I blame it on Tom Robinson. I used to wander around town, when I was a teenager, with TRB badges, when badges were the thing; it had a fist symbol, and it went beside my "Glad to be Gay" badge and my pink triangle and my "How dare you presume I'm heterosexual" badge. I was proclaiming myself a poofter in 1979, aged sixteen.
Tom Robinson is the only man I've ever written a fan letter to, and got a reply from (which I framed, and I'm sure I still have somewhere in one cardboard box or other.) He was my hero; he was the one who wrote the song that brought the word "gay" into my world, into my school, into my neighbour's party one long summer night, with the windows open and the stereo turned up high. He got teased, my neighbour, for playing the song, a vinyl 33rpm EP, but he took it good-naturedly, and it didn't faze him; it was obvious he wasn't gay.
But me, in my stretch denim jeans and cheesecloth shirt and long wavy brown hair (just like Tom's) and skin that was spotty and raw with Biactol, sitting by that window, cross-legged, looking at the stars over my street, blowing out Consulate smoke and just smiling the words fortified my soul it was obvious, then, that I was gay.
I told myself it was just a phase; that's what it said in the newspapers, and that didn't mean I was trapped or anything. That night I didn't know what it all meant, but something felt right; and my neighbour's easy acceptance, by playing Glad to be Gay , helped me.
But the thing about heroes is that they can turn out to have feet of clay. When Tom Robinson started going out with a woman, and fathered a child with her, I felt hollow inside. That's probably when his letter went into that cardboard box. It's not that I have any resentment or ill-will towards him. In fact I think he'd be a lovely person to meet and talk to. But it hurts inside, a bitter disappointment that says more about how much I needed outside guidance, modelling something that mattered, rather than his personal qualities as a human being.
I met someone today who actively pushed that painful button again, at a workshop for gay and lesbian people. I don't want to go into details, that wouldn't be fair; but there were two people leading it; one, a gifted, wise and graceful heterosexual woman who is wonderful to work with, and whose motives for running the days are eminently trustworthy; the other, a man who had travelled from Europe to join her.
I presumed he'd be gay; he looked it, with tight jeans and bright yellow puff-jacket and check shirt and little boy smile. I found myself shocked, even though he did warn us, when he told us about having been gay, having partied and been "heroically" political and done drag, but that eventually (and with a lot of other things happening, which I won't go into here), he'd discovered that he'd lost his "fear of women", decided that his homosexuality was most definitely not genetic, but a result of "family entanglements", and that he was now living happily in a "normal" life with a child and stepchildren, and he goes down the pub with his mates and "talks about football".
However, looking directly at me, he said that he still hadn't lost his homosexual side, and he still enjoyed looking at attractive men. I say this not to flatter myself, for, in fact, I felt anything but flattered; I felt nauseous. And furious.
It is my duty to report to you, dear readers, that I let rip, telling him exactly how I felt, calling him a smug bastard, among other pithy epithets. All within the bounds of responsible non-blaming non-shaming counselling-speak, you realise. (Counselling-speak lets you really dig the knife in, while not appearing to look insane).
I admit to all this with some trepidation, because I'm right slap bang in that awful 3-day nightmarish rollercoaster of cold turkey nicotine withdrawal (again) in which I can't tell whether what I'm feeling is adrenaline, panic, or simply existential nothingness, the hole in the soul that cannot be filled. It will pass; trouble is, will I have said something I will regret in the meantime?
But I also told him that it's an old story of mine; I have had a lover tell me in the past that being with me helped him realise he wanted to be with a woman, and I've never forgotten it. There is also that queasy feeling underlying the suspicion: God, what if he's right? What if the only thing holding me back from a "normal" life is fear of women?
This guy got to me because he equated his homosexuality with such an unhappy time in his life; and he was beaming out such chocolately satisfaction with having decided not to be a political queer hero any more, and to put down his sword and to be loving instead. That I can understand, and can identify with, up to a point; but the firm implications of his story were that he could only find that peace and contentment with a woman. By flirting with me in the way he did, he was equating surface appeal with his homosexuality, and true emotional connection with his newfound heterosexuality.
As with my teenage hero, Tom Robinson, I think that he's a nice man; but I feel again the same rage of having a hero disappoint. I so much wanted to meet a group leader, in the field of work that interests me, who was gay. My expectations were high, I admit. In the past six years I've been a student of various things but I haven't had a gay male teacher to follow or to emulate. It's felt like I've been beating a lonely path through the jungle. I lack heroes in my life.
I like heroes, those that have balls and take risks and are prepared to risk failing for the sake of something bigger than themselves. Listening to Bob Geldof this morning on the radio, his eloquence, sophisticated knowledge, and passion undimmed on matters drought-related, I felt admiration for his consistence and integrity.
But queer role models Gore Vidal? Nah, he's brilliant, but doesn't touch my heart. Edmund White is a truthful witness to his own rise and fall, but there's something about him that seems so much the passive observer of his life. Neil Bartlett's amusing. Allen Ginsberg was kinda close, but not close enough to my world. David Norris I admire hugely as a man; but I don't want to be like him, I don't have enough in common with him on a soul level.
Perhaps it's not necessary that my heroes should be gay or a man; Mary Robinson and Sinead O'Connor spring to mind immediately, if I open my mind. Les Dawson, too, for some surreal but important reason.
Perhaps the days of heroes are over. Perhaps it's just my days of heroes. But it would be nice to have a hero. Just for one day.