Why Grandad lives with Peter
Tony Peake had married and fathered two children before he found the courage to come out as gay. But how to explain this to his four increasingly inquisitive grandchildren?
Tony Peake had married and fathered two children before he found the courage to come out as gay. But how to explain this to his four increasingly inquisitive grandchildren?
My eldest grandson, who is six and beginning to grapple with issues existential and social, is curious to know if his grandmother and I are, or ever were, married. His bewilderment is understandable. Grandmoo, as he calls her, lives with someone other than myself - her current husband, Keith - and I with Peter, for whom there is no convenient label, certainly not where an inquiring six-year-old is concerned.
But answer him I shall have to, if not now, then later, so I may as well start practising. And, who knows? In the process, I may even increase my own understanding of what has made me into such a curiosity - a gay grandfather - and maybe come to a decision (as I'll be considering the nature of family) as to whether or not I wish, after 20 years of cohabitation, to take advantage of recent legislation and register myself as Peter's civil partner. On many levels I find it wondrous that we are finally free to "marry". Yet am I positive this is the fairy-tale ending I want for my story?
It's a story that begins, like many a fairy tale, in another time, another place: South Africa in the 1950s. The cosseted only child of elderly parents, I grew up near Johannesburg wanting one day to be a famous writer - "more famous than Shakespeare". Packed off to boarding school at the age of seven, it became my lonely habit at night to arrange my blankets into a series of hills and valleys in order to flex my imagination by queening it over this invented landscape (much about me had been set by the time I'd turned seven and it was always as its queen that I ruled my nocturnal realm).
However, unlike my eldest grandchild, I didn't fuss unduly about gender, didn't see anything unusual in my choice of role. Besides, it wasn't long before I was experimentally kissing my first girlfriend, and if I still found the hotly anticipated trips I occasionally took into the veld with a male friend to play doctors infinitely more absorbing, well, I didn't dwell on the matter. Certain things had to remain unchallenged. For instance, because my parents loved me so unreservedly, I must, of course, never disappoint them. To which end, being more famous than Shakespeare would go a long way; as would one day marrying and becoming a father.
Or perhaps I make too much of this? Perhaps what drove me had less to do with parental expectation than with how feverishly it excited me to cycle with my friend into the veld and unbutton his trousers - though as this was South Africa in the 50s and 60s, when the country was every bit as circumscribed sexually as it was politically, I didn't dare think of making this my emotional and sexual future. No matter how intense my secret longings, not once did I abandon having a girlfriend, or allow myself to imagine not marrying.
And so, in due course, having inadvertently impregnated my girlfriend, marry is what I did; marry and become the proud father of two children, one boy, one girl. Prized and hard-won normality - provided, of course, you exclude certain niggles, such as my parents' misgivings at the shotgun nature of my marriage. Or the Shakespeare fantasy, yet to be realised. Or, crucially, the fact that here the fairy tale darkens, that now we enter a tangled wood, prowled by a most disruptive wolf.
As a young man, I firmly believed that finding male bodies so thrilling was only part of my physiognomy - a metaphoric boil, as it were, that, although recurring and troubling, could always be lanced. Whereas love, true love, emotional commitment as opposed to mere lust, was something I could experience only with a woman. And that I passionately loved my wife was never in question. True, we might argue bitterly; true, my eyes might wander; true, sometimes I felt sick to the stomach with worry (or fear, or uncertainty, or longing; I don't have the right word). But such passing confusion aside, Irene remained my necessary other half. Without her, I couldn't conceive of ever being whole; would always, I thought, be less than myself. Never mind the wonderful fact of our two children, the joy they brought, the sense of purpose, the contentment, the balance, the normality, the (yes) self-satisfaction.
By this stage, Irene and I had left South Africa and moved to London, where I encountered shops that openly sold magazines featuring naked men. Guiltily, I would buy them, pore over them - until the fateful day when, on opening the case in which I kept my stash, I discovered a note from Irene asking which of the men I found the most titillating. My shameful secret was out! And, to my surprise, once I'd overcome a surge of guilt, I experienced only relief. The closet door had begun to creak open; what had before been solitary could suddenly be shared.
Self-deception is a strange thing; even as it blinds you to yourself, it encourages selfishness. At the time, I saw only my good fortune - having my cake and being able to eat it. What I ignored, didn't even begin to comprehend, was Irene's hurt; her growing insecurity; the rising desperation. Instead, I opted to view our openness as proof of how grown-up we were, how able to accommodate our differences while celebrating our closeness. What could be more perfect, I asked myself, than the nuclear family that is able to dabble in fusion?
Irene and I were now a combustible mix - and the explosion, when it came, was devastating.
