Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter (21 page)

Again, I keep thinking about my family and decide that, in any case, Anne could quite conceivably tell me that she didn't want to know anything about my gay life if I were to broach the subject with her. The sexual aspect of our marriage has never amounted to much and has dwindled away completely. I had already decided that I was not going to make a great effort to cover my tracks and I now decide that the strategy I will adopt is to answer truthfully any questions she asks, but not to volunteer any more information than necessary. I don't want to deceive and perhaps this is the best way of achieving the best sort of balance. Lately I have become so aware of the fact that each marriage is unique and perhaps this is the most appropriate course for ours.

Why do we have to endure such pain?

I have traced back my first remembered homosexual impulse to the age of 7. From the age of 12 I was having frequent erotic fantasies about men. When I was 14 I discovered the word
homosexual
in a book, and learned from the same book that I was sick, disgusting and evil; I grew up with the assumption that was how my parents would see me, if they knew. I was unable even to tell anyone about myself until I was 25, my shame was so deep. I went through my life in a state of perpetual tension, anxiety and guilt.

I got married, raised three children, and passed through the hands of four different psychiatrists in my efforts to be “cured.”

I am now in my 40s, with a broken marriage and a lot of heartbreak—my wife's as well as my own—behind me.

I have accepted that I am homosexual; I am happy, confident, well-adjusted, and on very good terms with my many students, all of whom must know about me; I proudly wear a Gay Rights button to my classes.

At last, I recognize that I am neither sick, disgusting nor evil. I am functioning more creatively, as writer and teacher, than ever before in my life.

My children, who live in England, know all about my situation, and have accepted it without difficulty;
they are coming over to spend the summer with me and my lover. Children are not harmed by sexual knowledge; they are harmed by the attitudes of disgust and shame that many adults force upon them.

With my background of a childhood, adolescence and manhood of prolonged and pointless anguish, I am deeply grateful to Mayor John Sewell for his official acknowledgement of my right to be regarded as human.
^*

Those who oppose him might well ponder my case. The misery I have experienced, the misery I have caused, were both the direct result of the oppression of homosexuals within our culture.

Those parents who are so concerned about their children might pause to think that they may be helping to impose on them the misery and guilt that were imposed on me. My parents never knew that I was homosexual, either, for how could I tell them?

20.3.79

Looking back over the last several months, I would judge my emotions to be on a more even keel. That unrestrained drive to experiment—or simply to experience—that I felt in the first few months has subsided. Even my gay life has settled into a pattern: Gay Fathers of Toronto dinners every two or three weeks, the occasional overnight stay in the city, the odd chat with Ian Chapman.
^*
On the other side of things, my home life continues to go on placidly.

I have a feeling that Anne realizes something and silently accepts—but perhaps that is wishful thinking. Since 9.2.79, I have met two very pleasant men—Hank, a linguistics prof at U of T, recently separated from his wife who lives in Ottawa with their two boys; he cooks, sails, loves nude sunbathing and talks about his recent gay life as an exciting adventure— Hank displays an honest effervescence—he admits to pining still after his first love, an R.C. priest, and I tell him I know how it feels. We also have a dislike of the one-night stand. We hit it off well, and Hank tells me that he would love to ask me back to his apartment, but he has hurt his arm (it turns out later to be broken) and lovemaking is just too painful, but we agree to keep in touch and he is interested in GFT.

The other man is Robin Wood who had written a splendid letter to the
Star
during the Sewell–
Body Politic
trial period. I had written to him and said that I hoped we might meet
sometime—not the least because of our common interest in the arts. He answered and suggested we meet for a drink sometime. We met in the Duke in the Eaton Centre and hit it off well. Most of the time we talked about music and the Beethoven Fourth Symphony he is reviewing for
Fugue
, but we also compared our family experiences—he was married and has three children.

Robin loved his wife, but, in the end, she couldn't bear the thought of sharing him and he moved out. Shortly afterwards, I gather, he came to Canada and became Fine Arts Chairman at York. Robin has a beautiful manner which suggests he is at peace with himself and in his letter to the
Star
he talks about his past distress—4 psychiatrists and a marriage breakup—but now he happily accepts his being gay. I feel I would like to know Robin better and he asks me to keep in touch.

Meeting people like Robin and Hank leads me to conclude that there are lovely people in this new world—but how strange to share with other men as friends this terribly important, at times difficult experience, but at the same time, to see them as sexually attractive, possible lovers or disappointments.

26.3.79

I had a call from a guy called Don who spoke furtively, said we shared the same “problem,” called himself a friend of Robin Wood and asked if he would see me. We met the next day—unfortunately a pretty ordinary looking fellow, though remarkably well preserved. He told me his pathetic story. He
has been actively gay for about seven years and felt so guilty about his first encounter that he told his wife. He had a Trent prof as a lover for a year or more and was shattered when that broke up.

