John Martin - Some Memories of Sussex University
The Advantages of the Bisexual Vantage Point
(for Mike)
PREAMBLE
'You only told Eileen to leave me because you wanted her for yourself,' exclaimed Stav, as he sat opposite me at, was it the Loft Café? in the Backs at Brighton. I had gone there to be on my own, and stare into a moody cup of coffee, in the midst of a lot of other students, all very much strangers to me. Perhaps because they were from the Art School. Perhaps because I'd only recently arrived at the University.
Anyhow Stav had somehow surreptitiously inserted himself into my field of vision, like some pop-up feature in a recently opened website. 'Ah no, Stav,' I replied, as graciously as I could, 'that cannot be the case. You see I'm a homosexual.' Well that certainly took the wind out of his sails. Which I suppose was the desired effect. There he was all worked up ready for the fight of a lifetime, and now all of a sudden there was nothing left to fight over.
But only something to commiserate about.
You see, at times lying really is the best strategy. And quite on the spur of the moment I really couldn't think of a better approach. And besides it wasn't really so much a lie as a half-truth.
The next time I met him he was sitting at my feet, for all the world as if I were some sort of Guru, and asking me if I'd like to come on holiday to Greece with them all, that following summer. Just a moment before he had burst into Eileen's room accompanied by a new - and very pretty - girlfriend, looking idyllically happy; and full of gratitude towards me, apparently, for the small part I had played in the breakup of his previous relationship. (Stav apparently was a great one for bursting.) (But then, at that time, so were most people.)
Eileen had complained to me that he was continually attacking her physically. I merely quietly suggested that things really couldn't go on like that. I think she was hoping to initiate something with me. And I wasn't unattracted. But, you see, I already had a prior engagement.
Though I was only at Sussex University for a very short time, in that short time a lot of crucially important things happened. Of which this was one of the least. But all the same I did feel very much as though I'd finally come home. And I liked the other students a lot as well. In fact, in many ways, that was precisely the trouble: they were so very friendly - and kind - and 'enlightened' - that it was really rather frightening. And I felt a very great sense of responsibility towards them.
By and large most of the students were a year younger than me. But that one year made such a difference, that, to my jaded eyes, they seemed just like innocent children. And so I felt rather avuncular in their presence.
However, be that as it may, I have always considered myself more as an alumnus of Sussex than I do of anywhere else.
Sussex as a County already loomed very large in my personal mythology. My brother went to a Boarding School there. And we used to visit him at least once a term. Then either go into the local town (Horsham), or explore the surrounding countryside, or take a train to the coast. Though on these occasions it was never, I think, to Brighton. It was Littlehampton or Seaford.
But also, long before that, I can remember spending days at Brighton with my father on one of what we called 'Dad's Jaunts'. And we had two wonderful holidays (separated by a two-year gap) camping in a field at Firle. Somewhere beneath Firle Beacon. (The same field on both occasions. And in the same part of it.) It was on one of these holidays that we twice had tea with Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister), once at their place, and then a week later when they visited our camp. I think you can understand that I might value this karmic connection with one of our finest modernist writers very greatly. And my only regret is that, because of her suicide, I never got to meet VW directly. If anybody epitomised Sussex, and the Sussex countryside, it was these people. And VW's writings - many of which I have in first editions, inherited from my parents - have always meant a very great deal to me.
Before any of our camping holidays we used to take a dander into the area in which we intended to camp. For this we availed ourselves of a relatively cheap same-day return during the preceding Easter vacation. And then called on various local farmers until we found one who was willing to let us camp in one of his fields for a couple of weeks in the summer. On this occasion, having done that, we climbed to the top of Firle Beacon, and then slid down Firle Beacon on our bottoms through the long grass. When we returned in the summer, much to our delight, as we passed below in a bus on our way to Eastbourne, we could see three trails still clearly marked in the grass. So even at that tender age I'd already made my mark on the landscape. So all in all Sussex felt very much like my home county.
