Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter

by Alison Wearing

  Clipping: “Homosexuality Can Be Traced to Infancy,” The Globe and Mail, April 26, 1979

  Homosexual tendencies are created in infancy and early childhood by the parents’ earliest reactions to their offspring, a U.S. expert on adolescent sexuality said yesterday.

  Dr. Paul Fink said it is a myth that a seduction by someone of the same sex during adolescence creates homosexuality. What happened in the first 18 months of life is much more important.

  Dr. Fink, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College in Philadelphia, spoke to about 40 doctors specializing in children’s problems during a conference organized by the American Academy of Pediatricians.

  He said a study by Dr. Robert Stoller of the University of California in Los Angeles shows that a child’s “gender identity”—the sense of maleness or femaleness—is established within the first 18 months of life by the infant’s relationship with its mother.

  A mother typically treats a boy differently from the way she treats a girl, as though he were a bit alien, the study found. If a boy had the sort of close relationship that girls have with their mothers he would want to be a girl.

  Dr. Fink said the implication of this and other studies is that a person’s sense of gender and choice of a different sex or their own sex as love objects is really determined in infancy. Almost as important as the relationship with the mother in early infancy is the relationship between the child and father during the years from age 3 to 6, Dr. Fink said.

  “The father takes the existing gender identity of both the boy or girl and reinforces it by his attitude. For the boy he provides an identification person. The boy wants to grow up to be just like him.… The little girl needs a father available to affirm her femininity.”

  Dr. Fink said homosexuality is not a disease but a case of arrested development. The male homosexual is not created because he had a strong mother and a weak father, but because the only tenderness he ever had was with the father, a member of the same sex.

  Dr. Fink said the female homosexual often didn’t have a father who was accepting and so turned back to her mother, then to other females, for love.

  Homosexuality with this firm a base is not likely to change in later life, he said, although homosexuality that is essentially a defence built up out of simple fear of the opposite sex may be treated.

  Clipping: “Gay San Francisco,” Weekend Magazine, July 1979

  A homosexual who tries to hide the nature of his sexuality is said to be in the closet. Should he abandon the attempt to hide he will be said to have come out. Homosexuals are now coming out in great numbers, and as though in imitation of a law of nature many heterosexuals are manifesting an equal but opposite reaction.

  “If society is to allow and promote homosexuality,” wrote Staff Sergeant Thomas Moclair in a recent issue of the Toronto police union’s monthly newsletter, “then why not other acts? Why not condone murder, assault and rape? Those people are sick in the head, too.”

  Handwritten notes on white paper

  Sometimes I think I must be out of my mind. Here I am—in early middle age, well established in my profession, well known and regarded in my community, married to a very intelligent, talented, charming woman who is a first-class mother to our wonderful children. All this may very well be put into jeopardy by this incredible sexual adventure which I have embarked on. But have I any choice? No. I don’t think so.

  Journal entry on lined paper

  31.1.80

  Last night, I made it with a Roman Catholic priest. When I turned around and our eyes met at Buddy’s, he looked like anything but a priest. With long blond hair curled tightly against his head, and a sexy, textured white shirt open halfway to his waist, very masculine and with a fresh tan which he had got in Key West, Al was one of the more gorgeous-looking men in the bar.

  He introduced himself first as a university professor in psychology at D__, where in fact he teaches part-time. It wasn’t until later in the evening that I discovered he is also a priest at a prestigious parish in B__. I could then see a glimpse of that quiet confidence which so often marks a cleric, but, as I was soon to find out, it was combined with an astonishing need to have his attractiveness and good body reaffirmed.

  He kept asking me to tell him what I liked about him, what it was about him that attracted me to him in the bar. When we first met, he told me I was a handsome man, which was a nice surprise, but later when we talked about it, he admitted how much he needed compliments on his own attractiveness. He thinks this is in part due to the fact that his mother is Portuguese, all the rest of the family is dark and he was the ugly duckling, in his mother’s eyes at least. But he supports the theory that physical beauty can be a burden when this almost inevitably becomes an important aspect of the person and his definition of himself.

  Al graduated from university at about 19, went into the priesthood and led an incredibly disciplined life until his late thirties. Somewhere along the way, he also picked up a doctorate of psychology. He claims that he didn’t even masturbate from the time he entered the priesthood until he was 33. He didn’t smoke or drink alcohol, tea or coffee and owned two black suits. Then, he came out, abandoned his collar and acquired a vast wardrobe of smart clothes.

  Al struck me as being remarkably at ease with being a gay parish priest—in fact, he talked about giving up teaching in order to devote more time to his parish. He clearly enjoys letting people realize that not all priests are dour, sober characters. He talked about coming back on the plane from Key West with a woman in her fifties who kept saying over her Bloody Marys, “I can’t believe you are a priest!” I can imagine that, in fact, he would be beautifully relaxed, friendly and genial with his parishioners, but can he really keep his gay identity separate?

