You’re gay – get over it. These are the words [of wisdom?] from my Mother after a recent conversation (a couple of years ago – that’s my kinda recent) that I can’t even remember what I said to prompt such a statement.

So, I’m stuck. How exactly am I supposed to “get over” being gay? What exactly does that mean? How do I get over the ongoing discussion I’ve had in my head since I recognised that I was gay. How do I respond to my questioning of why am I gay? Was I born this way? Is it a lifestyle choice? Is it a consequence of my upbringing?

How do I “get over” the classic lines from my mother’s book of wisdom… [It’s a book of wisdom, as my parent’s liked their books. They didn’t read books, no. My Father had his “book of lost opportunities” – being a child is lazy, get something useful done. He’s dead now, but the book lives on. My Mother has her “book of wisdom” – stop worrying about yourself and start considering how difficult life is on her.]

Let me set the scene. It’s 1995, I’m living in Nuremberg, Germany, having just completed a year out from my Engineering degree with Siemens. I’ve had a wonderful time being 1000 miles away from England, met some new people, playing around with being different. I’ve gotten my ear pierced (not the right-hand side though – that’s a step too far). Gone to a German gay bar on my own {terrifying}, bought pornography [nothing hardcore – just some nice chests] from the newsagents at the railway station. I’ve lived a sample of what life could be like out from the clutches of my ever-expecting parents.

My parents were on a European trip with the caravan, with the final stop being Nuremberg, to pick me up and bring me back to England. They were staying at a campsite at Dutzendteich. (you’ll know this from the Nazi rally images from WWII [link]). It’s a nice area, popular with the locals, even with its difficult history.

I’ve packed all my stuff into a box or two – including the above-mentioned pornography (first mistake) and dropped off the boxes with them. My Mother, in her wisdom (the second mistake – forgot about her “wisdom”) decides to unpack the boxes to distribute the weight of the stuff around the caravan.

I’m meeting them before meeting friends at the beer festival taking place that week on the same site. This tale begins in a caravan, with two parents on one bench, and I on another:

Mother: tell us it’s not true.

I can’t.

Mother: There’s something wrong with you. You need a psychiatrist. Who did you talk to about this? You should have talked to us.

Chris, Julie.

Mother: It’s these people you told who have done this to you. You have a year to straighten yourself out. NO ONE in the family must know.

My father is silent with his “feeling sorry for himself” eyes on his face. My mother is raging, swearing in a way I’ve never heard before. I can tell she had brothers in the Navy. She flees the caravan, off into the woods. My father tells me:

Father: go find your mother.

The journey back to the UK. Silent and difficult. I’m due to go back to University in a month. I say to my Mother before I leave:

I’m no different, you just know a bit more about me.

I don’t straighten out in a year. How would I do that anyway? No psychiatrist was involved in this case. I’m also not suicidal, I’m more likely to disappear than die. I’m too stubborn. I do make some vows and prepare myself with a potential new identity ^[1]https://thathiddenguy.talkingspace.co.uk/2021/05/09/aaron-conrad/. Naive? Perhaps – I am only 20 though…

Vow 1: I will never trust them again, with anything about me.

Vow 2: I will never rely on them for anything. I will never owe them anything.

Vow 3: I will never speak of this to anyone in the family.

Vow 4: I will never lie about who I am. I will not cause intentional harm [as I feel] to another (aka wife or children).

It’s 1998 and I’m now living between Coventry and Colchester. I’ve got a graduate job as a Software Engineer. I also have a boyfriend – well, a wild two-week fling. He is handsome, encouraging, and supportive when talking about my parents. I think to myself:

it’s been a couple of years and the gay stuff hasn’t come up again. Perhaps my parents have changed their stance.

I phone her up. I say:

If I came to visit you with a boyfriend, would you let me in?

Mother: No. We would shut the door in your face.

Things have not changed.

My memory is now a little hazy, but it’s around 2000 (new millennium – new start) that I write to my parents to break contact. “Other than being related, we have nothing in common”. That sort of thing. I hear nothing in response and just get on with my life.

2004 comes along and I’m now living in Nottingham, working as an Engineer with Marconi. I take a random phone call at work. Out of the blue, it’s my Mother wanting to meet up. I’m thinking:

Who has cancer?

We meet at the pub around the corner from work. No one has cancer, my parents are moving to Japan with my dad’s job. They got my letter.