There were a number of reasons why I felt ill-at-ease at Sussex University, though. Which is presumably why I remained there only a short time. In fact of course I already felt ill-at-ease with the whole education system. Specifically because of the way it had separated me from my working-class friends, and my female friends, and my black friends, at the tender age of eleven. As if, because of some boring little exam, I no longer had any human connection with any of them, and they now belonged to some inferior species. And this, mark you, included my own brother! (So much for 'the Brotherhood of all Mankind'!) Who had perforce had to go to a Public School to avoid going to a Secondary Modern. Where it was felt by my parents that his sensitive nature wouldn't be able to thrive. (Some 'charity', so-called, had offered to pay his fees for him.) So that effectively the education system wasn't so much educating me as indoctrinating me in a regime of prejudice and intolerance, under the guise of raising me to be a good little Christian. Thus blaspheming against the Holy Ghost in at least three ways at once. Presumably once for each member of the Trinity. And effectively holding the Christian religion up to the public ridicule of even children!
When I was at Primary School the female of the species was nothing special. They were my friends, that's all. To such an extent that I felt annoyed they had totally separate playgrounds from the boys. This seemed to be an unwonted intrusion into my social life. So you can imagine what I felt about being separated from them in a different school altogether.
Even at kindergarten I remember a tender and romantic moment with a girl. And that seemed to me to be a normal part of growing up and maturing as a complete human being. And it seemed to me that that was what education should be about. But I was even more shocked to find out that normal natural heterosexual relationships had been replaced by the crudest displays of homosexuality, enacted all around me in such a way that I simply couldn't escape them. As I say, at Primary School, the opposite sex were my friends. Largely because they weren't so much opposite - and so opposed - as they were on my side - and hence rather well-disposed. But by the time I reached Sussex University they had been turned into mere sexual objects. Now they really had been turned into the opposing sex. In the place of those friendly and very humane beings who had once been so much on my side. (And God knows I needed people who were on my side. The more the merrier. I really felt the need of any sort of support I could get.) And so now I felt much less connection than before. Those who had once been rather special friends were now offered up to me as objects for my masculine approbation. Like meat at a butcher's market. Or slaves at a slave market. Or adornments to some idiot entrepreneur's devious commercial enticements. All this seemed to me to be degrading. And at the very least humiliating. Education had managed to destroy not just my dignity as a human being, but everybody else's. And I didn't think much of that. That didn't seem to me to be at all what education should be about. So I already felt disaffected. Those who had once been my friends had been prettified and degraded at one and the same time. And as much rapined by this as they had now been wrapped up in tissue and tinsel. Somehow along the way they had lost their pristine innocence and acquired the slightly shop-soiled patina of an alien market place.
Several conspiracies seemed to be operating. All of them counter to what I thought education should actually be about. They had separated me from my brother. Thus breaking up my family. And one of the things I had wanted to do, from a very early age, was make society like my family. So that was one ambition quashed before I'd even started. (Or rather life-project. Since on the whole I don't really like ambition. As a word it has far too selfish a flavour.) At Primary School I had discovered in myself an ability to get on well with children from the widest possible variety of backgrounds. Working-class as well as middle-class, female as well as male, black as well as white. In fact the more different they were from me the more fascinated I was by them. It seemed to me that I was surrounded by friends who looked up to me, as well as loved me. There were occasional idiots who attempted to bully me, but I could always give a good account of myself in the playground, and soon saw them off.
There was only one black boy in the school. He had a sister. And she was in a lower class. I was as proud to have him as my friend as any other lad. And visited him at least once in his home. Later on, as an adolescent, I got to know his older brother. His father was a poet. Who has since been published. His brother, much later than when I knew him, was awarded an OBE for services to black charities. Which is as much as my father earned as an artist.
You can, I hope, imagine my shock when subsequent attempts, by the powers that be, to 'educate' me resulted in my social horizons being restricted to a bunch of monotonously accoutred ladder-climbers who acted as if they had conferred a privilege on me merely by allowing me to breathe the same air as they did. So that I felt more as if I'd been condemned to prison than 'liberated' in any way. But, you see, they hadn't actually conferred any privilege on me. They had simply insulted me, by refusing to acknowledge the depth and breadth of any humanity I might have hitherto acquired. Believe you me the love and respect of my black friends and working-class friends and female friends had felt to me to be much more like a privilege than anything these creeps had on offer. And certainly a lot more humanising.
