The Stinging Fly https://stingingfly.org New Writers, New Writing Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:29:03 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://i0.wp.com/stingingfly.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/sf-logo-drawn.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 The Stinging Fly https://stingingfly.org 32 32 The Road (Not) Taken https://stingingfly.org/2024/03/13/the-road-not-taken/ Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:05:46 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=42590 Continue reading "The Road (Not) Taken"]]> There have been many surprises since I embarked on a career as a writer: the constant feelings of inadequacy, long bouts of creative constipation, the acute pleasure of getting pissed with other writers at literary launches, and the vast amount of time I spend planning and writing applications. If I could somehow conjure a world in which all these applications came to fruition – the residencies, collections, cross-disciplinary exhibitions, the visits to galleries and archives around the world – I would be significantly closer to a Nobel Prize than I am in my present form. However, according to the realities of failure, the majority of these hours of administrative work have resulted in something more aborted, the idea of a thing rather than the thing itself. 

Some recent failed applications have included a residency to a city in Galicia where I would have written poetry that reflected the links between Greek, Irish and local mythology through a tower named for Hercules; a stay in the Provence home of a dead artist I have been writing about for a number of years; and a multi-faceted collaborative project pairing contemporary writers with historical Irish women artists that would have culminated in either a touring exhibition, a podcast or a publication (depending on which version of the application you were reading). In my deepest hours of self-doubt, I have considered that perhaps these unsuccessful proposals are some of the best work I have ever made or will ever make. Acts of pure speculative imagination read only by a small panel of my peers and superiors. 

Before I became a writer, I had already failed quite a lot. I like to think it was good practice. For reasons now beyond my comprehension, I set out to become a dentist after school. As a committed horse girl, I had originally wanted to study veterinary medicine, but my uncle, a vet, advised that there would be a lot of early mornings during lambing season and dentistry would be a good alternative. I was doing a mix of sciences and English Literature at A level and was provided with a short list of ‘appropriate’ professions to go into. Those applying for medicine, law, dentistry or Oxbridge were given special careers classes, and I have always been motivated by feeling special.

After three years of studying in Glasgow, I was gently pushed out the door when I failed my anatomy exams. I had voiced my discomfort at cutting up cadavers in the wake of a number of family deaths and subsequently the lecturer told me “When I am uncomfortable I think of the things my grandfather saw in the Great War and I just carry on.” After that I just did what came naturally to me and took to my bed, attending classes infrequently until my passive protest made it clear to administrators that my commitment to dentistry was lacking. Before I could really protest, my career was over. 

I remember at the time this was seen as a great shame upon my family, and the inevitable end of my professional (financial) potential. This huge failure was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. In the same way as I feel strangely about people my age who have never experienced a major bereavement, I feel concerned for people who have never truly fucked up their lives. Imagine having that virgin experience hanging over you somewhere in the future. I learned quickly how to pick myself up and start again. In fact, I became so practiced in the art of recovery that I have managed to fuck and unfuck my life up many times since.

When I speak with writers who are just starting out, they often ask about how to manage the rejections. As far as I can tell you either get used to it, or you don’t – and it chews you up. I have learned to send out applications and then forget about them until the email arrives. Rejection becomes background noise. Of course, some knock-backs do sting, but only for a short time. I can see the benefit of building up enough notches on your failure belt that they no longer hurt, but as an editor I don’t subscribe to the one hundred rejections method of gaming the literary world. I don’t agree with sending work indiscriminately to unsuitable journals and magazines. Part of publishing is learning where your work fits and, beyond the first flurry of excitement when you discover the world of journals, this scattergun approach only serves to clog the channels from writing to publication. Of course, this is just my personal opinion, and I won’t begrudge anyone their vast and beautifully coloured submission chart. 

Amongst the ruins of my own failures are a selection of successful proposals. However, it is impossible to project a perfect presentation of what a piece of work will turn into through a series of bullet-points in an application. As an example, when I started writing essays I was fixated on the idea of solitude being imperative for creative work. I had just gone through a break-up that necessitated a complete rebuilding of my life and ego; a self-sculpting into a person who was not only happy alone but was at peak creative performance. I was convinced of the importance of my own independence, collecting artists to study who had led solitary lives and figuratively turning my nose up at all the settled and happy couples. I knew the secret to being an artist was complete isolation, and I wanted to write about it. I was only a few essays in before I met my boyfriend, who invited me to move in with him in Galway a matter of weeks later. 

It became painfully clear that my book on solitude was dead before it had even arrived. There he was every morning and evening, working at the kitchen table in front of me, beside me on the couch watching his silly little films, in bed reading his silly little books. How was I supposed to write the book on solitude that I had pitched to my agent, to potential PhD supervisors, to the Arts Council, when I was no longer living the life I was proposing to write about? I had no option but to adapt. 

This need to change as time goes by and as projects develop has become very important to me. There is of course a nobility in steady commitment to an idea or subject; some of the most interesting work has been made by writers and artists who have figured out their niche and stuck to it, but I think that kind of practice would bore me to tears. One of the benefits of living in a state that supports artists, rather than art as a product, is that I have been able to follow my nose down trails that I would otherwise have had to ignore. I can allow myself the kind of creative appetite that nibbles a little here and a little there: a bit of Surrealism perhaps, or some poetry, a collaboration with a musician, or a long talk with an artist who makes aerial maps of waterways. 

In the process of reassessing my would-be-solitude book, I have learned so many things that enrich and contradict the ideas I had started out with. A lot of the women artists I was interested in didn’t live solitary lives. Quite a lot of them turned out to be in queer relationships, or at least undefined partnerships. Luckily there were other people out there writing beautiful books on the subject: Amy Key’s book, Arrangements in Blue, is a tender look at solitude that captures so much of the exquisite pain of loneliness as well as a life lived with pure joy; A Life of One’s Own by Joanna Briggs details her twin griefs of bereavement and divorce through the lives of eight women writers. I’m grateful I got to read these books without the horrifying pressure of knowing I was trying to do something along the same lines. Perhaps it is possible for me to now imagine my own solitude book as a shadow to the one I am currently writing, or perhaps as a parallel track on which I never met my boyfriend and lived a wonderful life of creative independence with a perfectly tidy house and girl dinners every night. When I suggested this to him, he laughed and told me it wouldn’t last a week. 

We have recently moved house and it has allowed me the opportunity to appraise our life together and the way we have come to form a literary scene of two; reading and editing each other’s work as well as working on The Pig’s Back journal, which we edit together. (Technically he is the Managing Editor, but I try not to let that go to his head.) I have also formed close collaborative relationships with other writers; Jo Burns – another ex-dental student – and I have a joint book coming out soon with Doire Press, and I am constantly scheming with artists about strange cross-discipline work we could make together. I find it inconceivable now that I thought working alone could nourish me creatively.

Other projects have gone awry: collaborations that never really came together, writing that felt forced and intensely difficult to produce. But that is part of the process of making a body of work, it isn’t always going to go well. Ask any writer and they will tell you in great detail how absolutely awful it all is; whole evenings are spent discussing how terribly respective books are going, bad reviews, difficult publishers and agents, mind-fog that stops you from stringing together even the most basic sentence. 

It is gratifying to have these conversations, alighting upon a collective understanding of the difficulties in finding a way through. Knowing and working with other writers has been a comfort; companionship as each of us seek moments of clarity that feel few and far between. Even when things seem impossible and the labours insurmountable, here we are, still dreaming up proposals and ways to work together, leaking novels and poems and essays out into the world. 

This essay forms part of an ongoing series of reflections on the writing life edited by Olivia Fitzsimons.

Previously‘We can’t all be a fresh new voice in literature’ by Sheena Patel

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Settling Down https://stingingfly.org/2024/03/05/settling-down/ Tue, 05 Mar 2024 12:00:00 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=42233 Continue reading "Settling Down"]]> The man appeared huge in their apartment door, filling the entire frame of it. He had full, sallow cheeks and coarse black hair, the front of which fell across his forehead, curling and wet. His sturdiness made the furniture in Cliona and Ben’s apartment appear flimsy, the cheap paintings and vases a failed attempt to hide the shabbiness of the carpet and curtains, things they couldn’t really afford to replace.

He introduced himself as Leo, shaking their hands. He called Cliona ‘young lady’ and Ben ‘sir’. In neither case did it strike Cliona as patronising or deferential, and she wondered how he did that. His work trousers were wide and at the end of his legs were feet that were surprisingly small. It gave the impression of a stocky man sitting on an adolescent’s shoulders, poorly disguising the arrangement with a long coat.

Cliona guided him through to the bathroom, where she switched on a light to illuminate what looked like several cups of wet coffee grounds thrown against the walls. Leo gasped as he stepped around Ben and Cliona and into their dim and narrow bathroom. The mould was dense and textured in the corners of the ceiling. As it spread toward the shower and toilet, it grew expansive and speckled. The air was humid. It had rained constantly for two days, which had only made things worse. The walls in every room were wet to touch and the paint had started to swell and blister.

Leo rubbed a hand across his stubble. ‘I’ve been doing this for decades, but I think this could be the worst I’ve ever seen.’ Only then did Cliona detect a slight South African accent.

Leo turned around, and as he looked into the kitchen, his face grew almost sorrowful to see the mould had spread there too. ‘Oh, would you look at the state of that. It’s like a Victorian hospital,’ he tutted, stretching his hand towards it.

‘The landlord said it’s because we spend too much time at home,’ Cliona ventured.

Ben chimed in then, apparently encouraged by her lead. ‘Yeah, he said that our breath causes too much condensation and the ventilation system can’t handle it.’

‘Oh, how inconsiderate of you,’ Leo said dryly. He stepped across the hall into the kitchen. ‘Breathing in your own home.’ He reached up to pull away the slotted cover of what appeared to be an air extractor. Behind it was nothing but a narrow hole. ‘I suppose you cook here too. In the place you pay rent to live? The nerve.’ He chuckled, crossing his eyes, severely, as if dumbfounded by the idea.

Ben laughed, slowly. He liked expressive people, especially when it came as a surprise.

This was the second damp expert the landlord had sent out. The first man had obviously been instructed by him to insist it wasn’t all that unusual to find mould growing on your clothes or shoes. It was an old building, what did they expect? Cliona had been defeated and wanted to let it go, but after several chest and ear infections, the landlord eventually agreed to send a second expert to them.

On the phone, Cliona had heard Ben say, ‘A real one this time, not one of your friends you’re paying to fob us off.’ She had been washing up after dinner in the kitchen and the remark made her press a soapy hand to her mouth.

Ben wore his sleek, brown hair in a ponytail and had long lashes and dark, watery eyes. This belied a temerity that made Cliona both nervous and proud. She worried that he would be too strident in his complaints, that they might be evicted. This apartment was good value, with a large bedroom and a separate kitchen and sitting room. They could hardly afford a studio elsewhere for the same rent. When she voiced this fear, Ben criticised her weakness. They’d be alright, he insisted. How though? She pressed. They had already been looking elsewhere and they couldn’t even get a viewing. She knew he didn’t have a plan, just the assurance that he could go back to his parents. Meanwhile, her brother, his girlfriend and their daughter took over her parents’ place. It hurt that he didn’t seem to consider this.

‘I understand that you are planning to pay half the cost while the landlord will pay the rest, yes?’ Leo asked, then. Ben rolled his eyes, reluctantly agreed. This of course had been another point of contention, something Ben was bitter about capitulating to.

‘I’ll get a quote across to you this afternoon,’ said Leo. ‘I imagine it should come in around twelve hundred,’ he said tentatively.

‘So, we’d pay six hundred, then,’ Ben said.

Although he appeared causal, she knew Ben was relieved. Between them they could afford no more than eight hundred. Even then, this expense would use up nearly all of her rainy-day fund. He was a German teacher who also taught classical guitar at the weekend. She had worked briefly in an advertising agency, an enervating yet hectic role she’d hated. In confusion and desperation, Cliona had believed she might be too creative for the job. Not once did it occur to her that she might be too stupid. Now she worked in customer service for a medical supply company and loved it. But their combined salary didn’t amount to much. They split everything as evenly as possible and whatever disposable income left was spent with guilt and care.

Although it appeared that Leo’s survey of the apartment was complete, he lingered for another fifteen minutes, listening to their complaints of how the mould had affected their life and belongings. It was hard to know when they ought to hold back, whether they might appear ungrateful, if Leo might privately consider them precious. But his shock at their problem was too gratifying to leave alone. They showed him the green and furry mould that had taken hold of their photo frames, the damp that had weakened their mahogany desk and the puddles of water pooling around the window frames. Just wait, they said, see for yourself. If you just follow us through here, it gets so much worse.

After he left, both Cliona and Ben were reinvigorated. There was housework to be done, but theirs was the pent up, unfocused sort of energy that comes with feeling vindicated, so they decided to take a walk instead. It was a wet evening but mild and still bright. In the park near their apartment, the trees were silvery and moist, the branches stark but heavy with nascent unfurling leaves. They both tried not to talk about the mould; it was too dreary to obsess over. But invariably they found the conversation looping back around to Leo. When they ran out of things to say, one would turn to the other and cross their eyes in imitation of Leo in the kitchen.Wasn’t he a decent sort of person, Ben insisted. A decent country sort of person, Cliona, who had grown up in West Clare, added. Yes, they agreed. It was hard to come by, sometimes. It was nice, for a change.

*

Cliona was forced to take the morning off work for Leo’s next visit. Ben would be in school, teaching until half three. The idea of being alone with Leo made her nervous, not because she felt threatened but because she feared Ben’s absence would make her less inhibited. She worried she might ramble inanely, a nervous habit Ben had identified five years earlier when they first got together. It was then a relief that Leo arrived with two other men, a broad-shouldered young man and an older, soft-spoken man who immediately asked to use the bathroom, the request urgent and anxious. He had small eyes with large, dark irises. He also addressed Cliona as ‘ma’am’. Her amusement at this seemed to perplex him, which she felt bad about.

At first, Leo delayed telling her what they were about to do, asking if she ought to take notes to relay to Ben, later on. He then seemed impressed by her insistence that this was unnecessary, she would understand. Even in the moment, the triumph of winning his approval was a little unpleasant. It was like this sometimes, with men. She had the feeling of being a scurrying rodent, vying for the little piece of cheese or bread from the man’s hand. Yes, you’re happy to be fed but you’re still just a mouse.

First, they would install an extractor fan in the bathroom. Cliona lingered, unsure whether she would need to be consulted. It quickly became clear that the younger man was aggrieved to be taking orders from Leo. He interrupted him several times, contradicting his instructions, suggesting they use a different method to the one Leo had decided. At first, Leo was patient, allowing that, yes, in theory that method was perfectly suitable, but that in his experience, his considerable experience, it just wasn’t quite as effective as his own.

Only when the younger man grew openly frustrated did Leo employ a sharper tone. He instructed the younger man to retrieve a tool, but he could not find it. He had emptied the boxes of equipment and was certain it wasn’t there. He swivelled around, gesturing to the floor, insistent that Leo had forgotten it. There were several tools and pieces of equipment that Cliona could not identify on the carpet, as well as lengths of white plastic tubing. The younger man’s voice grew slightly irate. There wouldn’t be time to drive back to get it—they had another job at two o’clock. What were they supposed to do?

Leo surveyed the equipment slowly, before pointing to the man’s left foot, at something that looked to Cliona like a large, rusted eyelash curler.

‘Well, what’s that, at your feet then, ah?’ he asked. ‘What would you call that? A cream bun?’ He looked at the older man then, who chuckled obediently.

‘Yeah,’ the older man added quietly, knowing whom to align himself with, ‘it’s his lunch, I’d say.’

The younger man bent to pick up the item in question, his face red. It appeared he had taken it from the box, hadn’t recognised it for what it was and discarded it. Cliona pitied him for trying so hard only to come up a fool in the end.

The men worked solidly and noisily for two and a half hours. Cliona offered them tea or coffee, but Leo refused, frowning as if a hot drink would be premature and uncouth. They had managed to install extractor fans in the bathroom and kitchen but would need to schedule another visit to install a ventilation unit in the bedroom. Leo invited Cliona to the bathroom, to see how the fan worked. She hovered at the threshold while he stood by the sink. The bathroom was narrow and cramped. To fit two people in there you would need to close the door.

‘Come on in now, young lady,’ he said. ‘You can close that door. I’m not going to bite.’

Cliona sidled around the door and pushed it shut. The air was close and warm.

‘Now, I’m going to ask you to turn on your shower for me there,’ he told her.

She followed his instruction and soon steam had risen from the shower. The fan began whirring, rhythmically.

He clapped his hands together. ‘Excellent, that’s working away for you now, my girl.’

His expression grew mischievous. He pointed an index finger upwards. ‘You know, I often say it, I have plenty of women, my clients, who claim that when they’re in the shower and they hear that fan get going, the first thing they think of is me.’

Cliona couldn’t help but laugh too, his was infectious. She’d been subjected to this kind of thing before, being cornered by a man, at a party or in the office, only for him to say something strange to elicit a reaction, fear or disgust. She felt neither. She didn’t feel tricked or threatened. It was difficult to fathom, because she wasn’t the kind of person to tolerate any innuendo, even if it appeared harmless. Usually, she considered comments adjacent to Leo’s as belonging to the broad base of the pyramid of misogyny, behaviour to be stamped out immediately. For the first time, she could empathise with those women who found themselves taken in by a charismatic cult leader.

Leo suddenly appeared thoughtful. ‘But Jesus, I mean no offence.You know, I have grandchildren now, I’m too old for that kind of thing.’ He lifted his hands, which tremored slightly, as if to dispel the idea. He took his phone from his pocket and flashed a screensaver photo of two toddlers crouched near a murky pond. Cliona smiled to reassure him, but didn’t add to the joke, for fear she might appear coarse and incapable of pulling it off the way he did.

*

That Friday, they met Ben’s friend Chris and his new girlfriend Lauren at a rundown but trendy Mexican place on the outskirts of town. The tables were lined with benches and the two couples sat across from each other, squeezed between two other parties, bumping shoulders and elbows. This was how it was: Chris had plenty of money, but he liked these cheap, authentic places and knew an unnatural amount about the owners and their staff, which was sometimes welcome but mostly not.

When Cliona and Ben first met Lauren, she told them she met Chris in a bookshop, could they believe that? They raised their eyebrows and drew back their shoulders, subtle gestures that allowed them to have their own wordless conversation, one they would have verbally once they were alone. They would know exactly what the other was thinking in that moment.What Lauren didn’t know is that Chris had first seen her in a café and then followed her to the bookshop, contriving an opportunity to introduce himself.

‘How’s the black mould situation going?’ Chris waggled his eyebrows, looking between Ben and Cliona.

Cliona turned to Lauren.‘We have a bit of a damp issue in our apartment. There’s a lot of black mould sprouting up.’

She returned a half-eaten mushroom taco to her plate. ‘Ew,’ she said softly.

‘Yes. It’s disgusting,’ Cliona said before turning to Chris. ‘But we have made progress. The landlord finally sent somebody decent and it looks like we can get it sorted out now.’ When Cliona described Leo’s charisma and energy, Ben appeared almost as invested in the story at first. Only when she started to describe his diplomatic approach to dealing with his jealous young employee could she sense him disengage.

‘It was nothing to do with ego, you know? He had to put him in his place, but it was for the greater good, so that they could all work together peacefully and with an understanding of the hierarchy.’ Even then, she could see Chris and Lauren were bored but she couldn’t help herself, she couldn’t stop talking about it.

‘Tell them what he said to you in the bathroom,’ Ben suggested, identifying a more interesting thread of the story.

‘Oh yes!’ She was happy to describe the interaction. In doing so, she was careful not to exaggerate anything.

‘How was it that he could do that without making me feel uncomfortable?’ she wondered.‘How did he pull that off?’

‘You’re one of his clients, now,’ was all Chris said. ‘Wait, who’s this again?’ Lauren piped up. Cliona had the impression that Lauren really listened only when Chris was speaking. She didn’t dislike her for this—she thought it wise. Lauren would need to conserve most of her energy for him if she wanted it to work out.

‘Cliona’s falling in love with a plumber,’ Chris told her.

At heart, he was a real snob.

‘He’s not a plumber, he’s a damp expert,’ Cliona said.

‘But she is falling for him,’ Ben added dryly. ‘We’re considering an open relationship.’ He leaned on his elbows and fixed his eyes on Lauren, waiting for her reaction. Cliona had forgotten how much he enjoyed flirting with new women.

‘But seriously,’ Cliona went on, placing a hand on Ben’s wrist to silence him,‘I just think it’s interesting, the difference that body language and implied intent make in these situations, don’t you?’

She looked at all three of them, noting their clear lack of interest. Even Lauren gave nothing more than a polite nod. Cliona felt like she was talking about a long-running but failing research project, a specialised interest no one else cared about.

She also knew she was veering close to Ben’s least favourite topic: the silent conversation between men and women, the daily subtle but pervasive line of communication that varied from lustful to patronising, from insistent to violent. She experienced this almost only with straight men, largely because there was no apparent need for any subterranean conversation with other people. It was fleeting and impossible to prove, yet she allowed it to inform and define the entire interaction. This silent conversation could even be quite intimate, and, depending on its extent, this intimacy could create greater distance between her and the man on the surface, as though they were both ashamed. Sometimes, she perceived impatience and resentment and sometimes she sensed tenderness, affection even. It was the tenderness that confused her and got her into trouble. It led her to obsess over the man and create expansive and improbable stories about him in her head. This was the thing that Ben disliked. Ben didn’t daydream. He took everything at face value. He never let his instinct overcome the bare facts of the situation.

The more Cliona drank, the harder she found it to stop talking about Leo. Even as they ate their ice cream, she found herself prompting Ben, saying things like,‘But isn’t he wasted in his day job? Shouldn’t he be on stage or television?’

‘Doing what?’ he asked, no longer willing to be complicit.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He could negotiate hostage situations. Or host one of those shows where he communicates with the audience’s dead relatives.’

At this, Chris snorted:‘Oh, they’re all full of shit.’

She shook her head, but knew not to say anything else, at last. Sometimes it was like this: she failed to explain her thoughts properly.

