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Cracking Up
Avoiding my friends became increasingly more important to me. They thought I was a good and decent kind of boy. They knew I'd been an altar boy and had not the slightest idea what I'd become. I found their natural good natures too much to cope with. It kind of made me feel worse to be around them. I would see Mike in the youth club and feel totally unworthy of his friendship, yet I wanted it so much. I would see him and feel dirty. Nothing was good any more and I should've known that it wouldn't last. The times I did drop in to the youth club, just to see Mike, I experienced a distancing sensation. It was weird because Mike would always make a point of coming to meet me the moment I entered. I felt like a complete fraud and would drift out again, telling him I had things to do. I just didn't feel good enough. His looking out for me was like having salt rubbed in the wounds, if you know what I mean. The things I had to do amounted to going back home and sitting buried in the television set or books, never speaking to anyone. I knew I was kind of cracking up and welcomed it in a strange sort of selfpunishing way. My only comfort continued to be masturbation but I always felt guilty about it afterwards.
After some considerable time of this self-enforced isolation my mother insisted that I go with her to see a counsellor. This took me by warm surprise and brought me that little bit closer to her. She was obviously seeing my pain. The counsellor was a woman of about my mother's age and seemed nice enough, but in front of my mother I just couldn't open up. To have asked my mother to leave would be like pushing her away and I wanted her close. I couldn't win so I said nothing. In the end the counsellor decided it might be a good idea to see us separately. She spent time with my mother first and then with me. I didn't understand anything she said; she was saying things in a way which I couldn't for the life of me make sense of. She was nice but that was it. At the end of my time with her she told me she was prepared to see me once a week and that if I liked I could join one of her weekly groups. I knew that she had something positive to offer even though I didn't know what and I agreed to join the group. What decided me was her genuine concern for me. What helped me was that she was a woman. It wasn't what she said that convinced me that I needed help, it was more the things she said with her body and her eyes while she spoke which told me I could trust her. I found that I didn't want to leave and this reminded me of the Chinese laundry when I'd sat and told the old Chinaman everything.
On the way home I told my mother that I was looking forward to the Saturday morning group. She was clearly pleased. When we arrived home, however, my father gave my mother the third degree and told us both that no child of his was going to see a bloody psychiatrist. My mother told him that it wasn't a psychiatrist and that the woman was a child psychotherapist.
'It's the same bloody thing woman. What's the matter with you?'
I exploded in defence of my mother and my lost opportunity.
'It's you who should see a psychiatrist!'
His punch sent me flying through the air and I landed on the far side of the room. As I picked myself up, with my mother's help, I realised that what I'd said must somehow be the truth. He reminded me of a jealous schoolboy. A couple of days later a letter of confirmation arrived from the adolescent unit and my mother tried to reason with my father. His response was to throw the letter onto the back of the fire.
'That's an end to it. I don't want to hear another word about it.'
I looked at the flames and saw myself going up in smoke. That evening I went out and ended up in the picture house where men paid boys to have sex with them. I let a man do anything and everything he wanted in the back row and didn't ask him for money. It felt real good.
Not long after that James joined the merchant navy. He was delighted to get away and I felt pleased for him and sad for me. I knew I'd miss him. Just before he left he had the most wonderful verbal fight with my father which, as far as I was concerned, he won. He was still seeing the same girl, Rose. So, with my brother and my cousin now in the merchant navy I was left with my younger sister who was the apple of my father's eye. She could twist him around her little finger. It was really strange the way he talked to her. With her he was remarkably gentle and kind. I was as jealous as hell. When she'd first been born I was about seven years old and I was jealous then too. I recall asking my mother one day while she was breast-feeding Kathleen if she liked the new baby.
'Oh yes, look at her, she's beautiful.'
'Do you like me?'
'Don't be silly. Of course I do.'
'No, I mean, do you like boys?'
'Yes, what are you getting at?'
'You know, she's the first girl and we're boys, are you glad?'
'I always wanted a girl.'
'Always?'
'Yes, but we had one boy after another.'
'Did you want a girl when you had me?'
'Richard, when I had you I thanked God.'
'But you wanted a girl, really.'
'We hoped for a girl but we were thankful for what God sent.'
'If I'd been a girl, you know, what would you have called me?'
'You're not a girl.'
'I know, but you must have had a name ready, right?'
'Alicia! But you're not a girl and that's that.'
I hated the name, especially when I discovered that it was my father's mother's name. Nonetheless, I recall trying very hard to behave like a girl just to please him. It wasn't that I wanted to be a girl, it was more that I tried to be his mother in a weird kind of way. To some extent it worked too. For a short time his interest in me grew. It didn't last though because I couldn't keep it up. But anything was worth a try. You see, when you feel that you're not wanted just for yourself, you have to be someone else. It's then like you don't exist and you have to do things to make your existence real. Even getting belted was a kind of confirmation that I existed. It was better than nothing. A cuddle or a slap, what's the difference?
Anyway, James had left home and gone to sea. How I envied his new found freedom. I'd lost my companion in the struggle to survive and needed a new one urgently.
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