  His bishop knows that he is gay and told him he could have gay friends, but no genital contact. He certainly was not following the bishop’s instructions last night. Al has quite a circle of friends with whom he keeps in touch and comes to Toronto once a month for his diet of gay life. He says he doesn’t think he would ever like to live with another person so perhaps he is coming to terms with his profession and gayness. Although he said that he, like me, had trouble concentrating on intellectual matters ever since he came out.

  I asked him what had led to his coming out. He said he had been very ill and almost died with two perforated ulcers. His doctor was amazed that he had been able apparently to suppress the pain so that he wasn’t even aware of it and he thinks that it was all related to his suppressing his homosexuality as well. In any case, that day he came home from the hospital, everything looked beautiful, life was exciting and he decided on the spur of the moment to go to New York, where he met a man coming out of a play, was seduced and has been gay ever since. That was three years ago.

  Excerpts from Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, handwritten on lined paper

  If music be the food of love, play on;

  Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

  The appetite may sicken, and so die. (I,i)

  What is love? ’tis not hereafter;

  Present mirth hath present laughter;

  What’s to come is still unsure;

  In delay there lies no plenty (II,iii)

  For such as I am all true lovers are,

  Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,

  Save in the constant image of the creature

  That is beloved. (II,iv)

  A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon

  Than love that would seem hid: love; night is noon (III,i)

  What relish is in this? How runneth the stream?

  Or I am mad or else this is a dream:

  Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;

  If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep! (IV,ii)

  Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe;

  What is decreed must be, and be this so. (I,v)

  Journal entries on lined notepad

  23.3.80r />
  Meeting Tom has been one of the most wonderful things that has happened to me—but also, inevitably, profoundly disturbing.

  After his PhD at London School of Economics Tom had been a film director making documentaries for the BBC. For the last five years he had been teaching in the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. But, above all, he was bright, intelligent, witty, and I felt an instantaneous meeting of minds. Obviously he did too. He said we had to spend the night together; I agreed. As we walked to the flat where he was staying, he said he liked me because I was a real person and that he knew we were going to be friends for a long time. Normally that sort of hasty concluding makes me suspicious and wary, but in this case I loved it. We often have our best times when things go dreadfully wrong and we certainly started that way.

  When we got back to the supposedly empty apartment, we found a stranger already in bed. He got up; we proceeded to make embarrassed introductions. He was an artist who was also a friend of the man whose apartment it was. Tom handled the situation beautifully. He admired the man’s pictures and after chatting for a while, announced, “Joe and I are gay and you’re not and we are planning to spend the night together, so you go back to bed and we’ll stay in the living room.” The man was very kind, however, and offered his bed. By this time, I knew that I liked Tom a lot simply as someone who was great fun to be with.…

  I had planned to go back to Peterborough the next day, but Tom wanted to go dancing and I said I would be delighted. Later in the afternoon I met him at his office and heard more about the work he was doing. He was on leave from Harvard to make a film with the group who had made such an impact with the Connections documentary on the mafia a few years ago.

  Almost every time we are together, we talk a lot and laugh a lot. Tom has remarked on various occasions how we “click,” how there is a “zing,” how we understand each other’s so-often literary or intellectual humour. And last Thursday at our picnic with Flip, Flip said the same thing—“You guys are always laughing.”

  Tom had to go back to Boston. He thought it might be for a couple of weeks and that was my first experience in seeing days stretch into weeks. I also became increasingly desperate as I realized that my sabbatical was slipping away. An election had been called for 18 February and I realized I wouldn’t be able to leave Canada until at least the beginning of March. I knew I still had a lot to do, but was terribly bored with the book* and fed up with living in Ptbo. The book was proceeding at a snail’s pace and that just increased my sense of panic. I thought of moving to Toronto—at least there, I would be able to mix work and pleasure.

  Finally on 5 February, Tom was back in town. I met him at his office—a wonderful moment, though, oddly, slightly different from how I had remembered him. We went to the Chinese restaurant in the basement on Dundas. Tom clearly had had a bad day. The financing of the film was shaky and, to top that off, a medical exam had discovered that he was mildly diabetic. But he loved the restaurant—we share a fascination for cheap, sleazy restaurants that serve good food—and then we went out for a drink at Neighbour’s. But Tom was distracted by his worries and suddenly announced that he wanted to go back to Ian’s and call Bob, his lover in Boston. I was so disappointed, and bitterly reminded of the fact that he was already committed.

  On the Saturday afternoon of the weekend we first met, Tom had told me a lot about Bob, but Tom was afraid that already the end was inevitable. Tom wanted a monogamous relationship, but Bob had a need to be admired and sought after and Bob was drinking heavily. My reaction was to think that perhaps Tom was freer than he had first suggested, but, at the same time, I felt for him and admired him tremendously for his sense of loyalty.

  But now, with Tom leaving me to call Bob, he had dashed my hopes for him. I sought out E at Katrina’s and, for the second time in a month, I wept sadly on his shoulder. I told him I wondered if I really was suited for the gay world, to which he replied that I made a very good faggot because I cried so beautifully. I rather liked that!