Mother: If you came home one day to find your father and me sacrificing children in the back garden, that’s what we think of you being gay.

oh.

It’s 2007 and I’ve started my therapy training. I’m learning all sorts of things about myself and my relationship with my family. Some good and some painful. My sister is now in a long-term relationship with her then-girlfriend, and they are buying a house together. I am fed up with lying for her to our parents, who had been in relationships or living with her girlfriends since around 1997. I’m on the phone with her. I suggest:

Perhaps now it was time for me to be honest with our parents?

Sister: What do I get out of that?

I do what we are good at doing in our family, I distance myself from her – ceasing contact.

It’s around 2010 and my parents have now returned from Japan. I did visit but spent as little time as I could with them, enjoying a trip around an amazing country.

My Mother now decides that my Father is an abuser, and I’m just like him [Yes – she called me an abuser]. She disappears without telling anyone where she’s gone. That’s not quite right. My sister had bungled our Mother’s stuff into a van and helped her flee from her bastard husband and it would seem her [bastard] son too. I ally myself with my Father. It’s difficult for him, but I offer him tough love:

grieve for her and move on.

My Mother returns having found out what real abused women experience. Don’t get me wrong, my Father wasn’t great at times, but she wasn’t afraid of protecting herself. My parents took turns to show me the bruises they had inflicted on each other. It’s not a memory I will forget easily. I also do not condone violence towards another – male or female.

My Mother is now clinically depressed, had suicidal thoughts, and any mention of why she had left was met with the response:

Mother: I can feel myself slipping (back into her depression and suicidal thoughts).

Here endeth that conversation.

It’s 2012 and [as if by magic] being gay is okay now. My sister was in a crisis with her then-girlfriend. She called on our parents to help her, came out to them at the same time, and they went along to help her move out of where she was living. I talk to my parents about how difficult it has been for me over the years, having to lie for my sister:

Mother: we would have rather you had lied about being gay as your sister had done.

oh.

It’s 2014 and I’m getting married, because I can now without disclosing my sexuality (civil partnerships were only for gay/lesbian people then and the use of the term would have forced me to out myself – err, no). I invite both parents along, but my sister is still out of the picture. Although during the time of the wedding she’s in the next county, visiting friends. [She lives in the South West, but chose to be in the neighbouring county that weekend.]

It’s the day after the ceremony, our friends have celebrated our union over two days in surroundings that reflect who we are as people.

I’m invited to walk with my parents:

Mother: after this, we now know that marriage is now not about having children. It’s about love.

fuck me.

At some point here, my sister is back in the picture – probably when my Father receives his diagnosis of prostate cancer. We don’t talk about what’s happened in the past, that’s not the sort of family we are. We pretend all is okay. I put aside all my family difficulties for the remaining years of his life. [Haven’t I been doing this anyway?]

It’s now 2018 and my father dies of prostate cancer on my birthday. My husband plays his Flugelhorn at the funeral. It’s now not only okay to be gay, but it’s also okay for the family to know. [I have honoured my end of the vow. I never spoke to anyone in the family about being gay.] I protected my parents from their shame. I try and bring this up with my Mother:

Mother: you’re gay, get over it.

{shocked out of words}

In 2020 my mother announces to me that all she’s ever wanted is to have a relationship with her daughter. She didn’t have a relationship with her mother, who was “cold and withholding”. It’s around this time I always say to her, through many tears:

I don’t want you to go to your grave without me and you having a relationship.

I wasn’t clear enough:

Mother: what do you want to know about me?

I’m still crying inside.

It’s the end of 2021, and I’m trying something new. I’ve got my Father’s Book of Lost Opportunities to hand and I’m seeing whether my mother is there to support me. I’m feeling nervous and I call her for a bit of support. It’s nothing major, the singing group I’m part of are doing a recording for local radio. Of course, I don’t tell her this during the call, I check she is doing okay. It’s afterwards, I tell her the real reason for calling:

Mother: I can’t read your mind. Well, you weren’t alone, were you. You were fine, weren’t you.

I am fine, I am always fine.

Every day, I wonder why I am gay. I do this alone and in silence.

I can’t get over being gay – I don’t know how to.

I want to get over my Mother.

