Authors: Graham Norton
Soon it was time for me to visit Ashley in Australia. Now, I do like Australia. It is a very nice place; however, I don’t think anyone could argue that it is nice enough to warrant
the journey. If Australia was where France is I’d go all the time, but it seems perverse to put yourself through airplane hell for days simply to arrive somewhere that is really just America, but with most of the population missing. Most places one visits take on the quality of the centre of the earth simply because you are there. In Australia it is very different. It feels like the edge of the earth, and even Australians who have never lived anywhere else seem to know that they are living very far from the action. Of course none of this mattered to me at the time; I was going to be reunited with the love of my life.
Ashley had promised that by the time I got there he would have moved out of his parents’ house. When I arrived I found that he had been true to his word. He had moved out of their house – into the garage. Oh, he’d done it up with long drapes of material and nice pieces of furniture that he had been keeping in storage, but no amount of interior design could save me from the embarrassment of having his father walking in on us lying in bed while he looked for a hammer or an elusive drill bit. I wasn’t out to my parents, but Ashley couldn’t have been more out to his. He seemed to think that the only way for his parents to prove that they accepted his life and truly loved him was to have them sitting at the bottom of the bed while we had sex in it.
Obviously honesty is a good thing in any relationship, but sometimes it strikes me that coming out to your parents can be quite a selfish thing to do. Kids and their sex lives are never going to be welcome topics of conversation for parents. I remember when, a couple of years after my sister was married, she announced that she was pregnant: we were delighted for her, but there was also a feeling of embarrassment
lingering in the air because we now knew for sure that she was no longer a virgin. As for my sexuality, I felt that Ashley sobbing in front of my visiting parents as he watched Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
and gasping, ‘Her dress . . . her dress is so beautiful,’ was as close to coming out as I wanted to get.
Ashley’s parents, Mr and Mrs Eccles, were very sweet and couldn’t have made me feel more at home. True, I was on a major charm offensive, and made sure to help with chores, drink ‘stubbies’ with the father and compliment the mother profusely on her signature dish, ‘curried sausage casserole’. By the time I left Mr Eccles was patting me on the back and saying that it was like having another son. You can imagine how annoying Ashley found that.
Although we had a few arguments (‘The fucking garage!!’) for the most part we lived well in each other’s pockets. His friends liked me and I was surprised by how much I liked them. I will mention Jenny McCarthy, just because I know she will read this and be very upset not to find her name anywhere. Overall I headed back to London believing that I would spend the rest of my life with Ashley. Had there been gay marriage at the time, I would have been popping the vol-au-vents in the oven and arranging bits of old net curtain on my head, as I had in my former life as a toddler transvestite.
The next few months were spent trying to find a one-bedroom flat for us to share when Ashley got back. Finally I found one a bit further away from Central, over in Queen’s Park. Now I just needed to pay for it. Mike Belben, my catering mentor, had moved to a small restaurant around the corner from Smiths called Melange. It was incredibly
busy, and the waiters got to keep their own tips. I said farewell to the ordered calm of Smiths and stepped into the lucrative madness that was Melange. Anyone who ate there would not have forgotten it in a hurry. It was owned by a Dutchman named Freddy who had only ever worked in one other restaurant. He had been fired from that job after one night. This might have given some people an indication that catering was perhaps not the job for them, but Freddy took this initial discouragement as some sort of challenge and opened his own place.
Melange was unique in so many ways. The interior looked like a designer had lost a bet. Holes that had been knocked in walls during a drink-induced fit of DIY enthusiasm sat gathering dust, islands of mosaics glistened hopefully, bits of scaffolding held up the bar and most of the stairs. An estate agent might have described it as looking distressed. The food was equally eccentric, but for the most part delicious. David Eyre had quit Smiths as well and had discovered somewhere along the way that he was a great chef. The customers piled in and the small band of waiters ran up and down stairs with trays and attitude. Melange became my extended dysfunctional family.
