Other Halves

by Nick Alexander

  The concept of a whole spectrum of normality was, though obvious to some, a revelation to me, and trying to reply to that question of quite where on it I belonged opened the floodgates to every fear, every hope, every doubt I had ever experienced. Mostly in tears, I told Jenny about my marriage, about my reasonably satisfactory sex life with Hannah, about my tentative fumblings with men, about Glen, and Tristan, and even about being caught looking at men on Grindr in France.

  Jenny nodded and smiled sympathetically at me throughout, as though none of this shocked her, as though all of this belonged on her personal spectrum of normality.

  The session went by too fast, and it ended too soon. I felt as if steam was gushing out of an escape valve and I wanted that to continue, but Jenny insisted that an hour of such intensity was enough and that having some time to decompress before the next session really was the best way to proceed.

  She advised me to take the afternoon off if I could. She said I’d be feeling tired and emotional for a few hours at least and that I would need some time to digest everything that had happened.

  I told her that I couldn’t possibly do that, that I needed to get back to work, that I had things to finish before the Christmas break, but though this was true, when it came to it, I couldn’t face work. Instead, when I got back to Farnham, I walked right past the office entrance and headed on to the park where I walked, impervious to the faint drizzle, and tried in an unfocussed manner to think about the subject of my sexuality. But it seemed, that day, as if the more I tried to think about it, the vaguer my thinking got. It felt as if the subject was too big to be held in my head at one time, like trying to remember a rapidly fleeting dream the morning after. I felt exhausted and depressed, but also, deep down, aware of a tiny sprouting seedling of hope that, with Jenny’s help, everything might be all right.

  When I got home that evening, Luke was already back from Billy’s house. His first question, before I even took my coat off, was, “Dad, can we go get the PlayStation from the house? I need it.”

  I looked at him and smiled weakly. This intrusion of normal life into my brain, exhausted with self-analysis, felt like a gift.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I told him. “If you start carting it back and forth, it’ll end up getting damaged.”

  “But—”

  “What I was thinking, is that maybe we need to get another PlayStation for here,” I told him. “I thought that might be your main Christmas present this year.”

  “Wow.”

  “Good idea?”

  “Yeah. But can we get an Xbox instead?”

  “But all your games are for the PlayStation.”

  “I know, but Billy’s got loads. I could borrow them.”

  I pulled a face.

  “Oh go on, Dad!”

  “How much is an Xbox?”

  “About the same as a PS3. Oh go on. That would be so cool.”

  “Maybe. Let’s have a think about it. See if you’re sure that’s what you really want.”

  “I have thought about it,” Luke declared. “I’m a very quick thinker. Please, Dad?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Luke glanced at the clock. “Can we go get one now? Argos is open till five-thirty.”

  “Luke! Calm down. I said ‘maybe.’ And I said for Christmas.”

  “But it could be my Christmas present. And I could use it this week while I’m off. Oh come on. Please?”

  Because rushing out to buy an Xbox was such a very welcome distraction from the machinations of my own mind, that’s exactly what we did – Luke’s timing for the request couldn’t have been better. It was clear from his wide-eyed expression that he couldn’t believe his luck.

  * * *

  By the time the next appointment came up, it was a week before Christmas. Luke was off school, and with Hannah away in Australia, he was living full time with me in the flat. This meant that Billy, who only had a portable TV screen for his own Xbox, was almost permanently at ours as well.

  On the Wednesday, I left the two boys under strict instruction to do nothing other than continue slaying the insurgents in their on-screen, Middle East hellhole, and made my way to Guildford.

  Jenny got me to run through how I had been feeling since the previous meeting, and this led us straight back into our discussion about the great sexuality continuum and where I would place myself upon it, a question I was still unable to answer.

  I had spent fifteen years in a heterosexual relationship, I pointed out. Even if, perhaps, I did find myself looking at men from time to time, how could I quantify these two separate and opposite aspects of my life into a single point on a graph?

  It was at this point that Jenny introduced another concept to me: that my sexuality didn’t have to be a fixed point in space and time; that she wasn’t asking where Cliff, once dead, would be situated by some all-seeing power, but where Cliff the Living would place that dot right now, at this instant, even if he suspected that it might change again in the next ten minutes.

  The idea brought me so much relief that I started to cry again as I forced myself to admit that, at least for the moment, I was finding myself more attracted to men, and that, in truth, it had been many years since I had found any woman other than Hannah sexually attractive. If ever.

  I asked Jenny if that meant that I was gay after all, and she said again that at this point in my debate with myself, fixed labels that defined one-hundred-per-cent sexualities weren’t helpful. She asked me whether I felt that exploring this other side of my sexuality was something that I might want to put into practice, and when I said “no”, she asked me why, and the only answer I could come up with was shame.

  As after the first session, I came out of the meeting feeling emotionally shattered. I returned home and fixed soup and cheese-on-toast for the boys, who were luckily still far too engrossed in mass slaughter to notice anything strange about me as I sat staring out of the window.

  For the next few days, as we went Christmas shopping, as we bought and then decorated the tree, I tried to imagine a scenario whereby I might do something with another man. But as all of the situations my imagination came up with involved me going to a gay bar or club to actually meet someone – something so clearly beyond the bounds of possibility – the whole concept remained very much a virtual fantasy.