Early on I was being taught to be a sexist, a racist and a snob. And strangely enough, while being taught to be a homosexual, I was being taught to be a homophobe at precisely the same time. Apparently I was meant to be both! Thus dividing me from myself at the very centre of my being. An interior laceration. In fact I was supposed to be phobic to everything! Including even myself. I was no longer to be allowed friends. I was only permitted rivals. Or, as they called them, 'contacts' and 'colleagues'. And the whole point of the education system, as it was presented to me, was to set everybody at each other's throats. Brother against brother. Friend against friend. Lover against lover. Self against self. Heart against head. Head against heart. Heart against heart. Head against head. Nerve against nerve. Raw nerve against raw nerve. The whole point apparently being to divide and rule. Whereas I, in my Christian naivety, thought it should be about uniting and serving. And I still do. Having been divided and ruled by these bastards, in the very inmost centre of my being, like Christ upon his cross, only even more so, hung, drawn and quartered like a lamb to the bloody slaughter. My inmost life reduced to a shambles for their ignorant pride to triumph over. No wonder I wept. If Jesus could, then even more so, so could I.
So that by the time I arrived at one of their precious universities I already felt very disaffected. The whole thing seemed to me to be a middle-class conspiracy to do everybody else down. 'A con.' As a lorry-driver I thumbed a hitch from once agreed with me. In fact, I now suspect, the very lorry-driver I thumbed a lift from on that day I left Sussex. I explained to him that I was just leaving the University. And he replied: 'Yes. It's just a con, all that.' The first word of sense I'd heard in a month or so.
Even at Primary School I knew I wanted to be a writer. And yet the education system, as I knew it, so far, had been conspiring to do its best to prevent me from being anything I wanted to be. Indeed it didn't even ask me what I wanted to be. I might as well have been toothpaste squeezed out of a tube for all they cared. It was deliberately depriving me of the human experience that was essential to my emotional and social growth. It forced on me a form of sexual relationship that revolted me while at the same time adopting a punitive approach towards it. Thereby placing not just me but all children in an absolutely impossible position.
There were no Creative Writing Courses in those days. And certainly no Degrees in the subject. And I, for one, couldn't understand why, when it came to the visual arts, there were no courses in appreciation, only in creation, but, when it came to the literary arts, there were only courses in appreciation and none in creation. This was surely absurd. Called a disgrace to their disgrace of a sixth form for being in tears in a Music lesson I quickly got the message that emotions were considered a bad thing. And their expression even worse. What then was I supposed to do? If I was revolting to them, everything inside me revolted against them. What else could it do? So by the time I got to university all these johnnies were all already very much in my bad books. And very much on probation. I knew Sussex to be the most enlightened and forward-looking of our universities. If good sense couldn't prevail there surely it couldn't prevail anywhere.
As I say - and will probably say again ad nauseam - and so the more-or-less gentle reader will just have to bear with me - after all I've had to bear with you lot for more than long enough - at Primary School girls had been my friends. In fact I was annoyed by the fact that the boys' playground was totally separate from the girls' playground. On a few rare occasions they weren't. And the boys' playground suddenly became so much more civilised, and humanly rich, and rewarding. So you can imagine how I felt when I reached secondary school and there were no girls at all. And even more when all that homosexual malarkey suddenly started taking place.
As I say arriving at Sussex I found that all those who had once been my friends had now been turned into items in a supermarket for me to ogle, or morsels for me to devour. I felt horrified. And couldn't get over it. And still can't. And still don't see why I had to. I felt deeply insulted. I didn't just feel that my humanity had been insulted, I felt as if all humanity had been insulted. This sort of crap was not the way Christians should be behaving. As I understood it human beings are immortal souls made in the image of God, not objects to be devoured, or consumed, or eaten, or used sexually, or as cannon-fodder, or even as canon-fodder, or in any other way. I am not a cannibal. Nor a cannonball. I am not a slave-owner. Nor a slave. I am a friend. And that is the only relationship to other human beings that I can abide, or that seems to me to bestow on them the dignity they deserve. Or indeed that I deserve. I felt insulted to my very core. And felt that my religion had been insulted too. And Christ once again mocked and crucified.