He seems to hate his life, but is too timid to break out of it and he seems to hate himself for being gay—last Christmas he said he tried to commit suicide. He is desperate for companionship and I suggested the Gay Fathers group, but he said it would be too much of a hassle for him to explain to his wife why he was going to Toronto.

I said I thought he had to decide what he really wanted. A sad case—he is caught between two worlds. In some ways, our situations are similar, except that I have accepted with joy and relief that I am gay. I tried to tell Don how, unexpectedly, I found that gay men were warm, supportive, interesting, and that one could be glad one was gay.

Homosexual tendencies are created in infancy and early childhood by the parents' earliest reactions to their offspring, a U.S. expert on adolescent sexuality said yesterday.

Dr. Paul Fink said it is a myth that a seduction by someone of the same sex during adolescence creates homosexuality. What happened in the first 18 months of life is much more important.

Dr. Fink, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College in Philadelphia, spoke to about 40 doctors specializing in children's problems during a conference organized by the American Academy of Pediatricians.

He said a study by Dr. Robert Stoller of the University of California in Los Angeles shows that a child's “gender identity”—the sense of maleness or femaleness—is established within the first 18 months of life by the infant's relationship with its mother.

A mother typically treats a boy differently from the way she treats a girl, as though he were a bit alien, the study found. If a boy had the sort of close relationship that girls have with their mothers he would want to be a girl.

Dr. Fink said the implication of this and other studies is that a person's sense of gender and choice of
a different sex or their own sex as love objects is really determined in infancy. Almost as important as the relationship with the mother in early infancy is the relationship between the child and father during the years from age 3 to 6, Dr. Fink said.

“The father takes the existing gender identity of both the boy or girl and reinforces it by his attitude. For the boy he provides an identification person. The boy wants to grow up to be just like him.… The little girl needs a father available to affirm her femininity.”

Dr. Fink said homosexuality is not a disease but a case of arrested development. The male homosexual is not created because he had a strong mother and a weak father, but because the only tenderness he ever had was with the father, a member of the same sex.

Dr. Fink said the female homosexual often didn't have a father who was accepting and so turned back to her mother, then to other females, for love.

Homosexuality with this firm a base is not likely to change in later life, he said, although homosexuality that is essentially a defence built up out of simple fear of the opposite sex may be treated.

A homosexual who tries to hide the nature of his sexuality is said to be in the closet. Should he abandon the attempt to hide he will be said to have come out. Homosexuals are now coming out in great numbers, and as though in imitation of a law of nature many heterosexuals are manifesting an equal but opposite reaction.

“If society is to allow and promote homosexuality,” wrote Staff Sergeant Thomas Moclair in a recent issue of the Toronto police union's monthly newsletter, “then why not other acts? Why not condone murder, assault and rape? Those people are sick in the head, too.”

Sometimes I think I must be out of my mind. Here I am—in early middle age, well established in my profession, well known and regarded in my community, married to a very intelligent, talented, charming woman who is a first-class mother to our wonderful children. All this may very well be put into jeopardy by this incredible sexual adventure which I have embarked on. But have I any choice? No. I don't think so.

31.1.80

Last night, I made it with a Roman Catholic priest. When I turned around and our eyes met at Buddy's, he looked like anything but a priest. With long blond hair curled tightly against his head, and a sexy, textured white shirt open halfway to his waist, very masculine and with a fresh tan which he had got in Key West, Al was one of the more gorgeous-looking men in the bar.

He introduced himself first as a university professor in psychology at D__, where in fact he teaches part-time. It wasn't until later in the evening that I discovered he is also a priest at a prestigious parish in B__. I could then see a glimpse of that quiet confidence which so often marks a cleric, but, as I was soon to find out, it was combined with an astonishing need to have his attractiveness and good body reaffirmed.

He kept asking me to tell him what I liked about him, what it was about him that attracted me to him in the bar. When we first met, he told me I was a handsome man, which was a nice surprise, but later when we talked about it, he admitted how much he needed compliments on his own attractiveness. He thinks this is in part due to the fact that his mother is Portuguese, all the rest of the family is dark and he was the ugly duckling, in his mother's eyes at least. But he supports the theory that physical beauty can be a burden when this almost inevitably becomes an important aspect of the person and his definition of himself.

Al graduated from university at about 19, went into the priesthood and led an incredibly disciplined life until his late thirties. Somewhere along the way, he also picked up a doctorate of psychology. He claims that he didn't even masturbate from the time he entered the priesthood until he was 33. He didn't smoke or drink alcohol, tea or coffee and owned two black suits. Then, he came out, abandoned his collar and acquired a vast wardrobe of smart clothes.

Al struck me as being remarkably at ease with being a gay parish priest—in fact, he talked about giving up teaching in order to devote more time to his parish. He clearly enjoys letting people realize that not all priests are dour, sober characters. He talked about coming back on the plane from Key West with a woman in her fifties who kept saying over her Bloody Marys, “I can't believe you are a priest!” I can imagine that, in fact, he would be beautifully relaxed, friendly and genial with his parishioners, but can he really keep his gay identity separate?