Funded by my father's largesse, I fucked my way through many of the available girls in Greater London, Middlesex and Surrey. I did other things too of course. For example, I half-heartedly attended the Berlitz Language School to hone my schoolboy French, then moved on to acquire some passable Spanish and some Portuguese. For some reason I am good with languages. What I most rejoiced in back then was the opportunity to speak in a language that carried no whiff of my awful childhood. All the dreadful things that were ever said or done to me were carried out in English. To speak in another tongue is to be reborn.
I also found myself unexpectedly working as a singer. Before parting company, I had gone with some dreary relatives to some sort of club/music hall affair where people sang along or occasionally took over the microphone to sing a solo or two. This was pre-Karaoke. When the MC asked for another volunteer I mounted the platform, consulted with the pianist and launched into "Yesterday". The crowd applauded wildly. Even my relatives were gob-smacked. For an encore I did "I Left my Heart in San Francisco". Afterwards, a middle-aged man approached me and asked if I was interested in working regularly, I said "sure" and so began my brief "career" in show biz!
The money was okay and there were lots of similar venues in and around London. All I needed was a sound repertoire of standards in order to respond to audience requests. There was always a pianist who could play almost anything in any key. Eventually, the nice middle-aged guy - I can't recall his name - told me he'd got me a booking at some place he regarded as a definite stepping stone upwards. By this time I had my own little flat in Richmond-on-Thames. When he rang he advised me to get some arrangements together for this particular gig as I would have a small orchestra backing me. After we'd spoken I thought for a while. Organising my own arrangements seemed too much of a drag. I rang him back, thanked him for his efforts on my behalf and announced that I was finished with show business. Why? Partly the effort, I guess, but also a feeling that I did not want to be defined as a singer. I love to sing and I'd loved the party atmosphere of those clubs and dance-halls, but my heart is really more in blues, jazz and opera and I could never have sustained a lengthy period doing pop and sentimental schmaltz. Besides, I had plans to return to Australia soon and take up my place at university.
One day I went shopping in Kings Road in Chelsea. I became aware that a guy was "checking me out" as I meandered through a menswear store. I know now about the glance that can be exchanged between men, the glance that forms a connection, the look that says "I'm interested if you are", but I didn't know about it when I was seventeen. He did nothing overt but I was very aware of him and I felt a powerful attraction. He spoke first. We chatted and then sat together at an outdoor cafe to talk some more. His name was Robert and he was quite old - almost thirty! Robert ended up accompanying me home and I voluntarily had sex with a man. Not the whole enchilada - I wasn't prepared to go that far - but it was sex nonetheless.
I was a very confused boy but I was glad to have a close male friend. He would visit me about twice a week and I found out that he worked for half of each year as a courier, escorting busloads of tourists on fifteen-day tours of Spain. The other half of the year, outside the tourist season, he usually spent in Granada or Morocco. It sounded magical and exotic. When he suggested I might like Spain too, I knew immediately where I was headed next. I contacted the university back home and was assured that my exam scores, even when scaled down over time, would still gain me admission into Law for at least another year and probably the year after that too. Then I advised my father where to send my allowance in future and set off into the glorious unknown.
I took the boat-train to Calais and then on to Paris where I'd been instructed to go from the Gare du Nord to Austerlitz train station. Robert, who had already returned to Spain, had briefed me thoroughly on how to make this trip. He would be waiting to meet me at the station in Barcelona. Well, of course I somehow ended up on the wrong train and found myself heading towards Portugal! I alighted at Narbonne and eventually organised travel in the right direction. I discovered that the people outside Paris were far more encouraging of my language skills than the sophisticates of Paris had been. The original plan had been that I would arrive in Barcelona in time to celebrate my eighteenth Birthday. I was now behind schedule and actually turned eighteen somewhere near the French-Spanish border. I was reading Maugham's "The Painted Veil" at the time and can remember weeping at the sad closing paragraphs. A kind fellow passenger attempted to console this tearful lad by offering him a chicken sandwich!
Fortunately, I remembered the name of the hotel where Robert and his tour group were staying and I got there just in time to join the party before it left for Valencia. I did the entire fifteen-day tour free of charge, sharing Robert's room in each new town. We were not lovers, just very close friends who occasionally fooled around. Robert was bisexual. Omnisexual might be a better description. He had guys and girls in every city and he also "accommodated" some of the more attractive members of his tour groups. I had the best two weeks possible and - when the bus reached Barcelona once more in order to take on the next load of tourists - I knew I was going to stay in Spain for quite a while.