I'm sorry to labour this Christian bit so doggedly but I'm sure even the most unchristian of you must appreciate what a rhetorical edge it gives to my blade when you consider that this school was supposed to be Christian. Of course it's precisely this sort of hypocrisy that puts many people off. But I doubt that you can blame Christ for that. Better perhaps to blame the Powers That Be, who seem to have adopted as a permanent strategy the commandeering of all Christianity so as to suit their own devious ends. But in no way should what they impose be confused with the Christianity that Christ himself preached. Which surely knew nothing of dog-collars, or sacristans, or bishops, or clergy, or anything else. But was a far more honest man-to-man affair. Not totally lacking in ritual but putting ritual where it belonged. Somewhere in the background.
And in no way is what I am labouring so tediously and repetitiously here 'over the top'. If anything perhaps I am being a bit too sotto voce. If women are not good enough to be my friends and companions in my formative years then how can they be good enough for me to marry? The whole thing's not only absurd but utterly degrading.
When you teach a child you can't just teach part of a child. To teach part of a child is to teach a child that it is but a part of itself. And therefore not a whole human being. It is perforce less than a human being. And in fact just a machine or, even worse, part of a machine. The whole human being has to be taught. And this means that all possible positive human relations must be allowed. And even encouraged. Growth is of the utmost importance in any situation considered to be educational. And that means growth as a complete human being. It certainly isn't the place of education to instruct children in petty prejudice. That isn't education, it's indoctrination.
I would characterise my secondary school as a homosexual brothel run by a gang of thugs. And certainly no fit place for a child to grow up in.
Things were made even more difficult for me by virtue of the fact that I felt that in all justice I should have gone to Oxbridge rather than Sussex. Or at least had the splendid luxury of turning down Oxbridge in favour of Sussex. This wasn't due to any snobbery, or elitism, or vanity on my part. My father once said, when I was a child, and had said something particularly intelligent, that I ought to 'go to Cambridge and meet "the best minds of my generation"'. (Well, after Allen Ginsberg, we all know what happened to them!) Most of my circle of friends went to Oxbridge and they weren't any more intelligent than I was. And in many ways less intelligent. And certainly much less socially and culturally aware. They were mathematicians and science buffs. And they just buckled down to their molecules and forgot about everything else. No wonder they were so loved by the powers that be. (And no wonder I was so hated.)
AMBLE
Of course the first thing I did when I got to Sussex was to write an article entitled 'The Advantages Of The Bisexual Vantage Point'. It had to be. I was aware that most of the writers I admired were bisexual. And perhaps needed to be if they were to be able to imaginatively identify with all of their characters. I was in something of a state. I felt the need to lay my cards on the table. And the general idea was to publish the article in the student magazine. But on the other hand homosexuality was still illegal. And not just illegal but something to be deeply ashamed of. A sort of illness. Or even worse, a character flaw. If not a deliberate perversity of will. And the very height of depravity.
I had acquired a 'lover'. If you can distinguish what he specialised in as 'love'. To me it felt more as if my general willingness to oblige had simply been taken advantage of by somebody with whose plight I sympathised. I felt very embarrassed by everything. Particularly by this.
I had already practically lived with a girl for about six months. My best friend at school had died and bequeathed her to me on his deathbed. Things were uncomfortably dramatic where they weren't plain hectic. Everything was all over the place. I didn't really get on with strait-laced middle-class people. And didn't quite see why I had to. But on the other hand I didn't really get on with beatniks either. Nor later on with hippies, who in fact became something of a bête noir. Mike had arrived on my already chaotic horizon and had semipermanently inserted himself there by imposing himself on my kindness and generosity. Everyone else hated him. (No doubt you'll be relieved to hear I have become a lot less kind and a lot less generous since.) He had a criminal record. At the age of sixteen he had become sexually involved with boys who were a year or so younger than himself. I don't know what prison did for his homosexuality. But I daresay it gave him a chip on his shoulder. Which of course he took out on anybody he could.
In those days there was no student accommodation on campus. This was the second year of inception. We were boarded out in the many hotels of the town. Which at this off-season time of the year were no doubt glad to have the custom. My hotel was in the New Steine, and called, I think, the Trouville. I shared a long narrow gloomy room with Roger Silverman, the somewhat long narrow and gloomy son of Sidney Silverman MP, whose chief claim to fame was a successful attempt to abolish capital punishment by way of a Private Member's Bill.
