by Sue Perkins
We met and seemed to bypass the normal parameters of friendship. There was no Maybe let’s meet next month for a coffee or any of those boundaries. We met the next day, and very shortly afterwards, maybe even the day after that, we met again. Then we started meeting every single day, often sitting next to one another at my computer to play a Star Trek video game. This involved staring at a seemingly endless black screen and moving your mouse up and down, left and right in a vain attempt to find a Klingon. We never found a Klingon. It was forever dark in space. Although I did find that we were now sitting so close to one another that our legs were touching.
I became restless. I didn’t sleep much at night and would catnap during the day. I stopped being interested in things. I sat daydreaming, waiting for Spock o’clock. Something felt wrong. Very wrong. I phoned my sister.
Me:
Gel, there’s something wrong with me. I don’t feel right. I can’t sleep and I feel sick to my stomach. I just sit around …
Michelle:
Can I just stop you there?
Me:
Is it irritable bowel syndrome?
Michelle:
It’s worse.
Me:
Oh God.
Michelle:
Yep.
Me:
Oh God. I’m in love, aren’t I?
Michelle:
I am rather sorry to say, yes. Yes, you are.
Out and About
Every gay person in the world has an idealized notion of their coming-out in their head – a fantasy version which eases the anxiety about the inevitable horror to come. This was mine.
Mum is running her hands along the smooth clean lines of her kitchen, wondering if her obsession with minimalism isn’t creating a rather austere living space. I come in just as she turns her attentions to the sofa.
Me:
Mum, there’s something you should know.
Mum:
What is it, angel?
Me:
I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while but couldn’t find the right time.
Mum:
[plumping cushions] Well, I think now is the perfect time. Sit! Can I get you a herbal tea?
Me:
No, I’m fine.
Mum:
Thank God. I don’t have any mugs anyway. I got rid of them. You know I can’t stand extraneous crockery. Anyway, go on.
Me:
Well, the thing is … I’m gay, Mum.
A pause. Mum gets up wordlessly and walks to the window.
Me:
Did you hear me, Mum? I’m gay.
Mum:
[muttering to herself] Oh God.
Me:
Mum?
Mum:
Oh God, no …
Suddenly her legs seem to give way, and she collapses, grabbing at the damask curtains as she slides to the floor.
Mum:
No! Not my little princess. Not my Susan. Oh God, I’m in shock. I’m going into shock. I can’t believe it! I can’t … I can’t cope!
I walk over and offer her my hand.
Me:
It is a shock?
Mum:
It’s a massive shock. I cannot think of anyone in the entire world less likely to be gay than you. You’re so … un-gay.
Me:
I know. Come on, Mum, please stop crying. Try and put into words your knee-jerk prejudices about something that is essentially nothing to do with you – merely a matter of personal choice that, due to bewildering social convention, I’m forced to share with blood relatives.
Mum:
[taking my hand, pulling herself up and resting against the sofa] I guess, my initial worry is that now you’re a lesbian –
Me:
Yes …
Mum:
– you’ll have to spend the rest of your life in a fleece.
Me:
We only wear fleeces 50 per cent of the time these days, Mum. Get with the programme. And there are so many advantages to me being a lesbian: I can perv over men without them noticing, and dress like a teenager well into my forties. Plus, you’ll always be able to rely on me having spare wet-weather gear, should you need it.
Mum:
But I assume, because you’re such a maverick, that you will forgo the time-honoured lesbian obsession with cats?
Me:
Yes. Yes, I will. Cats leave me cold. I shall have dogs. Many, many dogs.
Mum:
You’re so unique.
Me:
I know, Mum. I know.
Mum:
[drying her tears] You’ve totally changed my views on sexuality and gender politics. I’m going to tell everyone I know in the Croydon area, while making sure I credit you utterly and exclusively with this incredible transformation. Thank you.
Me:
You’re welcome.
Mum:
I’m so proud of you, my darling.
Me:
Don’t be silly. I’m just glad I’ve had such a powerful and positive impact on your life. Now go! Go tell everyone what you’ve learned here today.