By this juncture, we were living in Spain, where the children could run free, where I could hopefully write, where all four of us might, we believed, more happily be ourselves. For Irene, this briefly meant falling in love with another man, which I took as sanction for me to step aside, which in fact hadn't been her intention, though by then I'd stepped aside and didn't intend stepping forward again, which pitched Irene into despair. And so, in a welter of confusion and contention, our marriage entered its lacerating final stages and a protracted process of unravelling began. Irene elected to remain in Spain with our children, while I packed my bags and returned to London.
There is more, of course, any number of degrading and distressing incidents, the detailing of which would take us too deep into the wood. Suffice to say that one year later, Irene had returned to England, found solace in the arms of God, and was living in Brighton with our daughter. Our son, meanwhile, had come to live in London with me because, given the state of virtual war then existing between Irene and myself, I fervently held that the only way to prevent the children from being caught in the crossfire was to divide their care equally between us. And, in order finally to draw a legal line under our collective misery, I also insisted on a divorce.
Thus, for a while, it went. We became two "one-parent" families who spent large chunks of time travelling between Brighton and London in order for the children to enjoy their weekends and holidays together. I found work that would allow me to pick up my son from school; friends and family rallied round. As did a variety of girlfriends, for I hadn't allowed the fact of my divorce, or my internal confusion, to stop me acting as heterosexually as possible.
Of course, I still fancied men, and had lately - when my son was staying with his mother - begun to experiment. Pubs, clubs, Soho cinemas, outdoor cruising, cottaging all started to figure in my life. Yet I still believed that only with a woman could I hope for any degree of emotional stability or commitment. Until, in 1984, I met a man (I thought, purely for sex) who, at a stroke, made me realise the full extent of my self-delusion. I tumbled hopelessly, gloriously into that state of tortured suspension we call "being in love" - and not even the fact that my quarry wasn't remotely interested in reciprocating my passion could detract from how happy this made me feel. I was at last comfortable in my own skin. Fully out of the closet. Standing in the light. Liberated. Complete.
When, soon afterwards, I met Peter, I was therefore ready. But my son was just 13. How the hell to introduce a strange man into our lives? The simple answer was: I couldn't. So we pretended merely to be friends, until the fateful day when I received a letter from Irene's lawyer. As a practising homosexual, the letter chillingly informed me, I could no longer be considered a fit parent and my ex-wife was therefore taking me to court to seek custody of our son.
As with our divorce, what followed was distressing in the extreme. Mistrust, anger, thwarted love, bewilderment, spite, God, the lack of God: all played their part, venomously on occasion. But the main thing for me was, and remains, my instinctive decision not to deny a relationship with Peter. I didn't for one instant relish exposing my young son to my sexuality; but to have pretended that I felt other than I did about Peter would, I resolved, have entailed a degree of dishonesty that even I, despite a lifetime's practice, could suddenly not have endured.
And so I fought the case, with the considerable help of family and friends, and went on to win it, too, thanks to the most skilful of solicitors and our great good luck of landing a sympathetic judge.
At which point, we were dealt a further surprise. My son announced that he would henceforth prefer to live with his mother. As he later explained, he felt that he and I had enjoyed enough of a "run" together; now it was his mother's turn. Though what he might in fact have been saying is that the court case, and all that it entailed, had simply been too difficult for him to handle. As, indeed, it had for all of us, in different ways.
So does my ending qualify as happy or unhappy? Miraculously, albeit with reservations, it qualifies as happy. After my son had left, there was no longer any reason for Peter and myself not to move in together, or to become what we have very contentedly become: a domestic partnership that has spanned 20 years. Years made even richer by the fact that we could continue to see the children on a regular basis and take familial holidays together, on one occasion driving from London to Italy and back again, accruing many happy memories along the way: the hotel with stuffed animal heads on every wall; the woman on the beach who removed her false legs before swimming; the soundtrack of Chicago on the tape deck in the car; much unfair teasing of my daughter about her propensity to lose things. Irene, too, has found happiness with Keith, both our children (now grown up) with their respective spouses, and although there are still (and, perhaps, always will be) no-go areas in the story of our family, when we gather together to greet the arrival of new grandchildren, currently totalling four, the occasions are joyful, even when Peter jokingly complains that grandfatherhood by proxy is not what he, as a gay man, had envisaged for his old age.
Added to which, he and I can now also contemplate legalising our own union, thereby bagging for ourselves a further happy ending, while in South Africa there exists a new constitution that grants to gays and lesbians a degree of rights and respect that would, in my youth, have been unthinkable.
Were I to be starting my journey afresh, how much easier it would be, how much smoother!
