the young ones darling, we're the young ones and the young ones shouldn't be afraid.. the voice of cliff richard drifts up the stairs from the living room. to me, its just an old song with nice lyrics. to frank and margaret its another place and time. those early, early days. trips to london they thought their parents didn't know about (separate rooms, of course, these were different times). stolen kisses. a time when everything seemed full of possibility, and promise. a time when just being alive held its own magic. their freedom stretched out before them, and, apart from a few rather difficult months in the early 1970s, they would share their freedom, compromise it for one another, forever. i have the night off from work. saturday night. i should be out, surveying my own freedom. perhaps finding that somebody to compromise it for. not tonight, though. not for a while. east langerston is a small village (two pubs, a chip shop and a woman who no longer goes from house to house cutting old ladys' hair, because she has her own salon.) and small villages leave nowhere to hide. especially when you find you have become bigger than you ever meant to be. i'll explain. an ink polaroid. this is me and shelley macdonald sitting in the bull. shelley has changed a little from the days before i left. i remember her, the girl she once was. minette, her mother wanted to call her. minette...its exotic. minette would stare at me disparagingly from under layers of eyeshadow. the shining lips would purse, and she'd look away, in search of better people. you'll see she's changed in this picture. yes, that's her, on the other side of the table, drinking a pint of cider which she's too young to buy. a friend cut her hair. spiky, mostly black, except for the the blue she put in herself, just after she had her upper ear pierced. yes, that does say 'system of a down' on her t-shirt. most of the people in the pub look away from us. some regard us, and shelley in particular, with thinly disguised sneers, similar to the sneer she once wore herself with such aptitude. i'll play you the ink cd. it will make things clearer. 'but eileen, if you're gay, you shouldn't be ashamed of it. you should just admit it. be what you are. don't be afraid to stand out.' 'shelley..i'm not gay' 'look, i don't know why you're denying it. this is me, remember. you could tell me anything. if it wasn't for you i might never have changed. god, i look at the way i was then and i can't believe its the same person.' i'll skip this track, she has had too much to drink, and continues in this vein for a while. in the end, i just let it wash over me. it is nice of her to say i inspired her personal changes. apparently, it all stemmed from the day i made her listen to a looper album. how this led to the vision in black she has now become is somewhat mystifying. she says it 'made her listen to weird music'. in the year since, she has progressed from looper to korn. not, in my view, the best progression. but that is her decision. she admires me for prompting the change. i tell her she would have done it herself, given time. so.. when she tells me i shouldn't be afraid to be different, she means it. i am letting her down by insisting on my heterosexuality. she is disappointed, and i am tired of the conversation, but i only have myself to blame... another ink polaroid, and cd. same table, same pub, a week earlier. andy has returned from london for the weekend. he has asked me out specifically. for the sake of old times, i have accompanied him. i enjoy his company. i always did. although the memories of a night left alone, picking at a vodka bottle and contemplating the virginity he'd so thoughtlessly left me with still remain. but he thinks everything is okay now. he has discovered my 'secret': 'for god's sake, eileen. if i can do it, why can't you? can't you at least be honest with yourself? look, just say it. all you have to do is say it. you know i won't tell anyone.' 'andy...' 'it wasn't easy for me, either, you know. but it will get easier, over time. people come to accept it..' 'oh for god's sake. yes, andy, if it makes you happy.. i'm gay. gay gay GAY GAY GAY! i'm a GREAT BIG BLOODY LESBIAN!' the people in the pub stare just long enough to let me know they have heard, and then return to their lives. some of the older regulars tut. somebody, somewhere, mutters 'tell us something we didn't know..'. i pick up my coat, and i leave. to confront margaret, my adopted mother who, for reasons best know to herself, has asked my gay ex-boyfriend to coax me out of the closet. so far, it has been a difficult year. the young ones shouldn't be afraid to live, love there's a song to be sung.. it was the night of my last post when frank asked me: 'that woman you lived with... you weren't just sharing a house, were you?' as simple as that. he told me he'd love me whatever, and i should try and be happy. he cried a bit. later that week, margaret cried a lot, and told me i had to follow my dreams. she has spent the last two months trying to procure me a girlfriend. i am disappointing them all by refusing to acknowledge my true self. if they can accept it, why can't i? the last time i was in the bull, jason baggs came to sit with me and bought me a drink. i remember jason. most girls from our school do. he was in the year below me, but he'd sit behind me on the school bus, with the older girls who would compete for the empty seat beside him. i was suprised to find myself a girl again.. intimidated, blushing, knocking the drinks back too quickly... laughing at all of his jokes, pretending i found his conversation interesting.. at the end of the night, i gave him my mobile number. i only heard a snatch of the conversation as i left the pub.. 'but she's .... isn't she?' 'she won't be after i've finished with her..' and they cheered. i was a challenge. i tore his number up. i am a challenge. but not in the sense that they might think. 'cos we may not be the young ones very long..' the song played, as frank patted me on the arm, and told me he understood. his favourite song. i hope i didn't spoil it for ever. i know where the song used to take him. i remember, a month or so ago, late at night after the chippy was closed, when he and margaret had both had too much to drink. we turned off the television and they put on old records. i sipped at my glass of baileys as they held each other and swung unsteadily from side to side, their eyes full of another time. but i suspect that there will be times, when that song plays, when he finds himself in the back room of his house, talking to his adopted daugher about her lesbian lover. comforting her as she cries, and trying to hold back his own tears. i never wanted to be this big. i never wanted to feel this large in the lives of those around me. i shall put on my own records. i shall block out the world. i shall let them take me to the places they used to take me. i will sit in the darkness again, waiting for the sound to hit my eardrums. i will find the old eileen. the one i left several months ago, to find a new life, in the big city. i miss her. i want songs of small towns, and small minds. i want songs of individuals refusing to be what everybody thinks they should be. i want songs of people who just want to hide, and be quiet, and be true to whatever exists at that moment in time. i will sit in the darkness, and i will contemplate having a boy, on that last bus out of town. or perhaps a girl. just to make them all happy. eileen __________________________________________________ Yahoo! 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