THE OEDIPUL SON Chapter Eight: i’d rather you were dead than a homosexual

In his loneliness Carlton found a friend in Adrian. Adrian was very camp, direct and confrontational and this made Carlton afraid. When the other boys teased him he would lower his head and walk away. Adrian however would scream at them in a frightening falsetto, “Fuck off and die you baby making pussy lovers.” To Carlton’s amazement this seemed to work and while he continued to be harassed daily, Adrian was given a wide birth.

They were both members of the chess club and that was where they  became friends when Carlton discovered that they both wrote poetry, found expression for their fears in language and communicated their desires in the written word. He found that when Adrian was not threatened he could be gentle and kind and besides, when they were together no one dared to tease Carlton because they knew that ‘the crazy queen’ would fly into a rage.

Adrian’s first lover had been the nineteen year old domestic houseboy, Moses. Adrian’s parents had lived in Nairobi until political unrest and bloodshed had forced them to leave. In Kenya it was common to have a ‘boy’ as a servant rather than a ‘girl’, because they were much more useful and could be put to work in the garden as well as in the house. They were capable of more physically challenging labour than the ‘girls’.

Adrian had watched Moses mowing the lawn one day, from the kitchen window. He wasn’t wearing underwear and Adrian could clearly see the shape that swung pendulously beneath the thin fabric of his hand-me-down shorts; it was barely concealed. Even at twelve, Adrian had been excited. When the ‘boy’ came into the kitchen Adrian had dropped to his knees and pressed his face against that enticing bulge. Moses had been hesitant at first, but hadn’t dared to object, and it wasn’t long before he was participating fully and was allowing this young white boy to pleasure him on the cold kitchen floor.

Because Adrian knew that what he was doing was forbidden, it made it even more exciting; just as Moses’ size, smell, colour and the fact that, unlike Adrian, he was uncircumcised, intensified the eroticism of this first, shared sexual experience.


One day Carlton came home to find his mother sitting on his bed, reading a letter that had arrived for him while he had not been there. It was from Adrian and described in detail a young boy that he’d seen on the beach. His description was vivid and erotic, carefully detailing how he’d like to touch this youth.

Through her tears Dorothea pleaded, "Please tell me that you’re not a pervert like your friend; if you are, this will be my Gethsemane."

At that moment he would have done anything to stop his mother’s tears and the words that he anticipated from her mouth, “Wait until I tell your father”; and so he lied. He denied his reality in order to spare his mother’s pain but also to save his own hide.

His mother’s last words on the subject for the next twenty seven years were, “Think about what this will do to your father Carlton. It would kill him. What would his congregation think if they knew that he’d spawned a homosexual? I’m not even going to talk to him about Adrian’s letter; I’m scared he might beat you to death. Personally I would rather that you were dead than a homosexual but it would destroy your father’s life and I won’t allow you to do that.”


Adrian and Carlton were movie and book junkies. They both needed the escape that could be found between the covers of a book or in the celluloid fantasy world that allowed them to temporarily disappear and live in the lives of others. They had no role models so they looked to the silver screen and books for characters they could emulate.

The first movie that Carlton and Adrian saw together was Camelot. In the story of Sir Lancelot’s tragic love affair with Guinevere, King Arthur’s wife, Carlton discovered the image of The Hero; The Knight in Shining Armour that would enter his dreams and drive his relentless search for love in the arms of strangers.

The instant that Sir Lancelot appeared on the screen, standing on the battlements of his French castle, Carlton’s enchantment turned into adoration. His face was impossibly handsome; chiselled, angular, strong jawed, sensitive lipped and the bluest eyes. He couldn’t sing to save his life but he bravely battled through an impossibly facile song. Carlton didn’t care, he never wanted that awful song to end; his eyes devoured the image of his Knight in Shining Armour on a white horse. He was in love.

Carlton cried when Lancelot told Guinevere that he needed to leave, but couldn’t, and the raw sincerity of his voice suddenly became the most beautiful sound that Carlton had ever heard, the words of that song staying in his head, being replayed over and over as though Lancelot had sung them to him:


If ever I would leave you
it wouldn’t be in summer
seeing you in summer
I never would go…
Oh no, not in springtime
summer, winter or fall
no never could I leave you
at all

When Adrian wasn’t around on weekends or holidays Carlton spent lonely days at all day cinemas. There, for the price of one entrance ticket, he could waste an entire day watching the same two or three movies over and over again and disappear into an imaginary world where loneliness was drowned by repetitive fantasies.


(Orientation Note for Readers: This serialisation is adapted from my semi-autobiographical novel Other Voices. If you wish to read the Prologue to the book, it was posted in the Fictional Prose category on 17th October 2013)
© Carlton Carr 2013
http://othervoices.blog.co.uk/