Adventures in Dating...in Heels Read online

  “Grey area. It’s much less likely anyone would find out. None of my neighbours know I work here. As long as you keep it down and don’t keep the lights on too late, chances are no one will notice you here. And it keeps you a good distance from me, which is the problem with you staying at mine.” He handed me a key, then a bag of clothes and a sleeping bag.

  “What’s this?”

  “You can’t wear the same clothes for three days until you’re in the hostel. You’ll look like a homeless person. John’s doing me a favour giving you a room, so you’ve gotta behave.”

  “Whose clothes are they?”

  “Some are mine. Some are things left here from other people at the group. If they don’t claim them, I take them home for situations like this.” He laid the sleeping bag out on the row of chairs against the wall. “Home sweet home.”

  “Other people’s clothes?” Even amid all this, I still had standards. I felt some small comfort from hanging on to at least that.

  “Beggars and choosers.”

  I wilted.

  “There’s a towel in there too. You’ll have to make do with a whore’s wash over the sink. Use the deodorant and soap in the bag. I’ll be back in the morning to check on you. Keep the noise down and get some sleep. It’ll all be fine. Promise. I’ve seen this loads of times before. It’ll blow itself out, or something else will happen.”

  Suddenly, I felt like a small boy all alone in a temporary building in a not-very-nice housing estate on the edge of Salisbury. And I felt like a bit of me was starting to unravel, to gently come undone inside myself. I stared at the floor and cried, quiet little sobs.

  Bruce knelt in front of me and brought me towards him, enveloping me in his big strong bear arms. He squeezed me tight and rocked with me, telling me it would all be all right, that he would be there, and there were plenty of others who’d help too, if needed.

  If needed? What else could happen?

  Once I’d composed myself, he showed me how to lock the door from the inside and waved goodbye. “Get some sleep.”

  JOHN’S HOSTEL WAS like the Ritz in comparison with the row of chairs at the Portakabin. It was a large four-storey Victorian red-brick house on the Salisbury side of Churchfields industrial estate. It had a large, dirty shared kitchen full of named bags of food and tubs of margarine with crumbs from a hundred loaves of bread. I only used the microwave to heat up ready meals. I couldn’t face using the oven with its caked-on blackness from years of neglect. The hob wasn’t much better with an assortment of various stains spattering across it. The living room had a large wooden-framed TV in the corner and an old top-loading VCR with a mix of home-recorded tapes—mainly sport—and some old films that must have been donated from an old lady’s house after she’d died. They were all black-and-white, and featured Doris Day. Hardly in high demand for the residents of the hostel—teenage boys about my age or slightly older. Some had been thrown out of home for various things; others had had disagreements with step-parents and walked out; others through no fault of their own found themselves without a parent or guardian and had turned to the hostel.

  Although it was filthy, John was very strict on any breaking of the rules.

  No alcohol under-age.

  No being drunk on the premises.

  No illegal drugs of any kind, no matter if you had a scribbled note from your doctor saying the hashish was for medicinal purposes.

  No overnight guests of any gender.

  Two missed appointments with John and that’s a final warning.

  John was like the house-father; on site from early morning to early evening. We each had regular one-to-ones with him to talk about our progress with the various bits of homework he’d given us. Had we spoken to the job centre? Did we want any help with that job application? Had we filled in the housing benefit form we said we would? For some, it was much more basic like did they want him to go through how to pay a utility bill for when they had their own place? Did we need another how-to-budget talk with a calculator and a column of expenses?

  Mine was pretty easy. John checked on me every couple of days for a quick chat to see if I’d heard from my parents. And the rest was me talking to Bruce at Out! or dropping into his office if I had time.

  Bruce said it was important to keep as much of my life undisturbed, so I continued going to school once Bruce had collected my uniform and told my parents where I was staying. Tony was great. He kept it between us two at work.

  The first morning I came to work from the hostel, Tony was so pleased to see me. He held out a clean uniform. “Wasn’t sure you’d have brought it, but you obviously have.”