Mum:
I shall.
Me:
And you’ll credit me – remember?
Mum:
Of course. I love you so much.
Me:
I love you too. Now c’mon – get outta here. You’re embarrassing me.
This is how it actually went.
Me:
[on phone, strained voice] Mum. Can I come home tomorrow?
Mum:
Yes. Why? Are you all right?
Me:
Yes. I just … I just want to talk to you about something.
Mum:
[matter of factly while eating what sounds like toast] Is it about you being gay?
Long, long pause.
Me:
Yes, it might be that.
Mum:
[still munching] Is it that?
Another long pause.
Me:
It might be.
Mum:
Fine. Well, just whenever you like. No rush. Lots of love, darling.
Click of the receiver.
And that’s why I do what I do. You’ve got to get your drama somewhere, haven’t you?
Our next gaff was a flat on the fourth floor of a mansion block in Abbey Road. By now Emma had moved in. In the basement of this block lived John, the night porter, a
waxy-faced man with bad teeth who looked like the sort of thing Gunther von Hagens had had a crack at plasticizing. John was a weapons-grade bore who originally hailed from Sligo. Every night when we returned home we’d run the gauntlet from the front door to the rickety cage lift, desperate to avoid his hypnotic honeyed vowels. His chat ammo of choice? The life and works of seventeenth-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper. It didn’t matter what ailment you had, John would let you know, in painstaking detail, using his approximation of a Jacobean voice, what old Nicholas would have done. (This invariably involved boiling onions …)
Most nights, our arrival home went as follows.
Open front door, clasp keys tightly to avoid jangling. Run to lift and press button. The cabling sparks into life and the cage slowly descends. Suddenly there is the sound of heavy footsteps ascending from the basement and the noise of a key turning in a lock.
Me:
Shit … shit! [Frantically jabbing at the lift button]
The basement door swings open. The smell of boiled onions fills the lobby.
John:
Well, hello, Susan.
Me:
Hello, John. I was just –
John:
Is that the sound of mucus in your passages?
Me:
No.
John:
I think it is. A little thickening of the membrane. I can hear it in your voice.
The cage drops into view. Salvation is at hand.
Me:
No, I think it’s just because … Well, you know, it’s late. I’m tired …
John:
The damp. Do you feel it in the flesh, the bones or the ventricles?
Me:
Really …
John:
Try thistles in wine. Culpeper says they ‘expel superfluous melancholy from the body and make a man as merry as a cricket’. Will you do that?
Me:
Yes. Yes, John. Absolutely.
John:
Well, you’re a feckin’ liar as you can’t get thistles this time of year. Honestly. They’re ruled by Saturn and Mars, you know. Saturn and Mars!
I rise in the iron cage, high above him, away from the smell of alliums and the sound of silly oldy-worldy babble, back to the safety of the flat and a double whisky.
The strange thing about John was that, for all his guff about late-medieval herbalism, he was a devout and unrepentant chain-smoker. I don’t know what Nicholas Culpeper said about tobacco, but we’ve had a few more credible physicians since who assert that it isn’t the healthiest. More worrying, however, was John’s insistence on carrying his air rifle with him wherever he went. Whether he was investigating a drains blockage or coming to collect the service charge, his trusty firearm would come with him.
‘It’s for the squirrels,’ he’d insist as I backed away from him in the small kitchen in which we both found ourselves.
One morning, after we’d had to call upon his services to inspect some suspect cracks in the ceiling, I noticed him gazing intently out of the window. None of my attempts to lure him back on message were successful; he merely stared resolutely out until, in a flash, he raised his gun and popped a tree rodent out of the sky.
‘Got the little bastard.’
During an impromptu birthday party, one of the more rowdy guests redecorated an entire wall with Cabernet Sauvignon. We did our best to conceal things from John, sneaking off to buy a tin of fresh paint, only to get collared at the last minute.
We turn the front door key and rush to the lift, stabbing at the button. The reflex of cabling as the iron box lowers towards us. We will it on. The sound of heavy footsteps heading upwards from the basement. The door opens. The stench of boiled onions.
