It's Friday afternoon and I'm childless for a few days. Mr Fifteen is on a Boy Scout camp until Sunday afternoon and Miss Eleven has a sleepover Birthday party at her cousins' house and won't be back till Sunday morning. I dare say they're both wondering how I can possibly cope without them. It'll be tough, but I'm determined to soldier on somehow!
In most respects this has been a business-as-usual week. I continue to be diligent in my attendance at the gym. By now I absolutely hate doing laps. I would infinitely prefer to be swimming at a beach - body-surfing to the shallows and then wading back to catch the next wave - but it is not yet beach weather.
Last Monday morning, Steve - my gym buddy - returned to regular patronage of the early-morning madness that fitness demands. We are now in the habit of chatting afterwards over a cool drink or a coffee. I have discovered why he went missing for a few days. In fact, I am discovering a lot about Steve and about myself with each passing day.
It's a happy coincidence that my two careers - lawyer and then psychologist - both demanded similar skills. In both roles, asking the right questions is important, as is an ability to listen. This doesn't mean that, in my private life, I go around interrogating people at every opportunity, but I am able to get even the most reticent of people to open up to me, and I am also generally able - much to my children's chagrin - to spot a falsehood at twenty paces.
Steve told me he skipped exercising for a few days because he was in what I perceive to have been some sort of artistic frenzy. His muse beckons him constantly and, occasionally, he is so inspired by a thought or a vision in his mind's eye that he has to paint until an artistic love-child is delivered on canvas. I understand this. I feel much the same way about writing. An idea arrives and one is deaf and blind to almost every other consideration until that idea is realised on paper. In many respects I approached building our house the same way - my fervour and enthusiasm knew no limits and I could not rest until that architectural vision was realised in bricks and mortar.
Steve and I now know how old we are. I had supposed him to be in his mid to late-thirties. He had supposed me to be in my early to mid-forties. We are both generous souls, having each underestimated the other by a ten-year margin. Unwelcome memories of "Gummy Helen" flooded back when Steve said he had difficulty in believing I had five grandchildren. Naturally, I mitigated this somewhat by explaining that all my grandchildren are very, very young and that I had been the male equivalent of a child bride! Anyway, Steve is in fact forty-eight and so there are only a handful of years between us. For whatever reason, I find this re-assuring.
Thus far, our sole somewhat intimate moment came that morning I gave him a lift home from the gym. It has not been referred to in any of our morning chats but I cannot ignore the reality that our buddy-ship is sexually charged in some way. We do nothing together that is intimate or sexy and yet, merely through eye contact and voice modulations, we convey a deep understanding and appreciation of each other.
I feel that I know this man. And I can see that he knows me too. For a man who has spent a lifetime expressing himself visually, he is remarkably articulate.
Steve is the product of one of those arid and loveless unions of the early 1960's, where people often married because a baby was on the way or because society saw marriage as everyone's destiny. He has had no contact with his parents or siblings for more than twenty years. He does not despise them. It's the reverse. He feels they despise him. He had a few girlfriends in his teens and early twenties but - for all that he can depict female nudity with breathtakingly few brushstrokes - his heart was not in heterosexuality. The battle against those feelings, coupled with his family's view that artists are by definition Bohemian, led him to flaunt a gay lifestyle and, eventually, to drug addiction to dull the pain of feeling like a pariah.
He has never had a sustained relationship with anyone - male or female - because he has always felt too crippled inside to be worthy of another's love. When he was at the lowest point of all, constantly craving heroin, he turned to prostitition to fund his habit. He inevitably ended up in trouble with the law and was faced with a choice - enter rehab or accept a prison sentence.
He has now been clean for almost five years. He has eked out a very precarious living as an artist. He is well regarded by his peers but does not want fame. Only very recently has he begun to re-engage with the world beyond his beachside shack. Joining the gym was his first step in that direction. Ironically, his fees are being paid via a grant from a charitable organisation with which I'm associated, but he doesn't know that. Previously he has maintained his fitness by working out at home and by jogging along deserted beaches at dawn or at dusk. For years he has forsaken intimate human contact save for occasional furtive visits to beats where guys can achieve a quick and anonymous, no-strings-attached sexual coupling.
Now, I know it may seem ludicrous to say this, but I feel Steve and I are very similar. In radically different circumstances and for dramatically different reasons, I too have avoided intimacy - true, deep intimacy - with anyone for more than eight years. I have borne the loss of my wife and my obligations to my children as some sort of cross - a cross that conveniently precludes my allowing my heart to ever be touched again. It's not simply about feeling horny - I now realise that I need someone to re-validate me as a sexual entity. It's as if I seek permission or encouragement to once again be a man with needs and desires beyond fatherhood and counselling. The similarity I see is that we are both of us - Steve and I - attempting to give ourselves a second chance at love and trust and intimacy.
Isn't it astonishing how much one can find out while chatting in a gym canteen or the parking lot?
