Oh Brother, Who Art Thou? (1992)

I always knew my brother was a bit different.

He was three-and-a-half years my senior but always seemed so much older than that. I loved to watch him draw characters from comics. He'd produce near perfect copies of Donald Duck or Spider-man and I'd ask if I could colour them in. He always told me to draw my own. Now and again he'd read stories at bedtime. I don't remember either of my parents ever reading bedtime stories - but I do remember my brother doing it. Was he reading them to me, or did he just like the sound of his own voice?

Our Dad would take us to the little town library. I'm not sure why it was his responsibility to help us find books - I never saw Dad read anything - but he did encourage us. 

I was only allowed to look at the big, colourful picture books that were untidily arranged in a big wooden trough but my brother was already devouring the fiction section. He only seemed really happy when his nose was in a book. Even if he wouldn't read to me, he'd excitedly tell Mam about the stories he was enjoying. And he'd talk about the books his teachers were reading to his class at school - bits and pieces from Narnia and the Faraway Tree.

Our parents divorced not long after I turned 4. I hadn't even started school before everything kicked off. From that moment on my brother seemed to have a lot of responsibility heaped upon him. He was nearly 8. I think both of my parents looked to him to look after me.

There was no marriage counselling and there certainly wasn't any mental health provision for kids in 1977 - we just had to live with our crazy new world as best we could. Our parents had joint custody and we stayed with Dad at the weekends. The only person I saw every single day was my big brother.

I started school in early 1978 and that's when I began to realise just how different my brother was. 

Loads of the kids I met - Kevin, Robert, Martin and Graeme - they all complained about their older brothers and sisters. They had shocking stories about their siblings doing rotten things to them. I heard about broken toys, stolen sweets, tale-telling, name-calling and 'fun fights' that always went too far. One of my new class-mates had a scar across his bottom lip thanks to his sister pushing him off a climbing frame. 

This sounded terrible - my brother would sometimes sigh or roll his eyes at me when I asked for a bed-time story - but he never thumped me or kicked me in the shins.

We stopped seeing Dad just before my 7th birthday. We were told he loved his job more than us, that he loved playing rugby and watching football more than us... and now he had a new family - so he obviously loved them more than us. 

Before our parents had been forced into a hasty wedding, Dad had planned to become a P.E. teacher. His marriage and impending fatherhood forced him into the best job he could get - and that was in the Police force. Mam told us about his long hours at work, his drinking with rugby club pals and how his job had made him big-headed.

I think my brother and I were both afraid of growing up to be anything like Dad. We knew Mam would hate us as much as she hated him. If nothing else we also grew up with a huge aversion to P.E. teachers and Policemen. And I had to pretend I didn't like watching football on the telly (even when there was a World Cup on!) in case it meant I was turning into Dad.

Mam had a new bloke but he made no effort to be any kind of father. He'd leave the room rather than be on his own with us. Was my brother the only man I could look up to? He had to be a better role model than either of Mam's husbands. He was smarter than everyone else and teachers were always asking why I wasn't more like him. I also saw how proud Mam was. She'd been a teenage mother and plenty of people thought she should have given my brother up for adoption. I think she saw every single one of his good school reports or 'A' grades as a personal victory.

His difference from all the other big brothers became more and more apparent. He didn't even swear! And everybody swore at school! As soon as we heard a 'new' naughty word we had to try them out - but my brother never did. And he never seemed very interested in football, cars or girls. He was friendly with the girls in his year group but he didn't talk about them in the same way most lads did. I just thought he was more mature and respectful than everybody else. His English Teacher praised his "remarkable sensitivity". He was about as different from Dad as it was possible to be.

He seemed to have his mind on higher things. He had his D.H. Lawrence books, Doctor Who videos and David Bowie records - and he'd started writing his own fiction. He'd finished at least one full length stage play and the first draft of a Douglas Adams inspired sci-fi novel by the time he was 16.

After her second husband went to work abroad, Mam fell ill. Nobody ever really told us what was wrong, but she was stuck in the house for years. Nanna came to look after her (and us) through the week. 

My brother had to take on even more responsibility. He'd sometimes have to make our meals and every week he'd be given a list so we could do the shopping on a Friday evening after school. We'd walk back from the town centre with bags and bags of groceries, the plastic carriers leaving deep lines in our hands and wrists. 

It all became normal in the same way that never seeing Dad became normal. We weren't allowed to have friends come over to the house and we couldn't make any noise in case we disturbed Mam. That was fine for my brother - his main hobbies were reading and writing - but I had to get used to wearing headphones a lot of the time.

 

Mam never approved of my friends and she was always telling me who I could or couldn't play out with. She'd tell my brother to take me out with his friends. He couldn't go to the library, the town centre or the cinema without me tagging along.

Most of the time he didn't seem to mind - but he did get cross when he was forced to take me to his band practice. He was singing in a group and I had to sit there, trying not to laugh.