  The next day, Tom called me, obviously in much better spirits, asked if we were getting together that evening, and I said only if he really wanted to. He got the message and said, yes, he would like to. We went to the play Something Red that Richard Monette was in. I had already seen it once before, but was interested to see if it would be as good the second time without the surprise of the Russian roulette. I also wanted to see if Tom and I shared the same taste in theatre. We did. But the most wonderful thing about that evening was that he came back with me to my room at Hart House.…

  During the next three months, I went home each weekend, usually meeting Paul on Saturday afternoon for a dim sum lunch and driving him back to St. Andrew’s* on Sunday evening. Sunday afternoon, I took Flip skiing at Devil’s Elbow and while he went downhill, I did the cross-country track. Alone with my thoughts, I recalled what Tom and I had done the previous week, what he had said, and was struck by how much I missed him. In Toronto, just being with him gave me such a sense of elation, but I took it all in stride, the many laughs we had, our shared interests and the deeply satisfying sex. But each weekend back in Peterborough, I realized more and more how much I missed him and how much I was falling in love with him. Each week in Toronto, our relationship acquired a new depth.

  The next week, Tom and I didn’t do anything like going to a film, but after dinner, he came back to Hart House with me. One night, when we came in, he took off his trousers, asked me to pour him a drink and said how relaxed he felt with me. And we were wonderfully relaxed together. We talked and drank and talked and, one night, I played a tape of the Love Duet from Tristan und Isolde, which he did not know, and we made love to some of the most beautiful music I know.

  I think it was on the Saturday morning that the word love first passed between us. (Thankfully, so unlike the other silly men who say they love you half an hour after you have started kissing!) We had often talked about the incredible understanding we had for each other and how we both knew how much we liked each other. But this time, Tom said that we were starting to fall in love with each other and did we realize the consequences, especially as both of us already had commitments. By this time, I had already started to ponder what Tom might mean to my life and to realize that ours was such an exceptional relationship, that he was so exceptional, that I felt prepared to accept the consequences of our being in love.

  I like Anne a lot and feel a strong sense of duty towards her and the kids, but more and more, especially after being in Toronto, I realize that I simply can’t live at home in Ptbo week in and week out, even if there were no Tom. Miraculously, Anne has not complained about my time away from Ptbo and perhaps that will make possible a loose kind of modus vivendi.

  As for Tom, here was the physical affection, the intelligence, the artistic sensitivity, a comparable career and, not least, the sheer sexual fulfillment which I had so longed for. Yes, I could accept the consequences.

  That morning, a light snow (the first for weeks) was falling as we left the side door of Hart House together. Tom looked at me with such love in his eyes and said he wanted to kiss me. It was public and he couldn’t, but I knew how far we had come.

  March 5 began the wonderful month when we lived together in BW’s apartment in Toronto. Tom had got the apartment and invited me to share it with him. It was a very comfortable, stylishly furnished apartment with that unmistakable stamp of faggot money about it.

  It is difficult to put into words the utter joy I felt in actually living with Tom. Everything had an excitement about it—making shopping lists and going to all the various shops in the area—almost like shopping in France, playing BW’s records, sharing the same gigantic bath towel and especially those tête-à-tête dinners and the conversations that stretched on until Tom announced that we were going to bed.…

  The most spectacular night, probably, was the time we had a dinner party for Bob and Ben. I had, at long last, finished my book and that afternoon had indexed the chart, tables, table of contents, pre
face—everything. Bob and Ben were great fun and we even came up with a title for my book—Bob had yawned and made fun of Inside the Liberal Party and I had challenged them all to come up with something better. When Tom suggested The L-Shaped Party—we all agreed that was it. But by that time, I had had a great deal to drink and scribbled down the title for fear of forgetting it (next morning, I did).

  One evening that week, Anne and Alison came for a quick dinner after a doctor’s appointment for Alison. I was nervous about it—would they inspect the sleeping arrangements?—but very much wanted to bring these two parts of my life together—to continue to have Anne become gradually aware of what I was doing. They had a great time together—Alison wanted Tom to see us in the summer. Tom and Anne joked about my cooking messes in the kitchen.

  That weekend was the one when I took Paul and Flip skiing for four days. Flip is always lively and amusing (a bit “off the wall,” as Tom would say). There was a period when Paul and I never had very much to talk about, but in the last year, he has become interested in politics and I enjoy giving him little mini-lectures, when, for instance, he asks me about the American primaries. The skiing was mixed and Tom was never far from my thoughts …

  Wednesday, I wanted to cook a special dinner for Tom. I got fresh asparagus, pheasant and strawberries to go with Tom’s honey melon. I also had a special 1971 claret from the purchase I had made several years ago. The meal went wonderfully well (asparagus was perfect) and afterwards, Tom told me how much he appreciated my sense of occasion. He was obviously very moved. We played La Bohème and after I had sat with my eyes closed for a long time, he reached across the table to take my hands and we looked into each other’s eyes. Never have I felt so deeply in love nor so deeply loved.