Who am I, Part the second.
Part the first available here http://djthetrainmanwalker.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/who-am-i.html
Ok, so in my last post I started talking about secrets, and How I learned to keep them.
The next big secret I learned to keep, was my sexuality.
I had some vague sense that there were boys and girls, and that I was supposed to be attracted to girls. And since I liked the company of girls that didn't seem a problem to me.
But there were these other strange creatures called boys. Who seemed to me to spend their time wanting to fight all the time, but who being around made me feel shall we say exited. As adolescence started messing with my body chemistry, things got... shall we say somewhat confusing.
And then there was the 'Holiday'.
I was always a problem of some kind. Partly because I didn't back down from confrontation, and I fought like a girl. I.e. I would stand near safe adults when I could, but if I was cornered, I scratched, I bit and targeted delicate bits of anatomy.
My 'excitement' among boys, and a profound sense of being 'exposed' in locker rooms, caused me problems. Which I was only able to solve by demanding and getting a dispensation to have a bath at my grandmothers house. She was one of the house mistresses of the private school I had been sent to. Her husband, my grandfather, had been the deputy headmaster, and one of the directors of the school.
One year, (which must have been 1975 for reasons that will become clear,) something had happened. Possibly something I had 'done', and possibly the aftermath of my Grandfathers illness and death. And most likely both. And I went on my first holiday alone, without the rest of my immediate family, at christmas.
This was to Aunty May's boarding house. We usually went there as a family, but this time it was just me, and it was for several weeks of the school break. I remember quite a lot about it, most of which isn't a part of this story.
What is a part of this story is: "The Naked Civil Servant" which was first broadcast 17th December 1975.
I had arrived a few days before it was shown and one evening, it was just there on the telly. I was actually playing with Lego motors and gears when it started.
I was positively hypnotised by the story, and John Hurt's portayal of Quentin Crisp. Aunt May actually left the room and was doing something in the Kitchen of the boarding house for most of the time it was on. I had a sense that some of this story was in a way about me.
At the time I felt I had 'got away' with something. That if May had understood what the program was about, the channel would have been changed.
Recently however it dawned on me, that May was no fool, she was not a daft old woman, as children are often prone to imagine. My insistance on not showering with other boys, must have been communicated somewhere along the line. After all I had used family influence to get out of it.
Whether it had been May alone, or not, I don't think I can ever know. But from all these years in the future, it suddenly seems an extrodinary coincidence, that my favourite Aunt, had on a TV program that had such relevence to my issues at the time.
Ok, so in my last post I started talking about secrets, and How I learned to keep them.
The next big secret I learned to keep, was my sexuality.
I had some vague sense that there were boys and girls, and that I was supposed to be attracted to girls. And since I liked the company of girls that didn't seem a problem to me.
But there were these other strange creatures called boys. Who seemed to me to spend their time wanting to fight all the time, but who being around made me feel shall we say exited. As adolescence started messing with my body chemistry, things got... shall we say somewhat confusing.
And then there was the 'Holiday'.
I was always a problem of some kind. Partly because I didn't back down from confrontation, and I fought like a girl. I.e. I would stand near safe adults when I could, but if I was cornered, I scratched, I bit and targeted delicate bits of anatomy.
My 'excitement' among boys, and a profound sense of being 'exposed' in locker rooms, caused me problems. Which I was only able to solve by demanding and getting a dispensation to have a bath at my grandmothers house. She was one of the house mistresses of the private school I had been sent to. Her husband, my grandfather, had been the deputy headmaster, and one of the directors of the school.
One year, (which must have been 1975 for reasons that will become clear,) something had happened. Possibly something I had 'done', and possibly the aftermath of my Grandfathers illness and death. And most likely both. And I went on my first holiday alone, without the rest of my immediate family, at christmas.
This was to Aunty May's boarding house. We usually went there as a family, but this time it was just me, and it was for several weeks of the school break. I remember quite a lot about it, most of which isn't a part of this story.
What is a part of this story is: "The Naked Civil Servant" which was first broadcast 17th December 1975.
I had arrived a few days before it was shown and one evening, it was just there on the telly. I was actually playing with Lego motors and gears when it started.
I was positively hypnotised by the story, and John Hurt's portayal of Quentin Crisp. Aunt May actually left the room and was doing something in the Kitchen of the boarding house for most of the time it was on. I had a sense that some of this story was in a way about me.
At the time I felt I had 'got away' with something. That if May had understood what the program was about, the channel would have been changed.
Recently however it dawned on me, that May was no fool, she was not a daft old woman, as children are often prone to imagine. My insistance on not showering with other boys, must have been communicated somewhere along the line. After all I had used family influence to get out of it.
Whether it had been May alone, or not, I don't think I can ever know. But from all these years in the future, it suddenly seems an extrodinary coincidence, that my favourite Aunt, had on a TV program that had such relevence to my issues at the time.
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