Egypt, Roland and I sat having a drink in a pub with my counselling him that the two of them could not continue as they were doing. Roland was reserved but used one of his favourite phrases of that time that he would wait and give John "enough rope to hang himself". He left to keep a pre-arranged appointment with John and 30 minutes later I received a phone call from Roland. He had arrived at John's shared house to find the front door unlocked. When he entered, he discovered John hanging in the hallway. He was already dead.
I arrived by taxi 15 minutes later just after the police. As far as possible, I stood by Roland over the next few weeks, helped him visit the funeral parlour, attend the funeral and the wake. He remained icy calm throughout. Only when I watched him kiss John's corpse did I see emotion and I couldn't understand then how anyone could kiss a dead person.
No-one really knows why John killed himself. He was a damaged person in great pain. Circumstantial evidence, however, points to his having knowledge which he felt he could not share and possibly could not live with.
During this period of time, working in Liverpool, I became friendly with a number of students. I recognise that there was a certain fashionable kudos in being able to say that you were friends with a gay man but a number of acquaintanceships and even friendships sprang up. Some even became one (or more) time bed-partners. All were, predominantly, heterosexual. And it wasn't the most obvious people who ended up in bed with me. It's OK guys, if you're reading, this it isn't going to be a kiss and tell session. However, here's a few of the lines I used. Some were even successful, some of the time.
Ruth was the last woman to date with whom I've had an affair. It began with a threesome involving her and Andy who was celebrating his birthday. We drifted in and out of bed together in a friendly way through most of the Summer till we went our separate ways and I met
After Richard and I finished, I took my time getting things sorted. I visited Köln, went on a Gay Men's Yoga Week, tended to my house. I told myself that the last thing that I needed at this time was a permanent relationship and was more than content with the amiable succession of encounters I was enjoying. Then in the summer, I heard abut a gay theatre project that was to create a production of the Gay Sweatshop play As Time Goes By. I joined up and met Keith. We became the production romance.
I was determined to take things slowly and not to rush in. By October, Keith, newly graduated, had a job and was talking of moving flat. We took a deep breath and he moved in with me. And it was great. With his design skills, he transformed my living space in to our living space simply by adding a few things and moving some others around. It wouldn't be true to say that everything was rosy but after the previous four years it was an oasis of blessed calm and peace.
By the following Spring his current work contract was coming to an end, so he started casting round for other work and landed a job - in Bristol. I cursed my luck but put a brave face on events and tried to encourage him to go for the main chance. Eventually, I cracked and there were tears and I told him that I didn't want him to go and he asked why I hadn't tried to stop him and I said that I didn't feel that I had the right.
So, he went to Bristol and we made no promises other than the promise to take it easy and see how things went. In the summer, we holidayed in Spain, and had a delightful time together including one amazing fuck one evening on the second floor balcony of our apartment with both of us stifling our increasingly noisy passion for fear of alerting the neighbours.
We were obviously not going to split up. We travelled to Berlin in the November and had another fabulous holiday together.
1993 was more fraught as the problems of long-distance relationships overtook us. But we were sensible. I was looking to change job and move to London. We agreed that when it happened, Keith would join me as soon as possible. In September, I moved and, first off, went to stay with Colin whilst I sold my house in Liverpool. That happened in November about the same time that Keith went on holiday with another friend to Madrid.
There was a distinct change when he returned. I thought that it was just to do with the frustrations of being apart but I was wrong. In Madrid, travelling without me, Keith had discovered that he felt a lot freer to do as he wanted and to tackle the world on his own terms rather than having to negotiate with me all the time. The security and protection of an older (twelve and a half years older), more experienced and more worldly-wise man which had been so attractive two years earlier was now suffocating him.
For two more months he struggled with the instinct to call a halt and the knowledge that he had made promises and commitments to me. Then, I started house hunting for the two of us in earnest and he knew that he had to say something immediately. One Sunday morning, I visited the house I now live in and fell in love with it and hoped that Keith would like it too. In the afternoon, I travelled to Paddington to collect him from Bristol, wanting to whisk him away and show him the house. Instead, he insisted on going to Colin's where he sat me down and unburdened himself. I felt that a dagger had been plunged in my heart.
