So Me (3 page)

In truth I don’t recall much about our month together in Ireland. I’m amazed it was a month, because in fact the only things I can remember are that he ate everything, annoyed me by criticising the way I laid a table and laughed till I thought he might vomit at
The Benny Hill Show
.

But somehow a month passed and it was time for the return visit to France. We went back to the airport (‘Weetabix, that’s all I could get down him the whole month’, ‘She went missing for two nights with some fella from Cork city. We had the guards out’). My mother looked very smug as she shepherded St Jules towards the departure gate. My dad gave me a wad of francs, and Mum kissed me and said, ‘Eat everything you’re given.’ I nodded grimly. This was a question of national and family pride. I would be swallowing pig gristle for the Walkers and for Ireland.

I decided that I would keep a diary of my first trip abroad. Now, I can’t be certain but I’ve a funny feeling I might have been reading a little too much Jane Austen before I left. Remember I was seventeen years old and had never been out of Ireland before:

Day One
.

We arrived in Lourdes following the plane journey during which I discovered I enjoy flying. Lourdes proved to me once again that Roman Catholicism must be the
least civilised religion in the world. Also, surprisingly, it is falling down. It’s quite common to see the Virgin’s nose or left big toe missing where lumps of plaster have fallen from the wall. But Lourdes did have one advantage, I met someone who could speak English; an arts student from Hong Kong. Somehow it wasn’t quite the same as having a chat
.

All of this on Day One!!! I pray this pretentious prig unleashed himself only on the page and that I wasn’t quite so bad in reality – surely my mother brought me up better than that. Speaking of my mother, here’s another snippet from the diary that she might have written herself.

The house is obviously decorated with taste, but it’s not mine. Enough said, suffice to say the stairs don’t have a handrail
.

And in answer to your question, no, I have no idea what I was talking about either.

The diary documents the month fairly faithfully. In it I describe the heat, moan about the food, and report endless games of ping-pong. There is the odd joke that has stood the test of time, such as:

But now lunch is calling. They might have at least knocked the thing unconscious before we ate it
.

There are also frightening violent outbursts about Jules’s parents, who I in fact recall very fondly:

Madame, hang on to your pink bri-nylon dressing gown ’cos you’re driving me up the wall! Madame has packed for me and taken charge of my money and passport, but still no word about what she intends to do as regards compensation for the trousers she wrecked. God bless her little heart, may it break in two and rot behind her knees. Tra La!

The father didn’t escape my wrath either:

Jules cooked lunch and there was no noticeable change, except that there was no cheese for a second time and I was able to avoid it in the salad. This afternoon I wrote a few letters because the father more or less asked me to, and as you know I’d do anything to please the dear man. Greasy old pig, may he rot in hell!

It was only a couple of days before the end of the trip that things took an unexpected twist. The following entries are exactly as written. Imagine if Adrian Mole had been gay.

August 28th. Night
.

I’m faced with a difficult decision; whether to keep this a glib record of my little days, or to give an honest account of what is actually happening. I will choose the latter
.

I’m here nervous, tense and terrified. How to write about this I find difficult to know, I’ll just start and hope it sounds the way it’s meant to
.

This afternoon, changing for windsurfing, Jules stripped completely and when I took no notice, he
pointed at his erection and said, ‘It is starting.’ I gave my usual noncommittal little laugh, but then with the use of gestures and words he asked me if I masturbated and told me every day in school they did it in a group. He virtually asked me to go to the toilet with him. I was surprised by how much this revelation affected me. I suppose it was just the fact of it being clean, proper, smiling Jules. I felt physically sick and my mouth went dry. I just kept asking myself why, why he had to go and do this now the holiday was nearly over? We couldn’t be the same again. But it was over now. I prayed we’d have no more
.

When we got back to the house I’d recovered a little. I was going to take a shower. Jules went into the loo. I went into the bathroom, but no towel, so I was just about to come out to ask Jules where I could get one, when he called me. I opened the door and there was Jules standing naked on the landing, masturbating
.

