‘No, Mam. You didn’t, ever. You did great. Even if Dad were alive, I’d still be gay. It’s who I am.’ He knelt beside her chair and took her hand in his. ‘Don’t ever think like that. We all have to walk our own path in life and this is mine.’
‘And do you hate it? Is it a burden to you? Are you unhappy?’ she asked earnestly.
‘I did hate it at first. I hated myself, and it was a burden when I was young and had to hide it, especially here in Rosslara,’ he admitted. ‘And when I started working first, I had a boss who was homophobic and he gave me a very hard time—’
‘I hope you reported him,’ Nancy bristled.
‘Oh I sorted him, don’t you worry!’ Jonathan said grimly. ‘But I’ve made great friends in Dublin. Hilary and Kenny and Russell, you know them. And I go to a great counsellor called Hannah Harrison. You’d love her, Mam. She’s amazing. She’s made me look at everything so differently. If my boss hadn’t bullied me, for example, I might have got stuck in a rut in the Civil Service, but because of him I was determined that no one would treat me like that again and it motivated me to do the interviews and climb up the grade scale. So Hannah says that on a soul level he was a great teacher for me in many ways. His homophobia made me stand up for myself and gave me the kick in the ass I needed to move upwards.’
‘Oh! Well that’s an unusual way to look at it, I suppose,’ Nancy said dubiously.
‘Yeah, she makes you think about stuff differently.’ Jonathan stood up and went and sprawled on the sofa. ‘She believes in reincarnation. And she says we come to teach each other lessons in life to advance ourselves spiritually.’
‘And do you believe in reincarnation?’ Nancy asked, thinking that she would have chosen for her husband to live, and not to have spent most of her adult life as a widow, if she’d truly had a choice.
‘I think it makes sense, really. I’ve read a good few metaphysical books, and yes, it explains a lot.’
‘Even why you’re gay?’ Nancy ventured.
‘Especially why I’m gay,’ Jonathan laughed. ‘I’ve been straight in other lives. It’s all about the challenge and how you deal with it and you know, Mam, right now I’m doing fine. I truly am, so you’ve no need to worry about me. As Alice Walker, one of my favourite authors, said, We have to own the fears we have of each other, and then in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than what we were brought up to. That makes such sense to me. It can refer to anything in life, religion, politics and cultural differences. Fear of each other causes so much turmoil and violence in the world.’
‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Nancy. ‘She put it very well. It’s all about fear, isn’t it, that homophobic stuff? I mean who could be afraid of you?’
‘I can be pretty fierce,’ Jonathan teased. ‘Isn’t it wonderful to be able to sit and talk like this. I’m so lucky to have you, Mam.’
‘And I’m so lucky to have you, son. Just promise me you’ll never keep anything from me again,’ Nancy said sternly.
‘I promise,’ he assured her, utterly relieved that she had believed his story. It was a relief to be able to put her mind at rest too about how he felt about his life path. The evening wasn’t a disaster after all, even if he had held back on the most horrendous events of his childhood, he decided. He had not betrayed himself. He had chosen not to inflict emotional carnage on his beloved mother.
‘And you know something, Mam, I don’t define myself by being gay. That’s only part of who I am. I am a man, like any other, with a successful career, my own home, great family and friends, who happens to be gay. I never feel I have to introduce myself by saying, “Hi, I’m Jonathan and I’m gay.” I hate the fact that people feel they have to “come out”, or others feel that gay people have to be “outed”. It’s no one’s business really. I mean you would never dream of introducing yourself as “Nancy who’s heterosexual”, would you? All that stuff pisses me off big time.’
‘And rightly so, why wouldn’t it?’ Nancy agreed. ‘The next time I go with the parish group to an event where we meet new people I must introduce myself as “Nancy the heterosexual”. That would make a few jaws drop,’ she laughed, tickled at the notion.
‘All these labels we hide behind. Straight, gay, upper class, lower class, highbrow, lowbrow, black, white, they’re all designed to make us forget that we are all equal, all one from the one Source, even the ones who abuse us. That last one takes some getting your head round, I can tell you.’ Jonathan made a face.
‘But why does it happen? Why does all this evil exist in the world?’ Nancy sighed.
‘Hannah says it’s because we’ve all forgotten who we are and why we were created. She calls it “the vale of forgetting”: we come back to earth and forget what we’ve come back to do. Life’s hard knocks are one way of getting us to remember.’
‘I like the sound of this Hannah. She has an interesting take on life.’ Nancy stretched her feet towards the fire.
‘You can say that again. She puts it up to you to stop feeling sorry for yourself, and really makes you look at it all from another perspective.’
‘I didn’t have time to be sorry for myself, but you know, before your daddy died, I wouldn’t say boo to a
