Being Gay and twenty-one years old in 1962 is not always easy...
Of course, the Fortune Teller lied. Down a Walton Street edged with stalls, sideshows and gaudily beckoning caravans, strolling the chill illuminated darkness where it erupts into the fairground. The smoky spun-sugar aroma of candy-floss, hot dogs that drip with ketchup-blood, brittle golden curls of brandy-snap, polystyrene-white nougat slabs (pronounced 'nuggit'), and the fat round pomegranates that only emerge for these two weeks. Pause at the freak show, reading the comic-strip of pictures outside. The Barker calling, advertising unmissable once-in-a-lifetime attractions to be ogled behind the gaudy side-show facades, the Bearded Lady, A Calf With Two Heads, The Strong-Man in a Leopard-Skin, The Fire-Eater, The Contortionist, 'The Man Who Eats Lightbulbs and Impales His Face With Rods Of Steel', step right this way. Then, drawn back to the fortune-teller. 'Madame Lavinia, Daughter of the original Romany Clairvoyant Gipsy Petrulengo'. I was killing time. I have time to kill. Why not? Two steps up. Into a bright gloom. She wears gold hoop earrings and a scarf glittering with sequins.
'Your future foretold, let Lavinia read your destiny...' You cross her palm with silver. A spread of cards slurred in a half-circle. 'I sense you have many questions...', and she starts into telling me I'm about to meet my true love.
Stepping back into the whirling night I sneer, little can she know the real nature of my desires, but at the same time... yes, there's something that almost believes. After all, at eight o' clock, I'm going round to his house. The night makes me anonymous. I walk the slow jostling circle where a flashing haze of brightly-lit faces scream as the Shamrock plummets, where the Ferris Wheel scrapes the stars, past the thunder from the switchback, the smack and clang of the shooting gallery, where the big-cc bikes rev up outside the Wall of Death. The gilded Galloping Horses Carousel in the rich din of piped organs, while above me, the gargoyle clown-faces leer down past the Cakewalk, the Flea Circus, the Ghost Train, the Waltzers, Helter-Skelter, and Bingo stalls. Eyed by the sad goldfish that circle endlessly in their distorting bulges of plastic as Hook-A-Duck prizes. The Hall of Mirrors, in each mirror, an incident, in each mirror a dream, a fantasy.
I hang around the gold-painted pillars, watching the Dodgem Cars weave and impact, their tall poles sparking as they thrip across the grid. Watching the attendant ride the cars with easy loping leaps from one to the other, the girls shrieking as he leans over them. Talking at them. The words lost by the slightly out-of-phase treble-drenched records, Neil Sedaka's "Oh Carol", Del Shannon's "Runaway", Connie Francis' "Stupid Cupid". I love those singles, but they come vividly alive in new more raucous ways, the bass-lines thrumming up through buckboards with the reverberation of the cars. The attendants, they're like cowboys. Vagabonds. Diddycoys. Untamed gypsies who restlessly move from town to town as the fair circulates, roustabouts in faded jeans and scuffed jackets, neckerchief, oil-slips of night-black greasy hair that shimmers in the pulsing lights as they ride the cars.
As I'm stepping down I glance off across the crowd, and there's a bunch of giggling sniggering girls from work. They've not seen me, yet. And I don't want them to see that I'm here alone. Without a friend. They'll talk about it at work tomorrow. I slide down beside the rides. There's a slim path between, sided with rainwater-beaded gloss-painted panels and the spread dark fingers of loose tarpaulin sheets, it throbs with power-cables and storage-drums. I shove my way through. The whirring noise dims a little. A tar-black darkness draws in around me with a night-moistened scent. I pause. I can wait here till they've passed. No, I'll just go a little further, see what's there, it should lead back to Walton Street. Back to where my pushbike is chained to the lamppost. There's a generator almost up to my chest, it vibrates with energy and exhales dust. There's a telegraph pole with cables attached. And a small enclosed space scrubby with weed and sickly crushed grass. A piece of night that trembles beneath the ice-blue weight of stars.