  “Bruce.”

  “Please don’t tell anyone else, okay? I don’t think I can cope with going over it again, and the endless tilted heads and isn’t that sad for you looks.”

  He zipped his lips with his hand and smiled. “Ready for some normality?”

  “I can’t wait. Just show me the disorganised clothes and I’ll be away.”

  As we arrived at the footwear section to a pile of mismatched shoes, he turned and quietly said, “I told Mum and Dad what’s happened. They said you can come round any time you want, get a good dinner, whatever. It’s just Dad’s a bit funny about me having friends stay the night. He knows we’re both, you know. And there’s only the sofa to sleep on.”

  “Benders?”

  “Gay.” He nodded. “I told him we’re just friends, but he won’t budge. That, and the sofa. Sorry. I suppose that’s a different level of acceptance, isn’t it? Maybe I should save it for when I bring home my first boyfriend.”

  “Chance’d be a fine thing!”

  Tony slapped me playfully and told me to get on. “Are we all right? I am sorry. It’s not my house, so it’s not my rules.”

  “We’re always okay. I don’t know where I’d be without you and us being okay. I’m not falling out with you on top of all this crap. I need some things to stay the same in my life. And you’re definitely one of them.”

  “Get on with the shoes. And stop mincing about.” He winked at me and left with a smile.

  THE TIME AT the hostel flew by. Towards the end, I was almost starting to get used to it, to having my own space, taking responsibility for buying my own food and paying the rent for the room each week out of my wages. It gave me a sense of ownership and a taste of being an adult I’d not experienced before.

  But the thing I couldn’t cope without was Mum. I missed our little chats when I came home from school or work. She was always so interested in my day as she rarely left the house, except for food shopping or to buy cleaning products or a monthly outing “up the town” for clothes for her and Dad.

  Three weeks after leaving home, I had gone back. I left school at lunchtime and Mum had opened the door, her eyes wide and her arms wider to take me in. “You’re coming home!”

  “I can’t change. It’s part of me. It is me.”

  She hugged me tight and led me into the kitchen. “Never mind all that. Come and have something to eat. Are they feeding you at that place? What you been eating? You look like you’ve lost weight. Are you still keeping up at that school? I don’t want your school to suffer just cos of this.” She looked at the clock above the door. “Wednesday. Lunchtime. Why aren’t you at school?”

  “I missed you. I didn’t want another row with Dad.”

  She wiped her eye, walked to the fridge, and leaned against its open door. “How’s a cheese salad sound?”

  “Bang on.”

  Over the cheese salad, we talked about my secret wardrobe at Tony’s, and how happy it made me when I got dressed up.

  She listened, serving me extra slices of thick white bread covered in butter.

  “When you go up to town, do you wear your dressing-gown?” I knew the answer to this, because I’d seen her many times well-presented, searching through the sale rail at TK Maxx.

  She shook her head quickly. “Never outside the house. If I want to feel smart; I dress up smart.”

/>   “And how does that feel, when you look at yourself smart, in the mirror?”

  She bunched up her fist and held it next to her heart. “It’s like a warm feeling, deep inside. Like when I’ve done the brasses and they’ve come up so clean I can see my face in ’em. Only better.”

  “That’s why I dress up.”

  “What about all the other stuff, boys and that?”

  “I’m still gay.” I held her hand, which was shaking slightly. “I was born gay. I will always be gay. I don’t want to change anything.”

  She wiped her brow with a little white embroidered hanky she’d pulled from her housecoat pocket. “No operations, nothing like that?”

  I shook my head.

  “You sure?”

  “I promise. On my life, I will never have any operation to change my body. I dress how I feel. And when I’m dressed up, it makes me feel even better.”

  “I got some chocolate hobnobs. Fancy some? I’ll make a pot of tea.” She stood and began fussing about with the kettle and teapot, putting a selection of biscuits arranged like a fan on the plate. She stopped moving, leant on the work surface, and stared at the ceiling. “Any ideas what to tell your father?”