Robert departed with his next group and I found a room in a pension in the Gothic Quarter. I had fallen in love with Barcelona. I loved the colours, the aromas, the food, the buildings and the people. Every evening the Ramblas was a seething mass of people strolling leisurely towards a cafe or a bar or a restaurant. The central strip was crowded with people selling canaries in small cages, artwork and all manner of craft items, souvenirs and snacks. It was like no place I had ever visited before and I vowed to think in Spanish, speak only in Spanish and stay in this wonderful place for as long as possible. I still had no idea who or what I really was but this city fitted me like a glove.
Some glitch arose with regard to my allowance. It kept piling up at the bank in Twickenham and never seemed to reach Barcelona. It took two months to resolve the problem so I was very poor in the interim. Assuring anyone who asked that I was twenty-one - tricky because I hadn't yet ever needed to shave! - I found work as a tutor to university students who were struggling with their English. The students' English was execrable but then so was my Spanish at that stage. For my first class I learned one phrase off by heart: aqui hablamos solamente Inglese - here we will speak only in English. By the time anyone realised I didn't speak Spanish I could! For this work I received the princely sum of seventy pesetas (roughly one Australian dollar) per hour, but it was enough to survive on until my allowance flowed once more.
I made lots of friends, all of them native Catalonians. I even learned a little Catalan and some Basque. Two middle-aged sisters, Carmen and Nuria, became my special friends. At least once a week I had dinner at their apartment and we had fun with languages. Carmen spoke only Spanish and French; Nuria spoke only Spanish and excellent English; and I enjoyed the thrill of conversing in all three tongues while polishing off some excellent home cooking. These two sisters had experienced the Spanish Civil War as children and been deeply traumatised by what happened to their family. They both worked in the city and, having nursed elderly parents until death, thay had never married. They were warm, generous and loving people. It was probably the closest I ever came to being mothered and I can never think of them without emotion and gratitude.
I sort of fell in love with a cute Spanish boy around my own age. Miguel spoke no English and came from a poor background. He lived with an older lover, a nasty guy named Ignacio, but every now and then, when Ignacio was away working somewhere, Miguel and I would catch up. Twice we caught the train to the beautiful seaside town of Sitges and spent the weekend there, baking on rented deck-chairs and occasionally swimming in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. It amused me that the pension there would generally have a vacant room "if you gentlemen don't mind sharing a double bed".
What a question! No wonder I had fallen in love with this country and these people.
I also found myself unexpectedly working as a singer. Before parting company, I had gone with some dreary relatives to some sort of club/music hall affair where people sang along or occasionally took over the microphone to sing a solo or two. This was pre-Karaoke. When the MC asked for another volunteer I mounted the platform, consulted with the pianist and launched into "Yesterday". The crowd applauded wildly. Even my relatives were gob-smacked. For an encore I did "I Left my Heart in San Francisco". Afterwards, a middle-aged man approached me and asked if I was interested in working regularly, I said "sure" and so began my brief "career" in show biz!
The money was okay and there were lots of similar venues in and around London. All I needed was a sound repertoire of standards in order to respond to audience requests. There was always a pianist who could play almost anything in any key. Eventually, the nice middle-aged guy - I can't recall his name - told me he'd got me a booking at some place he regarded as a definite stepping stone upwards. By this time I had my own little flat in Richmond-on-Thames. When he rang he advised me to get some arrangements together for this particular gig as I would have a small orchestra backing me. After we'd spoken I thought for a while. Organising my own arrangements seemed too much of a drag. I rang him back, thanked him for his efforts on my behalf and announced that I was finished with show business. Why? Partly the effort, I guess, but also a feeling that I did not want to be defined as a singer. I love to sing and I'd loved the party atmosphere of those clubs and dance-halls, but my heart is really more in blues, jazz and opera and I could never have sustained a lengthy period doing pop and sentimental schmaltz. Besides, I had plans to return to Australia soon and take up my place at university.
One day I went shopping in Kings Road in Chelsea. I became aware that a guy was "checking me out" as I meandered through a menswear store. I know now about the glance that can be exchanged between men, the glance that forms a connection, the look that says "I'm interested if you are", but I didn't know about it when I was seventeen. He did nothing overt but I was very aware of him and I felt a powerful attraction. He spoke first. We chatted and then sat together at an outdoor cafe to talk some more. His name was Robert and he was quite old - almost thirty! Robert ended up accompanying me home and I voluntarily had sex with a man. Not the whole enchilada - I wasn't prepared to go that far - but it was sex nonetheless.
