REFLECTIVE DAZE

'Until the morning sun appears
Making light of all my fears
I dry the tears I've never shown
out here on my own

But when I'm down and feeling blue
I close my eyes so I can be with you
Oh, baby, be strong for me
Baby, belong to me
Help me through
Help me need you...'

I had a dream a few nights ago.  It made me realize many things.  Why I am writing this blog, why I am still fixated with Matty, why my addictive personality would steer my life and why I am the way I am.

It wasn't a dream about Matty hitting me - something which would continue to happen for another 4 years - but more frighteningly it was a dream about the quiet, menacing promise of another beating.  The realisation that for nearly 10 years I let someone completely dominate me both mentally and physically.  The realisation that my acceptance of this life was a combination of many factors over which I had no control.

All my life I had been a 'loner'.  Being the youngest child and only boy in the family.  Growing up with my parents values which, although well intentioned, left psychological barriers which I never learnt to adjust to.  I lived my life in a conflicting world of what I wanted to do and what I thought my parents wanted me to do.

Growing up in a staunchly, old-fashioned Catholic family.  Growing up with a father who had never had a childhood.  Growing up with a mother whose values were way out of date with the times we lived in. Growing up knowing I was different and having to hide that difference as best I could.  All of these factors left mental scars on me which took me nearly 45 years to recognize.

From my father I inherited my addictive personality.  My whole childhood was spent running after my father's addictions.  First it was gem hunting, then tropical fish, then horse racing, then gardening.  Whatever hobby my father took up it consumed all his free time, all his energy, and all our spare money.  We were forced to go along with it.  Even today my father is still consumed by his hobbies...

From my mother I inherited my warped sense of loyalty.  "I made a vow until death us do part"....my sense of pride - she was always concerned with 'what will the neighbours think' and imagined that our family was a cut above our neighbours.  My childhood friendships were monitored by my mother.  No one in the neighbourhood was good enough and therefore my only chance at making friends was always done clandestinely.  On top of that I grew up in a 'straight world' where masculinity was the only way of gaining acceptance.  I quickly learned to act the part.

I never had close friends who accepted me for what I was. I grew used to either being someone I wasn't or when bullied and humiliated for being a 'faggot' I learnt to hide my shame and retreated into my private world.

The only time in my life I truly had a 'friend' was the few short years between 1982 and 1985 when I was with Billy.  We were two young boys with similar backgrounds and similar personalities.  We shared a bed, we shared our friends, our lives and we shared our most intimate hopes and fears.  Before Billy and after it would be many years until I found both the strength and loyalty of true friends with whom I could confide in.  In between were just a bunch of people who came and went.  Our only real connections were prostitution and drugs.

 There are many things I have neglected to mention in previous journals.  Not because I am ashamed but because there is only so much you can write about in one go.  But many of these little incidents partly justify my loyalty to Matty and my staying with him to the end - no matter how bad things got, and believe me, they would get worse over the ensuing few years we had left together.

When I was 15, I wagged school sport one afternoon and went to my cousin's house.  He hadn't been at school for the day so I figured he was at home.  At the time he was living with his father and another elderly man in the house where, coincidently,  my first childhood friend had lived.  The 'lodger' let me in and told me my cousin wasn't home but I could wait.  He was getting ready to go to work his night shift and left me waiting in my cousins bedroom.  And yes, when he came out of the shower he forcefully raped me and left me stunned and ashamed. He told me that if I said anything that he would tell my parents I had wagged school - I would have been caned at school and my father would have taken his belt to me.  It was less painful to remain silent.

  Weeks later I got my revenge by going back and using the 'key under the mat' to let myself in and steal over $100 from the man's room.  It wasn't until 2004 when I met up with my cousin after almost 40 years that not only did I find out that my cousin had taken the blame for the theft but also that he had spent nearly two years subjected to this man's depravity while his own father was either at work or too drunk to see what was happening.


In my first months of 'running away from home' I had spent nights on the street.  Dossed down in filthy squats with heroin addicts, or sleeping with 'dirty old men' who were Social Workers during the day and preyed upon their young, vulnerable  clients in the evenings.  I had slept in boarding houses where the filth and cockroaches were so bad that I chose to live in a brothel rather than face another night in such disgusting premises.

I had seen, and taken part in, dumping overdosed prostitutes out of windows and into back lanes so the parlour would not have to deal with the repercussions. I had stood in a doctor's surgery holding the stab wound of a young boy together while the doctor stitched it up after he had been knifed by another drug crazed boy at the hostel where he was living - after the stitching I had promptly fainted in the bathroom of the surgery.

I had listened to the tragic stories of dozens of young boys and girls whose childhoods made mine seem like the Brady Bunch.  I had seen and done more than most people could ever imagine.

Yet in the years I was with Matty I lost all sense of the strong, individual that I had become.  My drug habit, which was originally recreational became a strong psychological dependence in which I could hide my fears and (real or imagined) failings from the world.  I didn't talk to anyone about my desperate circumstances.  I got stoned, I took speed or cocaine, I walked my dog and I kept my terrifying reality to myself.

I stayed with him out of a warped sense of pride, loyalty and my own fear of losing my self esteem and losing the domestic harmony I pretended to the world I had.  I was terrified of losing my semi - independence , ending up back in the world of the half-dead, losing my dog, losing face.  I had the most beautiful boy in the world and he had me.  Right down to his dying day he had me where he wanted me.

That's not to say that I didn't realize this.  I would take steps to re-gain my independence, to re-gain my sense of self worth and to make something out of my life.  The road would be harder than I imagined, the sacrifices often humiliating, the end tragically pathetic.  But I did make it, or so I thought.