*

It was surreal for her to learn, soon after, that of course Leo wasn’t wasted in his day job, that he had a full life besides that. Cliona discovered through googling his name, while drunk after the dinner with Chris and Lauren, that he also ran a charity, a stream of counselling services that ranged from addiction support groups to marriage mediation. The website included a biography that was lengthy and personal. His daughter’s life had been ravaged by addiction and mental illness. She eventually recovered as an adult, but as Leo noted, there were few supports for her, or their family, something that he believed hindered the healing process. He’d found help from community groups, resources he felt were underfunded. In his early fifties, he retrained as a counsellor (it tugged at Cliona’s heart to imagine him as a mature student, earnest and nervous). Alongside two other therapists, one who specialised in bereaved adolescents and another in trauma and crisis management, he ran his services out of a renovated parish hall. Why hadn’t she thought of looking him up earlier? Possibly because she felt embarrassed by the extent of her fascination with him while sober.

*

It was the following Saturday before Leo returned, this time alone, to install the final ventilation unit in their bedroom. Because Cliona was now slightly more familiar with him than Ben was, she could feel the plane of their dynamic tilting, so that much of the conversation darted back and forth between her and Leo. Leo tried to include Ben, by praising his perseverance with the landlord, saying that a man like that just wants to make as much money as possible, that’s all he cares about. Ben only shrugged, his dark eyes indifferent and remote.

Leo began heaving the unit through the sitting room and into their bedroom, one leg dragging slightly behind the other, leaving muddy smears on their linoleum. Cliona mouthed to Ben:‘Help. Him.’

‘Do you need a hand with anything, Leo?’ Ben called into the bedroom.

‘No, no, I have everything here now,’ he replied, breathless.

Ben turned around and angled his face to Cliona, as if to say, Happy now?

It took Leo less than forty-five minutes to finish the job. The bedroom carpet was coated in flakes of paint and chips of wood. He told them that once they painted over the mould, it shouldn’t return. This time, when Cliona offered him a cup of tea, he accepted it. In the kitchen, Leo pulled out a chair from under the table and sat down. Cliona leaned against counter while Ben hovered near the door frame.

After an extended silence, Leo cleared his throat.‘If you don’t mind, I’m about to pay you both a compliment,’ he began carefully. ‘I can tell, from the limited time I’ve had with you both in the last couple of weeks, that the communication between you is strong.’ He made a fist with his free hand.

He looked towards the fogged-up window. ‘I’m killed telling people this, really, but the line of communication between a couple is the backbone of a relationship. It has to be clear, and it has to be mutual.’ He took a loud gulp from his cup and turned back towards them, shrugging modestly. ‘I moonlight as a counsellor. I only do it part-time, but I do have some idea what I’m talking about.’

Ben’s laughter was abrupt and incredulous.

‘I know,’ Leo said, calmly. ‘You wouldn’t think it, looking at me.’ He gestured to his frayed work trousers and scuffed boots. Leo sat back and squinted. ‘I mean, I work with couples—mediation, reconciliation—and the people I help, it’s really only a 50 per cent success rate. It all depends on what they want to do, obviously.

‘But I have a good feeling about you two,’ he went on. ‘There’s just something about the way you are together. It’s a quiet sort of thing, but I’d say it works, doesn’t it?’

He looked at them expectantly and waited for their confirmation. It came slow and shy. They’d never talked about the quality of their relationship before, only that of those they came in contact with.

‘Look,’ Leo said blithely, placing the empty cup on the kitchen table.‘ You might not think it now, but you’ll probably get married and have kids, at some point.’

Noticing Ben’s expression changing, Leo regarded him gravely and carried on. ‘Believe me, you think it won’t happen.’ He paused and stood up. ‘But it does. And when it does, you’ll need each other. You’ll need to keep the line of communication open. Remember that—keep it strong and clear.’

He moved to gather the tools he’d brought with him. Both Ben and Cliona walked with him to the elevator, carrying the few things he couldn’t manage. Once the chrome doors slid open, he held a boot against it, preventing it from closing prematurely. He looked around a final time at the balding carpet and dented concrete walls. When he spoke, he looked directly at Ben.

‘And the next time you move, find her somewhere nicer than this, would you?’ He grinned then conspiratorially at Cliona. ‘You’re not students anymore. If comfort doesn’t matter to you now, it will soon.’

They walked silently back to their apartment. Cliona was afraid to say anything in case Leo heard her through the thin walls. Once the lock was turned in the door, Ben pressed one eye to the peephole, to make sure he hadn’t come back, having forgotten something.

‘What a load of shite,’ he hissed. ‘My head is wrecked listening to him. Imagine going to him for counselling. A 50 per cent success rate? What good is that?’

It wasn’t necessary for Cliona to respond. He was aggravated, off on a tangent, and didn’t require any reinforcement in order to continue.

‘Also, anyone could tell you that communication is important. Easily the most clichéd advice I’ve ever heard about relationships.’

Meanwhile, Cliona wondered why Leo assumed they’d get married and have children. Ben seized up with displeasure whenever she told him about a friend getting pregnant.‘That’s their life over’ was all he’d say, as though they had received a terminal diagnosis that he’d been lucky enough to avoid. This had seemed like something that might eventually change as they got older. Now, she felt stupid for her earlier hopefulness. Why would he ever change? And they were both thirty-two, almost thirty-three. What was going to happen, exactly? She’d been too afraid to ask, in case she was told that this was the most he was willing to offer. Would they just tumble along, as they had for the last few years, until one of them decided they had enough? She thought about some of her friends with children, whom she had previously believed she pitied. They couldn’t up and leave and start a new life at the drop of a hat. But when would she do that either? She didn’t even want a new life.

In the hours after Leo left, she began to understand more thoroughly why it was that his assessment had bothered her: he’d been wrong about them as a couple. He’d assumed that they were compatible and equally invested in a shared future, which wasn’t true. There was an imbalance that left her with less power. It was disappointing, not simply because it forced her to acknowledge an unhappy truth about her relationship, but also because it made her lose faith in Leo’s wisdom.

Surely they would have to talk about this. Ben would start to think about it too when he calmed down, he’d have to. The implications of Leo’s advice would start to dawn on him. They couldn’t just ignore it and carry on as they had before, wandering aimlessly through life together, only tenuously attached. She took a shower and washed her hair, an activity that helped her in overwhelming moments. The fan began to whir and, yes, she thought of Leo, but it was he who planted the idea in her head. Probably he’d made it up and the only reason he came to anyone’s mind in the shower was because he’d already created an earlier association. It was a psychological trick, something difficult to prove either way.

Even after they painted over the mould, it would return. They learned too late that it had nothing to do with the circulation of clean, dry air. The extractor fans and ventilation unit whirred uselessly, driving their electricity bills up but doing nothing to improve the damp conditions. It was the insulation, the single-paned windows, the poor infrastructure. The whole building was riddled with damp, and the only way to fix it would be to tear through the rotted walls and start all over again. They could either learn to live with it or leave. The landlord would find other tenants, poorer than Ben and Cliona, who would be satisfied with a roof over their heads.

Rebecca Ivory

Rebecca Ivory was born in 1993 and is a writer based in Dublin. Her short fiction has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Tangerine and Fallow Media. In 2020, she was awarded a Literature Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. ‘Settling Down’ appears in her debut story collection, Free Therapy, published by Jonathan Cape on 14 March 2024. Copyright © Rebecca Ivory 2024.

About Settling Down: Almost every house or apartment I’ve lived in in Ireland has been plagued by mould or damp. I don’t know if that’s because of the general building standards in our country, or if my particular presence is more prone to drawing out moisture from within the walls and window frames. When I wrote this story, I was a little bit obsessed with mould, in the same way that Cliona finds herself intrigued by Leo. I think she likes that he is practical and kind, and that he seems to present a straight-forward solution to her problems, which go beyond the damp-riddled walls of her apartment. What she fails to consider is that her problems are caused by larger issues and a personal and financial insecurity I feel she avoids facing. Eventually, she sees that much like the damp and mould in her apartment, the problems run deeper within the infrastructure of her home and life. Ultimately, there is no straight-forward fix, and these are problems that she will just have to learn to live with.

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Burn Heart https://stingingfly.org/2024/02/07/burn-heart/ Wed, 07 Feb 2024 12:47:51 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=42523 Continue reading "Burn Heart"]]> Bernard Travers was not what Greta Diehl was expecting. Not surprising. Even though they’d been pen pals for three years, he’d been careful to send Greta only one photo, and that was of his older brother, Gerard. Gerard was the good-looking one; wasted on the seminary his mother said. Greta had sent several pictures of herself so he knew who he was looking for as he stood with stinging palms on the platform at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof with the wretched case splayed by his side.  

He’d grown to hate that case. There had been three changes of trains on the journey from Ostend and the case thwarted him at every transfer. On the last leg, he’d struck up a conversation with a young Englishman called Philip who’d pointed to his own luggage in the rack overhead, a small attaché case, in tanned leather, polished with venom, with capped corners and thick ornate stitching.  

“If it doesn’t fit in there, it doesn’t come,” he said. “That’s the whole point of travel, don’t you think?”

Bernard didn’t know what the point of travel was. He was 17 and this was his first trip to the Continent. He had just finished secondary school and would shortly start a clerking job in the county council. The trip to see Greta would form the interlude between these two stages in his life.   

“You get to shed your possessions,” Philip said when Bernard failed to respond. “That’s the point: you become your most essential self.”

Bernard’s case, crammed with clothes for every season and too cumbersome to be lifted onto the rack, colonised the aisle of the carriage and was in everybody’s way. 

The air in the station was gritty. Destinations were called on the booming public address system and trains huffed and puffed importantly, seemingly impatient with loiterers like him. He wondered if he should have worn a large card strung around his neck with his name on it like a war orphan when he felt his sleeve being tugged. He turned and there was Greta and her dismay.

“Really?” she asked, “it is you?”

He recognised her dark bouncy hair, but she had different glasses which made her look much more secretarial than the school shots she’d sent him.  Or was it the clothes? In the photos she was wearing a uniform of some sort, but now she had a flouncy kind of dress with flowers all over it and a black jacket. And she was tall. Way taller than him.

He stuck out his hand and she shook it manfully.

“You are more fat,” she said.  

Charitably, Bernard put this down to her English, though he knew that being fat seemed to license other people to be very pass-remarkable, as his mother would put it. Greta’s mother came up beside them, small, sad-eyed, her high-built blonde hair shrouded in a gauzy scarf.  

“This,” Greta said, “is Mutti.

Mutti said something very fast in German that sounded like a question and ended with his name. 

Burn heart. 

For the first weekend, Greta marched him into the centre of town, took him to the small museum full of altarpieces, religious statues, and a small room devoted to torture. There was a tram ride to a large park with a lake but when they got there, there wasn’t much to do. Bernard had surreptitiously brought his togs with him but once he saw the murky waters of the lake he kept quiet about them. He wasn’t prepared to disrobe in front of Greta and she clearly didn’t think that the lake was for swimming in. Instead they watched a group of muscly young men dive from a little jetty and cavort athletically in the water. Then they got back on the tram and went directly home. The perfunctory aimlessness of this trip filled Bernard with dread about what other activities Greta had lined up. But come Monday, she resumed what he presumed was her normal life, which didn’t include him. She had a complicated schedule of choir practice, tennis matches and study groups (she was a year younger than Bernard and still at high school) to which Bernard was pointedly not invited. She disappeared early in the morning and was gone for the day leaving him alone with her mother.  

He tooled around the apartment with its stained floors and heavy dark furniture feeling like a trespasser. His room was bare, a single bed and a hospital-style locker, more of the stained floorboards and a full wall of wardrobe with sliding doors which when he opened it was as gloomy as a vault. It was packed full of tweedy clothes he was convinced belonged to the dead. That’s what they smelled of, this slack-shouldered army. He slid the door closed. He felt it wrong to put his own clothes in there.  He could hear his mother’s voice warning him to unpack his good shirt immediately to shake out the creases. She had visions of him going to concert halls because she believed all Germans were interested in classical music and didn’t Greta tell him she was in a choir? Well, Mam, he thought, I won’t  be needing my good shirt.  So he kept his clothes intact in the big suitcase – that way he wouldn’t have to struggle to get the lid closed as he had when leaving home. In truth he wanted to pack himself away out of this unhappy household.  

The kitchen with its bright white cabinets was the only non-brown room and here Mutti held possession though Bernard wasn’t sure if she was very busy.  Any time he came into the room she was sitting at the red Formica table, smoking languidly, though she cooked three full meals a day and the house looked clean as far as Bernard could judge. The days were interminable. He’d brought one book to read – Nevil Shute’s On the Beach – and he’d finished it by Tuesday morning. The only relief from the tedium was the food, which was meaty. There were stews and breaded chops, pies and sausage. He liked the sausage, in particular, which came in several guises, but he ate everything and Mutti seemed to enjoy feeding him. He said “sehr gut” after everything and she was always pleased to see his polished plate. 

On Wednesday afternoon, he couldn’t stick the brown flat any longer and determined to go out. He didn’t know if he should ask permission. At home he and Gerard would have to account for their movements, before and after. He knocked at the kitchen door and said in English, “Frau Diehl, I’m going out now,” and pointed to the front door. Mutti had no English so she just nodded. She pointed to her tiny wristwatch and he raised six fingers.  

The Diehls lived in an apartment block on an austere, respectable street with grassy patches out front and leafy trees, but when he started walking towards where he thought the centre was, it led into docklands with enormous monolithic factories and grim sidings where trains seemed to have been shunted and left to die. Greta’s father worked in the docks as a nightwatchman, if Bernard understood correctly. He was a ghostly presence in the flat. Seen at the breakfast table in blue overalls, bleary-eyed, with his hangdog face and bulbous eyes, he wolfed his food and eyed Bernard incuriously. Then he would shuffle off to bed and that was the last Bernard saw of him until the next morning. Frau Diehl serviced him like a sullen waitress, planting the heaped plate down in front of him without a word. 

It was inevitable, Olivia said to him years later. Olivia was the only person he’d ever told.  But Bernard had seen nothing inevitable about it.

The town centre proved elusive so he found a pub, Der Insel Teufel. Devil’s Island, Bernard thought, just perfect. It was in a red-bricked, flat-iron type building jutting like a prow on to a street, one side of which was a quay, with tracks scored into the cobbles. It looked over a basin of water to another quay, where a number of ships were docked. Behind them were rows of brick warehouses, and behind them a row of  cranes, their muscled necks frozen and their idle hooks like inverted question marks. The place seemed deserted. Was Wednesday half-day at the docks, he wondered.

It was equally quiet inside the pub. A couple of old men played dominoes noisily at the tables but Bernard sat at the bar and ordered a beer. He was expecting to be challenged but wasn’t. The barman, with a dead cigarette between his lips, produced a big blonde beer in a large tankard with a handle and smiled  at him as he set it down. Then he slapped his towel over his shoulder and went somewhere out the back – to restart his cigarette, Bernard supposed.  He was grateful for the lack of curiosity. His German wasn’t up to conversation. Here he felt blessedly ignored, and let’s face it, manly. 

He’d spent very little money since he arrived so he ordered two more tankards of beer. Live dangerously, he told himself. He knew he would have to fabricate a version of this trip for his mother who had helped him with the ferry fare.  He couldn’t disappoint her by saying that the highlight of his week away was getting drunk in a pub on his own.

Night was falling as he stepped outside. It was a fresh evening and he was glad of the wind as he walked home.  It would sober him up. He’d missed dinner at the Diehls and he worried  how he was going to explain that. He hadn’t been given a key to the apartment – in that it was just like home – so he had to ring the bell when he got back. Mutti opened the door. She looked different.  First of all she had shed her apron and was wearing a  blouse in a peachy colour with a ruffled neck and a porridge-coloured skirt that was just above her knee. And instead of her usual house slippers she had a pair of patent sling-backs. In her hand she held a thimble glass which she sipped from as she greeted him with a wide smile. There was no remonstration about dinner. He followed her into the dark sitting room where the television housed in a mahogany cabinet with doors was on at murmuring level.

She offered him a glass of what she was drinking – it was honey-coloured and awfully sweet. He drank slowly, relieved that it wasn’t another beer. He didn’t feel manly now; he felt bloated and sluggish. There was news first, followed by some kind of documentary about the Nazis. Mutti said nothing but seemed to be watching intently as the screen illuminated the dark room with vivid explosions. 

“Krieg,” she said, looking at him directly for the first time. She made it sound like a lament.

“Ja,” he said and nodded his head assertively.

More Krieg followed – marching columns of hard-hatted troops, aerial shots of the Nuremberg rallies, Deutschland Über Alles, and raised salutes.  He stole a sidelong glance at her.  

“Hitler,” she said and shook her head sorrowfully.

He wondered if she was expecting a guest, was that the reason she was all dolled up. In his state, he wouldn’t be able to handle two monosyllabic conversations at once, so he tossed back the stuff in the glass – it tasted sticky like glue – and extravagantly made to rise. In response, she stretched out her hand and covered his on the shiny brown leatherette of the sofa. She shook her head and pursed her lips and kept her hand on his quite firmly. They sat like that for several minutes. He felt his hand blushing in her tender prison. Then with great resolve, she stood up, and going over to the TV she switched it off. Damn, he thought, whatever chance he had with the TV between them as a source of conversation he was bunched now. She went to another cabinet in the room which opened on top and hid a record player. Why did the Germans coffin everything like this? She lifted out an LP and slid the record out placing it on the turntable. Then she lifted the needle very carefully – was she drunk, Bernard wondered, then chastised himself; who was he to point the finger – and set it down on the vinyl. She brought the cover over for his inspection. James Last, Games that Lovers Play. She beamed at him as a bombastic brass section declared its intentions. He recognised the title track immediately. He smiled at her accommodatingly.

“Möchten Sie tanzen?” she queried and for a minute Bernard got a glimpse of what she might have been like twenty years ago. Winsome, fey, appealing. For the first time in this house he felt emboldened. There was a lot of stuff he was crap at, but he was able to dance. 

“Nothing happened,” he told Olivia, when she winkled the story out of him thirty years later.  She was inordinately pleased to discover what she called a Mrs Robinson episode in his past. Olivia was always convinced he was withholding on her. He’d never gone as far as telling her he was a virgin. He wasn’t sure she would believe him. It wasn’t a credible thing to be in this day and age. He was already a fat, middle-aged man living with his brother – a defrocked priest, although Gerard insisted he’d left the priesthood of his own volition – in the house they’d grown up in. That was enough of a social handicap to bear; it told most people all they wanted to know. Declaring the extent of his sexual innocence would have been a burden. For Olivia, that is. 

“Nothing happened,” he repeated as Olivia wiggled her eyebrows at him like a smutty comedian. 

He didn’t describe the nesting sensation of Mutti in his arms, the animal closeness of another body, the trustingness of her. Not a bit like Auntie Min who’d taught him, who was vibrant and lip-sticked and smoked a cigarette as she swung around the sitting room in green silk, while imperiously pushing and pulling him about the place, like some jousting bully. There was initially some awkwardness with Mutti, which hand went where etc. Because of his age, she expected him only capable of that modern shuffle business, arms at waist level, gripping your partner’s love handles. But he didn’t want that because he was afraid of how his own body might react to such frictive proximity. So he placed a hand firmly in the small of her back and took the lead. 

Mutti was quite solid in his arms; he discovered comforting little rolls of flesh under her armpits that felt like baby fat and when he looked down – he was a good foot taller than her – he could see fair down on her cheeks. Mutti (even in his head, he couldn’t keep calling her Frau Diehl) complied, surrendered. She knew most of the steps too although he could tell it was a while since she’d danced. When she’d forget or stumble she’d look up and smile but otherwise their bodies did the talking. Even as Bernard shimmied and jived with Mutti, he knew her loneliness was more intense than his, but it chimed with what he felt was his deep unloveability. After a while he forgot he was dancing with his pen pal’s mother and he believed she forgot that he was the soft pouchy boy her daughter had brought home. That was the joy of it. They forgot themselves.  

He recognised several other tracks – ‘A Man and A Woman’, ‘Fly me to the Moon’, ‘What Now My Love’ – from Hospital Requests, which his mother liked to listen to, though she didn’t care much for James Last. James Blast, more like, she said. Bernard’s own taste ran more to Elton John and ELO.

Luckily Mutti was turning the record for a second time when they heard Greta’s key in the door. She dropped the needle noisily on the vinyl and tamped down her hair, then wordlessly she went to her end of the sofa, he to his. She patted her cheeks with her palms while he tried to regulate his breathing.  When Greta peered around the door, they were sitting as stiffly together as when they’d started, while the lush strings of ‘Lara’s Theme’ filled the room. 

“Oh Mutti,” Greta said in English for his benefit, “Bernard is not liking this altmodisch music.”

Bernard found himself bristling; what did Greta know about him?  Nothing… His letters to her in his stilted German allowed only the tedious cataloguing of activities – much of them invented – and he found himself tongue-tied in her presence, all his paltry German deserting him. She crossed the room and pulled the needle roughly off the record. Behind her back, Mutti looked at him, shrugged ruefully and smiled.

Greta turned the TV back on.

“Ein Platz an der Sonne,”  a hectic TV voice declared with matching words on screen. A flashing starburst showed a large sum in Deutschmarks.

“This,” Greta explained patiently, “is our game of chance.”

A lottery, Bernard had already guessed.

    

Unsurprisingly, Greta never made the planned return visit to Ireland. 

“It’s a wonder Mutti didn’t show up on your doorstep instead,” Olivia said. It was one of the few times Bernard was disappointed in her. Intimacy was always a joking matter with her, something to be belittled, perhaps because she’d never really mastered it. For her, nothing short of full-scale penetration would have counted as something happening, whereas this experience belonged to the realm of the unrequited. You can love someone warts and all, he longed to say, without ever having sex with them. From what he could gather, most people used sex to work off hostile energy. But he didn’t say any of that because he knew how threatened Olivia was by unspoken longing. His, in particular. 

Bernard’s underground feeling for Olivia had long been the sandpapery grit in their friendship. Olivia recognised it, he knew, and feared the power of its pathos.

“Didn’t Greta notice anything?” Olivia asked.

“No, she was too wrapped up in herself. ”

“And wasn’t it awkward afterwards?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “it wasn’t.  We just went back to being who we had been.” 

But Olivia didn’t believe him.

“Are you sure she didn’t tiptoe into your monkish room in a pink negligee and have her evil way with you? Go on, you can tell me.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to lie, to satisfy Olivia’s appetite for what she called the dirt.  But he demurred, faithful to the memory of Mutti, even though she  must be long dead now. 

“She gave me a packed lunch for the return journey.”