Or would it? Because when all is said and done, I happen to believe that uncertainty is intrinsic to the human condition. My not knowing myself was what, in the end, provided me with the answer; made me live the way I do now. As the proverb has it: the longest way round is the shortest way home.
· This is an edited extract from "The Way We Are Now".
.
(Αναδημοσίευση από τη βρετανική εφημερίδα THE GUARDIAN 22-04-2006)
But answer him I shall have to, if not now, then later, so I may as well start practising. And, who knows? In the process, I may even increase my own understanding of what has made me into such a curiosity - a gay grandfather - and maybe come to a decision (as I'll be considering the nature of family) as to whether or not I wish, after 20 years of cohabitation, to take advantage of recent legislation and register myself as Peter's civil partner. On many levels I find it wondrous that we are finally free to "marry". Yet am I positive this is the fairy-tale ending I want for my story?
It's a story that begins, like many a fairy tale, in another time, another place: South Africa in the 1950s. The cosseted only child of elderly parents, I grew up near Johannesburg wanting one day to be a famous writer - "more famous than Shakespeare". Packed off to boarding school at the age of seven, it became my lonely habit at night to arrange my blankets into a series of hills and valleys in order to flex my imagination by queening it over this invented landscape (much about me had been set by the time I'd turned seven and it was always as its queen that I ruled my nocturnal realm).
However, unlike my eldest grandchild, I didn't fuss unduly about gender, didn't see anything unusual in my choice of role. Besides, it wasn't long before I was experimentally kissing my first girlfriend, and if I still found the hotly anticipated trips I occasionally took into the veld with a male friend to play doctors infinitely more absorbing, well, I didn't dwell on the matter. Certain things had to remain unchallenged. For instance, because my parents loved me so unreservedly, I must, of course, never disappoint them. To which end, being more famous than Shakespeare would go a long way; as would one day marrying and becoming a father.
Or perhaps I make too much of this? Perhaps what drove me had less to do with parental expectation than with how feverishly it excited me to cycle with my friend into the veld and unbutton his trousers - though as this was South Africa in the 50s and 60s, when the country was every bit as circumscribed sexually as it was politically, I didn't dare think of making this my emotional and sexual future. No matter how intense my secret longings, not once did I abandon having a girlfriend, or allow myself to imagine not marrying.
And so, in due course, having inadvertently impregnated my girlfriend, marry is what I did; marry and become the proud father of two children, one boy, one girl. Prized and hard-won normality - provided, of course, you exclude certain niggles, such as my parents' misgivings at the shotgun nature of my marriage. Or the Shakespeare fantasy, yet to be realised. Or, crucially, the fact that here the fairy tale darkens, that now we enter a tangled wood, prowled by a most disruptive wolf.
As a young man, I firmly believed that finding male bodies so thrilling was only part of my physiognomy - a metaphoric boil, as it were, that, although recurring and troubling, could always be lanced. Whereas love, true love, emotional commitment as opposed to mere lust, was something I could experience only with a woman. And that I passionately loved my wife was never in question. True, we might argue bitterly; true, my eyes might wander; true, sometimes I felt sick to the stomach with worry (or fear, or uncertainty, or longing; I don't have the right word). But such passing confusion aside, Irene remained my necessary other half. Without her, I couldn't conceive of ever being whole; would always, I thought, be less than myself. Never mind the wonderful fact of our two children, the joy they brought, the sense of purpose, the contentment, the balance, the normality, the (yes) self-satisfaction.
By this stage, Irene and I had left South Africa and moved to London, where I encountered shops that openly sold magazines featuring naked men. Guiltily, I would buy them, pore over them - until the fateful day when, on opening the case in which I kept my stash, I discovered a note from Irene asking which of the men I found the most titillating. My shameful secret was out! And, to my surprise, once I'd overcome a surge of guilt, I experienced only relief. The closet door had begun to creak open; what had before been solitary could suddenly be shared.
Self-deception is a strange thing; even as it blinds you to yourself, it encourages selfishness. At the time, I saw only my good fortune - having my cake and being able to eat it. What I ignored, didn't even begin to comprehend, was Irene's hurt; her growing insecurity; the rising desperation. Instead, I opted to view our openness as proof of how grown-up we were, how able to accommodate our differences while celebrating our closeness. What could be more perfect, I asked myself, than the nuclear family that is able to dabble in fusion?
Irene and I were now a combustible mix - and the explosion, when it came, was devastating.
By this juncture, we were living in Spain, where the children could run free, where I could hopefully write, where all four of us might, we believed, more happily be ourselves. For Irene, this briefly meant falling in love with another man, which I took as sanction for me to step aside, which in fact hadn't been her intention, though by then I'd stepped aside and didn't intend stepping forward again, which pitched Irene into despair. And so, in a welter of confusion and contention, our marriage entered its lacerating final stages and a protracted process of unravelling began. Irene elected to remain in Spain with our children, while I packed my bags and returned to London.