I was a very confused boy but I was glad to have a close male friend. He would visit me about twice a week and I found out that he worked for half of each year as a courier, escorting busloads of tourists on fifteen-day tours of Spain. The other half of the year, outside the tourist season, he usually spent in Granada or Morocco. It sounded magical and exotic. When he suggested I might like Spain too, I knew immediately where I was headed next. I contacted the university back home and was assured that my exam scores, even when scaled down over time, would still gain me admission into Law for at least another year and probably the year after that too. Then I advised my father where to send my allowance in future and set off into the glorious unknown.
I took the boat-train to Calais and then on to Paris where I'd been instructed to go from the Gare du Nord to Austerlitz train station. Robert, who had already returned to Spain, had briefed me thoroughly on how to make this trip. He would be waiting to meet me at the station in Barcelona. Well, of course I somehow ended up on the wrong train and found myself heading towards Portugal! I alighted at Narbonne and eventually organised travel in the right direction. I discovered that the people outside Paris were far more encouraging of my language skills than the sophisticates of Paris had been. The original plan had been that I would arrive in Barcelona in time to celebrate my eighteenth Birthday. I was now behind schedule and actually turned eighteen somewhere near the French-Spanish border. I was reading Maugham's "The Painted Veil" at the time and can remember weeping at the sad closing paragraphs. A kind fellow passenger attempted to console this tearful lad by offering him a chicken sandwich!
Fortunately, I remembered the name of the hotel where Robert and his tour group were staying and I got there just in time to join the party before it left for Valencia. I did the entire fifteen-day tour free of charge, sharing Robert's room in each new town. We were not lovers, just very close friends who occasionally fooled around. Robert was bisexual. Omnisexual might be a better description. He had guys and girls in every city and he also "accommodated" some of the more attractive members of his tour groups. I had the best two weeks possible and - when the bus reached Barcelona once more in order to take on the next load of tourists - I knew I was going to stay in Spain for quite a while.
Robert departed with his next group and I found a room in a pension in the Gothic Quarter. I had fallen in love with Barcelona. I loved the colours, the aromas, the food, the buildings and the people. Every evening the Ramblas was a seething mass of people strolling leisurely towards a cafe or a bar or a restaurant. The central strip was crowded with people selling canaries in small cages, artwork and all manner of craft items, souvenirs and snacks. It was like no place I had ever visited before and I vowed to think in Spanish, speak only in Spanish and stay in this wonderful place for as long as possible. I still had no idea who or what I really was but this city fitted me like a glove.
Some glitch arose with regard to my allowance. It kept piling up at the bank in Twickenham and never seemed to reach Barcelona. It took two months to resolve the problem so I was very poor in the interim. Assuring anyone who asked that I was twenty-one - tricky because I hadn't yet ever needed to shave! - I found work as a tutor to university students who were struggling with their English. The students' English was execrable but then so was my Spanish at that stage. For my first class I learned one phrase off by heart: aqui hablamos solamente Inglese - here we will speak only in English. By the time anyone realised I didn't speak Spanish I could! For this work I received the princely sum of seventy pesetas (roughly one Australian dollar) per hour, but it was enough to survive on until my allowance flowed once more.
I made lots of friends, all of them native Catalonians. I even learned a little Catalan and some Basque. Two middle-aged sisters, Carmen and Nuria, became my special friends. At least once a week I had dinner at their apartment and we had fun with languages. Carmen spoke only Spanish and French; Nuria spoke only Spanish and excellent English; and I enjoyed the thrill of conversing in all three tongues while polishing off some excellent home cooking. These two sisters had experienced the Spanish Civil War as children and been deeply traumatised by what happened to their family. They both worked in the city and, having nursed elderly parents until death, thay had never married. They were warm, generous and loving people. It was probably the closest I ever came to being mothered and I can never think of them without emotion and gratitude.
I sort of fell in love with a cute Spanish boy around my own age. Miguel spoke no English and came from a poor background. He lived with an older lover, a nasty guy named Ignacio, but every now and then, when Ignacio was away working somewhere, Miguel and I would catch up. Twice we caught the train to the beautiful seaside town of Sitges and spent the weekend there, baking on rented deck-chairs and occasionally swimming in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. It amused me that the pension there would generally have a vacant room "if you gentlemen don't mind sharing a double bed".
What a question! No wonder I had fallen in love with this country and these people.