It was later. "Gimme a call when you've got time. It's your brother."
"hallo Martin. What's up?"
Then follows a conversation that even now I'm having trouble placing into perspective. He'd spoken to our mother about my wedding. She'd admitted hanging up on me when I told her. She told him the reason was because of, you know, father and Wolverhampton.
Wolverhampton? What of father in Wolverhampton? When? Martin said she thought we knew … knew what?! The arrest for soliciting for sex in a public toilet, when father got arrested and it was in the papers, and how everyone at church knew it … and how he tried to kill himself with pills but she'd stopped him and told him to pull himself together and how that was just before he died, or a year or two before or so.
My world just collapsed a little. A lot. My childhood. My father. My mother. I know none of it any more. It was all a lie.
… and I was the one who got punished for being queer.
I'm trembling with emotion but I'm not quite sure which one, which ones.
I feel trampled on and free at the same time.
Sent from my iPhone