“Aw,” Olivia said but it was sardonic.

He couldn’t tell Olivia that for decades he had drawn amorous solace remembering the half hour that he danced with Mutti. That it sustained him when nothing like it was on offer to him; no one would ever declare love, full-blown, unconditional, lustful love for him. Neither did he tell her that he still had the note. The paper was fragile now after so many years of folding and unfolding but still bore the fat, greasy watermark of what had been mustard smeared on the sausage sandwiches. He would read its message which, at this remove, seemed both urgent and valedictory. 

Gute Reise, Agnetha.

Mary Morrissy

Mary Morrissy is the author of four novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender, The Rising of Bella Casey and most recently Penelope Unbound. She has also published two collections of stories, A Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. Her work has won her the Hennessy Prize and a Lannan Foundation Award. A member of Aosdána, she is a journalist, teacher of creative writing and a literary mentor. “Burn Heart” is from a forthcoming short story collection entitled 20/20 Vision.

About Burn Heart: An old friend told me about the central episode in this story – the young man dancing with the mother of his pen pal. The surrounding architecture of the story is all mine. I wanted to explore the notion of unrequited love, so often perceived as pathetic or indicative of a lack of emotional sophistication. It’s also seen as an affliction of the young, a kind of illness that “real life” will eventually cure you of. Yet the experience of unlived-out love can often be much more intense and persistent than its requited counterpart. The real richness of Bernard’s life is that he has drawn enduring sustenance from the smallest of romantic offerings.

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After the Alphabet: What we do with words https://stingingfly.org/2024/01/26/after-the-alphabet/ Fri, 26 Jan 2024 11:59:25 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=42454 Continue reading "After the Alphabet: What we do with words"]]> This is the text of the 2023 Stinging Fly lecture, which was delivered at the United Arts Club in Dublin on November 29th 2023.

Considering the news headlines of the last year or so, or indeed the ones being written this minute, I should begin by referring to the words of Theodor Adorno from his 1949 essay: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.’ My own belief is that although it might seem ruthlessly self-indulgent, or, more to the point, truly delusionary, to be an artist of any hue at the moment, not continuing to be just that, or not recognising our need for artistic engagement, would in fact feed the parcels of barbarism that we’re seeing erupting. 

I’ve written before about our place in the cave:

There we are, everyone is more or less fed and has a place to sleep. The cooks have begun to add tastes to the food, the nurses have figured how to make bandages and put them on. I hate to tell you that over in the far corner someone has started making a weapon. But in the other one, the artists have begun… they have steadied themselves on the precipice between the desire to create the metaphor for themselves, and the apprehensive wish to make it public. They must continue sketching the world in order to strengthen their corner. They will have their work cut out for them when the hordes from the gun side gain strength. And when those hordes finally destroy that cave, and move to another one, the metaphor will stay hiding, waiting to be found some day, all alive as if it had never been neglected.

From Reading Rites (2023)

That says as much as I need to propel me back to the page. 

There are a lot of things going on in the first year of our lives, beginning with the realisation that those funny shaped things in front of our eyes are indeed our own hands, which can be moved about in patterns at our will, and, what’s even more interesting, that big people will watch us doing this. Then there are the steps of maturing, take your pick from which theoretical model you might want to follow: behaviourism, cognitive development, attachment theory, Erikson’s psychosocial theory or Freud’s Psychosexual Developmental Theory if you wouldn’t mind… although frankly for a baby this may well be a step too far. Eventually one of those big people, by some extraordinary process, teaches us that those hieroglyphics on a page also have patterns, relating to words, which are a shortcut to understanding. And we’re off. But just because we learn how to tie our shoelaces doesn’t mean we’re going to become cobblers, and not everyone uses their new intriguing facility in the same way. Some will use these new toys to talk, to explain, to simplify, to mumble. Others will fall in love, will imagine dancing in them and begin a life wedded to the bliss, the dangerous slipstream and the precariousness of them. Some will use them to lie. 

In the previous Stinging Fly lectures all sorts of terrific pictures have been called into service, as writers attempt to explain themselves. And in that spirit I’m going to talk about a few things that played their part in creating what’s between the covers of my books. In order to do that I came to the conclusion that I would have to plagiarise myself a little, an exercise that you might think should be painless enough, but that turned out to be a tad more difficult than expected, and included a shock or two: Surely, I didn’t write that. It’s also illuminating to discover that we don’t always agree with ourselves. In that spirit, here we go. 

I think every writer knows when they first owned up to their inescapable urge to build with words, to create something of this minute which would last beyond this minute. But wishing to be, and being, a writer are two different things. This mystifying desire is valiantly exposed by Jessie Kesson in her novel, The White Bird Passes, based on her own life. Kesson’s mother was an unmarried domestic servant in a workhouse in Inverness and gave birth in 1916. You can imagine what happens next. Jessie describes the conditions of her growing up in The Lane, in Elgin. Appalling as we the readers might think them, Kesson somehow manages to let us know that the young child is indeed happy. But at the age of ten she was removed from her mother on the grounds of ‘neglect’ and placed in the Proctor’s Orphan Training Home in Skene, Aberdeenshire. Kesson describes the child watching her much-missed mother weaving towards her on a visit. ‘Your mother is drunk,’ says one of the other inhabitants, to which the young girl indignantly replies: ‘No she’s not, she’s got syphilis.’ When it came time for Jessie to leave the Home and take up employment, the official who was organising this next step of her life asked her what she wanted to be, as if it would matter one whit what she aspired to. ‘A poet,’ she replied, already infatuated with and attached to the word. She was, of course, sent off to be a farmhand. But you will know, by my description of her, that Jessie did indeed get free of the life destined for her and become a wordsmith. 

I thought of her often when I entered into the imagined lives of the Famine orphan girls when writing Not the Same Sky. Every single one of those girls had their question answered, loudly, definitively, by someone else, with no input from themselves. 

We know the question: ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ 

The very wording suggests a certain choice or luxury. It can also cause ferocious anxiety. 

Well, I’m going to be good maybe, or interesting, happy out, or continuously anxious, despite trying not to be. Or I’m going to try to understand contradictions, although maybe what I actually want is to be really wild. 

Oh, that’s not what you mean? You mean what job am I going to do?

And you think that my job will be me? Well, maybe you should have asked me what I think I’ll work at when I grow up. As in: I’ll work at the one thing all my life and it will be me.

How often have you overheard this conversation?

‘How’s your Mark?’

‘Oh, he’s great, working with Google.’

‘And Rose, how’s she?’

‘Terrific, she’s with KPMG.’

The question was How’s Mark, not what blasted corporation he’s working for? (Come to think of it, that used to be an answer, she got a job with the Corporation.) 

‘How’s your Mark?’

‘Dreadful at the minute, but recovering, finding it hard but he’ll get there. He’s been in a worse state so we’re all very hopeful.’ That’s a more honest answer. 

‘And Rose, how’s she?’

‘Well, that’s another story.’ 

Now, about plagiarising oneself. These two sentences from Not the Same Sky alert us to my character Joy’s dilemma, on her way to becoming a stonemason, who works on graves. And of course it’s also about all the people who have to gollop their thoughts about the question of becoming something other than what is thought appropriate. 

At school when Joy was coming up to seventeen she got fed up with the decisiveness of her classmates. It was as if every day another traitor came in, all flushed, saying ‘Miss, Miss, I know what I want to be.’

More about this later. 

*

And so to the naming of oneself, which comes easier to some than others. Writing was a secret possession with me. Well, not that secret when I think about it, considering that I had two stories published in New Irish Writing, written when I was 16 and 17. But after those two, when I really did want to write a more dangerous tale, imagine a different ending for Madame Bovary, I hid in what I will call a form of poetry, or rather notes for poems, because I knew that what I needed to write would absolutely not be accepted in the Ireland of that time. I had not yet become a Helene Cixous woman (‘We must kill the false woman who is preventing the live one from breathing’) and so I believed that I could camouflage my thoughts in verse, which dishonesty, of course, produced some excruciations. I’ve often said that this hiding taught me a great skill: I’m a dab hand at recognising bad poetry, having written enough of it myself. Before I ran away to Australia on the boat, I had a chapbook printed by Kevin and Helen Clear, grandparents of DuBray Books. It was called Au Revoir, and I meant it; well, look how that turned out. While in Australia, I continued to pen these notes and even joined a writing group when I landed in the mining town of Mount Isa. I remember this group of people as being very kind. They were also very old, they might even have been over forty!

Mount Isa was/is a shockingly hot place in the middle of the desert, a town there only for the mines: Ór, airgead, copar, luaidh, stán gual agus iarann. For those of you who don’t know what luaidh is, that’s lead, and most of us got pretty sick once or twice a month when the wind changed direction and blew the fumes back into the town. During my six months there I worked in two jobs: office work sending out concrete to make the culverts for roads that were continuously collapsing, either from severe heat or torrential rains. And as a barmaid in the Irish Club, which served the mining men. Another sociological apprenticeship in, let’s call it, the deeply unusual. The writing workshop was an oasis and a massive contradiction in the middle of all this activity. The local newspaper printed the next chapbook called Thoughts among the Bindies – bindies being a weed prevalent in Mount Isa whose metamorphosis fascinated me. It’s not a spindly thing in its infancy but it got so parched in these surroundings that it became a light dried-up wisp and was continuously tumbling across the dirt tracks as if it had an alphabet all of its own. Out looking for a word. 

After returning to Ireland, I should own up to having produced two more chapbooks, Return to Ourselves and Not to be Classified. During the process of publishing one of them, I met Fintan Vallely – so even if the poetry was bad the printing was terrific. 

While I was at all that, and being ‘let go’ from my teaching job, for unstated political reasons, I was obliged to write Where Do I Come From, the first Irish sex education book, written by me, printed by Fintan Vallely, of Ard-Bui, distributed by Arlen House and eventually by the WHO, illustrated by Madeleine O’Neill, including, heaven help us, family setups outside the accepted norms. I say obliged because you could call it essential writing. I wanted, for my young sons, a book that would reflect the lives they were living, not just the ones illustrated in cloud cuckoo land. And I wanted it to be Irish. (As an aside, you can imagine my amusement one morning when I went into the room where my sons and two of their friends were having a sleepover-morning usual caper. Things had gone suspiciously quiet so I thought it best to check. When I opened the door there they were: all reading the book which they quickly put under the bedcovers when they saw me. Well, there you go, that’s how the author and the work needs to be separated.)

And then I returned to fiction. Home at last. When I say I returned, this was aided by my attendance at the National Writers’ Workshop, directed by Eavan Boland, with visiting writers including John Banville, who told us that writing cannot be taught, and Bernard MacLaverty who showed me, unforgettably, just how wonderful a short story is for the soul. I had been accepted onto this workshop with examples of my poetry, but when it came to making a decision, on the first Monday morning, I turned left into MacLaverty’s room. One of these two had said I looked more like a fiction writer than a poet. 

*

Because I’ve been asked in preparing this lecture to address difficulties faced, I must deal briefly with the things that some writers may think about, sometimes, but mostly not, because too much deliberation might stymie us completely, make us give up. So, how do we manage or how did we get to a stage where there’s no turning back? I can still hear one particular writer telling me that she had learned what to do with her career by taking note of what I’d done, and making sure she didn’t. It had never crossed my mind that I should have had some trajectory worked out. In much the same way as I still cannot honestly answer the inevitable question about my work practice, my discipline. All I can say is that this is what’s done so far and I still love having no trajectory. 

There are other weights common to all writers – how to manage expectations… a problem? a fact? which is it? – that applies to all artists. How do we decide that we’re doing alright, maybe even enjoying this life a bit? And does this change from day to day? It certainly changes in the course of writing a book. One minute all’s fine, foundation laid, getting there, picture emerging, only another six months to go maybe, and the next it’s being burned down, useless, meaningless. Start all over. You can see why this private battle has nothing to do with the book-launch night. And then there is the disparity of intent. Not all actors want to be in Hollywood, in fact some would convulse with nausea at the thought of doing that to themselves. Not all painters want to get in on a conversation with the Renaissance. Working scientists might not want to invent the modern day equivalent of cat’s eyes or television or sliced bread. And so too for wordsmiths. 

And then there are the dreaded prizes and what they do to the reception of serious work. Of course they may be a good way to alert us. But are they really? Are they not more of a distraction from the other books we should be reading? Faye Weldon had it right—she who did, in fact, give Madame Bovary a day out in a hat shop. She said that prize-giving ceremonies were about people watching the cheque being pulled away from those who do not get it. Of course it’s difficult for writers to enter this minefield, for fear of being accused of sour grapes but I will briefly refer to it, not being too bothered about what I’m accused of, in tandem with David Forster, a terrific Australian writer and scientist who didn’t wax lyrical about being given the Patrick White Award for ‘very neglected writer’. He called it ‘loser’s compo’. Another Australian writer, a prolific prize winner, got really mean about his colleague Frank Morehouse, who had been told he had won a prize only to be informed a few hours later that it was going to Peter Carey. I certainly will not come any closer to home with awful stories like that; suffice to say that having to listen to some of these conversations often makes writers shiver, then wilt. The background noise they create is like a mixture of a dentist’s drill and a bank holiday weekend burglar alarm. So, here’s another job to be done: the soundproofing of the imagination, so it can protect itself from the din, have real conversations about what matters in writing, and actually do the work.

But there we are, we’ve owned up to being a writer and one day do the same to a stranger who has asked ‘what do you do?’

Bad mistake. 

‘And what sort of stuff do you write? Would I know anything you have written?’

Now here’s a moment where I appreciate Google, although maybe it would be best to go to the toilet to look us up, rather than beginning a scroll right there and then, while eyeing us up suspiciously at the same time… and saying sceptically, ‘It says here…’

I’ve said before that there’s a peculiarity to all this—when we step into the doctor’s surgery, we don’t open the conversation by telling them about doctors we have met, and asking them about doctors they might know and if they think they’re any good. Nor would we dare start telling the builder about how much we enjoyed working with the last fellah. 

What is success? What is partial success, definite success, public success? Is it in books sold, or more important books actually read. Or is it in atmosphere, emotion created and remembered by a reader? Who may very well remember a completely different set of fallouts than the next reader. Or indeed than the writer had intended. At which point it might be best to return to work. Get on with it and let the words settle where they will. 

Every era brings its own challenges. A particularly disappointing one of today is the incessant hum of censorship, waiting to rear its ugly head in new mutated forms, forms we could never have envisaged a dozen years ago. I’ve had my personal experiences of the one that dogged my beginnings as a writer, some of which I’ve written about, difficulties that were of course hurtful but didn’t stop me. Unlike our imprisoned writer and journalist friends all over the world. The row about who gets to say what and about whom, will go on and will continue to change. It’s not going to be sorted this year or this decade. There is no cosy agreement to be had here. But the only road to take is the one that keeps seeing the problems and facing them. The closed minds that reigned supreme before the 1960s are still there, and always will be, waiting to appear with different clothes. But let’s not forget, so too are the open ones. 

Why do I bring that up? Well, frankly, I bring it up because we didn’t become writers in order to have our mouths taped shut. Where’s the sense of that, for anyone, unless of course you’re penning exactly what is required of you. But by whom? And how often does the whom change?

Lionel Shriver’s controversial Brisbane Writers Festival speech insisted on total freedom for the writer and made the plea, eloquently, for grown-up fiction to be spared the sensitivity Geiger counter. It did not however take into account that this sentiment can lead right back to where we started from, before we began the task of shedding ourselves of ignorance. I agree with her call but I’m also on the side of Yassmin Abdel-Magied, the classy hijab wearing engineer and writer who felt she had no option but to walk out. Even though the flinging away of my mantilla was one of the best undressings of my life. Which contradiction reminds us of the notion, attributed to Scott Fitzgerald, that ‘the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still maintain the ability to function’.

Clearly, I’m not going to get into the discussion this evening about whether or not censorship is ever acceptable. We know that advertising works, therefore, presumably, so too does violent pornography. The problem is Who gets to censor? Is it any better when self-appointed cohorts on a free for all telephone do it? Or half a dozen students who have the time and the inclination to block any view that doesn’t match perfectly that of their own ideological group. And are they sometimes right, or ever right? Norman Mailer, no slouch of a man when it came to taking unpopular positions, said of American Psycho, that he was terribly glad no publisher had asked his opinion about whether or not to go ahead with the book. He would have had to say yes, because of his stance against censorship, although in his heart he wished it had never been written. 

Primo Levi put the dilemma into a cup of irony in his short story, ‘Censorship in Bitinia’, which tells of government officials who have decided that because of the lively increase in the need for censors, and because a lot of those who are already in place are succumbing to depression, overreacting to all sorts of things for example colours and flavours, it might be best to replace these human censors with animals better suited to the task. They fail with monkeys, horses and dogs before succeeding with chickens. The hens, he writes:

besides being easily procured and costing little both as an initial investment and for their subsequent maintenance, are capable of making rapid and definitive decisions. They stick scrupulously to the prescribed mental programs, and, given their cold, calm nature and their evanescent memory, they are not subject to distractions.

If we’re deeply annoyed now by our own confusion we can always fall back on what Voltaire is supposed to have said, but which was actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall about Voltaire:

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. 

It’s a good fall-back position because, as writers, we know that the distant rattle of censorship, whose murmur attempts to make us self-censor, corrupts the imagination. 

*

But in order not to get bogged down in all these peripheral difficulties it’s important to concentrate on what has been done, what has happened when the rubble has been cleared, when authority over the characters has been assumed. And to remember that the secret is in the word: Fiction. 

When asked what part of the process interests me most, I would have to say: Off the beaten track research. Because that’s the tangible attachment to the real world, the historically accurate world, insofar as there is such a thing, before the thinking of oneself into the mind of who gets a part in this story or novel, and what way they play it. 

This searching happens if I’m working on a piece which requires it, rather than just having a good time playing with notions, or words. I’ve talked before about how the fictional parts of the story ‘Virgin Birth’ grew. On my first visit to Japan, where I was doing a number of readings, I went to Hiroshima. I couldn’t not have gone. I wrote a nonfiction piece about the experience, An Irishwoman’s Diary, for the Irish Times, but I never felt that I had done the experience justice until I grappled with the incongruity of it all, the scarcely believable capacity for resilience, which I felt could only be done through fiction, by creating a character who deliberately became pregnant despite the experience of the bomb. (The Japanese word Hibakusha describes someone who survived one of the atomic bombs, Nijyuu Hibakusha is someone who survived both atomic bombs.) A few years later, I was outlining the research done into the novel about the Famine orphan girls for a group of Australian students and their teachers when I fell into comparing that with the Hiroshima story. How I wondered about the birds following the ships taking their cargo of girls across the world, and about what happened to the birds that were in the sky on the morning the bomb was dropped, and how much they knew. I’ve never forgotten the Australian historian’s wistful comment that we fiction writers are allowed the birds, whereas historians are not. 

Some work takes more research than others, depending on how much we already know. For instance, the novel Skin of Dreams began with one encounter, as all work does. I was visiting my friend Pat Murphy and her partner Tiernan MacBride. He was on his way out to launch a book, written by Marcus Bourke, about Harry Gleeson, the Tipperary man executed, wrongly, for the murder of Mary McCarthy. Tiernan’s father, Sean MacBride, had defended Gleeson and always believed in his innocence. And so began years of research, not just into that particular story but into Death Row in the US, which I visited before spending an unforgettable ten days on the road with the Journey of Hope people. I have described the Death Row visit in the novel but of course not all of it. Or not exactly as I experienced it, because I am not the character Maud, and I had to stay true to her, the innocence and naivety of her. That’s why it’s called fiction.

I’ve always been drawn to imagining or attempting to understand prison – who knows why. I remember, when living in Australia in the 1970s, going to visit a deserted jail. I can still feel it. The inmates, many Irish, made the bricks and built the jail around themselves. Can this be true or did I dream it because the allegory fits? I do remember seeing a heartbreaking list of the physical attributes of men born in Cork, Kerry and Mayo who had escaped, their birthmarks on private parts of their bodies outlined as an utterly reliable way to identify them in the event of them needing to be tracked down. 

Not the Same Sky had its own particular difficulties because of the dearth of primary sources. These girls didn’t write droves of letters home. They did more forgetting than remembering, as they knuckled down to the creation of a life out of alien material. 

A Glassful of Letters began out of hearing of a survey conducted by the new owners of Waterford Glass. If their big buyers didn’t know that the glass was made in Waterford, Ireland, then they could move the production to a place with cheaper labour. And this they did. I began to imagine a man losing his job as a result, but the novel didn’t stay there. It morphed into all sorts of political and personal letters dreamt up from 1980s Ireland. It became not just about this man, but about the two women who live on his street, one a free moving Air Hostess, as we called them then, the other a woman grounded by having children. I also discovered the capacity of the epistolary form, the way it can fluidly allow protagonists to argue different points of view. Although, funny enough, I forgot that for a while but was delighted to welcome it back after my fourth go at writing the story based on the life of Violet Gibson, the woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini. I had approached it from the third person point of view, from the maid’s point of view, from an outsider’s distanced perspective, but none of that worked to my satisfaction. And then came the solution, the imagined personal note from the woman herself, scaffolded by historical fact. And thus the story, ‘Dear You’, a message written in a bottle and read by You, the person who picks it up. Around the same time I began to imagine Mary Lee and her daughter Evelyn, the woman originally from Monaghan, who ended up being the leading light in the suffrage movement in South Australia, the second place in the world to get female suffrage. How did she become that person? I had some interesting conversations with the Orange Order around that particular one. (Her deceased husband was supposed to have been a member and I was trying, unsuccessfully, to verify that.)

When writing ‘Disturbing Words’, a story about borders and overcoming them, or rather ignoring them, I remembered the essay by Hans Magnus Enzensherger, in which he examines the migration of people, the fear and distrust the original people have of the new, the nervousness attached to the making of borders. 

The essay didn’t come into the story, because it was a different metaphor, but it stayed there, like music in the distance. All the time I was working out that story – which is really as much about language as lines drawn on maps – I was remembering that wonderful ritual of passport handing all over Europe. And how passports were really the absolute holders of our personal information. That was in a time when we were, wisely, careful with our details. We wouldn’t give out our dates of birth unless we were going to be arrested for refusing. In particular we resented giving it while crossing our own border. If we had to give in, and we did, there was a way of doing it, looking at the skyline, as if we were attempting to stop seasickness on a ship in the middle of a storm. We fought against the cheap surrender of our privacy. Our task was to conceal our personal knowledge; it was personal, we trusted the word and knew what it meant.

