I have already told you about Julian, haven’t I? The lovely man I sometimes live with in Lincoln. Oh he is a lovely man and I love him a lot, just as much as he says he loves me. For a Gay he’s not at all showy, more like a quiet thoughtful accountant than an outgoing, flowery ladies clothes designer. I only wish he was sometimes. It would save both of us a lot of money!

Poor Julian! He had to take a manual job. And him with a degree or two under his hat. Trouble is, he isn’t ambitious you see. His mother told me that the first time I met her.

“He’s not queer either!” she told me forcibly “So you can forget anything he might have told you!”

I nodded and Julian, seated awkwardly at the other end of the dining table, shifted uncomfortably.

“Muuuum!” Julian said.

Damn the woman! I said to myself. She is trying to put the kybosh on everything. I knew it would be useless trying to tell her anything. After all Julian and I had already been together very nearly three months by the time I met her.

“Hydrology!” Julian had told me “Bloody boring, muddy and wet! And all because the people in the West Midlands like our water”

I kissed him on the mouth the moment I got into his car. He tasted salty, a bit, felt bristly and not at all queer.

“You didn’t have to do that” he protested.

“No, I know” I said. I think I’d caught him on an off day. He was bored stiff and thinking of resigning his job. For over an hour we sat and talked about this and that while the clouds drifted in messily from the North Sea. I wanted to hug him, kiss him some more, let him see that nothing was as bad as he thought it to be. After a while he cheered up a little. I followed him into Lincoln in my own little car, trailed behind him thoughtfully as it started to rain.

……………

That weekend we made love several times, getting to know each other, each time, a little better. I felt able to let myself go with him very quickly but he, poor Julian, remained rather reserved. He didn’t say so but I felt there was something missing, something that, for some reason, Julian wouldn’t talk about. He did though, at least he began to, at last, when I kissed and cuddled him in bed that night.

He told me I was the first man he’d actually slept with. Ever. For a while I found that quite difficult to believe. It’s alright for you, he’d told me, not objecting when I started to suck him again. You’re experienced in these things! Knowledgeable! He began to cry softly. I couldn’t believe it and stopped.

Julian was forty nine years old when I met him a little over a year ago. He got drunk and very silly on his fiftieth birthday. That was when I met him mum for the first time.

At first she’d taken it for granted that we worked together. She asked me several times where I lived and what sort of job did I have with the water authority. I smiled and kidded her along, catching Julian’s eye and carefully winking.

“Well actually” I said, looking at her steadily. “I don’t live in Lincolnshire at all. I live in Norfolk and I am sort of retired……”

She looked at me strangely then, still not getting the picture. Or not wanting to, more like!

I always wear my wedding ring wherever I am, whatever I do. I never take it off or try to hide it.

“Are you married?” she asked, I thought somewhat rudely. It wasn’t as if I was courting her virginal daughter or anything. She hadn’t got one. No I was being fucked by her fifty year old son.

“Happily!” I said truthfully “And my kids are all grown up and flown away!”

The woman laughed bitterly.

“Julian has never been married you know……….”

She threw a glance at him, like a dragon spouting flame.

“I know……..” I said.

“Never even had a lady friend! Whats the matter with him?”

I didn’t like to tell her there was nothing the matter with him at all. Except for the fact that he didn’t like women. In fact he was terrified of them but I didn’t tell her that either.

“Sometimes men are……..different” I suggested.

Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at me.

“He’s not queer, if that’s what you’re thinking!” she told me savagely.

And all the while poor Julian, holding an empty wine glass in one hand, sat uncomfortably in an armchair.

Sadly, predictably perhaps, the only female who’d agreed to come to Julian’s party was a mid forties hatchet faced confirmed spinster. She would not have married Julian even if he’d been gold plated. Not even if he did have a city centre exclusive flat. Blindly however, Julian’s mum could not see that.

I could understand her feelings, in a way. I had kids of my own, grandchildren even while she, although ever hopeful of Julian, would never have any.

“Why don’t you find out about adoption?” I’d asked him one evening. He’d had another of his melancholy crying fits and was in no mood to talk about anything much. Except himself and how miserable he felt. Anyway he didn’t like kids, he told me. They’re noisy, smelly, a lot of trouble ……. and they cost too much.

I couldn’t argue with any of that so I just hugged him and said “I know what you mean!”

After that the subject never came up again. Weeks went by and slowly I brought him out of his shell.

“She hates me you know!” one day he told me “Mother does, because I won’t get married and have three or four kids!”

I didn’t argue with him that time either. There wasn’t any point.

“She’ll die and leave everything to a dogs home!” Julian said.

He laughed harshly. “Then what’ll I bloody do?”

Well I knew Julian was quite a well off man anyway; he’d been clever with his money and knew where to invest, but I had a suspicion he might think that was what I was after if I tried to talk to him about it. God, he is such a bundle of phobias and worries. Sometimes I don’t know how I put up with any of it!

“I feel sorry for your mum” I told him.

Julian grimaced.

“She wouldn’t believe it, even when I came right out with it! She said I was joking, being spiteful, asked what I thought my old dad would think”

“He’d turn in his grave!” she’d screamed at him.

“Shall we go and talk to her together?” I suggested.

Predictably Julian shook his head.

“She knows you are married………..”

“Yes she does” I said.

“So I think if she knew what we were doing she’d have a fit!”

Close to tears he almost laughed then, in bitterness of course, not in mirth.

Oh hell it’s a hard life isn’t it? A grown man blubbering like a teenage girl, bottling up all his emotions, instead of coming right out with it. Yes he is Gay and yes he is frightened of women. He’ll never get married to a woman because he could never love one. Never except one, and that’s his old mum.

© Aahlu. 060710

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