My life was back on track – Central was going well, I had settled into a group of friends, I was earning more money and I had found my love nest. That was when a letter arrived from Ashley. It lay on the mat in its innocuous airmail envelope. My heart leapt when I saw it and I couldn’t wait until I got to school to read it. I ripped it open as I walked up the hill to Finchley Road. ‘This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write.’ I slowed down. That didn’t sound good. My eyes dashed across the words, desperate not to believe what
this letter was, scrabbling to find something positive I could cling to like a drowning man reaching out for a stray plank of wood. ‘I can’t love anyone until I learn to love myself . . . Please try to understand.’ I felt myself slip under the water.
Because of the time difference I had to wait all day before I could call him. As the day dragged on, my shock and grief turned to anger. The selfish little shit! Fuck the relationship, I had signed a lease on a flat that I couldn’t possible afford all by myself. The phrase ‘learn to love myself’ kept popping back into my head. Well, it’s going to be hard to learn to love someone who behaves like a snake in the ass! That first day I didn’t tell anyone else what had happened because I felt like such an idiot. There I was, all kitted out in my wedding outfit but it turned out it was dress-down Friday.
When we finally spoke I pleaded my case. ‘This isn’t fair. You’ve got to at least do it to my face, give us one more chance.’ He in turn rambled on about some self-help group that he had been going to. Later Ashley sent me a copy of the book that explained the philosophy behind it. I flicked through its crisp pages that were full of platitudes and strange declarations like ‘we don’t choose our parents’. So what? That may or may not be true, but what is also true and far more important is that it doesn’t alter the fact that these two people are your parents and you’d better just deal with it. A long chapter on jealousy could have been edited down by any provincial junior reporter to read: ‘Don’t be.’ Ashley had written on the inside cover ‘I hope this helps you understand’. All it helped me understand was that my lovely, funny, handsome boyfriend had been turned into a howling loon by some group that was claiming to help him.
After a couple of days I managed to tell some friends, and
they were as confused as I was, just not as humiliated. It’s one thing if your boyfriend leaves you for someone else, but Ashley was declaring to the world that he would prefer to be with nobody rather than be with me. I kept calling and pleading and even got friends to call. I don’t think I ever admitted it at the time, but I can see now that my aching heart was gradually overshadowed by a real sense of panic about how I was going to pay the Queen’s Park rent. Eventually Ashley agreed he would return and give me one more chance.
When he got back, the first thing he gave me was crabs. It seemed he had been learning to love a few more people than himself. I leafed through his bible but failed to see a chapter entitled ‘Be a big lice-ridden slut’. Ashley was gone; this creature that had returned from Australia was an unbearable, sanctimonious bore. The love nest began to look like a hamster lived in it as piles of tiny pieces of paper started to appear everywhere. These were Ashley’s affirmations. Obviously I read them to see if they said anything about me. Mostly they were things like ‘I deserve to be rich’ or ‘I deserve to live in a flat with a shower’. I longed to tell him what I thought he deserved.
His madness was catching, and I found myself behaving in a really erratic way. He told me he had a date with a man he had met in the shop of the English National Opera. When Ashley wasn’t home by midnight I sat on the floor ringing central London hotels describing him. When that drew no results I started phoning major European Opera Houses trying to find out if anyone who worked there was visiting London. This is why love scares the shit out of me. No matter how many days are spent having picnics and
laughing over brandies, this awful day always arrives. Like a dirty ball of farmer’s twine, love tightens its grip around your heart until you end up sobbing on the floor of a tiny flat in North London, hardly able to breathe because your happiness has simply wandered off holding the hand of a stranger.
The couple of months I spent with Ashley at that time were by far the worst of my life. Love had turned into cruel hatred and pettiness. If he said something about the noise of a neighbour mowing a lawn, I would argue that it was a chainsaw cutting wood until one of us had to end up screaming and running out of the flat. I hated him for throwing away our old life, and he hated me because I wouldn’t let him get on with his new one.
Isn’t it surprising that whenever you think things can’t get worse, something comes along to point out the obvious – they can.
I went to a party at Central at the end of the summer term. It was a Friday night and warm. We stood around in the small garden of the school, drinking and shrieking as drama students are prone to do. By the time I left it was late and I was tired. I had just about enough money for a taxi, but I decided that I wanted some Kentucky fried chicken more, and besides, I was in no rush to get home to Ashley fast asleep under his snow-white duvet of spiritual superiority.
