Innocent

Saturday Night Thoughts

In a few months I'll be sixty-five, which is all sorts of .... interesting.  I was talking to my best friend from when I was sixteen just now, and we were wondering what happened to our lives.  Fifty years, nearly, have gone by from those days when we were filled with hope and our whole lives lay ahead of us.  We believed passionately that we would make the world a better place, that we would make our mark somehow, that we would have happy lives.  Yet here we are, both of us, just a few months away from being able to go on the old age pension.  Him a widower, me arthritic and in pain.  Both of us much poorer than we'd hoped.   And with so little done.  The world has gone on, indifferently.

I can't say I haven't had a good life.  By comparison with some I've in fact had a wonderful life.  The grief which pressed so heavily on me a few years ago has lifted.  I shan't forget my friend Henrik, or my parents or my father-in-law, but the agonising grief of their deaths has hardened into a scar.  You can call that "healing" if you want.

I still miss my little dogs horribly, though.  Their love was so generous and forgiving, so un-judgemental.  Sometimes I think of them and I find myself weeping.  I wonder that God -- or whoever orders these things -- should acquiesce in such suffering.

Really, I shouldn't  complain.  I have enough to eat, shelter, books and music, a loving family.  I live in a safe country, with a decent welfare system, my health is tolerable.

All the same I still can't get my head around the terrible grief and loss we humans must endure, of how you will suddenly be ambushed by a random memory which leaves you weak with sorrow, of how happiness is always tinged with remembrance.  The other night I dreamt of the little dogs, all asleep on the bed, and was overcome with grief to wake and find it wasn't true.

Bizarrely, despite my grief and memories, I am also sometimes intensely happy. Without reason or logic.  Happy, just because.  I know that if I examine the cause it will flutter off, so I don't.  It's a sort of blind happiness, owing nothing, so far as I can see, to circumstance.  A divine pat, perhaps?

Did my parents suffer this angst too?  And theirs before them?  It seems to be something that the  young don't feel, perhaps because they haven't suffered grief like we oldies have.  Or maybe they do too.  I can't remember it, in myself, when I was young and brash.  But then, the young are so self-centred. Or at least, I was.  Perhaps it is precisely this grief that makes you fully human.  I don't know.  The happy certainties of sixteen have vanished.

Even the old aged pension is an oddly mixed blessing.  It means I'm entering that last stretch of life, the slow curve downwards, the decay.  I find myself forgetting things and wonder, is this it?  Only I can't forget the things I would like to.  God has a sense of humour.  A very black one.

It's bedtime, now.

A la prochaine, mes amis.

Monday morning

My little dog, 14 years ago

It's very cold (2 C) and dark and the beginning of the week.  Today I go to get the referral for the colonoscopy and gastroscopy.  That's where they stick a fibre-optic cable up and down you to look at your colon and your stomach, respectively.  It's horrid, the whole process horrible.  Bleagh.  But at least it's me and I know what's happening.  A much worse thing this week is that I'll be taking my dog down for his last visit to the vet.  He's quite senile now, and he's becoming distressed all the time.  He's been my loyal and loving friend for 16 years, more loyal than so many of my human friends.  He's loved me without judging, he's forgiven me when I've been grumpy.  And now it's time.

I can't bear it.

Off-line

I've been off-line for a month or so, now.  I've been unwell (going for some more tests in 2 weeks' time); depressed; tired.  All that stuff.

Maybe the problem is simple: old age.  I'll be 64 in a few weeks.  And when I say "old age", I mean the way in which life wears us out.  The death of family and friends, of the little dogs we love.  The realisation that no matter how hard you try, ppl are still going to be bigoted and nasty.  The wear and tear of constantly struggling against debts and poverty.  My lady was saying how once we would have bounced back from adversity.  Ah, the resilience of youth!  Now, when things go wrong it's so hard to find the energy to get going again.

Maybe it's that I am unfit.  A desk job; too much wining and dining with clients, not enough exercise (because of sore knees).  On which principle, since I am now swimming 40 lengths (1 km) 3 or 4 times a week, things should improve!  We'll see.  At least I'm losing weight again.

So ... a picture of Venice, a city which fascinates me, which I've never visited, but which I hope to see, one day.

