I am a voyeur.

I was destined to be a therapist, the living of life through the eyes of another. Living life to the expectations of another. Being the other who fulfilled the other’s unmet desires, dreams, fantasies, expectations, hopes… and ultimately fears (I’ll come to my father in a moment)…

I was never good enough for my father, so high were his expectations of what family life should be. My sister and I would joke (trust me, it wasn’t funny, but we weren’t allowed to be angry – only grateful for his hard work in putting food on the table ( – “I didn’t know how lucky I was” -)) about being The Waltons. We weren’t The Waltons… There was no John-Boy (I wish there were, fuck me, he was cute! – and had a loving father).

We looked as though we were good, well-behaved kids. What you didn’t know is the fear that lived within us if we stepped out of line. He wasn’t cruel, abusive, bad in that way (does a slipper or hand on my bum count? I can feel the pain now… ) I didn’t meet expectations of how I [should] be, as the eldest son.

I even had If by Rudyard Kipling (see below) hung above my head. Little did I know the power these words would have on me… I just enjoyed having one parent read them to me. I didn’t give a fuck about the words, I had a parent close to me as they helped me read the words.

I felt his disappointment and his shame. In my dark places, I can bring up my memory of his pitiful eyes I can take myself to that place (I think I still do on regular occasions – it’s easier now he’s dead). Powerful. Painful. Controlling. Effective.

I lived through the lives of my friends and my dreams. I had my own world which I would (NEVER) share with them. It was mine, and they couldn’t have it. I was a voyeur though… a voyeur lacking in feelings and confidence to truly follow his dreams.

I marched on London Pride in 1994 but nobody knew. I have flashes of memory of chanting at Downing Street (was Thatcher still in there?, the old battle-axe) “We’re here, We’re queer, and we’re not shopping”… [something about the cute copper, which I can’t remember]

I’ve met guys at midnight in lay-bys on motorways, old guys, young guys, married guys…

Sat in the passenger side at 1 am, leaving over and pleasuring him whilst he drove up the motorway, tasting him, swallowing as I noticed the child seat in the back of the car… a straight (?) man being a gay voyeur… perhaps he was more scared than I? I was not thinking about his home-life (home-wrecker me?) No one knows this story, did it really happen? [yes]

I wandered the streets of Nuremberg, yes Germany, (1996 I think) during my industrial year out, trying to pluck up the courage to go to a support group, desperate was I to make this gay life actually real, not just in my head. Too fucking scared, I remember that. I ventured into a gay bar, drunk out of my head, with minimal German (I had been there 3 months) I was so, so desperate to find someone like me.

As a therapist, I am a voyeur. Peaking into the lives of others. Experiencing their world without having to live it. Parting the curtains to see what happens in their offices, living rooms, bedrooms, dreams, nightmares…

I am now a cult member, a musician, a doctor (A&E and academic), a nurse, a police officer, a teacher, an alcoholic. I am drug-dependent, I have been horrendously abused and neglected. I have been groomed, and I have groomed others for my own gain.

I have witnessed the best and worst of humanity. Some days I skip home and others I just sit and sob. None of this is mine.

Perhaps I should thank my father for helping me to put others before myself. To live my life through the expectations of another. Perhaps I will ultimately disappoint those I work with in the ways I did my father.

Being gay seems to be a disappointment to so many I work with, destroying their fantasies of having a relationship with me (yes, including sex – and I’ve been told what they would like to do to me!), of me being their replacement father (if only they knew!) I keep going though, keep swallowing their fantasies, hopes, dreams and nightmares… [I’m thinking of that married guy again]

I am a voyeur-(ther)-apist.

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!