My own private member very much approved of all that. As it approved of far too many things. For instance the tender ministrations of Mike, my Jewish lover. (Much to my dismay.) You see for some reason I was surrounded by Jews: Roger was Jewish, Mike was Jewish, Misha was Jewish, Gabby was Jewish, Paul Ernest partly Jewish. David, my dear dead friend, who had bequeathed me Sally on his deathbed, had been Jewish. Allen Ginsberg was Jewish. Was David Daiches? No. He was Scottish. And therefore probably even worse.
He it was who had interviewed me.
I had travelled down to Brighton by slow train expressly.
The first thing I did was apologise for being late. David Daiches set me at my ease over that. How difficult authority figures are! I've never really known how to cope with them. Everything was happening so fast. I needed room to breathe. I proceeded to argue with David Daiches about the respective merits of Pound and Eliot. To my amazement Dr Daiches said 'yes' on the spot. I mean he actually said 'yes'. (At least I seem to remember he did.) I mean to the prospect of being admitted to that select university.
When I left the university, a month or so later, I had another interview with him. Were there any others present on either occasion? How should I know? I just felt very bad about betraying his faith in me. But you see I simply couldn't settle down to work. I was supposed to be doing Philosophy. Instead I found myself doing Sociology. A subject I was only marginally interested in. Why couldn't they let me follow my own interests and enthusiasms? I sat there in the long narrow gloomy room I shared with Roger smoking a long narrow not so gloomy clay pipe, heavily contaminated with some brownish gooh called opium. Roger's section of the room was curtained off. I listened to John Coltrane and felt terrible. I had seen the clay pipe in a Brighton shop window and bought it. The 'opium' had no effect. I only smoked one pipe. I was innocent of the fact that you need to smoke at least five pipes. But you see I had only bought one.
I went into the University once a week to attend Sociology tutorials with Mr Kedward. I think another student was present as well. I was far too busy articulating my own insights to notice very much. Mr Kedward suggested there were other would-be poets I might like to be introduced to. Ho hum. I was still desperately trying to introduce myself to Pound and Eliot.
I present my impressions helter-skelter in this confused fashion because that is the way they occurred. Indeed I am very much tempted to do a cut-up of them, they are so embarrassing and awkward and all over the place. Indeed I felt very much like somebody's cut-up. I felt I needed a couple of years to recover from secondary education before I could settle down to anything like serious work.
Then there were Jill and Eileen and Stav.
At the time I was reading a biography of Rimbaud - I think the one by Enid Starkie - and I remember finishing it, and remarking to Roger that, in the whole length of that book, homosexuality hadn't even been mentioned once. Another time Roger mentioned that he had 'a drink problem'. I daresay I made the appropriate sympathetic noises. On yet another occasion Roger asked me who I'd begged to be allowed to share a room with (on some form we'd had to fill in). I replied that I had opted for solitude. Roger, it turned out, had asked to share with me. I felt slightly embarrassed by my callous indifference to his proffered camaraderie. But, you see, I had been wanting to get off on my own from earliest adolescence. Not because I was naturally ungregarious but because everybody else seemed to be headed in exactly the opposite direction to the one I wanted to go.
Nevertheless by now solitude was a vocation to which I was very much committed. So I was continually getting off on my own. I remember going for a long walk along the front at Brighton heading in the eastwards direction. Eventually I stopped at a seafront café for some light refreshment. A young lady at another table, also on her own, called out to me: 'Are you at the university?' I replied in the affirmative. We got talking. It turned out she was too. 'A nice friendly bunch,' I thought to myself. Perhaps in future I'll have to go further. Or in some less obvious, slightly more devious, direction.
There was a pub in the centre of Brighton famous for its scrumpy. (A rough and rather strong cider.) One night I went there. And ordered a pint of the hideous muck, and stood at the bar imbibing it, in the hopes, presumably, that it would be somewhat more potent than the opium had proved to be. A group of students were sat round a table in the corner. One of them called out to me and asked if I'd like to join them. By now I'd drunk enough to render me slightly less antisocial. The girl was pretty and I acceded to her generous and kindly request. She mentioned the fact that we'd stood next to one another in the queue at the university refectory the day before. How nice all the girls were at Sussex! So friendly! And warm! And kind! And Eileen was one such. Was Stav also there? Was that the night we got pleasantly merry and walked back from the pub down the Backs with our arms around each other singing Beatles songs at the top of our voices? Or was that later?
Eileen shared a room with Jill. Jill was a mature student of thirty. Funny to think she would now be ninety. And Eileen seventy eight. I felt much more on a level with Jill in terms of maturity.