Ronny and i

I want to recommend this charming, subtle, heart-warming (and heart-breaking) film.  It's beautiful and quite perfect.  A minor masterpiece.

Ronny and i

Saturday night thoughts

In The Curse of Chalion (which I will review here one of these days), Bujold says at one point, 'a young woman looking forwards and up not backwards and down'.   It is a characteristic of youth, or at least more fortunate youth, to look forward in the expectation of up.  But surely most ppl my age look back.  And down.

Friends who are gone, for whatever reason.  Failing health.  Things you always thought you would do, but didn't: take the number 1 tram in Budapest, for example; or visit the forests of Washington;  or see Venice; or climb Sneeukop one last time with someone you love.  Things you will now never do.  Failure.  Loss.  The realisation that love is transitory and ... not enough.  The awareness of your own arrogance and folly when you were young and the certainty (given your own experience of life) that you will surely be foolish and  make more mistakes before you die.

The greed and short-sightedness which ignore the inexorable logic of global warming, to postpone as long as possible the necessary and inevitable steps needed to fight it.

Yet such are the ironies of life that your horizons contract as you age, and what you need to make you happy is less.  That is not to say that I don't sometimes find myself staring into the distance filled with melancholy.  Of course I do; life is filled with grief and loss.  Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.  Yet as you look back and down there are simple, ineffable, pleasures: a bowl of home-made mushroom soup.  Music.  The deep love which grows between partners in a marriage.  Family.  The first hope-filled creamy green spikes of the daffodils, knowing before we do that spring is on the way.  I am very conscious after recent health scares that I may not have much more time here.  Yet I am happy.  How odd.

Friend

Mates -- Alex Cunha, Nils Butler and Marlon Teixeira

This word has so many meanings.  Like "love".

We don't have enough words to convey and describe the subtle gradations between someone you barely know on Facebook, who is your "friend", and someone whom you would trust your life with.

For me, a friend is someone I love, and who loves me.  I'm not talking about sex or desire -- too often "intimate" is a euphemism for fucking.  Intimacy is something you have with real friends.  A friend is someone I trust in important things.  But most of all, a friend is someone I can be myself with, someone I don't have to pretend with.  They love me in spite of me.  With them,  I don't have to drag out my Mr Jolly persona.  If I am taciturn, well, I don't have to bother to chat mindlessly.   And so on.

Most people don't see friends in this way.   "How to choose friends for success".  "How to get better friends"  As if they were accessories.  You know, a good handbag or elegant shoes or a super haircut.  Using each other.

We are programmed both to love and to want sex, and sometimes these needs conflict.  But as I get older, it becomes more and more clear to me that love is what matters.  Without it we shrivel.  We can, if we have to, provide ourselves with all the sex we need, if we are truly talking just about sex and not about the bond that sex often builds between people, a bond which justifies the word "love".  But we can't manufacture or buy love.

Meh.  It's late (for me), I'm dead tired and worn, and I'm not thinking too well.  I'm off to bed.

Depression and sadness

I've seen several commentaries and discussions which treat depression and sadness as the same thing.  They are not.

Sadness is an intensity of feeling.  It's akin to grief and sorrow and loss.  It hurts.  It has colour and depth.

Depression is the absence of feeling.  It's greyness.  Indifference.  Akin to exhaustion and tiredness and weariness.  Nothing seems to matter.  Everything is too much trouble.  Life is flat and dreary.

Of course, sadness and its brothers grief and loss can lead to depression, as they did in my case. Over a period of a year  or so, someone I thought loved me as a friend dropped me; my best friend's wife died; my father-in-law died.  I lost some illusions and I grieve for them still.

As time when by, my grief lessened, but my disillusion deepened.  It came to seem to me that people I had trusted had betrayed me, that those who appeared to love me did not in truth, and those who were truly fond of me were dead.  To add to my depression, I had to take a massive pay cut at work (one still not reversed).

Gradually my depression eased too.  But still it is there, lurking just out of sight, and sometimes, it returns though, thankfully, never as bad as it was at the worst.  However, the cynicism and doubt engendered by the behaviour of my "friends" and of the universe have not left me, and I have to work hard to keep going.  When you are depressed, you do what you have to and what you can.  And everything else slips by the wayside.