‘
Comme ça,’he said smiling
.

‘
Je sais, je sais
.’

‘
You do it?
’

‘
Now?
’

‘
Yes, in the shower
.’

He walked towards me masturbating all the time. I shut the door and waited until I heard him go into his room. I felt like crying. It was the most blatant attempt at homosexual seduction I’ve ever encountered. But why did he do it now? Can it be we are going to have a little group session while camping in Luchon? I pray not. Will he try again in the morning? It is an awful sort of fear because I can’t trust myself.

I’m quietly impressed that I had the insight and the nerve to write that last sentence. Of course I was shocked and upset by everything, but part of me was also thrilled. The following day the saga continued:

August 29th. Afternoon
.

I survived the morning. During the night I thought of a good way to describe this time; a harrowing experience. In a way it’s absolutely hilarious. I imagine him lurking naked behind every corner. Yesterday at the clubhouse when he started to show and tell, all I did was ask him what it was called in French!

Xavier [a friend of Jules’] was here this morning and we put up the tent we have for Luchon. It’s a two-man tent; me and Jules! Oh God, what will I do? There isn’t room to turn in the damn thing
.

This afternoon, tennis – a newspaper took our picture as I stumbled around the court – and then table tennis at the ‘Club de Voile’. Things were fine, all was forgotten. When we got back I had my shower without incident. When Jules came into my room he was fairly conspicuous but he did have a towel thrown around him. I was just starting to make up a poem about how discretion was back in style, when I heard a sort of shout. He can’t have got dressed by now, I thought, and I was right. He pranced in naked and at his physical peak. He had with him something along the lines of Playboy
.

‘
Have you a magazine like that?
’

‘
Yes,’ I lied. It isn’t wise to be naïve. I hear that’s what they want.

‘
At your house?
’

‘
Yes. What’s the title of yours?
’

He showed me and then gaily pranced out again, no doubt scattering scented rose petals all around as he went. I may be flippant, but in reality I do feel sick all the time. It’s totally changed my attitude to Jules and to everyone we meet
.

Jules and I – how obscene that sounds – dined with Grandmère and Grandpère. Very nice, but I felt a bit tipsy all evening after all the Ricard and wine. We packed the tent and stuff into the car and then played a bit of ping-pong and now I lie here, for the second night, terrified
.

Doors that were shut

Now open sway
,

And the happy blue summer

Is now sweaty and grey
.

You know things are serious when the poetry starts, and then the inevitable finally happened.

August 31st. Night
.

It is my last night in France and words cannot express how much I’m looking forward to being able to talk English and to the familiar food. I find in the following piece there is no way I can make myself the hero, for I know that I’ve done wrong. Oh what the hell am I talking about? This is beginning to sound like ‘Song of Bernadette’. So what I couldn’t hold out in a tent? So I pulled a guy off with my mouth? So I felt like an
infatuated first year? I felt no guilt immediately after, and none now, though a little in between. I don’t care, it was enjoyable and I did get my cheap thrills
.

Jules wastes no time. I hardly got out of the room in time after collecting a few odds and ends for the morning and already he was on the bed rattling away and I’ve just found I’ve forgotten my watch – I daren’t go back
.

A couple of days later I sat at the desk in my bedroom back in Bandon. At the other end of the house I could hear my mother clinking plates and rattling pans as she put them on the stove. My father was watching the news.

September 2nd. Night
.

I have arrived home safely and indeed have already survived an entire day of school. It was wonderful to see Mum and Dad again and see all the old familiar things again. This is the end of my account, no matter what happens after this. I find I have ended up so that I find it impossible to be glib and flippant about Jules any longer. Images of he and I and he alone haunt me. They chase me about in my head and I must jump from one idea to the next to avoid them. I feel decidedly odd, depressed and tensed up
.

