I will, I hope

In 2007, when I was sixteen, I came out firstly to myself, secondly to my friends, and finally to my parents. Six years on, I remember the feeling this long and terrifying process gave way to pretty well. It was a concoction of emotions. Firstly, there was the relief of throwing off a mask, and the acknowledgement, in hindsight, of the exhaustion that wearing it had caused. Secondly, there was a feeling that I could do anything. If I could do what at the time was the most difficult thing I could even imagine doing, then I must have been able to achieve whatever I wanted. Thirdly, I felt I had conceded defeat to the people who called me ‘gay’ as an insult, and to my body, or my mind, or whatever it is that means I am as I am.

I had until that point maintained that I was straight because I saw being straight as better, and easier, than being gay, and having outed myself I hadn’t yet changed my mind. As I saw it, if I had only been different I could have got a proper job (gay men didn’t have jobs in my mind – don’t ask, because I don’t know), been friends with other men, laughed and joked and fantasised about man things like beer, and tits, and football (if ever I somehow taught myself to enjoy them), had children of my own, and walked in public with my hand in the hand of the person I was to love, without anyone batting an eyelid. Nobody would whisper about me from across the street as they did from the other side of the classroom. Nobody would spit at me in the street. I could have been normal, which is all I’d ever wanted. I wanted to give in to the taunts. I wanted to let them win, because it was easier.

A big part of the heterosexual fantasy I played out in my mind, as I waited for the moment that my sexuality righted itself, was marriage. I was never and am not now religious, and will not be seeking to be recognised in marriage by any religion, but I have always wanted to one day be married. To me, marriage was and is not about declaring love in the face of that big lie in the sky. Marriage is about two people declaring their love to each other, and in the faces of all of those whose opinions and blessings matter most to them. It is a statement that one person is going to spend the rest of his or her life with the other, and by telling everyone they care about that this is the case, they are proving to that person that they really mean it; look, I’m telling everyone. I love you. It’s hard to take it back if everybody knows, so you have to work for it when things aren’t so rosy. You don’t really want anybody to have to one day read that Such and Such has gone from being ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single/divorced/lonely/a failure/Bridget Jones with no Mr Darcy’, so you put the work in. At least that’s what it’s supposed to be about, I think.

Until today it was supposed to be about a man and a woman. Until recent decades it was supposed to be about a white man and a white woman or a black man and a black woman, and until Henry grew tired of Catherine (whose marriage to Henry was actually annulled, and no divorce took place, but go with me here), it was supposed to be forever. Marriage, like most things, changes. I believe that change is positive. Change is synonymous with progress. I have little respect for the upholding of ‘tradition’ for tradition’s sake, which in essence is merely stubborn unwillingness to let go of one’s dummy because one’s dummy is all one has ever known, and therefore must be all that is right and holy. It is short-sighted, stagnant, and upheld by the fear of change. But nobody is perfect. We all have to adjust. Technological advance would likely occur a lot more quickly if only we weren’t so frightened of it. Social change is just the same.

I feel as if I’ve taken you all on a merry dance. What I wanted to say is simple. It is that now, following a monumental decision made earlier today, and providing I am not sad and alone forever more, I might be able to be me and married after all. I don’t have to put up with having one thing and not the other. I can have it all, just like everyone else can. I can be equal, without being the same. It’s a big hurrah for me and people like me, and a satisfying fuck you to all the ignorant bastards who ever gave me and anybody like me any sort of hassle for nothing more than being ourselves, and proud of it. They are the frightened ones, quivering in their caves with their dummies sucked tightly between their lips, ancient life manuals clutched to their chests, and eyes tightly shut, and the the rest of us are marching forward with the torch of progress and enlightenment ahead of us, eyes open, in pursuit of the next hurdle over which we shall drag our terrified cousins, as they kick and scream, and scramble for their mothers’ familiar wombs. Silly sods.

We have jumped a hurdle in a race with no foreseeable finish line, and on we go…

Brother

My brother will turn ten years old in less than a fortnight, just under a week after my own birthday. He, one of our two sisters, and I are in the house alone. Our sister was sleeping already. I sat with my brother on his bed and we both read separately. He often asks me, when I’m around, to sit there with him at bedtime.  I read Nausea; he, something about animals to begin with, before moving on to Read Me and Laugh. From the first book he read out facts about ants. The Fire Ant, I think, can kill a man in twenty minutes. He looked up my birthday in his next book, written as a diary, and showed me the poem on the page. It was about the carrying of the simple pleasures of childhood into later life: I can’t remember any of them now because I’m tired. I need to get to bed. One verse was about ice cream. Maybe the poem isn’t even about what I thought it was, but as I read it I realised he was experiencing one of the pleasures I remember from childhood: sitting late at night with somebody older, leaning on their big shoulder, moving up and down as they breathe; feeling so safe because there’s someone so much bigger by your side, and they’re on your side, and there’s nothing that could hurt you because they’re there.

My brother misbehaves. He shouts and screams and we don’t know why. He does this almost daily. But he is equally sweet, and helpful, and generous, and affectionate, and funny.

We both read for a while. He tired quicker, lay his book aside, and linked his arm through mine. Head on my shoulder, his breathing deepened and he dozed. I continued to read, and at the same time I felt an intense love for my brother. I don’t mention it as if I’ve not felt it before. I often do feel this way for the people I care about. But the peacefulness of the moment and the gentle breathing of my sleeping companion felt somehow poignant in its finiteness. He isn’t going to be this little boy for much longer, and I believe that when this boy is gone I will miss who he is at this moment. He won’t ask me to sit with him on his bed when he’s fourteen, and it wouldn’t feel the same to do that either. He won’t want to tell me how long it takes an ant to kill a man, or to show me what my birthday poem is. Sitting with him, letting my book fall back as I began to drift off too, I felt that feeling of love that makes me want to curl up so tightly that my face is tucked right into my heart and my knees are touching my head and I’m smiling like The Cheshire Cat.

I’m frightened of him growing up, of his teenage opinions of me and how I am, and how I am not what he is. He is as boyish as a boy can be. As much as he turns his nose up now, he will like girls. He doesn’t know that I don’t. I think he should have been brought up fully aware of that fact, but that is for another entry. Maybe that won’t ever be an issue. Maybe I’m underestimating my sibling’s liberalism. Still, as he grows older, the differences between us, I fear, are going to widen, and I’m going to miss moments like that moment when he fell asleep on my shoulder tonight, when I was just Ben, his big brother.

I woke up, and I tucked him into bed, treasuring the act.