Gay Men and Their Mothers and Families Again

I have been reading the blog of a man who is Christian and identifies as homosexual rather than gay or queer. What strikes me is that his relationship with his mother is*exactly* like my relationship with my mother and is just the sort of enmeshed, inescapable relationship which I theorise many gay men have with their mothers:

I come from a dysfunctional family. In fact, I think that families that really love each other are a dangerous myth invented by movies and television. To give you some perspective: my mother doesn't talk to her mother, and hadn't spoken to her father for about ten years before he died (and didn't go to his funeral). She doesn't speak to two out of her three living brothers, and the one she is on speaking terms with none of us really like. I cannot be in the same room as my sister, who is, if not my nemesis, certainly the bane of my life and the worst human being I have ever met (an attitude for which my mother ironically scolds me some of the time). My father hasn't spoken to his sister for about fifteen years, and has a cold relationship with his mother who always treated my aunt and cousins with favouritism and who, during the course of my short life, has moved further and further away from us; first to Cornwall, then to France, and now Australia. I wouldn't care if I never saw her again and I don't think my father would either. I barely know my distant relatives; I don't really care for any of my cousins. You can feel the love, can't you.

I seldom, if ever, tell my mother anything of importance. For years growing up I was lulled by her claims to be an unselfish, caring person who was mistreated by her own family, and that her constant comparing my brother and me to other children, her constant put-downs, &c were just my misunderstandings. One parents' evening I shall remember to my dying day. Mrs Wheeler said to my mother: "This boy has produced the best piece of English literature coursework I have ever seen for GCSE." When we got home mother said that Mrs Wheeler obviously hadn't taught English for very long. This was the same parents' evening at which my mother failed to confront my history teacher about her constant bullying, and said afterwards: "well, what was I supposed to say?" Source

Various people responded sympathetically to his post, suggesting various practical things he could do to extricate himself from his situation. The trouble is it actually goes much deeper and is very ambivalent indeed, as the same blogger comments on his other blog:

 By the way, over the years you might have gotten the impression that I dislike my mother. That's a very complex thing but I suppose I could say briefly: don't ever tell me that homosexuals are attached to their mothers. My mother is responsible for considerable emotional damage and from what I can tell she thinks, given her own strained relationship with her mother (for whom I have a lasting affection...strange isn't it?), that that's one of the best things about being a parent. Source

Image source  No judgement is implied of the son's sexuality or his relationship with his mother.

My Lent Book

I have written here before of the practice I have stolen from the Christians of having a Lent book. This is the practice of the Lent book as described in the influential Rule of St Benedict:

During the days of Lent, they should be free in the morning to read until the third hour, after which they will work at their assigned tasks until the end of the tenth hour. During this time of Lent each one is to receive a book from the library, and is to read the whole of it straight through. These books are to be distributed at the beginning of Lent. Above all, one or two seniors must surely be deputed to make the rounds of the monastery while the brothers are reading. Their duty is to see that no brother is so apathetic as to waste time or engage in idle talk to the neglect of his reading, and so not only harm himself but also distract others. If such a monk is found–God forbid–he should be reproved a first and a second time. If he does not amend, he must be subjected to the punishment of the rule as a warning to others. Further, brothers ought not to associate with one another at inappropriate times. Source

I don't see the practice of being given a book to read all the way through, as being that different from two of our traditions in witchcraft. The first that when the student is ready the teacher will appear, and the second, the tradition of being given such things as tarot decks, which tends to take our choice out of it completely. Benedict phrases this allocation of books and the obligation to read through them in a rather doctrinaire way, and this will reflect that many of the monks in monasteries in former times would certainly not be old, and this fact is reflected in a need for a more disciplinary approach.
Personally I do value the gift of a book or magical tool from someone else, as an opportunity to see how someone else sees things, and avoid my own bias. Currently I have a Barbara Walker tarot deck I have been given, which I am looking forward to getting to know, to be exposed to a world view different from my own. So far I have never been given a Lent book and instead like to think of the book choosing me.
This year my book is Joe Orton's sister Leonie's memoir of her famous brother, I Had It In Me. I have ordered it online and never so much as set eyes on it but am looking forward so much to reading it.
Orton is a hero of mine, and has been ever since I discovered his plays in my teens. You can hear a BBC production of his play Loot here. And below is an interview with him. Interestingly he doesn't come across nearly as self-assured in reality as Gary Oldman did playing him in Prick Up Your Ears.

There is just one thing I have noticed, which is an anachronism in the literature about Orton. I noticed it in an interview with Leonie where the journalist commented that they ought to have been together still (he was born in 1933), only his murder intervened. This is of course true, and his death was tragic. But the reality is that if he had lived beyond the 1960s and continued his existing lifestyle, the likelihood is he would have died of AIDS in the 1980s. Orton's generation of gays were doomed and one tragedy prevented another getting him.