So, like Lord Peter Wimsey as he worked through his post-war shell-shock, I play patience.  Endlessly, hour after hour.  And I read and reread old familiar books (Dorothy Sayers among them)  and watch old familiar films on DVD (Miss Marple, Star Wars, Poirot).  Drink helped get me through the evening, but I'm not drinking now. Sometimes I have enough energy to write.  To play my clarinet or sax.  But often I don't.

Well, what I suffer is no more than what millions of others have endured, and here I am after all, surviving.

I make a point of being grateful for something every day.  I make little lists of things to be glad about.  This makeshift philosophy works.  Sometimes.

At any rate, tonight is one of the nights when I just don't want to do anything.  I'm reading Lois Bujold with enjoyment, and when I've reread all her books, I will move on to Mary Stewart.  Or Miss Marple.  Or Star Wars.  And glad it is I am that I have even those distractions.

Onwards and upwards.

Melancholy

Tonight I'm thinking of friends and family who've died.  It started with a post from Andrew Sullivan, The Last Lesson We Learn From Our Pets,  and I thought back to my own dear dog, and with tears in my eyes, after that to friends and family who have died.  My mother, my father-in-law, my friend Henrik, my friend Anneliese, my father.

God has so badly organised this business of death.  So much suffering before the end.  And our grief!  It's just not fair that we should suffer so.  But "not fair" is childish.  The world is what it is.  But the way people and animals die, and the grief that survivors endure seems to me to argue very cogently for the absence -- the total absence -- of God.  We are alone, and what we make of our lives and of the lives of those we love is up to us.  Not believing in God and in Heaven and Hell makes it all the more important that we show love and compassion and forgiveness and grace now, while we yet live, and not rely on some mythical ideas about life after death and paradise.  I know these notions comfort some people when someone they love dies.  But for me, the horrible savagery of our ends, of the permanent severing of ties between us, is a compelling argument to loving one another while we still can.

Omnia vincit amor

The world is full of sorrows. Ppl -- and dogs -- you love die. Friends stop being friends. You fail to do all the things you hoped to do. But, somehow, if you love and are loved, it's bearable, sometimes even wonderful. Omnia vincit amor. Love conquers all. Them Romans knew a thing or two.

Wish

From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, Good Lord, deliver us.

Lost friends

It hurts.  Always.  Whatever the cause.

Coming out blues

A couple of years ago, a good friend, a bisexual bloke I was very fond of, pushed me very hard to tell my friends I was gay.  He thought it would be good for my soul.

So I did.  It took a lot of courage.  I was afraid of their disapproval and disdain, of losing their friendship.  I had only a couple of close friends, and I didn't want to reduce that number any further.

Well, they made all the right noises.  "I'm so glad you trusted me with this, N."  "It doesn't surprise me, but it doesn't change anything."  Yeah, right.  The bloke who said that at once started making a point of sitting as far from me as possible when we met, with his arms crossed tightly across his chest.  The other one, a born-again Christian, with all the baggage that brings with it, said all the right things, but suddenly stopped phoning me.

I haven't seen either of them for 2 years now.  Despite all their political correctness, their real feelings have been revealed (as so often is the case) by their deeds.

I can console myself by saying that this is the real me, and if they don't like it, well, fuck them.  Except that I miss them.  I was very fond of them  And now I have no close friends.  The guy who pushed me to come out has died.  And the others have dumped me.  We'd been friends for 15 years.

A friend is, as it were, a second self.  [Marcus Tullius Cicero.]  Yes, and their betrayal hurts.

Then, about a year ago,  I got to talking with a bloke on the train.  He was a nice man, with a kind face, and he seemed intelligent and funny.  We started down the road of friendship.  So when he asked me what I was doing on my laptop, I thought it would be OK.  I told him.  I was working on Wilde Oats.  Oh, he said, and immediately looked it up on his smartphone.  Next day he was still friendly, a week later he was sitting on a different seat and wouldn't meet my eyes and now he travels in another carriage altogether (the trains are in units of 2 or 3 coaches, and you can only move around within one unit.)

Ah well.  The world is what it is, and I don't have the strength to try to force change on it.  But I won't be telling anyone else soon that I write romantic m2m stories or that I edit a gay-shaded e-zine.  Nor will I be trusting straight blokes again.

Shallow

I sent a recent photo of me to an e-friend.  After years of being my "friend", he's abruptly stopped talking to me.  I suppose I'm too old and ugly.  How shallow that is!  To judge someone by their looks, not by their heart.

