Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter (22 page)

His bishop knows that he is gay and told him he could have gay friends, but no genital contact. He certainly was not following the bishop's instructions last night. Al has quite a circle of friends with whom he keeps in touch and comes to Toronto once a month for his diet of gay life. He says he doesn't think he would ever like to live with another person so perhaps he is coming to terms with his profession and gayness. Although he said that he, like me, had trouble concentrating on intellectual matters ever since he came out.

I asked him what had led to his coming out. He said he had been very ill and almost died with two perforated ulcers. His doctor was amazed that he had been able apparently to suppress the pain so that he wasn't even aware of it and he thinks that it was all related to his suppressing his homosexuality as well. In any case, that day he came home from the hospital, everything looked beautiful, life was exciting and he decided on the spur of the moment to go to New York, where he met a man coming out of a play, was seduced and has been gay ever since. That was three years ago.

23.3.80

Meeting Tom has been one of the most wonderful things that has happened to me—but also, inevitably, profoundly disturbing.

After his PhD at London School of Economics Tom had been a film director making documentaries for the BBC. For the last five years he had been teaching in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. But, above all, he was bright, intelligent, witty, and I felt an instantaneous meeting of minds. Obviously he did too. He said we had to spend the night together; I agreed. As we walked to the flat where he was staying, he said he liked me because I was a real person and that he knew we were going to be friends for a long time. Normally that sort of hasty concluding makes me suspicious and wary, but in this case I loved it. We often have our best times when things go dreadfully wrong and we certainly started that way.

When we got back to the supposedly empty apartment, we found a stranger already in bed. He got up; we proceeded to make embarrassed introductions. He was an artist who was also a friend of the man whose apartment it was. Tom handled the situation beautifully. He admired the man's pictures and after chatting for a while, announced, “Joe and I are gay and you're not and we are planning to spend the night together, so you go back to bed and we'll stay in the living room.” The man was very kind, however, and offered his bed.
By this time, I knew that I liked Tom a lot simply as someone who was great fun to be with.…

I had planned to go back to Peterborough the next day, but Tom wanted to go dancing and I said I would be delighted. Later in the afternoon I met him at his office and heard more about the work he was doing. He was on leave from Harvard to make a film with the group who had made such an impact with the
Connections
documentary on the mafia a few years ago.

Almost every time we are together, we talk a lot and laugh a lot. Tom has remarked on various occasions how we “click,” how there is a “zing,” how we understand each other's so-often literary or intellectual humour. And last Thursday at our picnic with Flip, Flip said the same thing—“You guys are always laughing.”

Tom had to go back to Boston. He thought it might be for a couple of weeks and that was my first experience in seeing days stretch into weeks. I also became increasingly desperate as I realized that my sabbatical was slipping away. An election had been called for 18 February and I realized I wouldn't be able to leave Canada until at least the beginning of March. I knew I still had a lot to do, but was terribly bored with the book
^*
and fed up with living in Ptbo. The book was proceeding at a snail's pace and that just increased my sense of panic. I thought of moving to Toronto—at least there, I would be able to mix work and pleasure.

Finally on 5 February, Tom was back in town. I met him at his office—a wonderful moment, though, oddly, slightly different from how I had remembered him. We went to the Chinese restaurant in the basement on Dundas. Tom clearly had had a bad day. The financing of the film was shaky and, to top that off, a medical exam had discovered that he was mildly diabetic. But he loved the restaurant—we share a fascination for cheap, sleazy restaurants that serve good food—and then we went out for a drink at Neighbour's. But Tom was distracted by his worries and suddenly announced that he wanted to go back to Ian's and call Bob, his lover in Boston. I was so disappointed, and bitterly reminded of the fact that he was already committed.

On the Saturday afternoon of the weekend we first met, Tom had told me a lot about Bob, but Tom was afraid that already the end was inevitable. Tom wanted a monogamous relationship, but Bob had a need to be admired and sought after and Bob was drinking heavily. My reaction was to think that perhaps Tom was freer than he had first suggested, but, at the same time, I felt for him and admired him tremendously for his sense of loyalty.

But now, with Tom leaving me to call Bob, he had dashed my hopes for him. I sought out E at Katrina's and, for the second time in a month, I wept sadly on his shoulder. I told him I wondered if I really was suited for the gay world, to which he replied that I made a very good faggot because I cried so beautifully. I rather liked that!

The next day, Tom called me, obviously in much better
spirits, asked if we were getting together that evening, and I said only if he really wanted to. He got the message and said, yes, he would like to. We went to the play
Something Red
that Richard Monette was in. I had already seen it once before, but was interested to see if it would be as good the second time without the surprise of the Russian roulette. I also wanted to see if Tom and I shared the same taste in theatre. We did. But the most wonderful thing about that evening was that he came back with me to my room at Hart House.…

During the next three months, I went home each weekend, usually meeting Paul on Saturday afternoon for a dim sum lunch and driving him back to St. Andrew's
^*
on Sunday evening. Sunday afternoon, I took Flip skiing at Devil's Elbow and while he went downhill, I did the cross-country track. Alone with my thoughts, I recalled what Tom and I had done the previous week, what he had said, and was struck by how much I missed him. In Toronto, just being with him gave me such a sense of elation, but I took it all in stride, the many laughs we had, our shared interests and the deeply satisfying sex. But each weekend back in Peterborough, I realized more and more how much I missed him and how much I was falling in love with him. Each week in Toronto, our relationship acquired a new depth.

