Families And How To Escape Them - Afterword

My plan when I started writing these thirty odd chapters was to describe how I went from living around my parents to being able to live without them. For twenty years, since I was in single figures, I had privately believed that I was gay. For that same length of time my family believed that heterosexuals produced only heterosexuals. A heterosexual monoculture homosexuality could not create homosexual behaviour. The older I got, the more poorly supported I found the heterosexual lifestyle to be. Only working males could own property and the jobs that paid the male enough to buy a house, get him a partner, pay for his children, and give him sole property owning rights and drinking buddies, had long gone by the time I was expected to turn out like my father. In my twenties young men seemed to caught in a limbo of under supported expectation. I wanted to get out of that limbo. I felt that where ever it might get me, my homosexuality was my only pass out of that limbo.

Landing in Lady Bay and attending Lady Bay Church changed everything. Therapy and work changed how I saw life as well. That therapy was a rare experience, and the jobs that I could apply for disappeared like the tide going out was beyond my control. That I was still waiting for group therapy at the point where I ended this memoir, and for months afterwards I would still writing out why I disagreed with the idea of turning out like my parents expected me to goes to show how long the afterlife of some lost arguments can go on.

Whilst living in Nottingham I heavily revised what I had grown liking and I met more people that I thought it possible for me to meet. That I lost contact with nearly all of them was fine. Given my pinched family background, the life I enjoyed in Nottingham would be as near as I could get the life of a student.

Going through the door of The Admiral Duncan that Valentine Friday night of 1992 changed my life forever. The more I built on that change the more I had to make my battles my own, whoever else had a part role in them. I don't know when I shall start writing it, but the next memoir has to be about how complicated life gets when a person is under-prepared for the change in direction that they have to take, and how to survive with reduced expectation of direct foundational support.

Did I escape my family? I learned how to keep my family at a distance that I felt at ease with. Did I find long term companionship? Definitely though I was not a natural at it. The irregularities of my past were made better use of than they would be with anyone else. I had to go through some disruptive changes of address getting to where long term reliable companionship and I remember most of it. Just as when I first came to Nottingham I made mistakes finding out where to go, and I took chances on other people that they wished I had not taken. But I did what I had to do at the time. And finally, yes, there would be more therapy when I needed it.

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