  When she used “father,” I knew things were serious. “Nothing?”

  She turned, a teabag in one hand and the sugar bowl in the other. “How would that work then?”

  We discussed an approach based on silence and omission. Dad was hardly the most talkative person in the house, and if he could avoid a conversation and get stuck straight into his dinner then TV, without a word, he was happy. So Mum and I said we’d never mention the clothes again. Now Dad knew I was gay. Mum had sensed it from an early age, but had kept it to herself.

  And when I had started going to Out! at fifteen, after the He-Man incident a few years earlier, she wasn’t surprised. “Mums always know, love,” she had said simply as I showed her the flyer for Out! and told her about the interview with kind, understanding Bruce, with the greying temples and crow’s feet around his eyes.

  Now, Mum said, “He knows you’re that way now. But it’s probably best if you don’t really talk about it to him. Anything about your gay friends, you talk to me. Anything about boys you like, that’s me, all right? Maybe say it’s a phase. You’ve grown out of it, not interested anymore, like the dresses.”

  “It’s not a phase. None of it is.” I swallowed the anger building in my throat.

  “Least said, soonest mended,” Mum explained, tapping her nose. “I know. You know. Your father doesn’t need to know everything.”

  “What about the clothes?”

  “Gone. Sorry, love. He threw them out into the street. Great big piles of them, shouting about how it wasn’t natural wearing all that stuff.”

  “What if he mentions it, asks me about it, and if I’m still into it?”

  “Tell him you’re not into that anymore.” Mum stared at me.

  “I’m not changing who I am. I can’t. I won’t.”

  “I’m not asking you to, love. Besides you know he won’t ask any of that, love. I’ll smooth it over with him. Give it another few weeks and then come home.”

  “There will be more. I can’t stop doing it.”

  “This time, I’ll leave it at the back of the wardrobe. Cos your father’s not going to find it there. He wouldn’t know where the washing-up liquid’s kept under the sink, never mind what’s at the back of your wardrobe.”

  “It feels a bit like lying.”

  “He won’t want to talk about it. You can’t change. If he doesn’t see it, he won’t know. It’s not lying. It’s not telling him.”

  “About all of it. Me liking boys. Dressing up. Sounds like lying to me.”

  “Do you want to move back or not?”

  I did. I wanted to have our conversations back like this, as much as I’d wanted anything before. I wanted the home-cooked meals, the soap operas and the Mamas and the Papas records. I wanted to smell her lavender-and-bleach scent when she hugged me every morning as I left and every evening as I came home. And if I had to keep a part of me from Dad to get all that back in my life, I realised then, it was a compromise I was happy to make. I nodded.

  Mum poured us each a mug of tea, and then we knocked biscuits together in celebration of our plan.

  It took another three weeks of Mum’s little comments and hints to Dad about me being ready to come home and how they must both let sleeping dogs lie how she was sure it was just a phase I was going through, and how I was very sorry—it wouldn’t happen again—before I had a call come to John’s office phone at the hostel.

  I was wondering if I could get away with another day without enduring the full disgusting health hazard of the bath, and John knocked on my door to say I had a call. “I think you’re off, mate.”

  On the phone, Mum said, “He’s said you can come back. He thought you were ill. Said I should get you sent to the nut house up the road, see if some of that electroshock therapy shocked it out of you.”

  “I can’t come back to that. I’m all right here. Don’t worry. I’ll pop round when he’s out.”

  “He said that, before. Now he accepts it was a phase. I reminded him about the other things you were into as a kid. Putting everything in your mouth. Not wanting to eat potatoes. Then there was the I don’t want phase, where whatever we said, you didn’t want to do it. They all passed. I told him, and so has this one.”

  “He believed it?”

  “He wanted to. So he does. Who knows a child more than his mother? Exactly, so he listened to me. You’ve always been a mystery to him, ever since you was born. Not because of anything you did, but because you’re not a spreadsheet with sales targets, or a big Mercedes he can swan around in.”

