Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter Read online

  Who is my friend? It’s all quite extraordinary, as he himself said. It was one of those classic encounters—we exchanged first names, where we were from. We had such great fun and lovely banter—not the usual sort of “serious business.” Then later (much later) in the evening, I suddenly thought—I know that face—Richard? Stratford? “Your last name wouldn’t be Monette, by any chance?”* The embarrassing thing is that I have never seen him in anything, though as I said at the time, I would bet he hadn’t read any of my political articles either!

  We had another marvellous time together on Friday—dinner, chamber music concert (he confesses not to know much about music but is very receptive), a few drinks, etc. Once again, such fun. However, he is concerned that my marital status makes it impossible for us to carry on. He is afraid of the complexities and wants a lover who can live with him in Stratford and obviously I can’t fill that bill.

  I felt very sad afterwards because it seemed we had really clicked. We left agreeing that we could both do some thinking and meet again, at least to talk. Your doubts about whether the world is unfolding as it should are so well founded! I told Richard I was not surprised by what he said, that it would be so much easier if he had turned out to be a lawyer or a high school teacher in Peterborough. I would suspect that he is headed for even bigger things and I can understand that with his life he needs a personal anchor. The mind boggles at the possible complexities, but I hate to see the whole thing drop!

  I didn’t feel that our relationship had to be a deep, dark secret. In fact, I told Anne that I was seeing Richard for the evening and would be staying overnight with him. I guess his portrayal of Hosanna* gave him a certain notoriety (though he has had some important “straight” roles at Stratford since then), but what the hell if people want to draw conclusions. I am not prepared to eat crow—even though the circumstances are indeed what they might appear! We did talk vaguely about him spending a short time at Trent as an artist-in-residence before rehearsals begin at Stratford and about the possibility of spending part of my sabbatical together—but the latter is, at this stage, of course, premature.

  I have felt very sad about this and it is great to be able to talk about it in a letter, even though I am sure you have no ready answers. Do you in fact know Richard? He is terribly nice and not the sort of bizarre type one might have expected.

  Spoof on William Shakespeare’s “Polonius’s Farewell to Laertes” from Hamlet, Act I; written by my father on his manual typewriter

  Give thy coq no vin,

  To any well proportion’d coq, thy back.

  Be thou familiar, but only in backrooms vulgar;

  The tricks thou’st had, when of their performance tired,

  Grant them as they go, thy heaps of thanks;

  Then duly fill thy palm with entertaining

  Some new-hatch’d, untired comrade. Beware

  Of entering old queens; but, being in,

  Bear’t that th’old crow may be aware of thee.

  Give every man thine ear, if that’s his choice;

  Take each man’s caresses and so make thy judgment.

  Costly thy habit, if that’s how thou gett’st thy kicks,

  But, hotly press’d, by a fancy, bitchy body,

  Beware, lest th’apparent softness proclaims a sham,

  And they in France can often cause frustration,

  Being most neglect in gender; watch for that!

  Either a bugger, or a buggee be;

  But buggee oft exposes himself to infection,

  And buggering dulls the interest in husbanding.

  This above all: to thine orientation be true,

  And it must follow that, night after night,

  Thou canst not then be false to any man.

  Handwritten draft of a letter from my father, undated and unfinished

  Dear Richard,

  I was very saddened by our talk just before we parted on Friday night. I can quite understand your assessment that our continued involvement would probably be complex and difficult and not really what either of us would see as ideal. As I told you, I have had a number of very close male friendships—most of whom are still close friends even though of necessity we may not see each other for months or years at a time—but without a sexual consummation (which I now admit I would have liked).

  When, a short time ago, I accepted and began to act on my being gay, the opposite was presented—lots of sex but all one-night stands. While mostly lots of fun at the time, I have increasingly felt that I didn’t want to go on indefinitely in that routine. That is why I enjoyed meeting you so very much. Not only was our sex sensational (for me, anyway), but I really enjoyed our little banter and our chat afterwards. You were so much fun to be with and here at last was someone whom I had much in common with. For me, that was all delightfully confirmed on Friday.

  I think there are also several things I should make clear about my situation here. First of all, I accept as inevitable that people are going to at least suspect that I am gay. I would rather have that than attempt to keep it all a closely guarded secret. I do know that for some, it wouldn’t be such a great surprise in any case. I would prefer to avoid dramatic revelations (who the hell makes a great point of declaring themselves heterosexual?!), but to let it gradually become apparent—and I include my family in that. Perhaps I made too big a thing out of telling you, before we saw my Peterborough friends at the concert, that I have a “straight” life in Peterborough. It was just that I wanted to avoid you being taken by surprise. (I guess I assumed that you hadn’t remembered anything I’d told you the first time we met—very rude of me!)

  I had made a point of telling my wife that I was going to the concert with you and would be staying overnight with you, though obviously I was no more explicit than that. How much she is aware of I just don’t know though I would have thought that, if anything, my sexual performance at home ought to have aroused suspicions. In the end I don’t know whether she will be prepared to accept a gay husband (I have been amazed to find out that some do).