Eileen was from Liverpool, and told me how she had frequented the Cavern Club and listened to the Beatles and no doubt danced to their music.
If the education system had done its best to cramp my style, Mike's machinations and peregrinations didn't exactly give it much elbow room either. In fact if anything his solutions were even worse. Why exactly was everybody attempting to impose their own style on me anyway? Didn't they realise I had my own style, which, insofar as it was apparently even more delicate and sensitive than theirs, needed even more elbow room, and even more sunlight, and gentle watering, if it was to fully mature? Seemingly sunlight was nowhere to be found. And the only watering I was ever to be accorded was that of my own tears. The angry tears of others were simply no solution. And certainly the darkened dives of Soho into which Mike continually inducted me, as if into some splendid 'Destiny', offered even less sunlight than before. In any case hadn't I met all this already in the pages of Dante?
Sometimes Mike would visit me at Sussex, and then divert himself by lecturing the rest of the students about anything he felt they needed lecturing on. He really was an obnoxious little prick. He simply wasn't any good at anything, except telling other people how to do everything, including how to live their lives. He tried to convince me that he was a good drummer. But that failed to impress me because I really couldn't see that drumming required much skill anyway. All one needed was a sense of rhythm. He continually sought for my approval. While at the same time doing his best to reduce me to the status of an object. Confronted with a group of would-be lesbians, who hadn't yet crystallised into any definite symmetry, he presented me as his latest conquest. Their response was to murmur something like 'What a waste!' Which indeed was more or less true. Mike's response was, 'Do you like him? He's nice isn't he? He's got a big cock too.' Yet again reduced to the status of more or less fresh meat in a market place! Everywhere one turned there seemed no escape from the slave-auction. And yet, when they had first greeted Mike, it was with obvious liking and respect. Somewhere in the background there was a gentleman who looked like William Burroughs. The vaguely entrancing lad, who also officiated at the entrance, was a gamin of about fourteen. Mike tried to pick him up. The boy glanced in my direction and asked, 'With him?' Mike answered in the affirmative. The boy replied by suggesting that if he had no customers that night he would be willing enough to oblige. Later that night, on our exiting, he apologetically explained that he now had a customer, and nodded in the direction of 'William Burroughs'. I breathed an almost audible sigh of relief. The girls at Brighton were so much more reassuring. And healthy. And sane.
One weekend I was late returning from one of my forays into Soho and was fined by the sort of officious prick who takes a delight in such things. Five pounds, if I remember correctly. But what a miserable excuse for a life though… Fining people! To get to the end of one's life and think of all the famous people one had fined! Worse than collecting notches on one's penis. Or editors' rejection slips. Or degrees. Or items in a bucket list. Mike used to hitchhike even in the middle of London. Well, I suppose it made some sort of sense. Better sense than collecting things like crabs, say; or venereal diseases; or terms in prison. At least it had the merit of being difficult. And even unusual.
But not as difficult as writing great masterpieces of world literature. Which was the only thing that interested me.
When Eileen stumbled, and fell on me, on one occasion, and Jill exclaimed, 'You only did that because you wanted to kiss John,' I found that much more reassuring. But, even so, difficult to take. Why couldn't people leave me alone? A long moody walk with Eileen along the Brighton pier - the one that was subsequently destroyed or damaged - had her looking up into my eyes somewhat hopefully and wistfully. But you see the only thing I really had on my mind was my art. How exactly was I, in the midst of all this, going to write the great poem I knew I had inside of me? Everything else seemed strangely exterior. Like an Ingmar Bergman film. And yet too much of an emotional roller-coaster for me to be entirely at ease with. One moment at the top of Kanchenjunga, the next at the bottom of the Mindanao Trench. And as if all this wasn't enough I was expected to expatiate more or less expertly on Sociology, a subject I had almost no interest in, either theoretically or practically, and yet which was impinging on my creative endeavours in a most disruptive way, well nigh continually. Was it on that occasion that Eileen told me of her visits to the Cavern club and her preview into the delights of the as yet unheard of Beatles?