Sometimes he'd put me down in front of his friends, calling me "childish," "immature" and "a fool". At the time I didn't think too much about it - compared to him I probably was all of those things.

It's easy to see why he grew to resent me. Even when he arranged to go to the pictures with a girl from his class, Mam told him to take me along. How many 16 year olds would do that? I wasn't even that bothered about seeing 'Absolute Beginners' but Mam didn't give me a say in the matter.

There were other signs he wasn't exactly happy with the situation. According to Mam he told her he wished he'd been an only child. Was that true or was she shit stirring?

Sometimes we'd go to Darlington and my brother could happily spend hours browsing books in WHSmith, Ottakers or Dressers and I'd just stand behind him, bored senseless. He'd say I was "illiterate" or tell me off for following him around "like a fart in a lift."

It was a bit of a relief when he went to University. I hoped Mam would start treating me more like a grown up but it was just the start of a whole new set of problems. 

My brother loved University. He was suddenly surrounded by people who loved books just as much as he did. He had a grant and a reading list - he was literally being given money to buy more books and he had more time to read them. He took Creative Writing courses and joined theatre groups - and they wanted to stage his work! It must have felt like a dream come true.

Mam wasn't happy. My brother didn't come home very often. He didn't even phone as much as Mam wanted him to. She started to sound more like an abandoned wife than a proud mother.

I was always a disappointment. My school reports were never as good. My exam results were never as good. I wasn't as thoughtful or as witty. But I was still at home and that seemed to make Mam like me less and less. She'd complain about my brother staying away and she'd berate me for "not doing more" around the house. I told her she had to tell me what needed doing - but she always said she "shouldn't have to."

In due course, I went to University too. In fact, I went to the same University as my brother and that was a huge mistake.

He actually graduated the Summer before I was due to start - but inevitably he got First Class Honours and was able to get funding for his M.A. 

For Mam, this seemed to be ideal. Maybe she expected us to fall into our familiar pattern - I'd follow my brother (and his friends) around so she'd never have to worry about me "mixing with the wrong sort". She used to make jokes about "Big Brother" watching me. In her eyes I never stopped being the slightly useless, easily-led younger brother. Maybe I never did. 

In some ways it was a good thing. Thanks to my brother I knew which coach to get from Bishop Auckland bus station. I'd also been to visit him a couple of times so I knew the layout of the campus and the accomodation blocks. It was just as well, because I had to get there on my own and sort everything out for myself.

When my brother first went to University he'd briefly been back in touch with our Dad. It seemed unlikely and I'm still not sure how it happened, but for a couple of years he relied on Dad for lifts to and from Lancaster at the beginning and end of each term.

To begin with, Mam thought this was great - my brother was just "using" Dad and it was "about time he did something useful". But then she started to resent the whole idea. Why should our Dad reappear and bask in the glory of my brother going to University when he hadn't been around for so many years?

I wondered if she'd be just as upset if Dad started giving me lifts but I never got to find out. Before my first term my brother had a massive falling out with Dad and they sent each other a series of increasingly bitter and angry letters. So I was stuck with dragging my bags to Bishop Auckland bus station on my own.

I didn't enjoy student life. Everybody seemed a bit posh and a lot more grown up than me. And nearly everybody was obsessed with buying and/or smoking drugs. I've never been good at making friends so the first couple of terms were really rough. I did get talking to a couple of people - mostly because we all had to share a grim little kitchen. 

My brother came to see me one Wednesday afternoon. He was very proud of himself because some Theatre Group students were putting on a performance of a play he'd written. He asked me if I'd be going to see it. I said "of course". I even said I'd take some of the people from my accomodation block along. I knew the Theatre Group shows could be quite poorly attended and didn't want my brother's show to have loads of empty seats.

To me, it was pretty amazing that he was getting somewhere with his writing. It just seemed so unlikely that somebody from our little town - and with our family background - was writing things that people would perform or pay to see. 

And that's when he told me.

My brother started by asking if I'd ever wondered why he'd never had a girlfriend. I'd never really thought about it. He always seemed to get on really well with girls at school. And whenever I saw him on campus he always seemed to have more female friends than male. He was certainly more comfortable and relaxed around women than I ever was. I'd never had a girlfriend either!

So what was the big secret?

He asked if I'd ever noticed how 'different' he was from all the other boys at our school. I said I had. I'd certainly noticed he was way more intelligent than any of the other kids - as well as most of the bloody teachers. 

My brother said he'd never wanted a girlfriend, he'd never liked girls in 'that way'. He said he'd always known he was gay. 

Wait.

What?

Gay.

For real?

I was genuinely surprised. I'd always thought my brother was like Mr Spock or The Doctor - somebody who was too intelligent to be concerned with trivial things like romance or sex.

I also thought we'd both been put off relationships/marriage by watching our parents. Our Dad married three times - and had four kids who he didn't stick around for. Mam married twice - and her second marriage only seemed to endure because her husband was working abroad for eleven months of the year. 