John:
How are ya, girls?
Me:
Good, really good.
John:
I see one of yous got mail from the hospital. Are you all right?
Sarah:
It’s mine, John. It’s for me.
John:
May I ask what’s wrong wit ya? Only –
Sarah:
It’s nothing. Just a check-up.
John:
Private, eh? Or is it your privates? Venereal disease, maybe? Well for that Culpeper would be recommending a poultice of stewed leeks – or wild pansies. It’s not always the safest, but do you happen to have mercury in the house?
Sarah:
No, John. It’s not venereal disease.
John:
Mmm. Shame.
The lift finally descends to the ground floor. Free at last.
Whereas Sarah spent the year dodging questions about her genitals, Nicola spent hers staging a John-and-Yoko-style bed-in with a gorgeous boy called Barney. They holed up in the box room overlooking the Abbey Road studios, surfacing occasionally to eat anything beige that might be lying around – bread, pasta, jacket potatoes …
Whatever gets you through the night.
After completing our twelve-month tenancy, we escaped John but went from the frying pan into the fire. We decided to move further north, to Golders Green, renting a ramshackle Edwardian house that had remained untouched since its first paint job. Our landlady was an extraordinary character named Rhoda, an indomitable South African in her early nineties. Half the time I had the sneaking suspicion she was being played by Barry Humphries.
Rhoda had never lived in the house but had a fixation with it that none of us could understand. Occasionally we’d hear mutterings that her son had lived there and had died in one of the rooms, but whatever her reason, she had instilled in the building a sort of Havisham’s-by-proxy. The place remained as it had done for decades, and no amount of cajoling would get her to spend a penny on refurbishment. There was a small conservatory which had the rare distinction of being colder inside than out. Adjoining it was a small toilet which had been designated ‘spider loo’ in the first week after Emma sighted a huntsman suspended over the cistern. We never used it after that.
It was a strange relationship we enjoyed with Rhoda, with complex and ever-shifting boundaries. Sometimes we would be her surrogate children, then her friends, then strictly her tenants. The problem was, you never quite knew at what point on that continuum you were currently positioned. At the beginning of every week we’d do her food shopping and bring it round to her house. At the end of every week, by way of thanks, we’d receive a parcel from Fortnum & Mason containing one pack of sausages and two packs of ginger thins. The contents never changed. She had obviously taken one look at us and thought, What those girls need are pigs and biscuits. Pigs and biscuits!
Rhoda would also hold random, infrequent ‘happenings’. Our attendance was mandatory. Invariably we would be stuck next to an old colonel or someone who had invented radiotherapy, but we were young, stupid and cocky, so were impervious to their stories and achievements.
On one such occasion we arrived on Rhoda’s doorstep to be greeted by a beautiful black waiter. He seemed not to have a name but was merely part of the shadowy force known as ‘the staff’. It was going to be one of those evenings. Rhoda was an unapologetic racist w
ho had spent her formative years with no context other than apartheid, which meant you oscillated between hating her and feeling rather sorry for her. To be honest, on these evenings I felt sorry for everyone – suspended as we were in the aspic of class, power and money.
Rhoda’s entry to these parties was the stuff of legend. There would be the sound of brass and the rumble of machinery as she wobbled into view, descending – on her Stannah stairlift – in fuschia dress and red velvet turban, blowing like billy-o on a hunting horn. We’d applaud awkwardly. The problem was on this particular night the stairlift got stuck mid-descent, so we were forced to carry on clapping for several minutes while the unnamed beautiful-black-man carried her down.
Finally she reached us. She stood, gathered herself, pulled the back of her dress from out of her large cotton pants and ushered us into the dining room.
‘We’re having cold soup!’ she exclaimed cheerily. ‘I asked them to make it,’ gesturing to the staff. ‘I asked them to make it with avocado. Never seen that before, and I thought it could be fun!’
Three vast tureens were brought in. The lids were lifted. A cumulus of fruit flies flew out of each. Inside sat a lurid green broth with thick skin on top. From where I was sitting, it looked like Kermit cellulite.
Well, I thought, that is fun.