There is more, of course, any number of degrading and distressing incidents, the detailing of which would take us too deep into the wood. Suffice to say that one year later, Irene had returned to England, found solace in the arms of God, and was living in Brighton with our daughter. Our son, meanwhile, had come to live in London with me because, given the state of virtual war then existing between Irene and myself, I fervently held that the only way to prevent the children from being caught in the crossfire was to divide their care equally between us. And, in order finally to draw a legal line under our collective misery, I also insisted on a divorce.
Thus, for a while, it went. We became two "one-parent" families who spent large chunks of time travelling between Brighton and London in order for the children to enjoy their weekends and holidays together. I found work that would allow me to pick up my son from school; friends and family rallied round. As did a variety of girlfriends, for I hadn't allowed the fact of my divorce, or my internal confusion, to stop me acting as heterosexually as possible.
Of course, I still fancied men, and had lately - when my son was staying with his mother - begun to experiment. Pubs, clubs, Soho cinemas, outdoor cruising, cottaging all started to figure in my life. Yet I still believed that only with a woman could I hope for any degree of emotional stability or commitment. Until, in 1984, I met a man (I thought, purely for sex) who, at a stroke, made me realise the full extent of my self-delusion. I tumbled hopelessly, gloriously into that state of tortured suspension we call "being in love" - and not even the fact that my quarry wasn't remotely interested in reciprocating my passion could detract from how happy this made me feel. I was at last comfortable in my own skin. Fully out of the closet. Standing in the light. Liberated. Complete.
When, soon afterwards, I met Peter, I was therefore ready. But my son was just 13. How the hell to introduce a strange man into our lives? The simple answer was: I couldn't. So we pretended merely to be friends, until the fateful day when I received a letter from Irene's lawyer. As a practising homosexual, the letter chillingly informed me, I could no longer be considered a fit parent and my ex-wife was therefore taking me to court to seek custody of our son.
As with our divorce, what followed was distressing in the extreme. Mistrust, anger, thwarted love, bewilderment, spite, God, the lack of God: all played their part, venomously on occasion. But the main thing for me was, and remains, my instinctive decision not to deny a relationship with Peter. I didn't for one instant relish exposing my young son to my sexuality; but to have pretended that I felt other than I did about Peter would, I resolved, have entailed a degree of dishonesty that even I, despite a lifetime's practice, could suddenly not have endured.
And so I fought the case, with the considerable help of family and friends, and went on to win it, too, thanks to the most skilful of solicitors and our great good luck of landing a sympathetic judge.
At which point, we were dealt a further surprise. My son announced that he would henceforth prefer to live with his mother. As he later explained, he felt that he and I had enjoyed enough of a "run" together; now it was his mother's turn. Though what he might in fact have been saying is that the court case, and all that it entailed, had simply been too difficult for him to handle. As, indeed, it had for all of us, in different ways.
So does my ending qualify as happy or unhappy? Miraculously, albeit with reservations, it qualifies as happy. After my son had left, there was no longer any reason for Peter and myself not to move in together, or to become what we have very contentedly become: a domestic partnership that has spanned 20 years. Years made even richer by the fact that we could continue to see the children on a regular basis and take familial holidays together, on one occasion driving from London to Italy and back again, accruing many happy memories along the way: the hotel with stuffed animal heads on every wall; the woman on the beach who removed her false legs before swimming; the soundtrack of Chicago on the tape deck in the car; much unfair teasing of my daughter about her propensity to lose things. Irene, too, has found happiness with Keith, both our children (now grown up) with their respective spouses, and although there are still (and, perhaps, always will be) no-go areas in the story of our family, when we gather together to greet the arrival of new grandchildren, currently totalling four, the occasions are joyful, even when Peter jokingly complains that grandfatherhood by proxy is not what he, as a gay man, had envisaged for his old age.
Added to which, he and I can now also contemplate legalising our own union, thereby bagging for ourselves a further happy ending, while in South Africa there exists a new constitution that grants to gays and lesbians a degree of rights and respect that would, in my youth, have been unthinkable.
Were I to be starting my journey afresh, how much easier it would be, how much smoother!
Or would it? Because when all is said and done, I happen to believe that uncertainty is intrinsic to the human condition. My not knowing myself was what, in the end, provided me with the answer; made me live the way I do now. As the proverb has it: the longest way round is the shortest way home.
· This is an edited extract from "The Way We Are Now".
.
(Αναδημοσίευση από τη βρετανική εφημερίδα THE GUARDIAN 22-04-2006)
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