I tried arguing but he was sensible and knew his own mind.
Thereafter, things were difficult between us but it's been getting better recently. In autumn 1995, he moved to London to study theatre design at Central School of Speech and Drama and moved in to a room in Colin's house. Over the succeeding months, we did a lot together and I became aware again of how fond I was of him. I still missed the cheesecakes, the stir-fries and watching videos in bed together. I never wanted it to end. For a while, I vacillated about trying to get back together but, fortunately, nothing happened. He's very much established as his own man now.
Yes, if you check the dates, this means that I cheated on Keith. I can't say I'm sorry about it. It was at a NALGO Lesbian and Gay Conference in Glasgow and we had the most stupendous 24 hours of sex, interrupted only by meals, my having to joint-present a seminar and the conference disco. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. We talked twice on the phone afterwards.
What to say about Stuart? I met him through Roland at Keith's leaving of Liverpool party. Whilst Keith was in Bristol, we had a sort of fling that rocked the relationship. I felt at the time that I might have sought a relationship with him had the circumstances been different. But we remained friends, kept in touch and occasionally slept together and even more occasionally had sex. As I began writing this document in the summer of 1995, Stuart came to visit and made all sorts of intimations about coming to live with me. I resisted and things got tense. Then after a series of miscommunications, he stormed out of my house and claimed that I had been abusing him. Roland was very level headed about it and said that he'd seen Stuart behave in similarly explosive fashion when he felt trapped and wanted a reason to blame the rest of the world for his unhappinesses. But it was hell at the time.
This was not the longest relationship in the record books but it's the most intense I've experienced so far, pace Richard.
David and I met at a dinner party at Colin's and fell in love immediately. Ten days later he came to my house for a meal and stayed the night. On the Monday morning, I rang into work sick so we could have more time together. Eventually, we got out of bed and went for a walk in Epping Forrest.
Things got better from there. OK, we had rows and David was overly possessive but we started talking about futures and it had been a blissful start to what was promising to be a long, long relationship.
Sex between us was good. I don't usually enjoy being fucked. It's not just that I've had some bad experiences, it's more that it's never been high on my list of preferences. With David, it was different. As he lay there, I would sit astride him, impaled, my hands on his shoulders and his lubricated hands gripping my cock. Then, I would fuck into those strong hands while he moved inside me. And, when I came, it was like some fierce energy being ripped out of me, making me howl with abandon. They were among the most sweet and complete acts of love-making in my life.
And I thought "I can't be this lucky. These sorts of things don't happen to me." I had thought I was making a commitment for life to Richard and that blew apart. I'd been overjoyed to find Keith but that hadn't worked out. And now this.
Then, signs of sickness started showing up. I feared to guess what was happening and David initially denied he was positive. Then, he got too ill to cover up, came clean about his HIV status and, shortly after, was rushed into hospital. It was only mid-November.
We had Christmas together at my house but, that aside, he was either in hospital or incapacitated in his own bed thereafter. Lymphomas, specifically a cerebral lymphoma, got him. He basically faded away over a period of four months. I doubt if he weighed more than four/five stones at the end.
I wished him dead. No, I wished him to be at peace and released from suffering. If I could have a wish now, it would be to have him back and well.
In our final conversation together on the evening of Thursday 14 April, we both offered each other the opportunity to terminate the relationship and both chose to affirm the contract to the end. On Good Friday, he lost consciousness and his sister and I sat vigil for the remainder of the Easter weekend.
David died at 06.05am on the morning of Tuesday 18 April. I was there when he died. I awoke and was putting on my clothes knowing already that moment had come as the nurse came up the stairs to alert me that his breathing had changed.
The house was a zoo thereafter but Colin was there to support me. After David had been laid out and before the undertakers came, I had some time with him to tell him how much I loved him, missed him, was angry with him. And then I kissed his cold, waxy, lifeless forehead. And as I think back, I can now understand how Roland could kiss John's corpse in the undertaker's those few years before.