I love the sound of my children screaming with delight. Their giggling and merry-making is such a beautiful sound, skipping around the corridors of our home, singing in my heart. Playing on the floor with their plastic animals, their legs waving freely in the air, to the gentle beat of childhood innocence.

Aaron likes the dinosaurs, whilst for Rachel, it’s farm animals. Where they got these ideas from, who knows. Ruth and I look at each other, speaking in silent delight within our eyes, pleasure in their unique creativity.

I met Ruth just after finishing University, she completing her masters’ degree, whilst I was searching for that first, all important job. My career just about to launch, our romance a whirlwind. Passionate and excitement was the plat du jour, a dish we both enjoyed without care or restraint.

Interrailing across Europe, the sights and sounds of continental cities live in my memories. I particularly remember the view across Rome from St. Peter’s basilica on a crisp, spring morning. I can feel her hand in mine, as I remember the sun creeping above the horizon. The bite of the frost receding in the warmth of Ruth’s presence beside me.

Marriage then children, timed to perfection. Our parents were delighted, a fairytale romance, the expected 2.4 kids, our careers and lives as parents balanced. Don’t get me wrong, we had the usual relationship challenges. What marriage doesn’t? But we knew what was important. We were in love and we were happy.

Of course, none of this is true.

This is what my parents wanted from and for me, a romance they so desperately tried to cling on to themselves.

It was in the screams of my mum’s horror, desperate for me not to tell her it were true. The rage and hurt in her eyes, disappointment and despair in my father’s.

“Tell us it is not true“

I stood at the fork in the road. Do deny myself for their happiness or deny their happiness for my truth?

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!

I am aaron (lowercase a please, aaron likes to make a statement without having to use a capital letter)

aaron was born in 1995 aged 21. Where he was born is a mystery, adding to his charm (He has a Northern accent, but it’s hard to place, he also writes the number 7 in a mid-European way)

aaron did not need to see a Psychiatrist when he came out as gay, as his parents openly embraced his difference

aaron did not need to worry that his career would be limited by being gay, he didn’t have to lead a double life as the world of Engineering had moved on when he entered the industry

aaron did not have to hide his sexuality from some friends and all of his extended family, as being gay was not a shameful problem in which everyone pretends that aaron is “just busy building his career”

aaron did not need to set himself time limits (one year, to be precise) to straighten out as he was already straight (not odd/queer/bent/ill)

when aaron had his ear pierced, in a momentarily flash of rebellion, his family didn’t ask in bated breath… “not your right ear, I hope”

aaron lived a life were pronoun swapping was to respect gender expression not to protect others from their shame, disgust or discomfort with aaron being gay

aaron dressed in ways he felt comfortable, sexy, happy with his size and shape, and expressed his personality through the clothes and colours wrapping his body, he didn’t need to hide himself in business attire to protect his family from people… talking

Wise words, thanks, Jo. It is indeed an act of bravery, writing. I do not feel brave.

White water rafting on the Danube ^[1]I was 20 at the time, a story for another time, that was brave. At the time, cold, I was thinner then, squeezing into a wet suit (dry suit? I don’t know the difference, do you?). blind too, as I couldn’t wear my glasses [boy do I wish I could wear contact lenses]. What an exhilarating experience it was, clinging to the side of an air-filled boat, hanging on for dear life. I am enjoying this, I will enjoy it. I need to look brave with these people. Perhaps they were scared too, half-blind in sight, half-blind in putting on a brave face. Nostalgia will make it a happy story. Never an opportunity missed ^[2]that is another story for a dark night of red wine and ^{fuck you} expletives

Brave in the face of death. I’m even scared to ask for the vaccine I am entitled to as a key worker. Scared of facing the fear of the NHS staff – our brave heroes^[3]I take my hat off to our NHS staff. I do not clap them though, I stay at home and follow the guidelines, half scared to death at the endless queues of people waiting to die. A stab to keep them going a bit longer. Will I be next? Will I be the lucky (unlucky) one, who survives this to be around those war-torn, broken heroes^[4]The heroes word has certainly stuck, the power of rhetoric in action. Thanks BoJo. , crying through layers of plastic (…I’m hot in one mask, those bloody glasses, half-blinded again, with the breath of my life obscuring my view… (let alone having to wear a medically safe mask, shield, visor, gown, uniform, for 12 hours – how do they pee?)), speaking unheard to the prone-facing covid victim (ex-deny’er?)