  AND SO IT came to pass that one Saturday, six weeks and four days after I’d been thrown out, I came home. I stood in the kitchen, holding my bags. Mum hugged me and told Dad to pay the taxi driver instead of standing there like a lemon.

  Dad obeyed, pulling his thick leather wallet from his Saturday casual jeans and banging on the taxi’s roof.

  “English literature and business studies. What do you think of them?” he said loudly as he walked into the kitchen.

  “What for?”

  “You’re off to college soon, aren’t you? Need something useful, if you want to follow in your old man’s footsteps as a business man.”

  I caught Mum’s eye behind Dad’s head. She nodded.

  I tried to grab onto something familiar to continue the conversation. But nothing. I caught Mum’s eye again.

  She said, “Your friend Tony from work, he’s thinking of doing business studies, isn’t he? At Salisbury College. You could go there together.”

  Yes, he had mentioned that. I turned to Dad. “He’s a front-line manager, but he wants to work in head office eventually. Tony. Said the college does good business studies courses.”

  “Sensible lad. Have I met him?”

  “Once or twice.” We usually avoided times when Dad was home to prevent the inevitable barrage of questions about what Tony was wearing and was Tony that way and why did he need to make such a thing out of being different, why couldn’t he just blend in like everyone else did. Yeah, really, those were some of the questions he’d asked Tony before.

  So we talked about what I could study at college, as if the whole throwing me and my clothes out incident had never happened. Exactly as he obviously wanted.

  Mum took my bags to my room as Dad and I continued talking. It was more me listening than talking, but I was back, in the kitchen, at home, where I wanted to be.

  Chapter Six

  1996

  I had persuaded Tony to do business studies at Salisbury College, and Dad had persuaded me to do A level English alongside textiles and music.

  I left the comprehensive secondary school as soon as I got my not-very-good GCSE results and presented Mum and Dad with two options: I went to college for A levels or I waved goodbye to education and took my chances in the
real world. Mum was happy with whatever made me happy. Dad, as predicted, fell very heavily on the education side, with a preference to me staying at the secondary school so I could “get a proper education.”

  However, once I waved the prospectus under his nose, full of practical courses for practical qualifications, and mentioned that my friend Tony was studying business and maybe I might look into that, he was sold, with the only fly in the ointment being that I had to do English.

  “What will I need that for?” I’d protested for most of the previous summer.

  “Or you can stay at school,” Dad had replied like a stuck record.

  Having endured five years of that school, I knew of all the options that was the one I’d least want to do. I’d have rather taken my chances down the bus station with the winos and druggies, or back in the hostel than go back to the school. Never before had I felt so worthless, miserable, and lonely. Each day was something to be endured, like root canal work from a dentist. Although the bullying and name-calling had eased off since the boys realised calling me a poof, a bender, and a queer bent bastard didn’t bother me, since it was true, I was still a social outcast from all groups. Even the role-playing games geeks didn’t want to talk to me. I scared them apparently. Dad knew I’d rather eat my own head than do another two years in that place.

  “What about the shop?” Mum had offered a few times. “Nothing wrong with working in a shop.”

  And she was right, but somehow, there wasn’t anything particularly right with it either. Despite every fibre of my being wanting to disagree with Dad’s suggestions on principal of them being from him, I did want to at least try what the bright new world of possibilities of A levels might bring me.

  And so that’s how I ended up studying that motley mix of A levels.

  College was exactly the opposite of school. There was none of the uniform, rules, conformity I’d hated so much. Everyone turned up—or they didn’t. It had a rather more it’s up to you, we’re here if you need us attitude to education than the drill sergeant, learning things by rote approach of school. Everyone wore what they wanted, went out with who they wanted, and it was more of a mixture of different groups than school had been. Yes, there were little cliques and groups, but people seemed to have so much more going on outside college they were just an awful lot less arsed about all the internal politics than they’d been at school.