Sinister: expectations

[chippy eileen]

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

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