It was also while perusing notions of arbitrarily drawn borders that I was sent a nugget by the Australian poet Dan Disney, now teaching in Seoul, about the unexpected benefits of human madness. Apparently the demilitarised zone on the Korean border, created in 1953, one of the most dangerous places on earth for humans with its thousands of landmines and the millions of soldiers arrayed along its edges, has strangely created a good thing. The same forces that prevent humans from moving within the nearly 400 square miles of this zone, encourage other species to thrive. Manchurian or red-crowned, as well as white-naped, cranes are among the area’s most famous and visible denizens. Nearly 100 species of fish, perhaps 45 types of amphibians and reptiles and over 1,000 different insect species, all under threat elsewhere, now exist in their own protected zone. The thought of that would make you go hunting poems in the morning. 

So, how did my character Joy make her decision? 

She sat at the back of the class and twisted bits of hair around her ear. The career guidance teacher sent for her. Joy had not been party to any discussions that may have taken place between her and other teachers before she obeyed the summons. She did not know if the teacher’s tongue was in her cheek as she outlined all sorts of options and flattened her expression as Joy turned down the notion of all the jobs she could possibly bring to mind. A teacher. No way. The guidance person had put that in because it was de rigueur to consider it, she did not for a moment think that Joy had what it took. Next up was nurse. But it was clear to her that Joy had no interest whatsoever in tending ailments, far too flighty for that. It was even clearer to Joy. Secretary? ‘Oh no, I couldn’t work in an office,’ she said, completely startled by now. ‘Really?’ The stalling at this suggestion may have been the point at which a noticeable barb entered the teacher’s voice. There was silence while she regrouped. Joy wanted to be helpful. She did. She almost said she would like to be a poultry instructor, almost asked for the appropriate form, just to get out of the stifling room. She didn’t know if there was still such a job, but she’d had an aunt who had been one before she died. She had travelled to farmers’ wives, after they had day-old chickens posted to them, and she had advised them on feed, and what to do with sick chickens and how to diagnose diseases. But Joy thought it would be an insult to such a specific profession to feign interest in it. And presumably that job was long gone – there would be leaflets now and men in cars, or men ringing up, or maybe you just reared chickens yourself and hoped for the best.
The career guidance teacher had twenty-seven possibilities, and Joy couldn’t bring herself to say yes to one. She did have a respect for the professions. Her reluctance to be flippant about them surely proved that.
The teacher told Joy to go away and at least think.
She must have reported back to the other teachers because the next day, when Joy was staring out the window again, the mathematics teacher sighed as she battled against the spectacular lack of interest being shown in her subject. She thumped the desk and declared, ‘Joy Kennedy, the only thing you’re any good at is hanging around waiting to fit under your own headstone.’
It was getting close to The Leaving Certificate.
Joy said, ‘Thanks.’ The mathematics teacher said, ‘Don’t be so smart.’
The following week Joy went to the career guidance teacher. She wanted her to be the first to know. She had not come into school and burbled about it, she hadn’t wanted it to be sullied by puzzlement. The teacher thought for a moment and said, ‘How did you get to be so modern?’
Joy then told the mathematics teacher, and even how she had contributed to the decision.
The teacher said, ‘Well, I’m glad if I’ve been of some assistance in some way, because I have certainly failed to be able to teach you any trigonometry. And another thing, could you stop talking out of the side of your mouth like that, you’ll tighten it and then you’ll never be able to have a conversation that anyone will believe. 

From Not the Same Sky (2013)

Because of the subject matters that I choose, or that choose me if you want, my life as a writer has taken me all sorts of places. These include prison workshops, Death Row, a weekend in Dundalk with the Tallaght and Shankill women trying to work out what ‘peace’ might mean, an attempt at setting up a workshop for male Rohingyan refugees, a search for ways to help Afghani girls get to school, Wednesday nights in Hartstown with Serbian refugees, Famine and War memorials, the walking of the Old Walls of Jerusalem. I should also add beautiful places too, workshops that actually worked, residencies by the sea, singing weekends, interesting bridges, trains, boats, planes, my own home, and nightclubs. So it could be said that my work is about those things and others, but it is, in the end, all about the words. 

Evelyn Conlon

Evelyn Conlon is a short-story writer and novelist. Born in County Monaghan, she lives in Dublin and is a member of Aosdána. She has published four short-story collections and four novels and has edited four anthologies. Her most recent books are Moving About The Place (2021), a short-story collection, and Reading Rites (2023), a memoir in essays, both published by The Blackstaff Press.

About : The Stinging Fly’s Annual Lecture began as an initiative of Words Ireland and Bray Literary Festival in 2018. Each year since then we have commissioned a writer to reflect upon their experience of the writing life and the development of their creative practice. Previous lectures, which are all available to read on the website, have been delivered by Sean O’Reilly and Jan Carson (2018), Mia Gallagher (2019), Paul Lynch (2020), and Kevin Power (2022).

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Glorious Exploits (an extract) https://stingingfly.org/2024/01/10/glorious-exploits-an-extract/ Wed, 10 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=42193 Continue reading "Glorious Exploits (an extract)"]]> We are delighted to share Chapter 1 of Ferdia Lennon’s forthcoming novel, Glorious Exploits, which will be published by Fig Tree on January 18.


Syracuse

412 BC

So Gelon says to me, ‘Let’s go down and feed the Athenians. The weather’s perfect for feeding Athenians.’

Gelon speaks the truth. ’Cause the sun is blazing all white and tiny in the sky, and you can feel a burn from the stones as you walk. Even the lizards are hiding, poking their heads out from under rocks and trees as if to say, Apollo, are you fucking joking? I picture the Athenians all crammed in, their eyes darting about for a bit of shade, and their tongues all dry and gasping.

‘Gelon, you speak the truth.’

Gelon nods. We set out with six skins—four of water and two of wine —a pot of olives, and two blocks of that smelly cheese Ma makes. Ah, it’s a beautiful island we have, and sometimes I think the factory closing is my chance to shake things up. That I might just leave Syracuse and find myself a little place by the sea, no more dark rooms, clay and red hands, but the sea and the sky, and when I come home with a fresh catch slung over my shoulder, she’ll be there, whoever she may be, waiting for me and laughing. That laugh, I hear it now, and it sounds to me a soft and delicate thing.

‘Why, Gelon, I feel so good today!’

Gelon looks at me. He’s handsome, with eyes the colour of shallow sea when the sun shines through it. Not shit-brown like mine. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes. He’s often down, Gelon—sees the world as if it’s filtered through smoke, no brightness to anything. We walk on. Even though the Athenians are crushed, their ships firewood, and their unburied dead food for our dogs, there are still hoplites on patrol. Just in case. Diocles gave a speech not yesterday about how you can never tell with these Athenians; a fresh batch could arrive any day. Maybe he’s right. Most of the Spartans have left. Word is they’re heading for Athens itself, all set to siege it up right and proper. End this war. But there are still a few about. Homesick and useless. In fact, four of them walk ahead of us now, their red cloaks trailing behind them like wounds.

‘Morning!’

They look back. Only one of them salutes. Arrogant, these Spartans, but I’m feeling good.

‘Down with Athens!’

Two of them salute now, but there’s no life behind it. They look tired and sad, like Gelon.

‘I say Pericles is a prick!’

‘Pericles is dead, Lampo.’

‘Aye, sure, Gelon, I know that. I say Pericles is a dead prick!’

This time two of the Spartans laugh, and all four salute. Ah, I feel so happy today. I can’t explain it, but it’s some feeling. Those are the best ones. The ones you can’t explain, and we haven’t even fed the Athenians.

‘Which quarry shall it be today, Gelon?’

We stand at a fork in the road, and a decision must be made. Gelon hesitates.

‘Laurium?’ says Gelon, at last.

‘Laurium?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Laurium!’

We go left. Laurium is what the main quarry goes by these days. Someone thought it would be a laugh to call it after that silver mine in Attica that the Athenians used to fund this trip. The name stuck. It’s a massive pit surrounded by a milky rock face of limestone so high there’s only need for a fence in one or two spots. At one of those is the gateway in; where a couple of guards are sitting on their arses playing dice. Gelon hands them a wineskin, and they wave us on. The path down is a windy ankle-breaker. A coiling brown serpent is what Gelon calls it when the muse is upon him. We can smell the Athenians before we see them. The way being all twisted blocks a full view, but the smell is something awful: thick and rotten, the air almost misty with stench. I have to stop for a moment as my eyes are watering.

‘It seems worse than usual.’

‘That will be the heat.’

‘Aye.’

I pinch my nose, and we walk on. There are fewer than last time. At this rate, they’ll be all gone by winter. Gets me thinking of the evening they surrendered. The debate went on for hours. Diocles pacing back and forth, roaring, ‘Where do we put seven thousand of these bastards?’ Silence. So he asks again. This time that Hermocrates prick mumbles about a treaty. Treaty, my arse, thinks I, and then Diocles says it. Not in those words, but he means the same. He says, ‘Do you make a treaty with a corpse?’ Laughter spreads, fingers wag, and Hermocrates sits down and shuts his beak. And through it all, Diocles keeps pacing, asking us what to do? Silence. Although now it’s a throbbing silence. Ready to burst. Then he stops pacing; says he has something. Something new and strange. Something that will show the rest of Greece that we mean business. That we’re Syracuse and here to stay. Do we want to hear about it? ‘We do, Diocles!’ But he shakes his head. Actually, it’s too much. Too strange. Someone else should speak. But the time for that is long past. For we’re Syracuse and here to stay, and we tell him as much. So he leans forward and whispers. No sound. Only his lips moving. ‘We can’t hear you, Diocles!’ So he says it. Still low but loud enough for us to hear: ‘Put them in the quarries.’ Then he shouts it: ‘The quarries!’ And soon, nearly the whole of Syracuse was shivering with those two words: the quarries.

Aye, and that’s exactly what we did.

From a distance, they look like so many red ants swarming on the rocks, though these Athenians hardly swarm. They just lie about or crouch or crawl about, looking for a bit of shade. Still, to be fair, my eyesight’s not the best, and some of those most stationary may, in fact, be dead.

‘Morning!’

A few glance up, but none return my greeting. Now, as time goes by, some in the city feel we’ve made a mistake. That keeping them here in the pits is too much, that it goes beyond war. They say we should just kill them, make them slaves or send them home, but ah, I like the pits. It reminds us that all things must change. I recall the Athenians as they were a year ago: their armour flashing like waves when the moon is upon them, their war cries that kept you up at night, and set the dogs howling, and those ships, hundreds of ships gliding around our island, magnificent sharks ready to feast. The pits show us that nothing is permanent. That’s what Diocles says. They show us that glory and power are shadows on a wall. Ah, and I like the way they smell. It’s awful, but it’s wonderful awful. They smell like victory and more. Every Syracusan feels it when they get that smell. Even the slaves feel it. Rich or poor, free or not, you get a whiff of those pits, and your life seems somehow richer than it did before, your blankets warmer, your food tastier. You’re on the right track—or at the very least a better track than those Athenians.

‘Morning!’

A poor bastard sees my club and raises his arms. A stream of words follow, most of which I can’t understand, his voice beinga faint croak, but I pick out ‘Zeus’, ‘please’ and ‘children’. ‘Fear not,’ says I. ‘We come not to punish, though you Athenian dogs deserve punishment. Gelon and I are merciful. We come—’

‘Shut up.’

‘What, Gelon? I speak the truth.’

‘Just be quiet.’

I chuckle.

‘Ah, you’re in one of those moods, I see.’

He’s already kneeling by the poor bastard, giving him water.

‘Any Euripides?’ says Gelon.

The man is sucking at the goatskin like it’s Aphrodite’s nipple, some of the water trickling down his beard. He’s pink. Actually pink. Almost all of them are pink, though some are even red.

‘Euripides, man, do you know any?’

The man nods and sucks some more. Other Athenians are coming forward now. Feet clanking with chains. There are more than I thought, though still fewer than last time.

‘Water and cheese,’ says Gelon, ‘for anyone who knows lines of Euripides and can recite them! If it’s from Medea, or Telephus, you’ll get olives too.’

‘What about Sophocles?’ asks a tiny creature with no teeth. ‘Oedipus Rex ?’

‘Fuck Sophocles! Did Gelon mention Sophocles? You—’

‘Shut up.’

‘Ah, Gelon. I’m only saying.’

Gelon starts with the terms.

‘No Sophocles, nor Aeschylus, nor any other Athenian poet. You can recite them if it pleases you, but water and cheese are only for Euripides. Now, my man. What have you got?’

The man who was drinking clears his throat and goes to straighten up. It’s a sorry sight. Try as he might, he can’t do it. His neck flops, the head swaying from side to side, loose fruit blown by a gentle wind.

He says, ‘ “Eh, but we must learn to understand, King Priam . . .” ’

He stops.

‘Is that all?’

‘Sorry, I knew more, but I can’t seem to. My head, it’s broken, see, I forget faces, and I can’t remember my . . . I swear I knew more.’

The man puts his head in his hands. Gelon pats him on the shoulder and gives him one last sip. I think the Athenian’s crying, but he still sucks away at the skin. Water pouring into him even as it pours out.

‘Can anyone do better than that? A mouthful of olives for some Medea?’

Gelon’s mad for Euripides. It’s the main reason he comes. I think he would’ve been almost happy for the Athenians to have won if it meant Euripides would’ve popped over and put on some plays. He once spent a month’s wages to pay an old actor to come to our factory and recite scenes while we shaped pots. The foreman said it was reducing productivity, and he threw the actor out. Gelon didn’t give up, though. He had the actor shout the lines from across the street. You’d hear snatches of poetry through the blaze of the kiln, and though I think we made fewer pots that week, they were stranger, more beautiful. This was all before the war, and the actor’s dead now, the factory gone. I look over at Gelon. His blue eyes wide and nervous. A block of cheese held over his head. Shouting about olives. Gelon’s just mad. Never mind Euripides.

Many volunteer, but when it comes to it, most fumble and pause and complain about headaches and thirst, or just collapse on the ground so that we only get a line at a time. Two if we’re lucky. One bluffer starts doing a scene where Medea is being wooed by Achilles, which even I know is a load of bollix. Medea was way before Achilles. She was with Jason.

‘“But swift-footed Achilles it can never be! Oh Hellas, my father will never allow it. Achilles, what can . . .”’

Gelon raises his club, and the bluffer slinks away. Another takes his place. This one at least mentions Jason, but it’s a bit Gelon already knows. Still, he gets a few olives for histroubles.

The day goes on in this way. The sun gets fatter, yolkier, and its heat less fierce. Pinks and reds bleed into the blue. I leave Gelon to it and take a stroll around the pits. Officially I’m scouting for actors. Gelon’s taken a bold step and offered to return with a bag of grain if he can get five Athenians to do a scene from Medea. But he wants them to properly act it out. Like, perform it. He’ll be lucky if he finds one. These poor bastards are just waiting to die. I imagine the worst spots of Hades are something similar. Hairy skeletons with a hint of skin. Apart from the hair, the only bit of variety to be found is in the eyes. Glassy gems made brighter by dying. Massive browns and blues peer out at me. I haven’t found a leading man yet, but I’m looking.

Now, you watch these Athenians, and you feel like you’re seeing their spirit float out through the nostrils and lips, one breath at a time. You feel like their skin withers and flakes in front of you, that if you only waited and watched one long enough, they’d disappear, and all that would be left is their teeth and a few slender branches of bone, white teeth and white bone sinking into the quarry, and maybe some day a house will be built with that very stone, your house, and you’ll lie awake at night with the walls moaning, the ceiling weeping, a second sky dripping on your little head, and you’ll hope it’s nothing, the wind or the rain, and maybe it is, though maybe it’s them Athenians twisting in your walls. These are strange thoughts. Hades thoughts, but the quarry is a strange place, and a man is not himself in here.

There’s a scream in the distance. A lot of spirit lost in a scream. Must be serious. It comes again, just as loud. From a spot at the end of the quarry. Athenians seem to pour out and away from it so that instead of the usual wall of skin and rags, you can see the rock. I decide to take a closer peek. There’s a huge man swinging a club. An Athenian rolled up like a wailing kitten at his feet. Actually, there are two Athenians at his feet. Though the other is clearly dead. The clubber’s tunic is splattered with red. Is it Biton? Aye, it’s Biton. Always Biton. His son was killed in the first battle with the Athenians. Well, not in the actual battle. He was captured and tortured to death. Biton comes here a lot. Even more than us.

‘You’re a terrible man, Biton.’

Biton turns around. I wink. He doesn’t. There’s a twitching in his cheeks. If possible, he looks worse than the poor bastard at his feet. The Athenian’s face is a mass of gore, but there’s strange hope in those green eyes. Shocking green they are. Lizard-green. They’re bright, and he’s already pulling himself away. Not ready to give up on life just yet.

‘Gelon and I are up yonder. Collecting a bit of Euripides, would you believe.’

Biton doesn’t answer. Just squeezes the handle of his club. The veins in his arm streak like lightning.

‘Blinding heat we got this morning.’

Again nothing. The Athenian’s still crawling away.

‘You having a bit of sport? What did he do to deserve such attention?’

‘Found them in the wall.’

‘Wall?’

‘They’d made a hole. Bastards.’

‘They?’

Biton kicks the dead body at his feet.

‘Asleep in the arms of this piece of shit. Fucking wrapped around each other. Like lovers.’

I nod. The Athenian’s a decent bit away now. Crawling, a trail of red in his wake.

‘There are fewer here than last time.’

‘Bastards.’

‘Aye, they’re bastards. I give these Athenians two months at most. If Apollo keeps up this performance, maybe less. I think I’ll miss them when they’re gone. They break up the day somewhat.’

Biton puts his face in his hands.

‘You’re not the worst, Biton.’

The Athenian’s still in view. He’s not moving nearly fast enough. Go on, you bastard.

‘Diocles says we ought to follow them back to Greece. Really finish the job. What say you? I, for one, wouldn’t mind a stroll through their Acropolis. Maybe catch a show. They say it’s stunning. Like nothing here in Sicily.’

Biton lowers his hands and takes a step away.

‘That’s some club you got there. Heracles massaged the Nemean lion with such a club, Biton. I salute you on account of that club.’

I salute Biton. The Athenian’s moving tortoise-slow. I think, what’s the point? Let it be, but ah, I don’t want to see him die.

‘Will you pop back with me and give your greetings to Gelon? He’d be delighted to see you.’

This is a lie.

‘Too busy.’

‘Aye, I can see you’re a busy man. That’s clear. The thing is, I fancy a bit of company as I stroll. The light’s fading now, and it pains me to admit this, but I don’t like this place in the dark. The rats come out, and it frightens me. Now don’t laugh, Biton. I know it’s funny, but I say it plainly. It frightens me.’

Biton isn’t laughing. He’s walked off back towards the Athenian.

‘Wait!’

He stops and turns to face me.

‘Do you have your heart set on that poor fucker?’

Biton nods.

‘I only ask on account of Gelon looking for a green-eyed actor for the role of Jason. Jason being well known to have especially green eyes. The eyes being a significant factor in what first attracted Medea, if the tales are true.’

Biton looks confused.

‘I offer you this pouch of fine wine by way of compensation.’

He’s still confused, but it’s interested confusion. Since his son’s death, Biton has become a devotee of Dionysus, but being skint, he gets to worship rarely.

‘For me?’

‘Aye, in exchange for the Athenian.’

His eyes widen. He looks ready to cry.

‘Thanks.’

‘Enjoy, Biton.’

He takes the goatskin and sucks at it mightily. The suction not being quite equal to Aphrodite’s nipple, but surely that of a nymph or some lower goddess. I pat him on the shoulder and walk on ahead. It takes no more than a couple of strides for me to be level with the Athenian. He curls up in a ball, expecting more of the same. When the blows don’t come, his fingers open up, and I see those green eyes staring out at me—lizard-green.

‘Fear not, for I come not to torment, though you do deserve tormenting. I come to engage you in a theatrical performance!’

His fingers close, and he only rolls up the tighter.

‘For fucksake! If I wanted to hurt you, I’d hurt you.’

The fingers part, and those green eyes return. I think he’s saying something.

‘Please, don’t . . .’

‘Enough snivelling! I may change my mind. Now tell me plainly, and no harm will come. Do you know Euripides?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Speak! Do you know him? Euripides, a fine Athenian poet?’

‘I do.’

‘Would you be knowing any passages? I mean, could you say them when prompted? Be truthful.’

He nods.

Medea ? Do you know Medea ?’

‘Yes, I think so. I . . .’

‘Think is no good to me, man. I’m considering you for the role of Jason. It’s a key role. Now speak plainly.’

‘I think, sorry, I’m sure, I remember quite a bit, please.’

I hand him a waterskin to clear his thoughts. He finishes half in one gulp. I squirt the rest on his face to wash away the gore. It’s not as bad as it looks. A big gash on his cheek and another on his forehead. Nothing broken. I wouldn’t call him handsome, but all things considered, he’ll do. I offer him my arm, and he takes it. We walk. It all seems to be going fine till we get to the other Athenian. The one Biton killed. When we get to him, the green-eyed fella drops to the ground and starts crying, kissing the body and whispering to it.

‘Enough, man. I’m in a rush.’

He ignores me, just keeps kissing and whispering so that his lips and face get all red and messy. I’ll have to wash him again. That’s a waste of water.

‘Come on!’

Nothing. I raise my club as if to swing. It works, and he moves away from the body right quick. His arms up to protect himself.

‘Now stand!’

He goes to stand but stops, kneels back down, pulls a few bits of yellow hair from what’s left of the head and squeezes them in his fist. Then he stands. I start walking, real slow, and he follows.

The moon’s already out, a silver grin in the sky, but the sun is there too. Fat and red. In a little while it will be gone below the walls of the quarry and then below the sea and then, sure that’s night-time. I imagine my friend will be delighted with night-time. The sun, it seems, being the principal cause of death in these here pits.

‘You’ll be happy to see the evening come, no?’

He doesn’t respond.

‘Answer me, friend.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I say you’ll be happy now Apollo’s making himself scarce.’

‘It’s not much better at night.’

‘The rats?’

‘No, the cold. It gets bitter. The change brings on fevers.’

‘That why you and your mate were in the hole?’

He nods.