  And then, on the morning of Christmas Eve, while Luke was still sleeping, I looked at my phone and remembered Grindr – after all the drama it had caused in my life, I could hardly believe that I had forgotten it. Even if I didn’t actually go to meet anyone, I could look and see who was around; I could at least see what other gay men in Farnham looked like. And I thought, Why not? It wasn’t even a bit of fun – it was research.

  So I started looking at, and eventually chatting to, guys on Grindr and it was an eye-opener in so many ways.

  Most of these men seemed to be looking for sex, nothing more. Many of them seemed to be in relationships already. So many were looking for “no-strings fun” that they had reduced it to an acronym: NSF.

  It was as if sex, so complex to me, was to them no more or less important than a bar of chocolate – to be consumed, guilt-free, whenever they felt the urge. The conversations I had with these guys quickly went nowhere because, though I tried, I couldn’t simplify my view of sex to their way of thinking. Whether it was Christian morality or societal conditioning or a combination of both, I still saw sex as something special and sacred, and yes, complicated.

  As I continued my visits to Jenny Church, we attempted to explore and decode my feelings about sex, and though at times I could glimpse a broader truth – that it was perfectly OK for others to see sex in an entirely different way – that didn’t mean that I agreed, and more importantly, I came to realise that I didn’t want to agree either.

  Of course, not everyone I “met” on Grindr fitted this stereotype. My conversations with Paul (alias FarnhamBear) and Dan (SurreyLad) reassured me that I wasn’t, at least, an alien. There were oth
er guys out there who felt the same way that I did, people who thought sex was not unimportant, and a few who even seemed to want to take me on a proper date.

  Of these, Dan was the most interesting, and it was Dan who explained to me that by its very nature Grindr attracted the section of the population that wanted instant hook-ups, and drove away those who wanted a real relationship. I had to realise, Dan explained, that it wasn’t representative of gay men in general any more than a survey undertaken in a swingers club would be representative of the heterosexual population at large.

  Dan also introduced me to his very own classification system for the various types of time-wasters he had come across on Grindr. Amongst the many categories were the 5AD (five-a-days), people who required on average five different partners a day (yes, an exaggeration, but in some cases only just); the FIBBERS (people who posted photos of themselves ten years earlier, or even photos of other people entirely); and the LURKERS (men who never came out from behind their computers, preferring to live in the textual fantasy land of Grindr).

  My talks with Dan left me feeling guilty about my own behaviour. After all, I had posted a headless photo of myself, and lied about my name. For the purposes of the web, I had become “Fred”.

  I discussed all of this during my weekly sessions with Jenny and came to the conclusion that, as my primary purpose was not to deceive but to create a safe space in which I could explore my feelings, a little deception could be permitted. But inevitably, both Dan and Paul got bored trying to get me to provide an actual photo of myself, or a phone number, or an address, or a date for a proper meeting. Eventually they both gave up on ever meeting “Fred”. I’m pretty sure Dan must have classed me under “LURKERS”, and he would probably have been right to do so.

  Only once – and this was the most dishonest of my Grindr sins – I arranged to meet a pleasant, good-looking tree surgeon called Rob, only to chicken out at the last minute and, sweating and trembling with nerves, stride right past the pub.

  Rob sent me a message the next morning telling me that I was a “wanker” and I couldn’t really blame him for that. He then blocked me in some way so that even when, a week later, I was wracked with guilt and regret, I was unable to apologise to him. I swore then never to arrange to meet anyone, at least not until I was ready to follow through.

  For weeks, as Hannah returned from Australia and as Luke returned to school, I continued to chat to the various bits of anatomy that would pop up on my Grindr screen, but no one was ever as interesting as Dan, and no one ever looked as cute as chunky, bearded, brown-eyed Rob. I felt that I had wasted the two best opportunities I had stumbled across.

  And then one day, whilst sitting on the loo, I glanced at the screen and saw Tristan.

  I stared at his photo for ten minutes then, suddenly conscious of where I was, moved to the lounge, and stared at it some more.

  I felt strangely drawn to the photo, compelled to send him a tiny message of recognition if nothing else, but I wasn’t sure quite why. Though Tristan had always been pleasant enough to me, it would be a stretch to claim that we had been friends. He had always been Jill’s friend, and by extrapolation more of Hannah’s side of the family than mine. And yet, as I stared at that photo, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that lack of closeness had been due to my own “issues” with Tristan’s sexuality, my issues with my own sexuality for that matter. Perhaps Tristan and I could have been allies.

  Grindr was informing me that Tristan was three-point-two miles away, which meant that he had to be at the house, so on top of everything else, I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing with my wife.

  I crossed the room and looked out over the rooftops of the houses opposite. It was a cold, grey January Saturday and with Luke absent, the weekend yawned in front of me.

  My phone chirruped with a message, so I crossed the room and peered at the screen. The message, amazingly, was from Tristan: Hey there. How’s it hanging?

  I sat down and frowned at the screen, then clicked through a number of screens to check my own profile. But no, there was no possible way that Tristan could know he was talking to me.