I trudged up Finchley Road, got my chicken and chips and munched away as I walked through a deserted Kilburn and on towards Queen’s Park. I was just walking along the north side of the park when I became aware of a boy walking quickly in the shadows on the other side of the road. He
overtook me. Then, almost running, he doubled back on himself and headed towards me. This wasn’t good. I turned to flee in the opposite direction, only to bump into another guy who had been walking behind me. I was trapped. Like in a horror film when the inevitable happens, I cried out a thin, ‘No. No, please don’t.’ Then they were hitting me over my head. I heard a strange echoing noise and assumed they were using some sort of plastic pipe. It was only later that I worked out that it was the sound of wood against the bone of my skull. They told me to give them my wallet. I did. They told me to lie on the ground. I did. They emptied my small rucksack. I noticed my chequebook fall to the ground along with the couple of credit cards I had in my wallet. They took only my cash, which was about six pounds fifty. I almost wished I had more to give them, and felt bad that I had thrown away so much on the chicken and chips. Their work seemed to be done. I was told to keep lying there face down for five minutes. I nodded my agreement as vigorously as I could with my head pressed against the ground. I heard their footsteps clattering down the road as they ran off into the night.
Silence. I lay there breathing heavily and thought about Ashley. He was going to be unbearable because I knew he would tell me that on some level I had attracted this attack, that I had wanted it to happen, or needed it, or some such pointless shit. I had been mugged. Couldn’t I just be a victim, please? Then I noticed I had a cut on my wrist. They must have had a knife that I hadn’t seen. Fuck, Ashley would go into full Angel of Mercy mode. This was going to be awful. I felt a slight chill go through me and thought I had better gather my stuff and get home, which was just around
the corner. As I got up off the cold pavement I was aware that I was peeling myself off the ground. Odd. I looked down. My chest was covered in blood. My blood. I was bleeding profusely. I pulled back my T-shirt and there, almost in the centre of my chest, was a small, dark, wet hole. I had been stabbed. I started to gather up my books and bag, but I had to lie down. I was suddenly tired, very tired. I lay my head upon the rucksack and breathed in the familiar smells of books and pencils, only now mingled with the warm stickiness of my blood. I knew that all I really wanted to do was lie there, but a tiny glimmer of panic managed to force me into standing up again. I tried to pick my bag up once more, but the books just slipped from my hands. I wasn’t in control. Even my cries for help felt like small wet towels falling out of my mouth.
I managed to drag myself up to a house that had a light in the window and rang the bell. I leant against the door, whimpering. Nothing. With a huge effort I began to stumble down the street shouting ‘Help’ over and over again, because that was what I urgently needed. A door opened and an elderly man stood there staring. I walked down the short path towards him. I lifted my blood soaked top and pointed at the hole and explained helpfully, ‘I’ve been stabbed.’ I was like one of those characters in Shakespeare who declare, ‘I’ve been run through!’ I’d always thought they said it for the audience because there were no bloody special effects in those days, but, no, you say something like that because you are so surprised to find a hole in yourself.
Without waiting to be asked I lay down on his doorstep. He said he’d phone the police. His wife arrived in a bright cloud of dressing gown and stared down at the bloody mess.
The bloody mess looked up at her and without thinking asked, ‘Can you hold my hand, please?’ For a moment I thought she hadn’t understood, but then, slightly awkwardly, she reached her cool, calm hand out to me. I held on to her hand like a baby grabs hold of a finger. It was pure instinct – I didn’t want to die alone.
From then on, I started to drift in and out of consciousness. I had always imagined that if I found myself in a situation like this I would ‘fight for my life’, but of course when you are bleeding to death, as I was, your very life force is seeping out of you and it’s very difficult to fight. You’re tired, you want to sleep, you want to let go and drift away. Somewhere there were sirens. A man’s voice floated above me. ‘We better wait for the ambulance. There’ll be hell to pay if he dies in the back of the van.’ I was a bit light-headed by then and I thought to myself without a care in the world, ‘Oh, this must be quite serious.’ Then I was in an ambulance and a man was saying, ‘All right, son, we’re just going to take your strides off.’ In my cosy fog I can remember translating ‘strides’ into ‘trousers’ and feeling rather clever.