‘Shows ingenuity. I respect that, but sure, Biton, the fella you met earlier, he hates Athenian ingenuity. Despises it. I reckon you pissed him off with that one. Having a kip in the shade when you should’ve been outside baking.’

The Athenian’s crying again.

‘Calm down, man. Have an olive.’

I hold out the cup. They’re lovely olives: mixed with oil, salt, garlic and a secret ingredient. My ma makes them. Best in Syracuse. He hesitates but takes a few. He’s still crying, but he’s chewing too.

‘What’s your name, friend?’

‘Paches.’

‘Paches?’

He nods.

‘I’m Polyphemus.’

I made that up. You can never tell with these Athenians. A name can be used for a curse or whatnot.

‘Polyphemus, like the Cyclops?’

‘Aye, the very one. Ma tells me my da had one eye. Poor bastard.’

‘Oh.’

We walk on.

‘You know, Paches. You Athenians brought this on yourselves. Sailing over here like sharks ready to eat us up. You’re worse than the Persians. They’re barbarians, but you’re Greeks attacking Greeks. Aye, Diocles is right. You’re scum.’

He doesn’t answer, just limps on. Eyes watch us from the shadows.

‘Still, my mate Gelon will be pleased to meet such a scholar of Euripides. He says he’s finer than Homer. You’ll meet him soon. Gelon, not Homer.’

I wink.

With the light falling, the rats come out. At first, there are only one or two, but pretty soon, the ground is full of them, the air heavy with their sounds. They look mad. Not like any rats you know: wet, red and very fat. They waddle over your feet, but if you don’t step on them, they cause no trouble. Still, it makes me awful tentative as I walk. Paches doesn’t seem to notice, yet he must, for he never steps on one. Gelon reckons there are over a thousand rats in these pits. He says if you listen carefully at night, you can hear their screeching from the city.

‘The rats don’t bother you, Paches?’

‘No.’

‘I think they would get to me worse than the hunger or the thirst.’

He looks at me as if to say I’ve no clue.

‘Would you like some more water?’

He nods, and I hand him the skin.

‘You miss Athens?’

He spits out the water. Coughs.

‘Sorry, course you do. What I meant is, I hear it’s really something. You know, we Syracusans looked up to you so. Sure, isn’t our democracy taken after yours? Aye, I think I’d love to see it. The Parthenon. Gelon says it’s more beautiful than anything, even in Egypt or Persia.’

‘He’s been?’

I go to pat my club, but don’t.

‘No. He’s never been, but he’s spoken to those who have.’

‘It is.’

‘What?’

‘The most beautiful . . .’

He stops. I think tears are coming, but he masters himself.

‘It is the most beautiful city in Greece by far. I’ve been to Egypt, and I think it equals anything there. I can’t speak for Persia.’

‘You’ve been to Egypt?’

‘Yes.’

‘The pyramids? Really?’

He nods.

‘Would you like an olive?’

I hand him a few more.

‘Thank you, Polyphemus.’

I spot Gelon in the distance. He’s plopped on a rock—a couple of Athenians below him.

‘Lampo,’ I say quickly.

‘Pardon?’

‘My name. It’s not really Polyphemus. It’s Lampo. Sure, who’d be calling a child after a Cyclops?’

‘Oh.’

I grin and nudge him forward.

‘Brace yourself, Gelon. Here’s your leading man!’

Gelon peers down.

‘What?’

‘Meet Jason. See those green eyes. Didn’t you say Jason was green-eyed?’

Gelon takes in Paches. I don’t think he’s impressed, and in truth, the cuts Biton gave him are worse than I first thought. Paches looks a state.

‘Green-eyed? What are you on about? Anyway, that poor bastard’s dying.’

‘You’re a negative fucker, Gelon.’ I put my arm around Paches. ‘Show him, Paches. Jason’s final speech, right, when he realizes his children are dead!’

Paches coughs.

‘“You who are most despised by the gods, I—”’

‘Wait!’ says Gelon. ‘If he’s going to do it, at least do it as part of the scene. Medea, are you ready?’

‘Think so.’

A very tall woman steps forward, but of course, there are no women in the pits. I look again. Isn’t it only the poor bastard whose neck was swaying so, though his hair is much longer now and he’s in a girl’s chiton.

‘That your sister’s?’

Gelon nods.

‘The hair?’

‘From a horse.’

‘You went all out.’

‘Aye.’

Paches and Medea get in their positions. Gelon and I sit on a rock and wait. I think of what it would be like to see the real thing in Athens, and I feel an ache for I know I never will, but then I look around me: the quarry walls circling and the sky pressing down, thick with stars, or gods, and below equally thick with Athenians. Sure, isn’t this quarry itself an amphitheatre?

A huge Athenian amphitheatre, with two little Syracusans watching.

They begin.

Ferdia Lennon

Ferdia Lennon was born and raised in Dublin. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. His fiction has appeared in publications such as The Irish Times and The Stinging Fly. In 2019 and 2021, he received Literature Bursary Awards from the Arts Council of Ireland. The chapter is excerpted from his debut novel, Glorious Exploits, will will be published by Fig Tree on January 18. Copyright © Ferdia Lennon 2024.

About Glorious Exploits: The novel from which this extract is taken is short, but it took a long time for me to write. Initially, I wanted to put everything in. To write an epic of the Peloponnesian War with different timelines, naval battles, long speeches, and then I reached a bit of an impasse. The problem I realised was that this book had already been written. It was called Thucydides’ The History of The Peloponnesian War, and Thucydides had done a pretty good job of it. Still, I kept going with my timelines and my sketches of 5th-century BC siege engines until one day, half despairing, I took a break and, for fun as much as anything, started to reread The Iliad. One of the curious things about this poem is it’s generally thought of as a story of the Trojan War when really it’s the Trojan War reduced to a single episode and its fallout: The Rage of Achilles, a ten-year conflict through the fractal of a few weeks, one individual’s anger and its dreadful consequences. Reading it again something clicked. What had seemed impassable was actually pretty clear and straightforward. My story wasn’t about famous generals, sieges or naval battles, but two theatre-obsessed potters and their attempt to put on a play with defeated enemies no matter what the cost. I would follow this decision wherever it took them, nothing more, nothing less. That was the book. So, if you’re listening, Homer, thank you. I appreciate the lesson.

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This So-Called Writing Life https://stingingfly.org/2023/12/13/this-so-called-writing-life/ Wed, 13 Dec 2023 12:03:24 +0000 http://stingingfly.flywheelsites.com/?p=38675 Continue reading "This So-Called Writing Life"]]> A series of essays reflecting on craft, process, and the pains and pleasures of writing and publishing. Contributors: Kevin Doherty, Sheila Armstrong, Kevin Curran, Donal Ryan, Jan Carson, and Sheena Patel, with an Introduction and Afterword by Series Editor, Olivia Fitzsimons.


Afterword

December 2023

Over the past thirteen months, lots of people have told me how much these essays have meant to them, I have had conversations about the series at book launches, in workshops, and while drinking wine in the courtyard of Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. I have listened as people expressed how the essays left them feeling seen, understood, and a little bit more hopeful. The series has travelled: Jan Carson talked about her essay on Literary Community in Australia and Kevin Curran was interviewed for TV inside his writing shed.

I don’t know where you might be reading this: perhaps on a phone at work, on the commute home, alone in your room, hiding for a few precious moments in the car outside your house, or in a hospital, waiting at the GP, while you’re making dinner. Life may be difficult right now, fraught. There might be a baby or toddler on your knee, an elderly relative to care for; your heart might be broken; there will always be someone or something else vying for your attention. 

Today, as I write this, my youngest son is sick, off school again. I am working at the kitchen table, breakfast dishes piled in the sink, laundry waiting to be put out. This is my writing life—scattered, stretched out—far from anyone’s idea of perfect. Yet, I want everything to be perfect. But I am not perfect. I am uncertain. I remain afraid of failing myself, other writers, the magazine, our readers. And I wonder what is the point in writing, with all the devastation, death and horror, that engulfs the world? And then I see the community I belong to speak up, raise funds, use their voice, and I feel that writers are needed, vital, brave. And I want to better serve writers who trust me with their work because I know it matters. 

I did not expect that working on these essays would affect me as much as it has. Foolishly, I tried not to admit to myself that in order to get others to be brave I might have to become a little bit braver too. Selfishly, I wanted to feel less alone. Luckily, I had the generous support and skill of Thomas Morris and The Stinging Fly, to help guide the way. 

Re-reading these essays now, I find solace with Sheila Armstrong, faith with Donal Ryan, and I feel less alone with Sheena Patel. Kevin Curran entreats us all to do the work, while Jan Carson speaks to community in all its variations, and Kevin Doherty encourages steadfastness, to turn to the light and try again. In Ireland, we are blessed with a thriving literary culture that allows space for such reflection. It is soothing to see commonly held insecurities, challenges and joys reflected in the work that the writers in this series have shared. There is still more to say and more writers ready to help us find our way. 

This So-Called Writing Life: Season 2 will be back in January with an essay from Emily Cooper, but for now, thank you for reading. 

—Olivia Fitzsimons


Traditional Music

I don’t want to be looked at but I sing, amplified in a crowded hall. I don’t believe in admitting opinions but I agree to explain myself in essay format… This is the want and the shame of wanting.

–Kevin Doherty

The House That Shame Built

As writers, it is so rare to have a moment of trust in our own competence. What poison that is to our brains: to constantly be the imposter, to never know if we are good at our job, to attribute any success to an elaborate conspiracy.

—Sheila Armstrong

Doing the work

I ask some of my students to read chapters from the book, to cement my characters in place, elevate them. And they agree to help; over the course of a few weeks, five seventeen-year-olds stay back after school and read.

—Kevin Curran

You gotta have faith

The act of sitting, poised, waiting for something to occur, is as necessary a part of the writing process as the typing of words onto a screen. Or so I tell myself.

—Donal Ryan

On community

I was not an open-minded person when I first began to publish books. Writers befriended and accepted me with all my fundamentalist baggage. They gave me the time and space to change. They did not judge me.

—Jan Carson

We can’t all be a fresh new voice in literature 

I was a nightmare in those last three months. I had a tantrum on the floor of the publisher’s office where I cried for two hours and my poor editor hung off the window ledge for dear life waiting it out. 

—Sheena Patel


Introduction

November 2022

In the eleven months since my debut novel was published I have never felt more unsure of myself. Was I good enough? Was I ready? No. Not ever. I thought I knew who I was at forty-seven but publishing changed that. I know for certain that publishing is hard, no matter how old you are, or how secure. It can be a shadowy process, one that feels closed off to some of us; and at times it can seem impossible to navigate a way through all the unspoken rules. There is help—editors, writing friends—but it can be very lonely. Self-doubt becomes a companion who never shuts up: the bore at the party you are stuck with is yourself. 

How do other writers overcome insecurity to get words onto the page, and eventually show them to someone else? The reflections in this series of essays—starting here with a wonderful contribution by Kevin Doherty—provide an insight into the pleasure, and pain, that writing undoubtedly invites. Each writer has their own ways of making work, individual processes and rituals, but some sentiments are common, some feelings universal. 

As a former Catholic I hold reflection like a sibling of confession. Reflection has the potential to be shameful, whispered in dark recesses, to uncaring people happy to utilise your painful truths as a conduit to a higher power. I was bad. I was wrong. I was stupid. But, simultaneously, it can be incredibly potent when someone shares hidden knowledge. It can be divine, dazzling in its ability to connect and enlighten, cast off all the darkness, to see yourself as you truly are, reflected in other people.

I have asked writers I admire to dissect themselves, cut deep with their observations. I want to know the hows and whys of their work, examine their experiences, and this writing life they inhabit. What makes writing possible? Impossible? I’m interested in the conversations we’re having with ourselves about what we know and don’t know about our art. I hope these essays will extend that awareness, so that we might better examine our own assumptions and beliefs, interrogate the self-doubt that surrounds us, and find a way to cast it off, just long enough to do the work. I am certain these essays will resonate with many readers and provide a little illumination for our writing, our lives, in 2023. 

—Olivia Fitzsimons

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The Gay Panic is About Me https://stingingfly.org/2023/11/22/the-gay-panic-is-about-me/ Wed, 22 Nov 2023 12:00:00 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=41935 Continue reading "The Gay Panic is About Me"]]>

Introduction

A year ago, at the end of 2022, we received an essay submission from a queer Ugandan writer about finding ways to live joyfully and authentically in an oppressive society. When on May 26th of this year, President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act, we asked the writer if they would like to revisit their essay, to share their experiences both with fellow Ugandans and international readers who may not be aware of the reality they face in simply existing as a queer person in Kampala. The following piece is the result of months of difficult and passionate work by the writer, whose anger at the regime is matched by their belief in the Ugandan spirit, and their hope that friendship and community will see them, and their loved ones, through these darkest of days. To accompany this essay, we commissioned a photographer based in Kampala to capture images of modern Ugandan life, which we are equally proud to present.

It will become obvious why both the writer of this essay, and the photographer whose images of life in Kampala accompany their words, choose to remain anonymous. Working on this essay with its writer, I experienced the gamut of emotions: rage at the injustices faced by innocent people, admiration for their resilience, awe at the bravery of activists. And there is wry humour here too in how the writer evaluates the corruption of the political class, or the assumptions or romantic tribulations of their cis-hetero compatriots. The essay is divided into short sections, covering the writer’s own life, civil society in Uganda, and a brilliant, succinct queer history of Africa. But there’s a lot of context, and so this is certainly a long read—longer than the usual pieces we publish here on stingingfly.org. 

A commitment to social justice is one of The Stinging Fly’s values, and a vision of a world made more compassionate through literature is at the heart of all we do. We are inspired by radical work, challenging ideas, and strong perspectives. This essay is in accordance with these aspirations. 

—Lisa McInerney, Editor

A Grand Ole Ball

I started 2023 by watching the fireworks with my queer friends by my side. It was an intentional and symbolic action, something to set the tone for what the year would bring. 2022 had been the best year of my life; I felt that I was coming into myself and finding a community of my own. I met so many amazing queer people, and we spent the year coming up with excuses to gather and celebrate our being. From birthdays to Pride, Eid, Trannyversary parties, movie nights, Queerloween and Queermas, we were having a grand ole ball, dancing to Renaissance. I was living my best queer life, like I was in Dublin and not Kampala. It was the gayest year on personal record, and I was ready for 2023 to top it.

29th May 2023, Uganda

Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda since 1986, signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act, the world’s harshest anti-LGBT law. The act restricts freedom of speech on LGBTQI+ civil rights and prescribes up to 20 years imprisonment for ‘recruitment, promotion or funding’ of homosexuality, life imprisonment for gay sex, and the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’.

Shit Hits the Fan

Ugandans were homophobic long before the introduction of the law, but in recent years, things escalated in a way that none of us could have predicted. I think the current panic started when a Twitter user posted a picture of two high school girls from an international school who went to prom together—one wearing a suit, the other in a beautiful green dress—implying that they were lesbians. Few were curious as to why he had this photo to begin with, or why an adult man was speculating on the sexual lives of underage girls. Around the same time, a number of students were expelled for ‘lesbianism’ from a prominent, traditional single sex school. 

WhatsApp chain messages began to be forwarded across the country, warning parents to beware of homosexual influences on their children in schools. Elisha Mukisa, a man who described himself as an ‘ex-gay’, came forward and claimed that a prominent LGBTQI+ organisation, SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda), had recruited him and others into homosexuality and made them film gay pornography, leading to his becoming infected with HIV. His testimony reinforced the myth that queer people were ‘recruiting’ children and further fanned the flames of anti-gay hate. A blacklist of NGOs offering services to the LGBTQI+ community was circulated. Homophobic messages began to find their way into my carefully curated Twitter timeline and TikTok ‘For You’ page. All over the media, and at dinner tables, the queer community was the topic of discussion, and the consensus was that sinister forces were on a mission to spread homosexuality within the country by targeting children.

About a year after Mukisa came forward, a phone-call recording surfaced in which this ‘ex-gay’ tells a queer activist that he would like to return ‘home’ to the queer community. He acknowledges that he made his claims because he needed money; he was not receiving assistance from LGBTQI+ organisations, so he decided to turn to the government to offer his testimony in exchange for financial support. According to Mukisa, he worked with high-ranking members of the Ugandan government, like the Speaker of Parliament and even the President himself, to ensure the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act. In the recording, Mukisa brags that he lives in a fully-furnished house, paid for by the First Lady, but now that he has every material thing he needs, he realises that ’this is not the life I want‘ because he cannot be himself. The activist tells Mukisa that he would need to apologise for the harm that he has caused. Mukisa expresses concern that the queer community will not forgive him, and then decides he will only tell the truth about the situation on condition that queer organisations help him to seek asylum. 

In a twist of fate that almost feels scripted, Elisha Mukisa is going to face the law he worked so hard to put in place. On the 23rd of August 2023, a few days after those recordings surfaced, Mukisa was arraigned before the court and charged with homosexuality. Under the law, because he is HIV positive, and in the event that he infected his co-accused, his case may be categorised as aggravated homosexuality which carries the death penalty. While I don’t forgive him for the role he played in this injustice, I don’t want him dead. It remains to be seen how the case will unfold. 

Gabby with the Waist-long Braids 

When I was little, there was no discussion about homosexuality at the dinner table, no representation in the media, no prominent LGBTQI+ organisations, and I ended up queer anyway. I knew I was gay before I even knew what gay was, or that it was considered a bad thing. 

I remember the twinge of disappointment I always felt after those sex education lessons at school when the boys would be separated from the girls and a senior woman teacher would tell us about periods. The whole time, a part of me that could not name what I was feeling waited for her to say… something, but she never did. I thought I was going crazy and that there was something deeply wrong with me. I thought I was the only one in the world. 

When I was thirteen, I attended a week-long youth camp run by my church. One of the nights was dedicated to our praying for deliverance from any ungodly tendencies that had a hold on us. During the week, there had been sermons about homosexuality, and the youth pastors had invited anyone who was ‘struggling’ to approach them for counselling. I didn’t, because I could not stand the idea of anyone knowing. But that night, tears streaming down my face, I prayed to be delivered from my attraction to women.

Part of the reason I was so conflicted was that I was also attracted to men. A very specific kind of men, but men nonetheless, so I knew that I had it in me to be a ‘good, normal Christian girl’. I walked out of the auditorium that night believing I had been cured of homosexuality. I woke the next day hopeful and excited. It had rained during the night, and the morning air was crisp, the sun warm. It felt like a new beginning, like God had sent that storm to wash away my sins. And then Gabby with the waist-long braids and winged eyeliner walked by, and my chest tightened in that familiar way. I was still gay. 

I began to despair, experiencing this as a consistent low hum inside me. I was never going to be cured, which meant I was never going to go to heaven—I was going to burn in hell. The Bible teaches that it’s not just your actions you need to worry about, that you also sin with your thoughts; I hadn’t even had my first romantic encounter with a girl and I already hated myself, because I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to hold the hand of a girl I loved who loved me back. Where would I even find her? How would I know if she was queer? What if I approached a straight girl and then she told everyone I was a disgusting, predatory lesbian? I fell into depression and started cutting myself. I developed an eating disorder. I didn’t feel connected to my body.

In high school, speakers were invited to deliver horror stories about homosexuality. One man told us that he had been kidnapped and used for sex by both men and women, and how his intestines fell out of his anus; it was all very graphic. I would later learn that this gentleman did the rounds—my peers who attended other schools remember him as well. And his kind of approach was not unique. As soon as you mention homosexuality, Ugandans start thinking about anal sex and eating faeces. This is courtesy of Pastor Martin Ssempa’s viral anti-gay sermon which included a video presentation of coprophilic gay pornography. (Excuse me for a moment while I kink shame, but what the actual fuck? For a ‘Christian heterosexual man’, Ssempa has been to parts of porn websites the average homosexual person has never visited. I wonder how long and far he had to look to find those videos?)

Back to high school. We were told to be careful, that there were lesbians who had been planted in the school to recruit students into homosexuality, funded by foreign organisations. I believed this, even knowing that I myself was queer. I’ve kept journals for most of my life, but in those turbulent years, I couldn’t put into writing what I was feeling, partly because I was afraid someone would read it, but more because I was afraid that if I wrote it down I would make it real. 

The fear of people finding out would hang over my head for years. I remember, in my second year of uni, calling my boyfriend in the midst of a panic attack, crying to him that everyone knew, and they were all talking about me, and that my life was over. What was all the angst for? I was technically heterosexual if you looked at the people I had been involved with. I hated myself for seven years before I was ever involved with a woman. What a waste of time.

I’m glad I survived it. Many kids don’t. 

‘Let them do it, but the right way…’

The series of events that led to the Anti-Homosexuality Act coming into law felt choreographed, propped up by that central falsehood that queer people are a danger to the children of Uganda. No doubt there are homosexuals who prey on children, and my heart goes out to their victims. I strongly agree that they should be identified and dealt with under the law; the existing Penal Code Act penalises rape and defilement. The data tells us that every 42 minutes, a Ugandan child is sexually abused. But we know that the overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse in this country is carried out by adult heterosexual men, and that of the 12,740 defilement cases reported in 2022, 310 of the victims were male and 12,430 female. The logical conclusion should be that heterosexuality poses a far greater danger to Ugandan children than homosexuality, and should be similarly legislated against. 

The current teenage pregnancy rate in Uganda is at 25%. During the COVID-19 pandemic, an average of 32,000 teenage pregnancies were recorded per month. Adult heterosexual men were responsible for a significant proportion of these pregnancies, but few voices in our media are keen to raise the issue that a large number of Ugandan men prey on girls, and that they have been enabled by the wider community. 

In a 2014 BBC interview with Stephen Fry, Simon Lokodo, then the Ugandan Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity, was confronted with the fact that heterosexual rape is endemic in Ugandan society. He responded, ‘Let them do it, but the right way, at least it is the natural way of desiring sex.’ (Stephen Fry recalls how this confrontation rattled him so much, he attempted to take his own life afterwards.) Lokodo’s statement is a perfect encapsulation of the hypocrisy of homophobic Ugandans. 

A Waste of Sin

In June 2021, a video circulated of a gay wedding in Nansana, a town just outside Kampala, that had been raided by the police. With the couple’s faces plastered all over social media, commenters kept asking why they looked poor. Aren’t gays supposed to be rich? 

‘What a waste of a sin,’ was the common refrain. 