You the reader must find a tremendous difference between the start and the finish of this, but what could I do? I couldn’t predict what would happen
.

The bastard, he planned it all. I saw him pack the hankies to go to Luchon and I wondered why so many? Then he handed me one in the tent, so that when we
ejaculated we could mop up. He’s packed one for me. He’s known all along, the cold calculating bastard
.

Earlier I made too light of that night in the tent. It was such a long night. Afterwards I cried for hours without a sob, just a static hot pain in my eyes and on my face
.

You see, I’m no honest writer, I make light so that it reads jolly. It wasn’t, it was a gross and appalling affair. I cry with the shame of an upbringing as I recall all this to the page, but what could I do?

Oh dear! A young boy finishes his diary entry, looks out at the damp Irish fields and writes a poem about weeds.

Things seemed so momentous to me at the time. I had still to learn Rose’s mantra about learning to get over things. I had lived my life through television and books and so naturally I was convinced that what had happened between Jules and myself had to end in some huge drama. Nothing good was supposed to happen to the homosexual in the story. I really don’t think I had any true moral dilemma about fumbling around with Jules, I just wanted my own personal story to have a happy ending.

So many things strike me as I read this old diary, but the main thing is that, given how I feel now, and if that was how I felt then, what a very long book this is going be.

2

More French Oral

U
NIVERSITY! AND AT LAST I
felt like my real life, the one I was supposed to be leading, was about to start. The whole experience with Jules, although completely adolescent and harmless, had upset me and probably made me feel even more distant from those around me. A secret can do that.

On top of that there had been the pressure of our leaving certificate (A levels). I really shouldn’t have been going to university at all; God knows my exam results hadn’t suggested that I should be. My last year at school had been fairly miserable. I hadn’t coped very well. Whenever I’d tried to study I’d just drifted off into panic-filled daydreams about the future. These exams were supposed to mark the start of your adult life, but after France I had the spectre of being gay hanging over me in a much more tangible way than it had before. Now I didn’t just have to worry about what I was going to do in terms of a career, I had to consider the possibility that I would never push my kids on a swing in the park or kiss a wife as I ran out the door late for work.

What I really wanted to be was an actor, but sitting in rural Ireland where the only autograph I had collected belonged to a visiting Danish gymnast, that idea seemed too far-fetched even for daydreams. I tried to be sensible and mature. I tried
to imagine what the future really did hold for me. I would drive a car and work in an office. I was busy. I was drinking cups of coffee on the go. What was I? I was . . . a journalist! I applied to do a course in journalism in Dublin. They declined. OK. What would I do? I would drive a car and work in an office. My mother suggested I try the bank. My father agreed. So keen were my parents on this sensible career path that a special outfit was purchased for the event. Think brown, think check, think again. Complete with sports jacket and tie I really did look like a banker, but sadly they too turned me down. What would I do? What all the other middle-class losers did – an arts degree.

Having done too badly in my exams to get a grant, my parents had to pay for my tuition. Although never really poor, my father had worked hard and my mother had managed things down to the wire to get whatever money they had. This was going to be a huge expense for them. I suppose that one of the reasons they were willing to give up their hard-earned money was that they were proud: I would be the first person in our family to go to university. My sister had gone the bank route, not enjoyed it very much and so quickly got herself promoted to farmer’s wife. I didn’t have that option and so I found myself taking the family savings off to University College, Cork.

I loved university. I shared a flat with a boy from school called Billy Forrester. The only memorable thing about the flat was that the living room was wallpapered with gift-wrapping paper, and this was long before that designing pony Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen had shat through a stencil and smeared it on people’s walls. We were giddy with independence and cheap lager. For the first time in my life I found
myself amongst people I could relate to. They had seen films apart from James Bond, they read books because they wanted to, they gossiped, they preferred coffee to tea – in lots of ways all it really meant was that they were urban, but this was my first exposure to them, and I was dazzled by them.