The next week, Tom and I didn't do anything like going to a film, but after dinner, he came back to Hart House with
me. One night, when we came in, he took off his trousers, asked me to pour him a drink and said how relaxed he felt with me. And we
were
wonderfully relaxed together. We talked and drank and talked and, one night, I played a tape of the Love Duet from
Tristan und Isolde
, which he did not know, and we made love to some of the most beautiful music I know.

I think it was on the Saturday morning that the word
love
first passed between us. (Thankfully, so unlike the other silly men who say they love you half an hour after you have started kissing!) We had often talked about the incredible understanding we had for each other and how we both knew how much we liked each other. But this time, Tom said that we were starting to fall in love with each other and did we realize the consequences, especially as both of us already had commitments. By this time, I had already started to ponder what Tom might mean to my life and to realize that ours was such an exceptional relationship, that
he
was so exceptional, that I felt prepared to accept the consequences of our being in love.

I like Anne a lot and feel a strong sense of duty towards her and the kids, but more and more, especially after being in Toronto, I realize that I simply can't live at home in Ptbo week in and week out, even if there were no Tom. Miraculously, Anne has not complained about my time away from Ptbo and perhaps that will make possible a loose kind of
modus vivendi
.

As for Tom, here was the physical affection, the intelligence, the artistic sensitivity, a comparable career and, not least, the sheer sexual fulfillment which I had so longed for. Yes, I could accept the consequences.

That morning, a light snow (the first for weeks) was falling as we left the side door of Hart House together. Tom looked at me with such love in his eyes and said he wanted to kiss me. It was public and he couldn't, but I knew how far we had come.

March 5 began the wonderful month when we lived together in BW's apartment in Toronto. Tom had got the apartment and invited me to share it with him. It was a very comfortable, stylishly furnished apartment with that unmistakable stamp of faggot money about it.

It is difficult to put into words the utter joy I felt in actually living with Tom. Everything had an excitement about it—making shopping lists and going to all the various shops in the area—almost like shopping in France, playing BW's records, sharing the same gigantic bath towel and especially those tête-à-tête dinners and the conversations that stretched on until Tom announced that we were going to bed.…

The most spectacular night, probably, was the time we had a dinner party for Bob and Ben. I had, at long last, finished my book and that afternoon had indexed the chart, tables, table of contents, preface—everything. Bob and Ben were great fun and we even came up with a title for my book—Bob had yawned and made fun of
Inside the Liberal Party
and I had challenged them all to come up with something better. When Tom suggested
The L-Shaped Party
—we all agreed that was it. But by that time, I had had a great deal to drink and scribbled down the title for fear of forgetting it (next morning, I did).

One evening that week, Anne and Alison came for a quick dinner after a doctor's appointment for Alison. I was nervous about it—would they inspect the sleeping arrangements?—but very much wanted to bring these two parts of my life together—to continue to have Anne become gradually aware of what I was doing. They had a great time together—Alison wanted Tom to see us in the summer. Tom and Anne joked about my cooking messes in the kitchen.

That weekend was the one when I took Paul and Flip skiing for four days. Flip is always lively and amusing (a bit “off the wall,” as Tom would say). There was a period when Paul and I never had very much to talk about, but in the last year, he has become interested in politics and I enjoy giving him little mini-lectures, when, for instance, he asks me about the American primaries. The skiing was mixed and Tom was never far from my thoughts …

Wednesday, I wanted to cook a special dinner for Tom. I got fresh asparagus, pheasant and strawberries to go with Tom's honey melon. I also had a special 1971 claret from the purchase I had made several years ago. The meal went wonderfully well (asparagus was perfect) and afterwards, Tom told me how much he appreciated my sense of occasion. He was obviously very moved. We played
La Bohème
and after I had sat with my eyes closed for a long time, he reached across the table to take my hands and we looked into each other's eyes. Never have I felt so deeply in love nor so deeply loved.

Munich, 23.4.80

Dear Tom,

 … My life all seems to be such a hopeless tangle—though I agree with Daniel Martin
^*
that it is hard to have sympathy for one who has such an inordinate share of the world's riches—both material and, at least to outside observers, emotional—though you know some of the reality of the latter. I
had
hoped that one of the insights of this trip might be a clearer idea of where I am going. That may, by some miracle, still come. But so far, it has served only to reinforce my feelings about you—how much I simply enjoy being with you—which, somehow, in Toronto I can take in stride, but which, here, is more difficult to cope with.…

I am sitting on the edge of a vast German beer hall, while a Bavarian band plays “Roll Out the Barrel” and German Fraüleins laugh hysterically—oh, world!

As far as Anne and the kids are concerned, the 3,000-mile perspective has changed very little there either—so far. They
have
to know that I am not your standard Daddy/husband—and I hope to hell to keep their respect and love in this gradual unveiling process, but I know that I can't and don't want to keep up the pretence of the last 15+ years. I think, ultimately, it is up to them to decide what they can accept.

On every count (i.e., not
just
Anne and the kids), I know I have to have patience if I am going to achieve any kind of solution, but that has been and remains difficult. I think back to that evening in Wagstaff's apartment when you played some Elgar and I became very nostalgic and commented that, after all, perhaps each of us is really alone—and that seems to be one of the few things that doesn't get easier to bear as we get older. I also have this perhaps naive faith that we don't have to be quite as alone as we so often force ourselves to be—though one might think that by 43 I should know better.