And the funeral was a zoo as well but Colin and Roland and Gill were there to support me.
Why did I stay with David to the end? I could have gotten out. After all, he'd lied to me, put my life at risk. Out of love, yes, most certainly. Because I had made a commitment, yes, that too. But equally because I wanted to and because I couldn't abandon him. I've done a number of things in my life of which I am ashamed. On the other hand, I think that I can be proud of what I gave to David.
James and I first met during the summer of 1994 when he was working as a summer student in my place of work and I was still smarting from the recent demise of my relationship with Keith.
And yes, I dished him mildly, believing him to be yet another moderately flirty hettie lad. Honest! The gaydar simply did not work on that occasion. And he had a girlfriend named Natalie.
We kept in touch by e-mail when he went off to University and I visited him in February 1995 as part of a quick tour round England that I made to take a break from looking after David. That summer he was back at my workplace again. So, I invited him out to my place for a meal. Which is when he came out to me and told me about various bits of shit that had been happening to him.
Generally, it takes a lot to catch me off guard but I was rocked back on my heels for a while. I knew I was an emotional disaster area after David's death. Suddenly, instead of being safe, James became available (my fantasy, you understand - nothing to do with anything James had said or done). And the moment I felt desire for another, all the ache and loneliness of my losing David broke over me once more like a crushing wave.
Still, I think managed not to let all that intrude inappropriately into James's life. We went out for a few drinks together, went to theatre, chatted incessantly over e-mail. He's good company and mature beyond his years. It left a distinct gap in my life when he went back to College.
Oh, and for the record, we've never had sex. We've shared a bed and I've given him a complete body massage (another of my talents) but that's as far as it's gone. Much as I might like to imagine that I could show him a good time, it would be inappropriate and I've messed up enough friendships through sex already without trashing this one as well.
I first met Rod over the Internet. He lives with his partner Dale in Seattle. We all met up at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1994 and then they came to stay with me in London. They, David and I had one of the best of days in Cambridge. I still cherish the photographs they sent me of that day and, as of Yuletide 1995, I also have a video of that occasion which they sent to me. We still kept in touch over the Internet.
They were great talking to me through David's illness and continued their support after his death. I visited them at Easter 1996 and I marked the first anniversary of David's death in San Franciso by attending a performance of Beach Blanket Babylon with them. Call me perverse but I can't think of a better memorial.
I'd known Andy for some while, whilst he was a student in Liverpool, but we'd never gotten it together. Then, he came down to London for a job interview and we had a night a mutual pleasure including one of those lovely "Jesus, that's gorgeous. No-one's ever done that to me before" moments. Yes, I know that David was sick and dying at the time. And, no, I never told him about it. But it was exactly what I needed at that moment in time.
Andy moved in as a temporary lodger over the summer whilst he was sorting out accommodation for himself. He remained resolutely in the spare bedroom before moving out and on.
During autumn 1995, I started to put a toe back into the water of life and began meeting people again.
So, as of the Festive Season 1995, when I concluded this narrative, there was no one special person in my life and, though I continued to get bouts of loneliness, on the whole, things were OK.
So, there it is. Nearly 30 years of living and loving.
As I read through the text now, in the early part of 1996, I wonder how in the world anyone could know me and like me? The patterns of deceit and betrayal and arrogance march with steadfast regularity across the landscape of my life.
I'd like to think that I've been more sinned against than sinning but the weight of evidence here tells me that the balance is no more than 50/50, if I'm being generous with myself.
And yet. And yet.
I know that, contrary to much of what's here, I am, in my way, a kind and gentle and loving and generous and patient and loyal man. Not my words but the words of people around me. And some of those people have now been around for 15, 20 years. So, unless they are complete fools or under a comprehensive, collective delusion, I have to acknowledge that there must be something in me that is worth sticking by.
Maybe, it's simply that I'm a better friend than I am a partner. Maybe I ask too much of any one person in a relationship. Maybe I make inappropriate choices. Maybe the qualities in a person that attract me are not the qualities I can live with. Who knows?
I've got the rest of my life to find out. And you can find out how I'm doing currently in my Electronic Journals.
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