We'd grown up hearing a lot of arguments. It made sense to me that my brother had never had a girlfriend - I just thought he was scared of ending up like our parents. I know I was.

But he was gay. He said I needed to know because his play was about a kid growing up and discovering his sexuality. I asked him if he was using his work to "come out" but he laughed and said everybody at the University already knew. His friends and lecturers had known for a couple of years. 

It suddenly made sense - at University he'd been able to live his life. I also realised he'd spent less and less time at home because he didn't think people would accept him or embrace him in the way his University friends had. 

I asked him when he was going to tell Mam and he became a bit evasive. He asked me not to say anything. He said he was waiting for the right moment but didn't want Mam to hear "the news" from anybody else*. He also said he didn't think he'd be "so close" to Mam if he wasn't gay. I wondered what he meant by that. Did being gay make him a better son? Did it mean that he had more in common with her? It was tough to hear him say that, especially when I knew how upset Mam always got when my brother didn't phone or visit.

I knew he'd be wary of speaking to anybody else in our family. When we were kids, one of our closest relatives used to say; "if you're ever in trouble with the Police, we'll stand by you. If you ever get a girl pregnant, we'll always stand by you. But don't ever come home and tell us you're a puff. I couldn't cope with that".

In our town - and particularly at our school - being gay was always seen as something dreadful. Kids - and staff - would use disparaging terms to describe boys who were seen as being a "bit soft". If you were crap at P.E. you were a "nancy boy" and if you were good at Home Economics you were a "woofter".

Even my brother made jokes about it. He'd found a book in the town library called 'In the Tent' and joked that it was about "a couple of benders on a camping holiday". 

When he was in a band he'd insisted they change the words of 'Live To Tell' so he wasn't singing "a man can tell a thousand lies" - because he didn't want people to think he was a "fairy". I guess he was trying to fit in. Or maybe, back then, he was still confused about things.

I tried to talk about it with some of my new University 'friends' and they thought it was hilarious. They couldn't believe I'd never twigged. I did feel very, very stupid. But I'd never met a 'gay person' before. How would I know what to look for? Most of the gay people on TV were cartoonish and comical. Homosexuality was usually played for cheap laughs. I didn't recognise 'the signs' because I didn't know what 'the signs' were.

 Things got a bit tricky with Mam. I went home for the holidays even if my brother didn't. She started asking loads of questions. "What sort of people" was my brother "hanging around with?" "Why won't he visit?" Did he have a girlfriend? Was Theatre Group "full of freaks?"  It was my turn to be evasive. 

I wondered if my brother expected me to tell Mam. Our family was good at gossiping so maybe he thought I'd tell her. But I did keep quiet. I didn't want to be responsible for causing a huge row and I honestly didn't know how Mam would react.

Now that he'd "outed" himself, my brother seemed to have a whole new personality. Maybe it had always been there and he'd hidden it away until he felt safe enough to express himself. I honestly didn't know. 

All he seemed to talk about was sex. He talked about men the same way all the lads at school had talked about girls. Maybe he was having the sex-mad adolescence he'd not had as a teenager. He was full of scandalous stories about students and lecturers. He'd gossip and giggle about the exploits of some of the married women in his Creative Writing group. So much for Mr Spock or The Doctor - my brother seemed determined to channel Joe Orton or Ziggy Stardust. 

I felt a bit lost, to be honest. I'd grown up not knowing my own brother. The person I'd always looked up to didn't really exist. I couldn't talk to anybody at home about it. Our family was good at gossiping and arguing but absolutely terrible at having open, honest conversations.

Years later I'd find out just how much my brother resented me. He wrote - and published - stories about a sensitive boy who had to deal with a clingy little brother who wet the bed and cried for attention. Did he hate me or the responsibility he'd had heaped upon him? 

He also wrote an autobiographical radio play for the BBC and made himself an only child (just as Mam said he'd always wanted). I guess he began re-writing and editing his life, giving himself the kind of childhood he'd always wanted. Maybe he'd only told me he was gay because he wanted me (and my friends) to pay to see his play.

I always knew my brother was different from all the other older brothers. Yes, he was smarter and yes, he was gay - but more than that, he really really hated being a big brother. 

Maybe I represented his childhood being cut short. 

Even before the divorce, my existence meant that he wasn't quite so special. He'd never have Mam's full attention ever again. Maybe that's why he didn't kick me or punch me like other big brothers. Maybe, if he did his best to ignore me, he thought I'd cease to exist.

I still feel as if I never really knew him. And I know he never wanted to know me.

*I don't know if my brother ever actually told our Mam. I do know she found out because he was still using our family's home address when sending his manuscripts to publishers and agents. It was a bit ironic - Mam saw more of his post than she did of him. At some point a publisher returned one of his manuscripts and Mam read it. She told me it was all about 'the gays' and full of 'sex scenes'. Amazingly, I still didn't say anything - I just told her she needed to speak to my brother.