Walking down a Rue in Paris that previous summer I had been amused by the way Mike and another lad were so busy quarrelling with each other that they hardly noticed when I abstracted myself from their company by the simple expedient of simply stopping in my tracks while they walked on ahead and then darting across the thoroughfare in search of some other ampler Boulevard. From where I decamped to the Isle de la Cité, behind the Cathedral of Our Lady, at the far end, among the beautiful silver birches, to savour the transcendent beauty of their leaves, and the deep kindly old-fashioned, if slightly exotic, peace of the river. How good it was to get off on my own at long last!
But not for long, alas. Mike, obedient to his usual habit of just turning up, like a bad penny wherever a millionaire's ransome was needed, obtruded himself on my hitherto almost celestialised vision, to kindly inform me…Of what? (No… Not so much to 'inform' me as to enlighten me!...) That, of course, it was over me they had both been quarreling. Wow! If he hadn't told me I might never have known! And furthermore, it occurred to me, what a precious jewel l must have concealed up my anus, or, in the case of women, exposed on my prick! When what concerned me most was the sacred jewel in my heart, and, then, in my even higher chakras: the gift I wanted only too much to give to the world, and which was certainly infinitely more precious, and more deserving of everybody's impatient regard. Even that of my so-called Teachers and Tutors and Professors and Doctors.
The impression I picked up from Mike was that he was someone who thought of himself as surrounded by men who were good at everything, whereas he was good at nothing, and therefore good for nothing. And so the only thing left to him was homosexuality. At least there he could dominate others and gain some sort of revenge. And of course the more talented the victim the greater the triumph. That this was a pity shouldn't really need to be acknowledged by me. And if he did have any talent this certainly wasn't the way to develop it. After all I myself only had one talent, if that. And I knew already it would take time and patience to develop it. And that in any case talent very often only gets in the way. But even so, I could sympathise with Mike. And felt in many ways uncomfortably like him.
He was such an obnoxious little prick that when he had first turned up on the scene at Hampstead we had all been rather rude to him. And this had turned to outright revulsion when he confessed he had been to prison for 'picking up' schoolboys. But at the same time I felt slightly guilty that perhaps we'd been a bit hard on him. And so he had worked on that guilt sufficiently to gain access to my inner regions, and then finally obtain complete mastery over them. That sort of thing at least he was good at. He might have made a good therapist if he had turned his few talents in that more positive direction.
Mad, bad and dangerous to know, Mike was just another part of that grand conspiracy to prevent me from being me, that I could only finally counter by getting off completely on my own. Art School was a haven of peace. But that was all. Artists has always seemed to me to be saner than anybody else. And certainly kinder. And more relaxed. The most uptight were academics. The most relaxed person I have ever come across was Maharishi. But that was only to come several years later.
One day somebody took a whole party of us to visit Lewes and then ascend Mount Caburn. Did we go in a minibus, or a land-rover, or was it just a very large car? Roger was one of the party. The grass was long and lush. And the year was still not advanced enough for the weather to be entirely rebarbative. Or the trees to have entirely lost, or even completely gilded, their lily-like leaves. At least Mike wasn't one of the party. I was among normal and decent people at long last. If only for a short while.
You see what I needed more than anything else was to be among normal people and just rest and relax. Without any exterior demands being made on me. So that I could learn once again to listen into the demands of my own soul. And its underlying song. And Mike was no help because he was even more messed up than I was. Pete Blackman was always going on about 'fucked-up people'. And God knows this future winner of an OBE for his contribution to black charities was right. We were all more or less fucked-up. And it was education that had done that to us.
It was Mike who suggested I leave Sussex. He enticed me with all sorts of promises with regard to future developments in my social connectedness vis-à-vis poetry. Truth to say none of that mattered much to me anyway. It was my inner connectedness to my muse that most troubled me. My tutor at Sussex had promised much the same, and had done so, much more credibly. But I suppose it did give me the excuse I needed to abstract myself from an increasingly intolerable situation. I felt as if I were being torn to pieces, like Orpheus among the Maenads. I needed something a lot more Arcadian and soothing than even the countryside of Virginia Woolf could offer me. Or for that matter Virginia Woolf herself. Since she had committed suicide. I too had found a not dissimilar nemesis in another sort of ooze.