It makes me sad though.

Nice to know that gay shaded men can be just as shallow as straights.  Now I know how women feel with sexist straight men.   If they're pretty, they get listened too and courted.  If plain, they get ignored.

Next to the Water

I thought you'd like this image.

It reminds me of good times I had when I was younger.  Going to the beach, lying stretched out in the sun, surfing and swimming and being with friends.  I like these blokes' bodies:  not overdone, but still slim and sexy.  I like the tan lines.  And I like the pubic bush -- the fashion for shaving it all off. . . .   Nope.  Not to my taste at all!  But most of all, I like the easy-going, natural, utterly right closeness and intimacy.

Lots of stuff I want to talk about, but I'm still too busy.

Meanwhile . . .  enjoy!

Oh how the mighty are fallen

Years ago, I knew this amazingly beaut guy, who went on to become a model, for a while. He had nearly black hair, grey eyes which appeared darker than they were because of his sooty lashes, so that it was only close up that you saw just how beautiful they were, a creamy skin, and a perfect body, neither too skinny nor too muscled. Moreover, he had that natural charm which comes to confident, beautiful people provided they don't get swollen-headed. At a time when most young guys would have died rather than admit they found another man attractive, he always was the centre of attention at any party and the guys there were as attentive as the women.

We lost touch, but I saw a picture of him yesterday, 35 years since I last met him. Oh man. What's happened to me has happened to him: time's wingèd arrow. He's fat, and completely bald. That lovely thick floppy hair so casually flicked to one side, so sensuous you wanted to run your hands through it--all gone. I wouldn't have recognised him if I hadn't been told who it was. He still has a lovely smile though. And I bet in person he's just as much a charmer as he always was.

In some ways I've aged much better than he has (but then don't we all think that?) because I was never handsome as a young man. Now I'm not handsome as an older one. :-)

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let's sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again.

Can't think why I'm in such a good mood. Oh. I know. It's Friday. By the way, should you see the guy in the pic, send him over, won't you? I am quite at leisure.

(Incidentally, this pic comes from GayTwoGether. Worth a visit)

Old Friends

I've been thinking. I shouldn't, I know. It's a dangerous pastime. And probably against the law, too.

I was thinking about old friends who have died or vanished into the ether. Some were friends I knew in the flesh, as it were, and some were the e-equivalent of pen-pals. I miss them. One friend was the closest I've ever come to finding a soul-mate. He died a while ago, and I still miss him and think of him every day. I miss my father-in-law, who died just over a year ago. He was my friend for over 30 years. I miss my best friend and his wife. Since she died, he's been a shadow of himself, his agony leaving no room for anything else. I don't blame him. I can't even imagine what it feels like to lose your partner like that, especially when you have lived for each other, when the other person completed your life.

There isn't much which provides consolation or comfort. You have just to endure; survive; keep going, one step in front of the other. Only the love of those who care about you can provide any balm to the wounds. So I am grateful for my lady. Our love has survived much, and here we are, 35 years after we first started 'going out', still loving each other, still fulfilled by each other, after so many near shipwrecks on the journey.

Here's to you, my darling, dearest of people. Without you I couldn't keep going.

My Father-in-law's Wake

A hot Ozzie autumn evening, the currawongs and magpies calling, and the cockies with their raucous shrieks, so different to the endearing twitter they make as they fly in formation. A day Michael would have liked. He grew to love Oz and the Ozzie character; their generosity and scabrous sense of humour; their quiet patriotism; their robust egalitarianism; their honour and integrity. He spent nearly 15 years in Oz, living with us in a cottage we built for them out the back of our property. Although he came to love Oz he never stopped missing Cape Town where he was born 82 years ago, and where his closest friends remained.

It was a lovely wake, if you can say that about such a ceremony. While we were clearing out the cottage (Bay, my mother-in-law who used to live there has gone to live with her other daughter in New Zealand) we found 6 long red candles that she has been carrying around we think for over 50 years since she apparently had them in Kenya and we lit them and surrounded them with oak leaves - and sprigs of rosemary as well because Michael and Bay loved Ophelia's speech - 'there's rosemary, that's for remembrance'.