So, have I decided to give this a whirl? Am I going to throw caution to the wind and once more spend time in the arms of a guy after twenty years of "orthodox" heterosexuality? I can't say. I'm far too cautious to answer in the affirmative. But I do feel it's a definite maybe.
In most respects this has been a business-as-usual week. I continue to be diligent in my attendance at the gym. By now I absolutely hate doing laps. I would infinitely prefer to be swimming at a beach - body-surfing to the shallows and then wading back to catch the next wave - but it is not yet beach weather.
Last Monday morning, Steve - my gym buddy - returned to regular patronage of the early-morning madness that fitness demands. We are now in the habit of chatting afterwards over a cool drink or a coffee. I have discovered why he went missing for a few days. In fact, I am discovering a lot about Steve and about myself with each passing day.
It's a happy coincidence that my two careers - lawyer and then psychologist - both demanded similar skills. In both roles, asking the right questions is important, as is an ability to listen. This doesn't mean that, in my private life, I go around interrogating people at every opportunity, but I am able to get even the most reticent of people to open up to me, and I am also generally able - much to my children's chagrin - to spot a falsehood at twenty paces.
Steve told me he skipped exercising for a few days because he was in what I perceive to have been some sort of artistic frenzy. His muse beckons him constantly and, occasionally, he is so inspired by a thought or a vision in his mind's eye that he has to paint until an artistic love-child is delivered on canvas. I understand this. I feel much the same way about writing. An idea arrives and one is deaf and blind to almost every other consideration until that idea is realised on paper. In many respects I approached building our house the same way - my fervour and enthusiasm knew no limits and I could not rest until that architectural vision was realised in bricks and mortar.
Steve and I now know how old we are. I had supposed him to be in his mid to late-thirties. He had supposed me to be in my early to mid-forties. We are both generous souls, having each underestimated the other by a ten-year margin. Unwelcome memories of "Gummy Helen" flooded back when Steve said he had difficulty in believing I had five grandchildren. Naturally, I mitigated this somewhat by explaining that all my grandchildren are very, very young and that I had been the male equivalent of a child bride! Anyway, Steve is in fact forty-eight and so there are only a handful of years between us. For whatever reason, I find this re-assuring.
Thus far, our sole somewhat intimate moment came that morning I gave him a lift home from the gym. It has not been referred to in any of our morning chats but I cannot ignore the reality that our buddy-ship is sexually charged in some way. We do nothing together that is intimate or sexy and yet, merely through eye contact and voice modulations, we convey a deep understanding and appreciation of each other.
I feel that I know this man. And I can see that he knows me too. For a man who has spent a lifetime expressing himself visually, he is remarkably articulate.
Steve is the product of one of those arid and loveless unions of the early 1960's, where people often married because a baby was on the way or because society saw marriage as everyone's destiny. He has had no contact with his parents or siblings for more than twenty years. He does not despise them. It's the reverse. He feels they despise him. He had a few girlfriends in his teens and early twenties but - for all that he can depict female nudity with breathtakingly few brushstrokes - his heart was not in heterosexuality. The battle against those feelings, coupled with his family's view that artists are by definition Bohemian, led him to flaunt a gay lifestyle and, eventually, to drug addiction to dull the pain of feeling like a pariah.
He has never had a sustained relationship with anyone - male or female - because he has always felt too crippled inside to be worthy of another's love. When he was at the lowest point of all, constantly craving heroin, he turned to prostitition to fund his habit. He inevitably ended up in trouble with the law and was faced with a choice - enter rehab or accept a prison sentence.
He has now been clean for almost five years. He has eked out a very precarious living as an artist. He is well regarded by his peers but does not want fame. Only very recently has he begun to re-engage with the world beyond his beachside shack. Joining the gym was his first step in that direction. Ironically, his fees are being paid via a grant from a charitable organisation with which I'm associated, but he doesn't know that. Previously he has maintained his fitness by working out at home and by jogging along deserted beaches at dawn or at dusk. For years he has forsaken intimate human contact save for occasional furtive visits to beats where guys can achieve a quick and anonymous, no-strings-attached sexual coupling.
Now, I know it may seem ludicrous to say this, but I feel Steve and I are very similar. In radically different circumstances and for dramatically different reasons, I too have avoided intimacy - true, deep intimacy - with anyone for more than eight years. I have borne the loss of my wife and my obligations to my children as some sort of cross - a cross that conveniently precludes my allowing my heart to ever be touched again. It's not simply about feeling horny - I now realise that I need someone to re-validate me as a sexual entity. It's as if I seek permission or encouragement to once again be a man with needs and desires beyond fatherhood and counselling. The similarity I see is that we are both of us - Steve and I - attempting to give ourselves a second chance at love and trust and intimacy.
Isn't it astonishing how much one can find out while chatting in a gym canteen or the parking lot?
So, have I decided to give this a whirl? Am I going to throw caution to the wind and once more spend time in the arms of a guy after twenty years of "orthodox" heterosexuality? I can't say. I'm far too cautious to answer in the affirmative. But I do feel it's a definite maybe.