There's someone else here. I draw back, out of sightlines. He's stood facing the Dodgem's back-partition, bracing himself up against it with one hand, legs spread, so I can see him side-on. At first I can't quite... yes, it's the cowboy, taking a piss. I daren't breathe. As the starlight freezes, as the world recedes, I see the luminous arc of yellow piss begin sluicing patterns across the wooden panel, following it back I glimpse the dark tip of his penis standing proud from his fist. He stands head back as the seconds extend. He doesn't know I'm here, doesn't know I'm watching... or perhaps he does? Maybe he noticed the way I was watching him on the cars, and interpreted my exaggerated interest? Maybe he's doing this deliberately? What if he turns around now, and our eyes meet? What if he takes the few strides necessary to cross to where I'm standing, and forces me down onto my knees in front of him? He's bigger than I am, I'd be helpless to resist, even if I wanted to. What if he makes me... do things to him?
Instead, he just grunts. Shakes it. Tucks it away and zips up. For a moment it's as though he's coming this way, but no, just as quickly he's gone, and I can breathe again. Scared and excited in equal part, as though I've shared something. I've always been curious about what men have concealed in their pants, but have seldom had the opportunity of finding out. Now, I daren't stop until my fingers coil in around the chill steel handlebars of my bicycle. Breathing deep with my eyes slammed shut. And I cycle hurriedly all the way. It's almost eight o' clock...
--- 0 ---
While I'm precariously negotiating crossing the boundaries of language, silence, and shyness... He just blurts out 'Is it true that you're queer? I've always wondered what it'd be like to be sucked-off by a queer.'
I was embarrassed and confused, 'you can't say a thing like that.'
'Why not? It's true, isn't it?'
'It might be.' I couldn't say 'you're not my type' -- because he is, admit it, I've got the hots for him, and have had for a long while, secretly (arguing with myself, within my head -- 'so why don't you do something about it?' 'Afraid, I guess.' 'Of what?' 'Of rejection. That he might turn me down. And tell the others').
Me, on the print-works shop-floor, I was always the nervous tongue-tied kid. The shy misfit. In the odour of paper-dust, grease and ink I imagine the factory-girls in their curlers and head-scarves talking about me conspiratorially behind my back, laughing behind their hands, the sound lost in the rhythmic thump of presses. The older guys in boiler suits who talk endlessly about cars and sport, they just shake their heads in dismay. They can never work me out. But Vince had never been like that. Sure, he can join in with them in ways I never can, he has a kind of swaggering self-confidence that works when he talks trash to the girls, or TV-football to the older guys. But he never condescends to me either. He took care to include me, and that meant a lot.
'Stupid Cupid' indeed. He asked me what I was into. Music? Yes. And later, when he told me he had some Buddy Holly records, and if I wanted I could come around to his place to listen to them, I couldn't believe my luck. I listened to Ricky Nelson and Elvis more -- of course, but if Buddy Holly was all the excuse I needed, overnight I became a fan. The evening was slow, the TV flat and monochrome in contrast to my garish anticipations. Then I get my bicycle out, almost casually, and pedal across the estate, passing through the fairground. My heart in my mouth. Then I was here, in his room in his parent's house, studiously checking out the books on his shelf -- some James Bond paperbacks, a couple of science fiction anthologies, and an 'Eagle Annual 1964'. There's a Leeds United poster on his wall still betraying the pin-pricks where the staples had been prised open allowing it to be torn out of a magazine. Flipping through the singles in his record cabinet I make appropriately approving noises, and then I'm sitting beside him on the bed. He's wearing blue jeans, with scuffed pointed-toe shoes, buckles down the side.
That's when he asks the 'Is it true that you're queer?' question.
But be careful, 'anyway, I don't like that word' I manage at length.
'What word would you prefer -- poofter? Shirt-lifter? Fairy? Bum-boy? Homo?'
'They all sound like words from a dirty joke. They describe the camp comedians you hear on the radio. Kenneth Williams doing 'Julian & Sandy' in 'Round The Horne'. They don't describe me. They're nothing to do with me. I'm just me, that's all. And you're not... that way, are you?'
'No. Course not. But I just thought -- you know, it'd be interesting to try it. It's different with girls. You have to take them out, to the pictures, buy them drinks, then -- when you walk them home, you might get to kiss them goodnight. Perhaps a squeeze of tit through their blouse, and that's it. Only slags might do dirty stuff like that -- but only once you've shown them a really good time, and then its like they're doing you a big favour, but well, you must have done it before, you must do it all the time, so it's no big deal.'
