Majorca Flats -- 10

Jason went over to Keith.

“Got the job, didja?” Keith had a nice smile, mixing sardonic amusement at the necessity of having a job with good humour.

“Yeah. My name's Jason. Could you show me what to do? ”

“Keith.” They shook hands. “Ok,” said Keith, “this is where we keep the . . .”

Jason didn't stop working till 2 am. He was dog-tired at the end of his shift. He'd had only a couple of hours sleep since he'd left home — when? Nearly 48 hours ago — but he'd kept going. Hard work stopped him thinking, stopped him worrying, stopped him remembering. Oh God! That was the most important. When he thought about what had happened, he felt quite sick. A hard knot would form in his stomach and his heart would start pounding. He was glad he'd been kept too busy to think. And now he was so tired he'd fall asleep straight away when he finally got back to his room at Majorca Flats.

While Keith was mopping down the counter and stacking chairs, Tom called him into his office. Jason wondered whether all the effort would be worth it. Was he going to get paid?

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Gentlemen's Clubs

No, I'm not using this as a euphemism for a brothel.  I'm talking about old-fashioned clubs for men.  I'm reading The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, by the talented and insightful Dorothy Sayers.  First published in 1921 (90 years ago!) she describes how the very old General Fentiman leaves his flat in the morning, and then spends the rest of the day dozing in the armchair next to the fire, having a drink or two with old acquaintances, complaining about the state of the world, before going home in the evening.  General Fentiman comes of course to a sticky end.

It occurred to me while I read it that such an institution would be the perfect home for me.  Not just when I am old and decayed (next year, for example) but now.  A place where I can meet other men, not to hook up, but to chat, share a drink, and reach tentatively across that gap which divides us from each other.

You see, that sort of club is not for couples.  There, men can be friends with other men without their wives also having to be friends with each other or with them.  After marriage, for the most part it's couples (whether it's a het or gay marriage):  you go out to drinks together, or to dinner together or even to the cinema or the opera together.  So if your wife/husband/partner doesn't like your friend's ditto, a strain is placed on the friendship.  Also, you cannot be intimate in a group, and intimacy is indispensable to friendship.  Intimacy is personal, individual, private.  One cannot confess to one's weaknesses and failings in public.  Not without bathos.  But with someone you care for, who cares for you, you can admit to disappointment or unhappiness or a sense that life has passed you by.  You can even admit you are less than perfect because you are gay, or have just been diagnosed with a terminal disease, or some other personal catastrophe.

A few people tried to get me to join clubs when I first came to Oz.  A boss took me to lunch at the Australia Club, very grand, dreadful food, with a full length portrait of the Queen, housed in a wonderful stone late-Victorian building.  In those days, I didn't believe I was clubbable, and anyway, it was all rather stuffy and dull, and all those nabobs from industry, commerce, politics and banking rather intimidated me.   So I didn't pursue his offer to put me up for membership.  I know, I know, I'm really quite hopeless about networking.  I'd be much better off financially these days if I'd joined.  Another boss took me to lunch at the Savage Club, which was more my line -- a club for artists, musicians, scientists, actors and writers, and those who appreciated these arts.  Alas, this time, it was he didn't pursue the offer, and I was too shy to push it myself.

"Old Man with Dog" Ivey Hayes

There are humbler clubs: the local cricket or footy clubs, the country club, or the local choir.  Alas, I can't play cricket or footy, and they asked me to leave the choir because I couldn't sing.  (How humiliating is that?)

We are social animals.  We need others of our species.  Because we don't have human friends we get a dog.  But dogs are only a partial cure for loneliness. Better than nothing, I suppose.  I expect I shall be an old man with dog, one day.

For people who are clubbable, people who can join groups with other people who have an interest they share, life must be easier than it is for odd and eccentric loners like me.  Ninety years ago, there were clubs for all kinds of purposes and people from the humblest to the highest belonged to several.   Even if you were without close friends you didn't have to be alone.  These days we have Facebook.  Or Yahoo groups.  It's not the same, somehow.