The narrative is that there is a sinister agenda among foreign entities to implant homosexuality in Uganda, with local actors funded to spread the ‘vice’. There is a general belief that homosexuals are lazy, so ‘promotion of homosexuality’ is seen as a quick way to make money. Queer Africans from Kenya to Uganda, Zambia to Ghana are inundated with the same claims that we receive allowances from shadow organisations for being gay. We’ve all been played; we’ve been gay for free this whole time when we could have been cashing serious cheques?

The ‘rich gay’ stereotype abounds in part because only a small percentage of queer Africans can afford to be visible, and this skews public perception. The places you frequent, the areas you can afford to live in, the financial ability to avoid public transport—all offer a degree of leeway to be able to express yourself without repercussion. In a worst-case scenario, you can buy your way out of trouble.

This doesn’t apply to the majority. In 2022, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics categorised 42.1% of the Ugandan population as ‘multi-dimensionally poor’. In 2019, 12.3 million Ugandans were surviving on less than $1.44 per day. The pandemic worsened that figure. And, of course, it includes queer Ugandans. 

Most Ugandans can’t conceptualise a queer person as an ordinary human being, though it’s likely that every Ugandan has at least one queer person in their life. They may not be aware of it, especially if they are homophobic, since most of us blend in. We are heterosexual Ugandans’ friends, family members, classmates, teachers, colleagues, doctors, lawyers, boda boda riders and Rolex guys. For those queer Ugandans who cannot blend, who fail to adhere to gender norms, their participation in everyday life is severely curtailed by prejudiced systems and individuals. They face higher poverty rates than their heterosexual peers. Students who are identified as queer, whether they are or are simply perceived to be, are often bullied or expelled from educational institutions, and in a lot of cases, disowned by their families. (A queer child is a shame on the family name.) Family is the primary social safety net: without it, people are even more prone to poverty. 

The first thing most queer Ugandans stand to lose is their family. Hearing family members repeat homophobic rhetoric and knowing what could happen if they ever learn who you are is a very distinct pain. When I was considering coming out to my parents, I was terrified that they would tell me I was no longer their child, and ask me to leave. I made backup plans which were flimsy in hindsight; I had no job and I was still in school, so I was dependent on my parents. I took a very poorly calculated risk, but I was lucky: I have parents who love me regardless. Those of us who still have connections with our families are the envy of the community, because the wider queer community is marked by grieving for the families we are no longer allowed to be a part of. How does an ideology that causes disowning of queer family members encourage cohesion and longevity of the family?

It is homophobia, not homosexuality, that threatens families. 

Unemployment and housing discrimination are factors, too. People do not want to hire a gay or a ‘lesibian’, and they definitely do not want to rent to one. Long before the Anti-Homosexuality Act was signed into law, people were being evicted over their real or perceived sexuality with less than two weeks’ notice. (The law requires that a landlord give three months’ notice before eviction, but the average queer Ugandan is not aware of that, nor do they have the resources to enforce it.) Now, the Anti-Homosexuality Act even renders a landlord liable for knowingly renting to a homosexual. 

Queer Ugandans who can mask their sexuality may complete their education and obtain work, but make no mistake, unless you’re lucky to have a boss who is an ally, if your employer finds out about your sexuality, it’s bye-bye job. Try your luck with Uganda’s 9.3 million unemployed youth! Ugandan NGOs that support the queer community have tried to help by offering skilling workshops, but these are often labelled as ‘promoting homosexuality’—a perpetual concern. 

By Their Fruits, You Will Know Them

Overseas donations to LGBTQI+ organisations are interpreted as funds for ‘recruitment’ and taken as evidence of a sinister plot to spread homosexuality in Africa, despite the fact that these organisations need funding precisely because queer Africans are so frequently victimised by their communities. Interestingly, anti-LGBT campaigners neglect to mention that they too receive money from foreigners. Far from being organic, this mass hysteria is engineered by conservatives on the American Christian Right, pushing a version of African family values modelled on evangelical Christianity. 

Church attendance in the USA is in steady decline. In Uganda, though, business is booming. Africans are a very spiritual people. When our traditional religions were demonised by European missionaries —more on that later—they were replaced with Christianity, and Islam to a smaller extent. 

Africans have taken up Christianity with an intense fervour under the guidance of pastors who wield tremendous influence over their congregations. Most are proponents of a prosperity gospel, promising wealth to those with unwavering faith. Churchgoers are encouraged to give generously, and assured that the Lord will return their generosity sevenfold. When He doesn’t, it’s interpreted as a sign that their faith is lacking. (Nothing is too sacred to be desecrated by capitalism.) Prosperity gospel is so influential precisely because people are poor and suffering. For many, divine providence is their only source of hope. Regardless of the reasons, Ugandans are attending church in big numbers, and so Uganda is seen as fertile ground for American evangelicals who lost the battle against marriage equality at home, and who are currently backing anti-trans legislation across various US states. Neo-fascism is on the rise in the West, and Africa is a proxy battleground for its culture wars. 

The Christian Right plays a long game. An investigation by Open Democracy revealed that more than 20 US Christian groups opposing LGBTQI+ rights, access to safe abortion and contraceptives, and comprehensive sex and sexuality education, have spent at least $54m in Africa since 2007. These groups and actors include Family Watch International, founded by Sharon Slater, and Scott Lively, author of a book called The Pink Swastika in which he makes the ludicrous claim that the Holocaust was engineered and enacted by gay men. Lively’s actions in Uganda prompted SMUG to file a lawsuit against him, which was dismissed in 2017 on a technicality; nevertheless, Judge Richard Ponsor’s ruling stated: 

‘The question before the court is not whether Defendant’s actions in aiding and abetting efforts to demonize, intimidate, and injure LGBTI people in Uganda constitute violations of international law. They do.’ 

These extremists have forged ties with local anti-LGBT activists like Pastor Martin Ssempa (of the coprophilic gay pornography), Stephen Langa and David Bahati to influence policymakers. Queer Africans the continent over find themselves targeted with outrageous claims that vary little across countries; it is clear that African legislators are being ideologically mentored. 

For example, the Kenyan anti-homosexuality bill contains a clause that criminalises referring to someone with a different pronoun than the one corresponding with their assigned gender at birth. But most African languages do not even have the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘she’. In Swahili, if I were to ask ‘Where is she?’ or ‘Where is he?’ I would say ‘ako wapi?’ And in Kikuyu, ‘E ha?’ or ‘E ku?’ The same goes for Ugandan languages. In Luganda, it would be ‘aliwa?’, in Lugisu, ‘ali wayena?’, in Lugwere, ‘ali aina?’, in Acholi, ‘Tikwene?’, in Ethur, ‘En ti’e kwene?’, in Runyoro, Rukiga and Runyankore, ‘ari nkahi?’ or ‘arahi?’ The direct translation of these phrases is ‘Where are they?’

In America and other parts of the world, they/them pronouns have conservatives screaming that it’s grammatically incorrect to refer to a single individual as ‘they’, and that they won’t give into the ‘woke agenda’. The clause in the Kenyan anti-homosexuality bill is a reflection of that meltdown. 

When pressed about their role in orchestrating the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, Slater and Lively both responded that they do not support such harsh penalties for queer people. If they are so confident that what they are doing is right, why are they shying away from the results? They should claim their win and celebrate it out loud—or are they ashamed? Is this not exactly what they hoped would come from their hateful rhetoric?

The Bible has something to say about false prophets: ‘By their fruits, you will know them’. And, baby, look at the fruits and tell me this is Christ-like. 

A Queer History of a Pure Continent

In Uganda, every 3rd of June, millions of pilgrims flock to Namugongo Shrines to commemorate the 45 pages of the court of Kabaka (King) Mwanga II who were burned to death on his orders when they refused to renounce Christianity. This event holds a lot of significance for Uganda as a nation—the Pope even joined the pilgrimage in 2015—and yet, Ugandans are not informed of the circumstances that led to the pages’ execution. 

In primary school, we were vaguely taught that there were political factors at play, that the Martyrs had disobeyed the king. So imagine my shock when I stumbled upon historical accounts showing that Kabaka Mwanga II was accustomed to having sexual relations with his male palace pages. 

The British missionary John F. Faupel wrote in 1962 that,

Homosexuality seems to have been rife at Mutesa’s (Mwanga’s father’s) court. Mutesa himself indulged in the vice and encouraged his subjects to do so. His son Ssekabaka Mwanga II was also an addict before he ascended to the throne.’ 

As the pages interacted with European Catholic and Anglican missionaries, they were taught that homosexuality was a sin against the Christian god. They started refusing to meet Mwanga’s sexual demands, which was viewed by Mwanga’s senior chiefs as an attempt to undermine his authority as Kabaka. He was advised to do something about it, and the pages were put to death. 

There is much to be said about the power imbalance that existed between these pages and Kabaka Mwanga II, but we won’t get into that. Mwanga has since been labelled ‘Uganda’s bisexual king’, but this a modern categorisation which doesn’t accurately represent what was going on in his court. At the time, gender in Buganda (the traditional kingdom of the Baganda people, located within Uganda) was framed by a context-sensitive intersection of political authority, social class, biological sex, and gender roles. The royal palace was considered sacred grounds, where gender was constructed differently than it was in public spheres. Within the palace, all royals were gendered as male—meaning a Mumbejja (princess) would be referred to as Ssebo (sir)—and all bakopi (commoners) were gendered as female. This may provide some context to how we think about Kabaka Mwanga II’s interactions with his pages, differentiating them from present-day ideas about gay or bisexual identities. But whichever way you look at it, it is clear that precolonial Africans experienced and acted on same-sex desire.

We don’t have a lot of information regarding how homosexuality was regarded among common Baganda people at the time. It may well be that Kabaka Mwanga got away with things that would not have been accepted by the wider community. Some scholars have argued that his ‘vice’ was picked up from Arab traders. 

Sounds familiar. Queer Ugandans today are accused of having ‘learnt’ homosexuality from television, or interactions with white people. That queerness is un-African is a narrative that has been repeated by various African presidents and their citizens. Robert Mugabe described it as ‘a scourge planted by the White man on a pure continent’. With homosexuality viewed as a facet of neo-colonialism, African leaders passing laws like the Anti-Homosexuality Act can be heralded as brave, anti-imperialist revolutionaries who have stood up to the West to defend African values. The Anti-Homosexuality Act has certainly entrenched Yoweri Museveni in the minds of homophobic Africans as a leader who fought off neo-colonial attempts to dominate our culture. (Additionally, Museveni tries to craft his image here as a benevolent grandfather, referring to young Ugandans as his bazukullu, his grandchildren. This makes it difficult for Ugandans to hold Museveni accountable as a public servant. In our society, it is bad manners to criticise your grandfather.)

There is, of course, no such thing as a homogenous African culture. Africa holds within it a multiplicity of cultures. Uganda makes up only 0.8% of the African land mass and it contains over 56 tribes, each with their own customs and traditions. The presumed homophobic culture that Africans valiantly defend is a colonial relic: European Victorian moral sensibilities based on Christian ideology. I think wryly of people proclaiming we need to protect African values while referring to Sodom and Gomorrah and quoting Islamic and Christian texts—religions distinctly foreign to Africa.

Precolonial Africans who engaged in homosexual behaviour probably did not think of themselves as gays and lesbians in the contemporary sense. That language, and those understandings of sexuality as personal identity, arose from the very specific socio-political contexts surrounding Western gay and lesbian rights movements. But the type of behaviour associated with those terms was, without a doubt, always present. 

It is commonly claimed that the absence of terms for queer people in our local languages is proof of the non-existence of homosexuality in pre-colonial Africa. But that is simply false. The Ethiopian Amhara had the wandarwarad (male-female) and the wandawande (mannish-woman); the Hausa, the yan dauda (homosexual or transvestite); in Ghana, the Kojobesia (man-woman). Among the Fang, gay men were called a bele nnem e bango (he has the heart [aspirations] of boys) and in Ila they were referred to as mwaami (prophet). Outside those palace walls of Kabaka Mwanga II in Buganda, there was language for those who did not meet expected gender roles: feminine males were referred to as ekikazikazi and masculine females were known as nakawanga (she-cock) or kyakulassajja (grew like a man).

Community acceptance of LGBTQI+ identities varied across time and place. Some African societies tolerated homosexual activity but did not encourage it, and in others, gender non-conforming people may have been ostracised, the names used to refer to them closer to slurs than honorifics. But in some societies, queer individuals were integrated, even deified as spiritual leaders who served as a bridge between the ancestral plane and the physical world. 

In an interview with Ugandan human rights activist and poet Stella Nyanzi, on the question of what place homosexuality has in Ugandan culture, one queer Ugandan said,

I don’t believe homosexuality isn’t part of my culture. As I said, my ancestors chose me out of all the people in my family. I’m the only kuchu (homosexual) out of my father’s children. In my extended family, we’re two—one of my cousins is also a kuchu lesbian-man. But the ancestors left all the other people who are straight and they chose me to be the medium through whom they communicate to the people in the clan about cultural matters. When the spirits climb on my head, I get into a trance and start dancing Kigisu traditional dances. My family know it’s time to take me to the village home. I help people to solve their problems. I’m powerful in that moment. I can even sit in fire and not get burnt. But then if homosexuality was bad, the ancestral spirits wouldn’t have chosen me.

The cultural significance of same-sex sexual activity also varied across societies. In some communities, it was part of an initiation process from boyhood into manhood. In others, it was believed to grant a warrior protection before going into battle by making them more vigorous. Azande warriors routinely married boys who functioned as temporary wives, and paid bride price to the boys’ parents. (‘Bride price’ refers to payments made by the groom or his family to the bride or her family—the same idea as a dowry, but in reverse.) In South Africa, ‘mine marriages’ became common: senior miners took new miners as wives, offering protection, teaching them the nature of mining work and socialising them into that environment in exchange for cooking and sexual favours. The senior partner had to pay bride price (known as ilobolo in South Africa) to the family of the boy whom he wished to marry. Homosexual sex was also looked at as an alternative for young men in societies where it was important for women to maintain sexual purity before marriage. For the nomadic San people, who did not cultivate crops and could not afford their population to swell, it was a method of birth control. The woman-woman marriages among the Igbo in Nigeria and the Kikuyu in Kenya were distinctly noted as non-sexual. Older women married younger women, who would then bear children on their behalf. Across Africa—across the world—indigenous communities had robust understandings of gender and sexuality that transcended the cisheterosexist binary that we have today. 

That is, until they were suppressed by colonising peoples who punished any expression of ‘deviance’. Anti-gay laws in Uganda were first introduced during British colonial rule as a legal transplant of the British 1533 Buggery Act, which Ireland was also subject to, of course, as a colony itself. (Interestingly, lesbianism was not illegal. The British parliament was reluctant to criminalise it, because they feared drawing attention to it would give respectable young women funny ideas.)

Colonisation required a distinction to be created between Africans and Europeans: Africans were constructed as ‘primitive’, juxtaposed with ‘civilised’ white people. Where homosexual behaviour was observed within African societies, it was taken as evidence of their primitivity, proof that they were savages and less than human—fit, therefore, for enslavement.

Andrew Battell, an English traveller imprisoned by the Portuguese in the 1590s in what is now Angola, wrote of the Imbangala people:

‘Beastly in their living, for they have men in women’s apparel, whom they keepe among their wives.’

A Portuguese soldier in 1681 also wrote,

‘There is among the Angolan pagan much sodomy, sharing one with the other their dirtiness and filth, dressing as women.’ 

Among the Langi people of Northern Uganda, there was a category of effeminate males known as the mudoko dako. They transitioned socially, took on typically female roles within their society, and were treated as women who could marry men. The mudoko dako wore traditional women’s dress, jewellery, and styled their hair like women. They were not known to alter themselves physically. The mudoko dako were accepted and integrated into society, and held to the same standards of ubuntu (an African Bantu collectivist philosophy) as those around them. Unlike the Hijra, India’s ‘third gender’, the mudoko dako had no special religious or cultural significance; they existed just to exist. And unlike the Hijra—once judged as an ‘opprobrium upon colonial rule’, now officially recognised as a third gender by the Indian Supreme Court—the mudoko dako did not survive British moral determinations.

Most pre-colonial African societies relied on oral tradition, so the past is, in many ways, lost to us. We must rely on anthropological accounts by outsiders who observed communities through their own cultural lenses, and were likely to misinterpret the things they saw. Prior to British intervention, the laws and customs that governed our people were alive. Because they were unwritten, they operated in constant flux, changing as people’s realities shifted. What is known of traditional African culture today was written by people who were part of the colonial system that disrupted those cultures.

It’s clear that queer people have always existed in Uganda, but you don’t have to take my word for it. In a 2012 BBC Hard Talk interview, President Museveni acknowledged that ‘Homosexuals in small numbers have always existed in our part of black Africa… They were never prosecuted. They were never discriminated [against].’ Still, most people do not know that there is documented evidence of same-sex desire in various African cultures. I believed there was no queerness in Africa’s history until the first lockdown, when I found myself with a lot of time on my hands. Now ask: how much more believable is that myth for someone who needs it to be true, lest their worldview be shattered? 

And Then I Met a Girl…

The Anti-Homosexuality Act has made provisions for the ‘rehabilitation’ of homosexuals, with Ugandan sources claiming that a conversion therapy camp is being established in Nakasongola to handle those who will be arrested under this law. 

Conversion therapy is predicated on the idea that homosexuality is an abnormality that needs to be cured, and it works by reinforcing shame and self-hatred in queer people. Sharon Slater, of Family Watch International, advocates for ‘reinforcing a culture inimical to homosexuality to encourage LGBT people to unlearn their attraction.’ The plan is to create conditions so hostile that queer people decide that they would be better off being heterosexual. This has the unintended effect of making it so that some queer people would simply prefer to be dead, because when you finally realise that you cannot change, what are you left with? 

I have never been in conversion therapy, but Ugandan society is a borderless, open-air conversion camp—everywhere you turn, the message is that it is wrong to be anything but heterosexual. For years I internalised the idea that I was a dirty abomination, headed for hell because I had failed to get rid of my queerness. When I wasn’t sad, I was numb. Even when I was having a jolly time with my friends, my shame lay waiting for me to be alone, waiting for a quiet moment. I could not remember a time in my life I was actively glad to be living. People woke up and just felt joy? That did not compute. 

Accepting myself and undoing that self-loathing was an important step, but the loneliness was another beast. It is one thing to accept yourself, but it’s important to have people around you who accept and affirm you as well. And I didn’t know any other queer people. 

And then I met a girl.

In typical lesbian fashion, I fell in love with her on our first ‘date’ which wasn’t even a date. She came to my room to hang out for two hours and we ended up talking for six, about trauma, being queer and navigating the homophobic Ugandan school system. I felt like we were the main characters in a queer indie film. After she left, she texted, ‘I wish I’d kissed you.’ I asked why she hadn’t, and she said she didn’t want to scare me. I’d been afraid to scare her too. 

She became my everything. I latched onto her, too tightly and too quickly. I was intoxicated with that new feeling of being seen in the way only another queer person can see you. It felt like we were living Troye Sivan’s Blue Neighbourhood; it was us against the world. She was all I could think about: her smile, her smell, the taste of her lips. When we saw each other, I felt powerful, like the sun had risen that morning just for me. I imagined our life together, growing old with her, travelling the world. We were going to start with the coast in Kenya, then South Africa, then go outside the continent. I allowed myself to have hope, and it’s the hope that gets you.

She was still figuring herself out. Even though it was she who had sought me out, she was conflicted about our relationship and her faith. She was heavily involved in the church. She’d go three times a week without fail, even interrupting our limited time together to participate in Christian fellowship. I suppose to repent for whatever we had done. I’ll never forget the moment she told me that she thought what we were doing was wrong in the Christian god’s eyes. I laughed, thinking she was joking. Soon after that, she told me she was getting married—how clichéd. 

I begged and begged her to choose me, as if some abstract notion of love could be stronger than the very real pressure she was under, as if it could override the material consequences if she did not prove to her family that she was a god-fearing heterosexual woman. Love was not winning. I was not being picked.

Until then, I had thought the heartbreak that people wrote songs and made films about was exaggerated. I had been involved with men and didn’t see what all the fuss was about. But the pain I felt when she left me made me wish I’d never met her. It made me wish I was straight. I saw her in my dreams: as a face in a crowd or lying beside me in my bed. I would smell her perfume and frantically try to follow the scent. I felt like I was losing my mind. I lost 9 kilograms and received compliments about how hot I was looking while I was dying inside. I had to attend lectures and do coursework like nothing was happening. It was us against the world, but the world had won. 

I couldn’t exactly vent to others. What would I say?

‘I know you said that if you came across a homosexual, you would put a tyre around them and set them on fire, but I’m a lesbian. And this girl I’ve been involved with is going to marry some guy, instead of running away with me to start a fairytale life. And now I daydream about stepping in front of a speeding vehicle.’ 

No. That was not an option.

But when things got really bad, finally I told my two best friends. I’d waited so long to tell them because I was… a bit embarrassed. Because truly, what had I thought was going to happen? That she would meet my parents and I hers, and we would start a cute little family? I felt like such a clown.

My two best friends kept me alive. I was hanging by a thread, and they were holding the other end. But though they were my biggest allies, there was only so much they could do. I needed to feel seen by fellow queer people, but I had no queer community to fall back on. The end of that first relationship felt like confirmation of my fears that there was only rejection in my future. My mental state, already fragile, disintegrated. 

I’m privileged in that I have the kind of mother who suggested I see a therapist. She didn’t ask what I had to be so sad about when I had food in my belly and a roof over my head, so I took a year off university to focus on keeping myself alive. 

Keep it in Your Bedroom

President Museveni is of the opinion that sexuality is such a deeply personal thing in Uganda that if he kissed his wife in public, he would not win elections. According to multi-award-winning Ugandan-British author Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, the private nature of sexual expression in Uganda means that most Ugandans first see openly gay people on Western television programmes, thus equating homosexuality with Western culture. She also says:

‘When more gay people became visible, in film and in the music industry, Africans who are gay got confident and started to come out and be conspicuous.’

Unfortunately for queer Ugandans, what qualifies as ‘conspicuous’ is arbitrary. It could be dressing in a gender non-conforming way, or existing in a public space with your partner, or even mentioning that you have a same-sex partner. 