My two sons William and Nicholas changed out of their usual grunge gear into black pants and white shirts and sang a cappella 'Danny Boy' which was one of the songs Michael used to sing. My daughter Alexandra then read out a poem from one of my wife's cousins, and then my lady's 'Memories of Dad' in her calm, kind voice - she said her work in community radio was a help as you have to learn to carry on regardless (and there were many tears as well as laughter as she read). William then sang 'Jerusalem' at Mum's request as it was one of Dad's favourite hymns, and his pure angelic tenor lifted us out of ourselves and was balm to aching hearts. Needless to say, the champagne flowed copiously all the while. Nicholas finished by singing an impromptu version of 'Rambling Rose', another of Michael's old favourites, and his lovely gravelly baritone was every bit as good as Nat King Cole's. The children carried us through with their humour and gentleness and their steadiness. Our Jack Russell was the only one who didn't enjoy the singing - a very emotional dog, his head drooped lower and lower until he looked like Snoopy on his dog kennel, his nose almost on the ground, his eyes black pools of woe. He did cheer up when we shared some Camembert cheese with him, though. The red candles burned quietly for 3 hours and as the evening drew to a close, we watched them in silence go out, one by one.

We were reminded again of the importance of family and friends at these times. Omnia vincit amor, they say, even loss and sorrow and grief. Bay and my sister-in-law flew out to New Zealand yesterday morning and it was a wrench for all, but we know that in the long run she will be better looked after there. My sister-in-law has plans for giving Bay a whole new life and we know she will be lovingly cared for. We are planning our first trip over to see her in June/July.

The cottage is dismally empty and sad, devoid of the pictures and antiques that made it so beautiful, and missing the ppl who made it so welcoming.

ὣς ἔφατ' εὐχόμενος, τοῦ δ' ἔκλυε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων,
βῆ δὲ κατ' Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων χωόμενος κῆρ
τόξ' ὤμοισιν ἔχων ἀμφηρεφέα τε φαρέτρην:
ἔκλαγξαν δ' ἄρ' ὀϊστοὶ ἐπ' ὤμων χωομένοιο,
αὐτοῦ κινηθέντος: ὃ δ' ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς.

(If the quote appears inappropriate, I am very aware of the anger of the God.)

Rest in peace, dear friend.

Reflections on grief and loss

On Tuesday my father-in-law died. I'd known him since 1976, when I started going out with my lady, and he's been a friend ever since. My parents-in-law never struck me as unlikely friends, though soime might have questioned the generational gap -- they were well-read, well-travelled and young at heart. I enjoyed visiting them and talking to them. But Michael had further claims on my loyalty and gratitude. When I was a poor student, they invited me along to their visits to the theatre, the ballet and opera. I shall never forget the first time I saw La Bohème at La Nico in Cape Town. I was electrified, overwhelmed, blown away. I had never seen or experienced anything like it. Michael never went to these shows, but he paid, and the cost was way beyond what my student budget would have worn. How do you thank people for the things they did which permanently changed your life? My spirit soared on the things they introduced me to, and my mind broadened. I shall always be grateful.

We've been going through old photo albums, and I've been seeing sepia photographs of him as a baby and a boy, glossy black and whites of him as a young man, smiling sardonically at the camera, wedding photos and bon voyage photos and all the pictures we take of each stage of our lives. A whole life in pics, a whole extended family of uncles and aunts and cousins, most of whom I shall never meet, for they are long dead.

He'd been ailing for a while. Gradually his body started to shut down. Watching this process hasn't made my grief at his going any easier. Instead, it's been spread out over a couple of years. His decay and death have happened at a time when other people I've loved have died -- my dear Henrik; my best friend's wife; other good friends. Somehow each grief, each loss, isn't unique. I am reminded of previous losses, of previous deaths. My beloved father, dead now these 15 years, but still somehow always in my thoughts. Each happiness is unique and special, each grief just a drop in the sea of sorrow and loss which surrounds us.

Yet there is hope and comfort, too. My friends, my children, my wife and my family. Love is the only palliative for sorrow. We know it instinctively with a child when it falls over and grazes its knee. We pick it up and hug it, we kiss the wound better, we show we love it. Would that it were as easy to fix adult grief and pain! Yet how much worse would it be if I were alone. And how will I endure the inevitable loss of those I love when their time comes?

N