  I pondered what to do for a moment longer then decided that I needed to come clean quickly before Tristan sent another message, potentially something compromising that would embarrass us both.

  “Hi Tris’. It’s me, Cliff. PLEASE. Not one word to anyone there.”

  Tristan replied almost immediately with, “Oops! Not one word!” and I wondered if I believed him.

  “You at the house?” I asked.

  “Dragged here for lunch. Bored out of my mind.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “And U?”

  “Home. Bored too.”

  “Come join us. That would liven things up. Lol.”

  “No ta. Not keen on the company.”

  “Me neither! Pint?”

  Pint! I stared at the phone and wondered why on Earth Tristan would want to have a pint with me. It felt like some kind of a trap, like something from my schooldays, and this reminded me of my most recent session with Jenny Church. She had pointed out how low my self-esteem was, how unattractive and uninteresting I believed myself to be, and suggested that this belief might be holding me back. Perhaps Tristan really did want to have a pint with me. Perhaps he really did think that would be more interesting than lunch with Jill and Hannah.

  My phone beeped again. “Hello?”

  Of course there was only one way to find out. I swallowed hard, and thinking, “Jenny will be so proud of me when I tell her,” I typed, “Sure. Now?”

  “Where?”

  “The Jolly Sailor? West Street?”

  “How apt! In half an hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be wearing a carnation.”

  I glanced at the clock, then dropped the phone onto the couch and strode to the bedroom. I changed my shirt three times before settling on a beige corduroy number. I was aware that I was behaving like an adolescent girl on a date, but I couldn’t help but think, But what if it is a date?

  By the time I got to the pub, Tristan was already ordering at the bar.

  “Cliff,” he said when I reached him. “What you having?”

  “A pint of Abbott, please,” I replied, half to him and half to the barmaid.

  “That’ll put hairs on your chest,” Tristan commented, taking and sipping his own pint of lager.

  “Not much hope of that,” I retorted. “I didn’t see your Jeep outside.”

  “I swapped it for a Mini. Too big. Too brash. So how have you been? You look well. If a little beige.”

  I looked down at my clothes and realised that I was indeed wearing beige chinos, a beige shirt and a beige jacket. “Is beige some kind of fashion no-no?” I asked.

  “Like you don’t know,” Tristan laughed, handing the barmaid a ten pound note. But he was wrong. I didn’t know.

  We settled in a corner table as far from the Saturday eaters as possible. Tristan looked around and pulled a face. “Not so jolly, is it?”

  “The pub?”

  “Yeah. I was expecting something a little more, well, gay, I suppose. With a name like the Jolly Sailor . . .”

  “I don’t think they do gay in Farnham,” I said.

  “No. There’s some private bar in a guy’s cellar, so I hear.”

  “In his cellar?”

  “Yeah. All sounds a bit Pulp Fiction to me. But I’m assured it’s legit.”

  “Pulp Fiction?” I asked, starting to feel a little uncool.

  “Yeah. You know. Bring out the gimp. The gimp’s sleeping . . .”

  Even though I had no idea what he was talking about, I faked it: I smiled. “Right!”

  “Never been there though. A mate mentioned it once. I think it’s in Farnham anyway. You’ve not heard of it then?”

  “I haven’t heard of anywhere,” I replied. “So how did you know it was me?”

  Tristan frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “On Grindr. Ho
w did you know?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Oh. So why did you contact me?”

  “Precisely because I didn’t realise it was you.”

  I must have frowned at this, because Tristan added, “Sorry. That came out wrong. I just meant that I wouldn’t have propositioned you. I would have respected your privacy. That’s all.”

  “Right. So that’s what that was? A proposition? I’m kind of new to all this.”

  “It was just a contact, Cliff. No offence, but I sent the same message to ten guys. I was just bored, that’s all. Hannah was banging on about her holiday. You know what she’s like.”

  I nodded, and felt a little deflated.

  “But I’m happy to be here having a pint with you. I’ve been feeling bad about France, so . . .”

  “Bad? About what?”

  “About telling Hannah you were on Grindr.”

  “So it was you that told her?”

  Tristan grimaced. “Oops. I thought you knew.”

  “I suspected. But . . .” I shrugged.

  “Anyway, sorry.”

  I sighed. “It hardly matters now I suppose.”

  “So how have you been coping?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Not so well, huh?”

  “It’s a big adjustment to make.”

  “Sure. Coming out’s hard whenever you do it,” Tristan said, nodding knowingly.

  “I just meant living alone, actually.”

  “Of course. Sorry. I just assumed. What with you being on Grindr and all.”

  “That’s just . . . well, it’s research really.”

  “Research?”

  “I’m still trying to work out how I feel about everything.”

  Tristan nodded. “And?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s becoming clearer. Slowly. But as I say, I haven’t . . . taken steps, or anything.”

  Tristan grinned. “Taken steps,” he repeated. “I’ve heard some euphemisms in my time, but never taking steps.”

  “Sorry. But I find it hard to talk about all this. Especially to you.”

  “Because?”

  “Well, you know Jill for a start. I know you told her about the Grindr incident as well.”