Some Ugandans say, ‘It’s okay for you to be gay, just keep it to yourself.’ And yet how many heterosexual people base their whole personalities on their sexuality, obsessing over the rules of romantic interaction? ‘Who should pay on a date? Can a man forgive a woman who cheats? Ladies, here are some tips to keep a man!’ Ugandan pop music is rife with innuendo; talk shows constantly debate sex, relationships and marriage; sexual enhancement drugs are openly advertised on radio and television, even on loudspeakers attached to cars snaking through neighbourhoods in an effort to attract customers; tabloids publish lurid stories about which socialites are having sex with each other, or who is the ‘sweetest babe’ in Kampala; young Ugandans all but have sex on the dance floor in the name of nyigos. A television show has ONE queer character and ‘they’re shoving this rainbow thing down our throats!’. I wonder what world Ugandans think they live in where there are no queer people? For years, we sat down and consumed media depicting only heterosexual relationships and their predictable, repetitive issues; it’s time for the gays to eat. 

I too want to dance with my partner in the club. The logical conclusion would be for us to have our own bars and clubs, except the concept of a gay bar in Uganda right now is laughable. (There’s something about the threat of getting raided and featuring in the next viral video that makes it hard to relax.) 

A mere year ago, I was proud to know that when people saw me with my partner, they’d wonder how I bagged such a baddie. Now I’m afraid to hold hands in public.

For her 2013 book, Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall, Marie Cartier quotes a queer elder, Myrna Kurland: 

‘I would get up at one or two a.m. and I would call every gay bar I had the number to from the 1940s. I wouldn’t say anything. I would just stay on the phone and listen to the sounds in the background. … That phone. Those numbers. That was my lifeline … It meant there was a place somewhere—even if I couldn’t go there—that place was out there. I could hear it. Freedom.’

In the year I was recovering from the breakdown of my relationship, I self-soothed by creating my own queer community online. I followed gay people on YouTube, Twitter and TikTok. I listened to queer podcasts. I watched shows with LGBTQI+ characters. Living vicariously through queer people in progressive countries made me happy. Sometimes, it made me cry. I spent hours online, watching them live their lives. I particularly loved watching them wear their gay little outfits out in public. Alone in my room, I would scream and dance around, stirred by the bold display of phaggotry I had just witnessed. My chest would fill with such joy.

They may not realise it, but the positive impact queer people in progressive countries have on queer people across the world cannot be overstated. For those of us who live in countries where it is dangerous to express our identities, this connection means everything.

The online community I had created was a start, but the tide truly turned when I began to meet actual queer Ugandans. An old schoolmate reached out on Instagram. I was delighted to find they were also non-binary, and when I expressed my desire for queer community, they referred me to a friend of theirs who was interested in community building. 

At first, I was sceptical. But as soon as I met [REDACTED] and his partner, I knew I had found a home, I had found friends. With them, I didn’t feel like I had to put on a show or explain my existence, and the anxiety and tension I had been carrying was suddenly gone. I did not think it was possible for me to feel so at peace in the company of other people. It was my first time in a deliberately queer space. We talked for hours about everything from film and socialism to permaculture and the possibilities we could materialise for ourselves. Through [REDACTED] and his partner, I met so many brilliant people, more queer people than I thought was possible to exist on this planet, let alone in Uganda. I learnt that queer Ugandans were making lives for themselves regardless of the hostile legal and cultural environment. I learnt that it was possible to not just survive, but really live. Until then, when I’d thought of my life trajectory as a queer youth, I didn’t visualise a version where I could live openly and be happy; I only saw misery, rejection and death. I used to have nightmares regularly about being killed by a mob. And yet here I was, with people who had transcended friendship, and were quickly becoming family. 

Western Help and Hindrance

In response to the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, the USA announced that visa restrictions have been placed on ‘individuals believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic process in Uganda and abusing human rights, including those of LGBTQI+ persons, or engaging in corrupt practices.’ I applaud this, and think other countries that uphold LGBTQI+ rights and freedoms should do the same. Our gallant moral paragons should be supported in their endeavour to maintain a heterosexual Uganda by being denied access to progressive countries. What if they come across a homosexual in the streets and catch ‘gayism’ only to return to Uganda and spread it to our vulnerable youth? Let our leaders set an example, and stay here where we can all be sure that they will be safe from the gay agenda. 

The American government has also threatened to withdraw funding for HIV/AIDS prevention programmes in Uganda, but this response is much less helpful to our cause. It hurts vulnerable Ugandans who need those services, some of whom are LGBTQI+ persons living with HIV. I understand that the efficacy of HIV prevention programmes is hampered by the Anti-Homosexuality Act; that efficacy hinges on being able to reach key populations. Moreover, the money that Uganda receives for those programmes comes from American taxpayers, some of whom are queer themselves; why should their money be given to a homophobic government, especially given its habit of misappropriating funding? So I get the logic behind threatening to withdraw this funding, but it would do more harm than good. 

It would also be helpful if the international community was vocal about other human rights abuses that have been carried out by the Museveni regime. By coming out so strongly on this one issue, the impression is given that certain human rights are more important to the West than others. It actually lends to the idea that there is a Western plot to impose homosexuality on Uganda and Africa at large. 

Take for example what happened on 18th and 19th November, 2020. Protests broke out in Kampala after the arrest of opposition politician Bobi Wine, and the military was deployed and responded with tear gas, beatings and live bullets. 54 Ugandans were murdered, with many more injured. The state response in the aftermath was chilling. General Elly Tumwine, the Security Minister at the time, said, ‘Police has a right to shoot you and kill you if you reach a certain level of violence. Can I repeat? Police has a right, or any security agency if you reach a certain level, they have a right.’ The international response to the November massacre, in comparison to the recent response to the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, may as well have amounted to silence. Ugandans were left out in the cold.

And even when the West condemns human rights abuses carried out by Museveni’s regime, it continues to support and legitimise his leadership. From the time he took power in 1986, Yoweri Museveni has received total bipartisan support from every American administration. He is strategically positioned as one of America’s most important military allies in the Great Lakes region. In return, he has received sophisticated military equipment and training for his army. Donor funding has kept the regime’s pockets full enough to pay people to continue pretending that they believe Museveni is good for Uganda, to the point of getting rid of the presidential age limit to allow him to stand for another term.

To the outside world, the viral video of the fight that broke out in parliament on the day the age limit was abolished was just comic relief. Trevor Noah, covering the brawl on The Daily Show, joked that viewers wouldn’t care why chaos had broken out in the Ugandan parliament—what mattered was that it was entertaining. And while Western onlookers laughed, Ugandans found themselves ever more trapped by Museveni’s regime. 

By continuing to support this illegitimate government, the USA, Europe, and whatever other actors are complicit in a wide range of human rights abuses carried out by the Museveni regime. Without Western support, it is unlikely that Museveni would still be in power, but I suppose American interests come first, and fuck the rest of us. I wonder if American taxpayers know that their money is actively being used to hold Ugandans hostage? I wonder if they care? 

The Stability of Uganda

Ever since the November riots, I have had nightmares where I am going about my day downtown as a protest brews. Next thing I know, the big green truck is pulling up, and I spend the rest of the dream hiding from army men and dodging bullets. 

But President Museveni reached for a different kind of irrational fear—anti-LGBT sentiment. ‘Some of these (protesting) groups are being used by outsiders—the homosexuals and other groups outside there who don’t like the stability and independence of Uganda. But they will discover what they are looking for.’ Ugandans should not be surprised to see their government labelling all sorts of issues or challenges as ‘homosexual’ in order to stifle dissent or advance their interests. Parliament even approved an 18% tax on adult incontinence pants on the false basis that they are primarily used by gay men, not the sick and elderly. Another government official claimed that the DNA testing craze sweeping the country, revealing interesting levels of paternity fraud, is the work of homosexuals seeking to destroy the African family. 

Ugandans will go online to insult politicians who make such stupid statements, but won’t acknowledge that they are complicit in creating this situation. Meanwhile, the threat of violence hangs over our heads. In the months leading up to the 2021 election, army officers set up camp in various parts of Kampala; I would drive by, see the expanse of green tents, and wonder if we were in the middle of a war that we didn’t know about. Tanks drove through the city to remind Ugandans what the government was ready and willing to do to them if they stepped out of line. When Justine Lumumba, then the Secretary General of the National Resistance Movement (Uganda’s ruling party since 1986), told Ugandans that the state would kill their children, she meant it.

So here we are. Nothing seems to work in this country, except for the Uganda Driver Licensing System (we must give credit where it is due). Almost weekly, there is another shooting. The health and education sector are embarrassing; teachers and doctors have to protest to be paid, and there are no medical supplies in the hospitals. Meanwhile, our ruling classes fill their accounts with the money they are supposed to use to deliver services. They build extravagant, mall-like houses and fly out for medical treatment. Their children study abroad. Every time another scandal rocks this country, I hold my breath, wondering if this will be the thing that makes Ugandans angry enough to rise up. But we don’t, because we are afraid.

We can’t express our displeasure without risking beatings and tear gas, so we turn to the internet. But even as we banter online about the state of the nation, we’re aware that if our comments go too far, we could be picked up by a ‘drone’—an unmarked Toyota HiAce infamous for abducting people. The lucky ones later turn up with clear evidence of torture. The unlucky ones are never seen again, leaving their loved ones to wonder indefinitely what has become of them. 

Because Ugandans cope with humour, we will ask those who post particularly risqué comments what colour they would like their drone to be: white or grey? Would they like it to have air conditioning? Nothing about this is funny, really, but if we don’t laugh, we will cry.

We are wary of war, especially the elders; we have a brutal history, and this country has never seen a peaceful transition of power. Lose your life for Uganda, and your death will amount to nothing. So we keep our heads down and focus on providing for our families, quietly grumbling about how everything has gone to shit. We are angry, but we cannot express our anger in a meaningful way. The army and the increasingly militarised police are on standby to violently suppress any protests, no matter how peaceful. 

Unless, of course, you’re marching against the gays. 

This year, Ugandans have witnessed the only two peaceful protests in my living memory. In February, thousands of Muslim protestors took to the streets to protest against the LGBTQI+ community. The protests were concluded without a single tear gas canister going off. I didn’t even know that was possible, particularly as Uganda’s minority Muslim community is no stranger to scapegoating. It is common practice for any terrorist activity to be blamed on Muslims, but if Muslims had gathered to protest that, or the numerous unsolved murders of Muslim clerics in the past decade, things would have gone in a completely different direction. 

At the end of May, a day after the president assented to the Anti-Homosexuality Act and it became law, a small group of university students marched to parliament to congratulate the legislators. They were escorted by the police, and traffic officers diverted traffic to allow them to pass. This was truly a sight to behold, especially since only a few weeks prior, medical interns protesting the government’s failure to deploy them were brutally arrested. In 2019, when Makerere University students protested a 15% increase in tuition fees, the state responded like they were trying to stage a coup. 

Pointing out how absurd all this is doesn’t change the fact that queer lives are being affected by these games. It doesn’t matter that homosexuality is natural and African, it doesn’t matter that this hate is being fanned by American evangelicals, and it doesn’t matter that most African languages don’t have pronouns for ‘she’ and ‘he’—not when you’re being attacked, blackmailed, evicted, or extorted by the police. 

At this point, even if the courts rule that the law is unconstitutional, it will not change the situation. The hate has been stoked. If anything, it will be taken as confirmation that queer people are a powerful group, and President Museveni can sit back and tell the people he did his best to take down those homosexuals. Online and in person, visibly queer people are being promised that even if the court strikes down the law, they will be dealt with through mob justice.

Fostering hate and division goes directly against ubuntu, the Bantu philosophy I previously mentioned that governs the way most of our communities operate. Ubuntu is loosely translated as ‘I am because you are’, and founded on a spirit of collectivism, where one’s humanity is affirmed by the humanity of those around them. This ethos emphasises values like solidarity, interdependence, compassion, respect and dignity.

I feel that spirit when I interact with people on a day-to-day basis. It’s confusing, because I see the homophobic rhetoric online, yet I know Ugandans are not as bigoted as their leaders would like them to be, not really. I’ve experienced kindness from people that has actually shaken me, even when my presentation is gender non-conforming. Perhaps it’s the Ugandan hypocritical ability to treat people we despise with kindness, and ridicule them as soon as they are out of earshot? No. No, it’s not that. I feel a genuine sense of curiosity, camaraderie and kinship. It’s my favourite thing about this country: the warmth in how we interact with each other. That’s why for me, leaving is not a real option. I don’t want to brave cold winters and isolating, individualistic cultures. I don’t want to be an immigrant and have people look down on me as leeching off their country’s resources. I don’t think I’m mentally ready to experience racism. Leaving would only come as a last, last resort. 

I know it sounds crazy. Ugandans, queer and heterosexual, are jumping ship like grasshoppers out of a hot pan. The position seems to be that if you find a way to leave this country, hop on and never look back. Maybe I am young and naive, but I think we should stay and fix our country for those coming after us, for those who may not have the option of leaving. I know that Ugandans are brilliant and creative people, and if our leaders just let us be great, we could really make something of this country.

There are many, many things wrong with Uganda, but it is my home, and its chaos and madness is a part of me. 

If I Saw Me on the Street, I’d Want to Be Me

I’ve reached the point in my transition where I am quite androgynous. Sometimes, I look in the mirror to try and figure out what people see when they look at me, but I’ve not found an answer. I just see myself, and I’m happy with what I see. If I wasn’t already me, and I saw myself in the street, I would want to be me. What bliss.

Towards the end of 2022, the security guards at a supermarket that I frequent stopped me to ask ‘what’ I was. At the time, things felt a lot more optimistic, even whimsical. The guards told me that they had been discussing it, and had even placed a bet. The female guard was sure I was a man and the male guard was sure I was a woman. I let them debate and they failed to reach a conclusion. I was in good spirits, so when they asked me, I told them I was ‘just there in the middle’. 

The woman proclaimed, ‘You are lying. You are a woman!’ 

I told her, ‘If you want.’ Because really, if you ask me ‘what’ I am, and I tell you, and you disagree, where do we go from there? I’m not going to argue with you. You are free to call me what you want. It doesn’t change who I am.

Predictably, she was not satisfied with that response, so—I guess to corner me—she asked, ‘So if I want to be your girlfriend, will you allow?’ I told her she couldn’t be my girlfriend, because I already had someone. We laughed it off, and since that day, we greet each other with enthusiasm every time we cross paths.

I find that when I am perceived as a queer woman, it doesn’t feel as dangerous as when I am perceived as a queer man. When others perceive me as a masculine woman, I garner respect because of that masculinity. Masculinity is venerated above femininity, seen as an upgrade, so I get called ‘boss’ or ‘rasta’. Interactions with boda men and vendors are positive. 

When I am perceived as a feminine man, though, the danger is palpable. The parameters of manhood are so rigid. For a man to be queer and allow another man to dominate him is viewed as a shame to all men. To stoop so low as to be like a woman? How dare you? This is good old misogyny, of course, and it would be interesting to witness if it weren’t so scary. 

I have no control over how I will be perceived, and no way to predict it, which means it’s hard for me to be safe. Initially, I found myself putting on a masculinity that did not fit in an attempt to pass as a cis man for my safety. I succeeded, but I found that I didn’t like it. I didn’t do all that work transitioning and letting go of having to perform womanhood only to start having to perform manhood. 

In my experience, a one-on-one interaction will more likely than not be positive. At worst, it will be neutral. But the situation can escalate and turn ugly with groups, particularly now. Passing a taxi or a boda stage, my heart races. My body goes into fight-or-flight mode. In public, I make it a point not to stand in one place for too long. I walk fast and avoid eye contact. I hear the question ‘Mulenzi oba muwala?’ (‘Is that a boy or a girl?’) and I quicken my pace, gone before they can mobilise their friends and ask me directly. 

During the pandemic, I was overjoyed. Not about the pandemic, but about the masks. This was at the height of my dysphoria, and masked, I didn’t have to worry about how people perceived me. I wore a mask diligently and continue to do so, long after most people have stopped. It’s funny: now that I am no longer dysphoric, and ready to be perceived, the situation is too dangerous for me to be perceived. My partner and my sister ask me earnestly to tone down my queerness and pick one gender to present as. They aren’t trying to dim my light; they are scared, and their fear fuels mine.

The sad part is that before this panic started, I had been fighting hard to defrost. I’ve been told I come off cold initially. Part of it was simply that I have a resting bitch face, but it was also a defence mechanism. I kept an emotional distance because I didn’t see the point in wasting energy forming bonds which would be severed once people knew who I truly was. After coming out, I learned that a lot of people were in fact rooting for me, and that I hadn’t needed to do that. 

My transition has made me so comfortable in myself that I can form a connection with anyone. I love leaving an interaction feeling like I have made a genuine impact. I like to learn people—to hear their stories and see life through their eyes. It’s enriching. I am actually good with people. My teen self would not believe the person I am today.

But now, once again I find myself less inclined to be warm to strangers. I see the discourse online and I know that the average person I encounter is homophobic. 

I know most people’s homophobia comes from ignorance and fear of the unknown. Studies have shown that interactions with an ‘other’ tend to lessen bigotry. But you’ll forgive me: what if the person is so disgusted to be breathing the same air as a ‘musiyazi’ that they can’t see past that and they hate-crime me? Please, I don’t want to give anyone an excuse to attack me. I’ll be minding my business and maintaining my resting bitch face.

If it were up to me, I would move through Kampala as a hazy mist, a faceless entity that people forget as soon as they see it, my true self reserved only for those I deem worthy. Instead, I get stares—people turn their entire bodies to look as I pass. Maybe it’s because I’m so sexy that they can’t resist. Maybe they are shocked at my audacity to exist in public looking the way I do. Maybe they want me dead. 

To Hope or To Despair?

Death and I have a complicated relationship. For a significant part of my life, I longed to be dead. More accurately, I wished I was never born.

And then I had a health scare.

I imagined my family organising car washes to fundraise for my treatment abroad and failing to raise the money on time. Death was no longer the cold, final kiss I yearned for, but a real and immediate possibility. I had to come to terms with my mortality and the realness of it. I thought I would be scared, but more than anything I was angry that I had not had a chance to live as my true self. I came out of that experience with a promise to myself: I wasn’t going to waste any more time playing a role to make people happy. I decided to choose myself every day. As soon as I did that, my will to live returned, and I began to experience real joy.

I’m excited about the future. I’m full of hope and energy. I wake up and the sun is out and the birds are singing; I see colours and revel in their beauty. Even the climate crisis and the systems that have orchestrated it feel like things we can dismantle with the power of friendship. It’s delirious and delusional; I am feeling all the joy I hadn’t been able to feel all those years, feeling it all at once, and it’s giving me a headrush. 

If I died now, I would be satisfied that I lived and was loved. To me, death is just another step in the cycle of my spirit. Sometimes I look forward to it, not as an escape like I did before, but more like one looks forward to graduating: with the uncertainty of not knowing what life after school will be like, and the excitement to find out. And now I can genuinely say that I was happy, however briefly. But I try not to talk so callously about my death, because it hurts the people who love me.

For them, I have made changes to the way I present in public. I’ve stopped adorning myself like I used to. I dyed my hair black, giving up the wide array of colours I had planned for this year. (I had a whole chart.) I used to wear multiple rings on my fingers, layer chains around my neck and wear jewellery in all the holes in my ears. Now I step out looking so bland, it’s sickening. It’s sickening that I can’t be sickening. Nary a cunt is being served, girlies; it’s giving basic bitch. I may as well be some hetero with zero spice. 

I know that there is only so much I can do to hide who I am. I am painfully masculine and feminine; it’s my favourite thing about myself, but it’s not a hit with the masses over here. Even when I feel I have done my best to be ‘normal,’ it wriggles free. The phaggotry permeates the air around me like vanilla essence; if someone is looking, they will find it. I’ve made peace with the possibility that there are people who will want to harm me for it. I’ve been taking self-defence classes, but I know that if shit goes down, I cannot realistically box my way out of an angry mob. I’ve cut out unnecessary outings, like I’m on some self-imposed lockdown. If I leave my house, it’s to go see a friend at theirs. Public establishments are a no-go with the queers: we went and got too comfortable with who we are, and we’re bound to start acting like ourselves in public, which is dangerous territory. But there’s only so much I can do before I start to feel robbed. I’m tired of being afraid. It’s so draining, and I’m over it. My life belongs to me, and I will live it as I please. 

It’s important that we do not give into despair because that only traps us in a loop of inaction. We must resist, for our sake, and for those who are coming after us. 

Resistance looks different for each of us, but we each have a role to play, no matter how tiny. For some, our role will be to survive, to do whatever it is we need to keep us going: a cheesy queer film, RuPaul’s Drag Race, anything. I doubt that the Western out-and-proud version of queer activism works in a Ugandan context; visibility is a hard thing to ask of someone in an environment like ours. If someone has it in them, then by all means. Simply being yourself, unapologetically, has more power than people realise. 

This wave of homophobia has shown me that we are not completely alone. Queer Ugandans have more allies than I thought. Imagine that—allies who actually speak out for us, publicly. If you’re an ally, when an opportunity presents itself, say something. Don’t sit and watch as people spew hateful rhetoric that you know is not true.

Those who can write, write. If you can speak out, do that. If you have money, give it. If you have political power or influence, use it. Use whatever tools that you have at your disposal, don’t be consumed by despair. That’s not how things change. 

The week that the president signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, most of us sat at home; leaving our houses didn’t seem very wise. I made more phone calls that week than I usually do in an entire month, checking in on people, making sure that they were safe, and those conversations made all the difference. Which is why this next one is very important: check in on each other, and be in community whichever way you can, physically or electronically. The conditions are perilous but we don’t have to face them alone.

My heart especially goes out to those queer people who have not yet found their community. The people I have around me make living worthwhile, even in these conditions. All the joy in the world would have been hard to revel in without them. I am because they are. Which is why I am making it my mission to organise and build community, intentionally and deliberately. To those queer people who may be reading this: hang in there and know that you are not alone. I give you my word: the future is worth sticking around for. We cannot let hate steal our lives from us. We must continue to laugh, dance, and love each other, because life is short.

We just need to ride out the shit-storm, and though there’s a lot more shit coming, things are changing. The war we are fighting is much grander than this moment in history. The idea that hate might kill the gay away is laughable. What is a human lifetime? A mere speck in the broad expanse of time. You cannot kill an idea; you cannot kill a spirit.


About the author

The author is a non-binary Ugandan writer living and working in Kampala. They are interested in subversive storytelling and media that challenges dominant societal and cultural narratives. Their work is an exploration of the intricate tapestry of the African queer experience, examining themes that resonate deeply on a personal level, and more broadly across the queer community.

