He tries not to get the three confused.
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He tries not to get the three confused. |
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Home Recent Publications Fiction HIV/AIDS Opinion Reviews Miscellanea    14 April 2003 |
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In my mid-twenties, I was helping The Mother clear out the Futility Room, a Sisyphean task, when she found a jewellery box and showed me the ring it contained. "This was for your fiancée," she said, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken. I was aware that it was a difficult moment for her, finally accepting that I was gay, but my attention was taken by the sudden presence of a woman whom I would never meet, who did not even exist. What was she like, this future wife of mine? Tall, dark-haired, a pre-Raphaelite beauty? Thoughtful, kind, with a quiet sense of humour and a patience to calm my ill-temper and soothe my occasional sour moods? Intelligent, of course, independent. Soft, warm, with a light feminine reassuring scent. There was a moment of regret, and then the ring was put away and never spoken of again. I had a similar experience last week on the first of three transatlantic flights (don't ask...). I flew United and spent half an hour flicking through the Sky Mall brochure stuffed into the seat pocket with the inflight magazine and duty free and video guides. Sky Mall, for the uninitiated, is a 180 page catalogue, a consumer's delight, stuffed with items for home and office, friends and family. Its target audience is Mr and Ms Middle America, a couple with a disposable income and the beginnings of taste, if you ignore The Sword of the Archangel Michael, "created from the artwork of the Vatican", a three foot long replica of something that never existed for $395 and the nightshirt imprinted with the giant head of an Old English Sheepdog for only $16.95 plus postage and packing. I first came across the Sky Mall when the US was still more familiar to me on the silver screen than in reality. I come from a middle-class background, but the North American equivalent offered in the catalogue seemed to promise so much more: large well-proportioned houses in clean suburbs, each with its pool and barbecue, its friendly neighbo(u)rs and the perfect climate of snowy winters, hot summers and orange-leaved trees in fall. Nothing could wrong in this environment. It was quiet and comfortable, crime- and surprise-free, its only fault a lack of the unexpected. Later, there was a time when I wondered if the Sky Mall was my future. I was living with R in Los Angeles and considering making the States my home. If I did, then, not immediately, but towards retirement, he and I might settle in one of these perfect houses, in northern California, Oregon or Washington state. We would gradually fill it with comfortable clutter from the Sky Mall, travel and local crafts shops; in other words, we would put down roots and for the first time in my life there would be somewhere I would feel truly at home. Sky Mall was not the only source of that fantasy. I was also seduced, against my better judgement, by the endless car advertisements on television, where the same contentment could be bought for $159, $199 or $349 a month. Instead of which, R and I drove the same battered white Ford for several years. The dreams of house and car faded as we moved first to New York, then to London, then R became the ex. In recent years I have become more and more disenchanted with my former home, appreciating the friends I still have there and admiring its natural beauties, but increasingly disturbed by the arrogance, ignorance and intolerance that dominates its public life. Yet, even if we had stayed and, the dream was unlikely. R was too young to think of retirement and even if he had shared the ideal, an interracial male couple is not easily absorbed into any suburban community. Yet I remain fascinated by alternative lives, the many paths not taken. I want to be married with children, and watch them grow up and leave before my wife and I head towards retirement and the second home in Tuscany or the Algarve. Or I want to have that one fantastic commercial idea and the business sense to develop it, so that I can make my fortune, retire at forty and spend the next twenty years indulging my every whim. Or to be an academic, making my name in some ivory tower. Or work for the edgier NGOs, driving into war zones with truckloads of emergency supplies, dodging bullets and negotiating safe passage in broken Arabic or Russian with frowning men toting Kalishnikovs. Or for the United Nations, wielding influence behind the scenes. Or in parliament, in the shoes of Charles Kennedy, another Scot, only closer to power. (But that last is a fantasy too far; we have reached a point where the task of president and prime minister are impossible, where the head of government can take decisive action only occasionally, influence some events some of the time, and influence many events not at all.) Of course there are alternatives that I do not consider. The accident or illness that kills or leaves me permanently disabled, the descent into psychological or chemical addiction, the moment of madness that leads to crime and long punishment. Nor do I consider alternatives that would have me born in different circumstances: poor, female, illiterate, disabled, on the steppes of Central Asia, in the shanty-towns of Africa, or the young boy in Iraq who picked up a rocket propelled launcher in a moment of misplaced enthusiasm, perhaps to play with it, perhaps to bring it to an older brother, an uncle, before he was shot dead by a US soldier (USA Today, 8 April 2003). Sometimes I just want something simple. Better looks. More tact. The ability to save money. A more focused intelligence. More talent. A partner with whom I could spend my whole life, rather than a series of partners who turned into friends. A cat that enjoyed the company of other cats and which did not need to continually reassured. Better language skills. And so on and so on. Ideally, I would live in a universe in which every alternative life could be experienced, in which we were simultaneously ourselves and all the people we always wanted to be. In such a universe, we would also have to accept our worse selves, but that were the case surely edit our lives, disposing of the mass murderer, insecure lover, cruel husband and appallingly bad cook, to become only the Nobel Prize winner, the Zen monk, the perfect husband and father, the perfect human being we always wanted to be. But we're stuck with this universe and, despite all the paths not taken, I have no time for regrets. After all, the paths I have followed have turned out to be interesting and I still have many choices and challenges ahead of me. I'm working on a couple now; superstition prevents me from spelling them out, but I will of course describe them if they come to pass. |
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© Martin Foreman |