  On the other hand, I don’t want to be a Dr. Jekyll in Toronto and Mr. Hyde in Peterborough (or is it vice versa?!) into the distant future and I am quite prepared to face the consequences—though it shouldn’t be said that I look forward to it.

  So where does that leave us? I would hate to think that just as we were getting to know each other, the whole thing was over—fine. I guess I understand your wanting a lover who can live with you in Stratford and, ideally, I guess that is what I would want too—though in your case it’s a lot bloody more likely!

  This is all so new to me and there may very well be other reasons why you wouldn’t want our relationship to develop. That I can accept, albeit with reluctance. What would be most sad would be to think that the relationship was being snuffed out because of the practical problems—admittedly they are very real. Where is your sense of adventure?—to be just a bit facetious. And don’t forget what I said, just before we said good night on Friday. I do have a whole year off starting this summer.

  Excerpts from the small blue diary

  8.12.78

  Dot, Karen* and I got together for our annual mutual Christmas present—dinner and show at Second City. After we got back to the hotel, I excused myself ostensibly to get something to eat, but really to attempt expunging Richard from my memory. I headed straight for Mutual Street and, after several miscues, met Steve, a bearded twenty-two-year-old. Up in the attic again, the diversion was great, though can I ever forget Richard? Several days later, I was shocked and angered to learn that another bathhouse was raided at precisely the same time I was at Mutual Street—what a close call.

  16.12.78

  With the prospect of a long Christmas vacation ahead of me, I seized one last chance to run off to Toronto, ostensibly to do some Christmas shopping, but also to see the San Francisco Gay Collective do the show Crimes Against Nature. All the characters struck me as being very caricatured—the thing the gay movement always complains
about and not nearly as moving as the film Word Is Out.

  6.1.79

  Christmas with the Soanes and Neufelds† and New Year’s with the Cranes, Hennigers and Aykroyds* are happy occasions, but I cannot help wondering what the circumstances will be a year from now.

  I go through a period of feeling very lonely and frightened about the future and I decide I have to make contact with someone in Peterborough. I decide on Lee Beach as an old friend, even though I haven’t seen much of him recently. Getting up the nerve to make a move is comical. I circle round and round Traill College on my bicycle, I go into Traill, walk by Lee’s office and, to my terror, find him in. But I walk right by his office, get on my bicycle and ride off. Enough of this nonsense, I know I want to make a move, so back I go.

  I arrange to come to Lee’s apartment the beginning of the next week. As I go to see him, deciding on my opening words is difficult. I conclude that I cannot start off by asking him if he is gay, I have got to tell him, however briefly, what has happened to me before I have a right to ask him anything. That is in fact what happens before I blurt out—you and Gus are a gay couple, aren’t you.

  Lee laughs—I’m sure that’s what everyone at the university thinks, Gus and I are both gay, but we are just good friends. In fact, Gus is disgusted that anyone could think he was sexually attracted to someone skinny like me! Lee and I have a good chat—he tells me he had not “come out” until he was 38 (I was astonished) and how his first soured love affair had sent him to a psychiatrist. However, he can’t really give me any advice on the question—how does a gay man survive in Peterborough without constantly running off to Toronto?

  27.1.79

  I am alternately depressed and sanguine about my situation—my moods being influenced by the ups and downs of my affairs—and lack of them.… Should I tell Anne and get it over with, no matter what happens? Back in August, I told Michael Lynch that I was basically very happy in my heterosexual world—now I wouldn’t say that.…

  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.

  Handwritten notes on lined paper

  – have come out to a few gay friends, joined Gay Fathers of Toronto

  – periodically engulfed with trepidation for the future

  – fear estrangement from children, but want to be able to teach them about homosexuality, help them with the problems they will encounter in their own adolescence

  – have been amazed how, on the surface, life carries on as before

  – have decided to let my family know gradually—neither secretive nor deceptive

  – prepared for the truth to come out sometime, but sometimes the waiting is more than I can bear

  – also not sure how long I want to go on with my foot in both camps

  – desperately want a dear friend, who is also a sexual partner—what I wanted of the last 25 years, but was afraid to seek

  – torn between the unpredictable search for a lover, the intense but perhaps ephemeral sexual pleasure which I crave, and the less intense, but perhaps more dependable, more deeply satisfying happy home life as husband and father. Are these really the choices? Can I really choose? I suspect not. Perhaps, after all, we are all just like small boats on an often turbulent, always swelling sea, constantly working just to keep underway and afloat, and catching our pleasures when they come in sight

  – my moods change wildly, even within a day—at times my home life is a cage, at other times a precious refuge which I want to cling to as long as I can

  Why do we have to endure such pain?

  Clipping: Letters to the Editor, Toronto Star, January 20, 1979

  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?

  Robin Wood

  Chairman

  Department of Fine Arts

  York University

  Excerpts from the small blue diary

  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 f
or 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.