About the photographer

The photographer is a young woman based in Kampala who passionately seeks to document economic, cultural, and human reality in Uganda. Through her lens, she creates powerful narratives emphasising the rich, unique voices of Ugandan minorities, and the warmth and humour that define its people.

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Clouds of Albion, for Max https://stingingfly.org/2023/11/15/november-story-clouds-of-albion-for-max/ Wed, 15 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0000 http://stingingfly.flywheelsites.com/?p=41113 Continue reading "Clouds of Albion, for Max"]]> Norman played dominoes in the kitchen, not waiting for the lost ones to show. Spots under his palms. Norman, the once upon a time beautiful boy, shattered twink, reverb child, horny fingered string bender, had lost his hair in one big surprise. Ivory rectangles clacked together to make patterns that Norman was sure would eventually be the key, the number, that might turn behind his eyes and release a flow of awe and rage and tunes from where they were trapped, whirring like thugs’ knives forever in that alley in 1972. Over and over, he moved the tiles and stared into the new shapes chance had made. He liked a small glass to drink out of, as he emptied the skinny green bottle of red wine that tasted of raspberries and smoke.

Mother, whose name would always be Sheila, sat in the best room at the front of the house, the red brocade curtains pulled to, leaving a small gap which allowed a hot stripe of summer light to fall across her motionless face. Sometimes Sheila was dead and sometimes she was alive. Annabella the cat was black and rested atop the bookcase, not knowing of books, but well understanding what is dead, what is alive and what is in between.

In a time before, Norman walked by the river, heard the trout conversing with the finch, saw the last lark of England in the jaws of the final weasel. The fruit of the land lay rotting in the fields. Haystacks set afire by lonely wanderers sent skyward unclear signals. A flint tower held and released golden light, faced the sea and its next thousand years of standing.

Norman turned off the path into the meadow and lay down. Wheat stubble prickled his back, crickets rhymed with one another, the mice busied away, and as he fell asleep Norman realised that his young life was over. Thirty years later—the same. Twenty years earlier—the same. Now—the same.

Clouds of Albion, blown in from fires elsewhere, cruel conflagrations set by greed and burning for all time. The tinking sound that came occasionally through the soft air might have been pebbles knocking on the milder shore, or peeps from hedgerow hidden birds, or the swinging harness of a horse headed for its stable home, or chains from the past, the burden of the unpossessable spirit. Conscience watched from the trees. With a slight disturbance of the air, ripe seeds rose from the dry wild grass and drifted, momentarily fixed, in the form of a ladder, unfit for foot, headed for heaven, reaching from something to nothing. Anguish is simple. The richest England of all time is too mean to care for its sick and aged and broken and stricken. Curses fall and none are saved.

Words slip on each other, he had thought. We get out from under what we know, we fail to get out from what we think. We never discover what thinking is. Flickers of sense escape us, we have a word for what happens to the side, we have a word for what is underneath. Dissociation, unconscious: we don’t know what they are, what’s inside. We name what we don’t know. But we don’t know.

Norman was out of the shade, become unborn, barely visible, undestroyed and returned to nothingness, freed of sacrifice and errors beyond disguise: contented, almost. The summer was within him.

The movement in his mind was like prayer, a silent pleading with everything and nothing. No one is going to help, he said, but did not wake.

Norman imagined that he rose, and passed through the grass to a silver rill, a glittering tributary of a wider waterway with an ever-dark sea at its end. He loosed the painter and lay down in the boat. He drifted in time in the boat floating down the river. Strangers called from the bank, and he passed them by, saying nothing. Norman’s mind emptied into a sky of solitary blue that contained everything. 

Norman whispered. 

Come we. Be fond. Be past. Be forsaken and oblivious and unstifled and scornless. Be unconsumed. Be useful to no purpose. Be unmoving on the peak of the vaporous green ocean, above the depths unknown, the far shore unknown, the receded shore unremembered, above the vaulted sky. Be welcome. Fingers, once long and loved, now tiny, scaly, run along strings that only I can see, which stretch through now from then to then. The hedgehog I rolled in a furrow of which to make a ball of mud to bake in a clearing fire, thought heat for me behind its tiny black eyes and I panicked in the flames and raked it from the orange wood. I was only a boy, but I knew I was wrong. I reached through the narrow knot high up the beech tree, bent my wrist and twisted my arm and drew out five paley blue eggs, the woodpecker’s treasure, and brought them carefully to the ground. I blew the little maybe lives from them with a straw and kept the shells on a bed of cotton wool in a shoebox in my bedroom and from the first night that I began to think of my body singing, I started to hear a hollow knocking at the window ledge, at the door, at my heart, and I never could make it stop. I never learned to live with my misdeeds and piled wrong on wrongs and dragged them with me, weightier and heavier still, until one day I lay them down and they gathered in a circle around me and held me and told me of the end and the beginning and the end. Our problems will outlive us, let us abandon them today.

What will take away the bitter taste of love and no love? Ice cream, said me the child.

Farewell idle companion, myself. Power is elsewhere, and against me, and ignorant of me, and of which I have a declined portion, useless and belonging. Withered roots of the mind, there was nothing to find. What meant most were the times of idleness, pure nothing with least reflection. Rapture appals me now. Calm will glean the last grains of golden nothing until, with wordless inspiration, the slowing breaths approach.

Flowers freak in the gardens of the abandoned village, in colours for which we might tell ourselves there are words. There are words. Words.

Solar dinched, his body warmed through, and the thoughts that the body contained, too thermalised. Norman, gravid with heat, earth-pinned on the wild and spicy green. He slept to rise, awake this time, steeped in primrose, honeysuckle and violet. There was no boat, no river, no village. 

A day later, Norman was found on the road, sundazed and unsteady, and returned to home, where his mother, at first, did not recognise him, or more precisely sensed the loss of something essential and knew of an addition, a spot of white that might expand without end.

Norman’s words ran backwards in his mind, and sometimes out of it, until he reached his baby first word, his original vocable, and his hand moved a domino tile and slotted it into place and the numbers gathered and the key turned, and the light came on and then off for always.

David Hayden’s

David Hayden’s work has been published in Granta, A Public Space, Zoetrope All-Story, The Georgia Review, Zyzzyva, AGNI, Winter Papers and several times in The Stinging Fly. His book, ‘Darker With the Lights On’, was an Irish Times ‘Book of the Year’.

About Clouds of Albion, for Max: When the sun shines on the East Anglian land, where I live, stories come up out of the ground, or down from the trees. It is the same everywhere. But in some places, it seems, there is no one there to listen, or to write them down. Or the people there are committed to silence, because they think it’s none of the strangers’ business, because they believe that their stories might be held against them, as evidence and admission, or they think that no one would hear them, even if their airborne tales were spoken slow and clear and direct. Or they believe that the telling of a story changes nothing, and it is best to let tales and voices rise on the warming air and drift away unheard, past the woods and over the sea.

I caught the echo of Norman’s story one fine and lonely spring day, and because I have notions of this kind, I followed and carefully listened and made what I could of the sounds and the sense, even though his life was not mine to tell.

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We can’t all be a fresh new voice in literature https://stingingfly.org/2023/11/09/we-cant-all-be-a-fresh-new-voice-in-literature/ Thu, 09 Nov 2023 14:22:55 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=41788 Continue reading "We can’t all be a fresh new voice in literature"]]> The best things I said about my book, I said at the beginning. My answers have thinned, the more I am asked about it. I have come to realise, the less you say, the more powerful you suggest you are. The other tactic I employ is evasion. To some questions I reply, That’s not for me to answer, because I want to be mysterious—as if the sound of the modern world is too loud for my sensitive soul, as if I am being awoken from an inner sanctum, interrupted from hushed communion with my creativity. 

In the depths of the winter lockdown, my world shrunk to five-minute increments of time. Each second was bone-crunching agony. I spent a lot of it in bed. My friends were somehow finding relationships—the ones who were single with me, going into it, were suddenly no longer single, and the ones in long-term relationships got married and started having children. We never had a final summer of reckless abandon before they settled down. In the Before Times, we were available to one another, and then in the summer of 2021 I couldn’t get anyone to come out anymore, so I didn’t go out either. We went in as kids, they came out as adults, and I got stuck somewhere in-between. 

Being single was a suspension. Touch was relegated to that of the family, the one you made, not the one you came from. I decided to write, as I had nothing else to do. I watched the attacks on the Capitol in 2021 and started noodling about. Watching something so surreal clicked inside my head. I wrote two pages and sent it to Rough Trade Books, who had nurtured the collective, 4 Brown Girls Who Write, that I am in, by publishing our pamphlets in 2020. The editor, Will, wrote an initial email of encouragement that I still keep up on my wall. The publisher, Nina, told me to write the book. Will said to aim for one hundred thousand words. I baulked. They both said they’d help, so I met Will once a month on Zoom where I’d show him my scrappy collection of words and pictures I screenshotted from the Internet. We picked a date to publish which just kept moving. All I wanted was a beautiful, finished object I could point to and know what a year of my life had resulted in, because otherwise there was nothing. I felt arid, barren, static. I kept writing. Time ticked on. 

Four months before the book was sent to the printer, the publicist suggested we make a Bookseller announcement to make it official. The Observer got in touch, said they saw the announcement, and asked for the manuscript so it could be considered for their Top Ten Debuts list for the upcoming year. I hadn’t finished it, so I spent two frantic weekends trying to work it up to the best state it could be in, before the deadline. A week passed. When they told us it had made the list we were put under embargo so I couldn’t tell anyone, but for three days I would manically cry then laugh then cry again. I was writing up until the print deadline and so because of this there were no advance copies, it was going straight to the shops. I was a nightmare in those last three months. I had a tantrum on the floor of the publisher’s office where I cried for two hours and my poor editor hung off the window ledge for dear life waiting it out. My friends kept their distance from me. I was alone. I had no one to hang out with the day The Observer announcement went out until my publisher asked me to join her at her house.

When I did the interview for the paper early in the new year, the journalist apologised for taking up my time and I said, No, it’s no trouble. I wanted to tell him, I could talk to you for hours if you’d let me, because I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing else to do. I can’t believe someone is interested in me because of this book, my book, a book I wrote, me. Even when the paper came out, I didn’t tell my friends because I didn’t want it to look as if I was gloating. I used Instagram to announce it as if I were a celebrity. I sat down on the floor and stared at the photograph the paper had used of me. I scrutinised my appearance, my faded jawline, did my face really disappear into my neck like that? Was I prettier a year ago? Was I pretty now? How did I come across? I wondered what my exes thought of it and tried to see the photo from their perspective. As a joke, I said to the publisher, if this was going to happen to anyone, I’m glad that it’s happened to me. 

Suddenly writing wasn’t just a hobby. I met the industry. I knew it would change my relationships with people, just as I knew telling them writing a book would. It was almost the same as when one of your friends tells you they are going to get married, or have a child. It’s one of these thresholds that until you go through it you have no idea. Then, when you do, you join a secret club of people who have shared the same experience, and other people in your life are suddenly locked out. I hoarded the secret because I didn’t want anything to change. And it did change, but now the emails coming into my inbox have gone right back down. The constant high of that attention is like snorting gak up your nose. It is addictive and I miss it now it has gone. 

In publication week, one friend who was close to my creativity and now is not—she can’t stand me in fact—leaned over with her hands around her back to look at a copy of the book but didn’t touch it. She never talked to me about it. Pretended it hadn’t happened. In her eyes, none of this has happened to me. Foyles got in touch with my publicist, offering us a window. London Review of Books made it their book of the week, and there were reviews in The Observer, then The Guardian, and they were great. In the avalanche of press, like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’, I felt myself become Other. I grew thick, scaly skin, hard, almost bone, because people talked about me as if I didn’t really exist, as if I don’t have feelings. I read everything, in the press and what people say online, there is no review I don’t read. I am the least chill person about what is being said about me, anxiously scanning anything anyone says about it. I hear second-hand from someone we know that the reviews were as if I was being ‘flayed alive’. I still don’t know what they meant.

In the slush of attention, there is huge space between my friends and me. I don’t have anyone other than the publisher and the publicist protecting me or going with me to events. I talk to the press and have my photo taken. I become obsessed with how I photograph. Suddenly I’m expected to know my angles—me who ate three huge slices of cake a day in lockdown. I realise I didn’t expect to be perceived this much. People call me unique, original and it’s easy to believe them. I am. I actually am, I always was. People say it is a terrible book, DNF they write, it goes nowhere, what a waste of time and it’s easy to believe them. I look at the Goodreads reviews twice—once very early on when it was at four stars, and then one night, a year later, I read all of them drunk, in bed, in one go, not blinking as I scroll down and I fall in a fitful sleep thinking I’ll never write another word, I’m not even a proper writer, they’re all right about me, the worst things I think about myself, they’ve said out loud.

As the hardback turned to a paperback, my small indie press publisher turned into one of the bigger outfits, I am shortlisted and longlisted, I take up space and multiply much like a single person turns into a couple, a couple turns into a family, with coiffed dogs on leashes and ergonomic prams and the never-satiated need for more and more space which forces me onto the road, to walk past them, I have to make way for these ever larger families, I start to do the same. There is no getting away from me. People must make way for me. I take up intellectual space. My book is in shop-window displays up and down the country, it’s posted all over the internet, my name starts to mean something to other people, people I haven’t spoken to for years message me randomly to pass on their congratulations and that they have bought a house. I find myself more secure at parties, my nervous tics disappear. I can order a drink and wait for someone if I am early, people are gracious when I am ten minutes late.

When I say I am lonely, my friends tell me, ‘At least you have your book,’ as if the publicity stands in for a partner. Writing seems like more of a business now, less a hobby, but I have nothing substantial to say. Recently all the ideas have fled out of the orifices in my mind. I strongly believe this book was my only hit, it may not happen again—though I am grateful it happened this way. My friendship circle has fluttered back into place, bar two missing feathers. After the skin-bursting shed of the last two years, like an ouroboros, my life has circled. A mouth reluctant, greets the tail.

This essay forms part of a series of reflections on the writing life edited by Olivia Fitzsimons.

PreviouslyOn Community by Jan Carson

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The Bride https://stingingfly.org/2023/11/01/the-bride/ Wed, 01 Nov 2023 11:41:29 +0000 https://stingingfly.org/?p=41732 Continue reading "The Bride"]]> At seven o’clock on the evening before her wedding day, Margaret Casey finished her packing, locked her suitcase, and sat down on the edge of her bed to catch her breath. Her room was on the top floor of the house in Scarsdale where she had worked as a maid for ten years. She was alone in the house. The phone was shut off, the refrigerator was disconnected, the windows all were locked, and all the beds, except hers, stripped for the summer. The family had early that morning driven off to their cottage in the Berkshires, where they would remain until October. Margaret had dreaded the moment of their departure, fearing her own tears, which fell easily, but at the last minute she smiled brilliantly, and waved, and saw the car disappear out onto the road calmly enough, although for a moment there she felt she must cry after them to come back, come back, if only for an hour, and not leave her by herself at a time like this.

Of course, it was her own idea in the first place to get married the day after they left for the summer. Summer had seemed a comfortable, indefinite time away the night last February that she had given in to Carl’s persistence and given him her promise. She liked Carl, but she wasn’t much inclined to marry him. All that night, she lay awake in a panic, thinking of ways to break with him. It would be heartless to tell him straight out that she had no use for him. Crafty, she decided to do one thing at a time. First she would give Mrs Smith her notice, and then she would just steal away to another town and find a new job and not let Carl know anything about it. But when she went in, when they were having breakfast, and gave her notice, the sight of Mrs Smith’s stricken face was too much for her, and to ease her guilt she blurted out that she was going to marry Carl, and settle down, and stop working, and have a home of her own. Mr and Mrs Smith were astonished and delighted at her good fortune, and their pleasure made her so generous that she embroidered the case a little, describing the house (not yet built) that Carl hoped to buy, and telling about his plan to go into business with his brother someday, not right away. Mrs Smith said she hoped Margaret would let her give a little wedding breakfast here in the house after the ceremony, but Margaret quickly said no, that her plans were made to be married the day after they left for the summer. After some argument, Mrs Smith gave in to her, and laughed, and said that after all Margaret was the bride and it was only right she should have things her way. Back in the kitchen, Margaret sat as astonished as though they had ordered her out of the house. All I wanted to do was give notice, she thought, and here I’ve gone and committed myself.

Still, July seemed a long time off. There would surely be some way to free herself. She could pick a fight with Carl, or she might confide in Mrs Smith and ask her advice. But it grew harder and harder to speak up. Anyway, she found herself growing fond of Carl. It was the first time in her life she had ever had anyone of her own, and he was very considerate of her. He was coming along now in a few minutes to take her out to dinner.

She contrasted this evening with the evening, twelve years ago in Ireland, before her sister Madge was married. That evening, Madge never stopped posturing around in her wedding dress of blue silk, showing off before the neighbours while her mother sat in the middle of the room crying because she was losing her big girl and the family would soon be all scattered. ‘Next thing little Margaret will be leaving me,’ cried the mother, and Margaret had darted to her mother’s side and protested that no, no, she would never leave, and the neighbours nodded approvingly and said that was a good daughter, that one. Still, good daughter and all, it was Madge who was the favourite, and when, after a year, Madge decided to economise by moving back into her old home, Margaret felt very out of place with the perpetual fuss over Madge’s baby and Madge’s husband and Madge’s aches and pains. Margaret was already out working by then, and when her uncle in New York wrote offering to lend her the passage over, she accepted at once, believing up to the last minute before she left that the mother would come to her senses and forbid her to go. But the mother appeared delighted to see Margaret get her ‘chance,’ and there were fewer tears shed over Margaret’s departure for a foreign land than over Madge’s decision to marry a boy she had known all her life.

Margaret had found great satisfaction in the money orders she sent home weekly, knowing the power they gave her mother over the household. After the debt to her uncle was paid off, she sent more and more money home, stinting herself to send as much as she could. She always meant to start saving her fare home, but she really believed that when the time came for her to see her mother again, the money would turn up somehow. She wanted to go back there and best Madge, once and for all. She had a dream of saving up enough to go back and start a little business, enough to support her mother and herself, or to go back with a comfortable nest egg and find some good man to marry. None of her hopes had come true. All of her hopes had turned into regrets; only the hurt, strained feeling in her heart was the same. Everything had turned out wrong. The mother was five months dead now, and there no longer seemed any way to get back at Madge, sitting triumphant there in possession of all the old bits of ornaments and furniture and everything that remained of the old home. Not that Madge had offered to send her anything —not even a few of the old photographs —and it would be too bitter to reveal her jealousy and longing by asking for them. Madge had known what she was doing, all right.

If only God had given Margaret the strength to wait a while longer, something might have turned up. She might have won the Sweep, or some old lady might have turned up who wanted a companion to travel to Ireland with her, or somebody—her uncle, maybe—might have died and left her a legacy. There was no limit to the things that might have happened, if she’d only had patience. But the night she heard her mother was dead, Carl was so sympathetic that she committed herself further than she had ever meant to. It was the way he put his arm around her that undid her, the closeness of his body giving her a warmth she had forgotten since her mother’s lap. How well he knew the time to take advantage of me, she thought angrily. His persistence had put her off the first time she met him. She should have been firm then, and got rid of him for good. That was the German in him, enabling him to hang on until he got what he was after. He would never fit in with the crowd at home. They would laugh at him behind his back and say he was thick. Madge’s cruel eyes would cut clear through the smart American clothes to see the soft, good-natured, easily hurt fellow underneath. Madge would laugh to hear Mr Smith say that Carl was a fine, steady fellow who would always be a credit to the community. Mr and Mrs Smith had been very nice about the whole thing. Mr Smith had given Margaret three months’ salary as a wedding present, and Mrs Smith gave her her wedding outfit. Her dress, a jacket and skirt of navy-blue shantung, hung now in the closet, with the new shoes in a box on the floor underneath and the new hat in a box on the shelf above. Except for her rosary beads, she had nothing old and familiar from Ireland to bring with her into her new home. Madge had stolen everything, and without even lifting a finger.

One time, when Margaret was a little girl, before her father died, her mother and father had gone for a ride in a charabanc, out into the country. When they came back, they talked about the hotel where they’d had tea, and about the woods and rivers they had seen. They promised that Margaret would have a charabanc ride one Sunday, and she believed them and began to go every Sunday to watch the buses fill up with passengers. A lot of young people used to go, laughing and pushing and jostling each other to see who would get the best seat. Margaret had her seat all picked out—the one up in front near the driver—but she never had the chance to ride in it. There was always some excuse to keep her from going. Sometimes one of the charabancs went on a mystery tour. The driver of the charabanc knew where he was going, but the passengers had to guess, and never could be sure of their destination until they arrived there. The people going off on the mystery tours seemed even gayer than the usual charabanc crowds. Margaret longed to go with them, although she had a half fear that the mystery charabancs never came back at all. She might just as well have gone on one and not come back, for all the good she had made of her life.

*

A joyful shouting came from downstairs, and Margaret ran out onto the landing. It was Carl. He had let himself in by the back door. He was accustomed to back doors, being a plumber. When he reached the second-floor landing, he looked up and saw her.

‘How’s my girl?’ he shouted, as though they were miles apart. His voice was hard in the emptiness of the house. He had been drinking, she could hear it in his voice, but she would say nothing about it this time. He threw his head back and stretched his arms wide, clowning in his unaccustomed happiness, but she was not touched by his emotion. She stared down at him in astonishment and fear.

‘What’s the matter?’ he shouted, throwing himself down on his arms on the banisters. ‘Were you afraid I wasn’t going to come? Were you afraid I might leave you at the church? You can get that idea out of your head. You’re not getting away from me that easy.’ She wanted to scream at him that he was beneath her, and that she despised him, and that she was not bound to him yet and never would be bound to him, but instead she spoke civilly, saying that she would be ready in a minute, and warning him not to come up into the room, because her wedding dress was hanging there and she didn’t want him to see it ahead of time, for fear of bringing bad luck on the two of them.

‘The Bride’ was first published in The New Yorker in August 1953. It is included in The Rose Garden, which was the second collection of Brennan’s stories to be published posthumously, following on from The Springs of Affection. The Stinging Fly Press will publish a new edition of The Rose Garden in 2024 with a new introduction by Brennan’s biographer, Angela Bourke.

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