Closet Days, a Life in the Abstract

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem is another from the Taber archives, rediscovered last year and dated July 1963; this would make me 17 years-old at the time. I have revised it only slightly. For example, I have removed full stops at the end of stanzas and replaced most upper case letters with lower case; such were poetry conventions in those days upon which many poets still insist. I have to say I hadn’t realised I was already using the word ‘gay’ in poems although I should know by now that memory is not above springing surprises nearly fifty years on.

Homosexuality between consenting adults over the age of twenty-one would not become law here in the UK until 1967. Meanwhile, I was left to guard my secret. The invisible friend of my childhood had become my invisible lover, someone I could be sure would love me, look after me and make all that terrible anxt go away. At heart, I wasn’t so much ashamed of being gay as confused and scared that anyone might suspect.

Is it any surprise, you may well ask, that I had a nervous breakdown in my early 30’s? The only surprise is that I didn’t have one years earlier. Mind you, it was just as well I didn’t. A boy at my secondary school was sent to a psychiatrist and later subjected to electric shock ‘therapy’ for ‘exhibiting homosexual tendencies’. All the more reason to keep my own under wraps!

It was a very lonely time. Thank goodness for that twilight world where I’d meet other gay youths and men suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous bigotry. Even so, I’ll never know how I managed to keep my ‘straight’ act together long enough to revise for let alone pass any exams!

It should be so much easier for young people to express gay thoughts and feelings in this 21st century and, yes, for some, it is. Yet, so much depends on the person’s socio-cultural-religious background as well as their personality and whether or not they possess a natural self-confidence.

At least, in some parts of the world and on the Internet, there is access to various support networks these days. Oh, and by internet access, I mean addresses and phone numbers of organisations that can help. Don’t be taken in by any nasty scams or individuals you have never met and who may be less than genuine.

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CLOSET DAYS, A LIFE IN THE ABSTRACT

Often, I am lonely my bed,

die wishing you were here;

often I turn on my pillows,

die wishing you were there

Often, I feel someone near,

for wishing you were here;

often, I hear feet on the stair,

for wishing you were there

Often, I cross to the window,

for wishing you were here,

often, I caress your reflection,

for wishing you were there

Often, I tell the dark I’m gay

for wishing you were here;

in the end, I can only pretend

one day I’ll find you there

Copyright R. N. Taber 1963; 2010