I DID a shocking thing recently. I went out shopping with my boyfriend in a supermarket, decided what to cook for that night’s dinner, bought it, split the bill, and went home to cook it. We had a couple of friends over, enjoyed a pleasant meal with good company; they went home, and we went to bed.

I am still recovering from the trauma.

As we were walking down the aisles, I noticed another gay couple doing their shopping, minding their own business. I used to joke with an old friend of mine about the horror of becoming part of a Steve’n’Jeff couple, who do everything that a husband and wife do, with a mortgage, car, and 2.2 cats; spending every night in with each other, losing contact with their friends, letting their bodies go to hell.

To us, this seemed to me to be the epitome of losing a precious identity by mindlessly aping a heterosexual institution. As I was looking at the couple doing the shopping, it dawned on me that from their point of view I, too, had joined the ranks of the Steve’n’Jeffs of the world. But I don’t yet know whether to plead guilty or not.

At National School, I would stand watching the lads play football and wonder why I didn’t want to join in – what was it about me, and me alone, that made such boisterous sport, which was second nature to them, alien to me? When I brought in a skipping rope to play with, the headmaster, a kindly, well-intentioned man, took me aside and told me that it wasn’t right.

I forget the words he used, but I got the impression that I was being told that I was going along a dangerous path. An unwise path. There was enough of a rebel in me to know that he was wrong, as young as I was. But it was at a cost – self-consciousness, the feeling of being marked. I know now that you don’t have to be gay or lesbian to experience that same feeling of not fitting in – sometimes I believe that it is a universal experience, that it is a myth that there are others “out there” who go through life unchallenged. But once aware of it, it changes you.

BIZARRE

MANIFESTATION

Without the confirmation that you are doing fine, that who you are and what you do is acceptable, something in you goes into survival mode. And that is a mode that is hard to grow out of. To keep self-respect, either you throw all your energies at trying to fit in, and build a well-crafted closet, or you set yourself to being as different as possible. Or sometimes an uneasy combination of both. But the ordinary doesn’t come naturally to you again. There is a jarring note, like a piano that has been dropped and never sounds right again.

This feeling of being marked affects relationships most of all, naturally enough. When the ordinary doesn’t feel right, it is so easy to pursue the extraordinary with a vengeance, and explore the sexual undergrowth like a hunter seeking fresh meat, new meat, night after night. I used to seek relationships with people who weren’t interested in relationships, but only in sex; thereby guaranteeing that it would all end in tears. Sex with strangers has nothing to do with emotional intimacy or mutual respect, the two most important things in a relationship; and everything to do with fantasy, the escape from reality.

When you stop trying to fit other people’s fantasies, and begin to accept yourself as an ordinary human being instead of this freak that you felt you were as a child, then you open yourself up to meeting others who are in a similar frame of mind, who like themselves, warts and all. And with people like that, there isn’t a dis-illusionment when they start doing ordinary things like the washing up and going shopping.

In the debate prior to decriminalisation last year, reference was made to the “bizarre manifestation” of homosexual couples getting “married,” in the initial draft proposals to the Cabinet. I like the phrase “bizarre manifestation,” because it so closely mirrors how I used to feel about the Steve’n’Jeffs of this world. But now, I’ve mellowed a bit.

I believe there should be a ceremony at which a gay or lesbian couple can register their commitment legally and publicly. I have written before of the fact that I have attended a blessing ceremony in a Catholic church for a gay couple, and that the clandestine nature of the whole proceedings made me uneasy.

Now we are legally entitled to have sex in Ireland, we should now work towards legal recognition of committed lesbian and gay relationships, for tax, inheritance, pension and property rights, as well as the societal validation itself. Our detractors in Family Solidarity would have us believe that we are only interested in sex. They are only jealous, after all. But we should demand the right to be just as boring as they are.