Anyway that was what I told Dr Daiches. I had a friend and we were off to bloom and blossom in 'the land of no strangers' and extensive poetry. 'The Land Of No Strangers' was a book put together by some friends of the family and illustrated by a close friend of my mother. When I had come across her son in the concourse at Sussex I had rushed up to him with open arms calling out his name, 'Francis!' After all as children we had once shared a bed. He barely deigned to glance at me. He was looking very much at his ease, conversing with yet another frighteningly pretty girl. They seemed to be everywhere. And so many of them really friendly, and in a way the girls around Hampstead had never been. (Unlike me Francis had gone to a coeducational school and was therefore necessarily much more self-assured and relaxed than I now was.) After a moment's thought Francis relented and proffered me the address of his hotel in Brighton. Just slightly along the coast from where I was. To the east. An invitation I, alas, had to forego, since my terminal interview with Dr Daiches transpired before I had a chance to get round to it. Oh all these friends! Oh all these shared beds! At least my arrangements with Francis had been relatively chaste. And had taken place under the relatively tender supervision of my mother. And occasioned no subsequent pestilential infestation with crabs.
After I left there followed a couple of months doing all sorts of weird and wonderful if equally unbearable things before we arrived at an impasse and Christmas came and I had perforce to return to my parents. Who then suggested I go to Art School. To which accordingly I went. When I left Sussex, my tutor suggested that I might have been better off on the outside of the university coming in. When I went to Art School David Daiches wrote to me expressing his surprise at my sudden change of direction. I did not reply to his letter. I had entered a different world. And from henceforth was incommunicado. Even to myself.
POSTAMBLE
Though in very many ways I deeply regret leaving Sussex University so early I really had no other choice, did I? While I was there I did no work and simply couldn't settle down to work. I was far too disturbed. And, I hasten to add, quite rightly so. My thinking went something like this: How dare all you others take so much evil in your stride so calmly! What is wrong with you? Do you have no moral sense? Are you so focused on your own selfishness and greed that you can't take heed of anything else? 'Do what you're told; go along with the herd: don't ask questions; turn on anybody different': is that the only moral code you are aware of, and can follow? After two thousand years of Christianity?
What I really needed was a long rest from everything. An infinitely long rest.
Also, if I'd stayed, I would have had to make a fuss about homosexuality, and about child-abuse. And that would have upset my parents. And more than anything I wanted to please my parents. And also I didn't want to risk leading the other students astray. You see, I believe in the importance of setting a good example. (I only wish my teachers had shared that conviction.) Mike seemed to want me, and need me, more than anybody else did. He really was in a great deal of pain. And I'm a sucker for helping people and being generally useful. Or at least I used to be.
After he had succeeded in getting me to leave, Mike and I spent some time together. In the course of which time we worked in the degreasing unit of a factory, and got paid two weeks wages for one week's work. That trichlor really was the very devil. And we ended up being degreased far more than were the metal objects we were supposed to be degreasing. We were also charmingly regailed with stories of people going mad in there because of the fumes. I seem to remember we took plenty of breathers outside. We rented a room in the apartment of a black man who for some strange reason objected to Mike running around the rest of the flat in his underwear. I think all this took place in Millhill.
Then we split up.
Christmas was approaching. We'd run out of money. The only practical thing to do was to return to the bosoms of our respective families. (Not that Mike's 'family' had much of a bosom.) And that was the end of that. Mike made one or two desperate attempts to contact me again. But was seen off by my mother.
Later that Christmas I went round to Roger's place. We talked briefly at the door. Then his mother called out from wherever she was, 'Is that John Martin?' And on having her worst suspicions confirmed came charging up to the front door exclaiming, 'How dare you leave Sussex? Don't you realise you've deprived somebody else of a place?' What could I say? I simply bid Roger goodbye and went home.
In fact of course I didn't realise I'd deprived anybody else of a place. Far from it I was far too busy realising I'd deprived myself of a place. And in any case I daresay allowances are made for natural wastage: people dying; or failing exams; or changing their courses. I did, though, realise that Mrs Silverman had rushed to judgement. And not exactly given me a fair trial. But that was nothing new. I was beginning to see that the last thing one could expect from white professional middle-class people was fairness or justice. Wall-to-wall prejudice seemed to be the order of the day. And self-righteous bullying. Her husband was famous for abolishing the death sentence in this country. But single-handedly she had just done her best to reintroduce it. I might very well have gone home and committed suicide.
Self-righteousness apparently is so often accompanied by other-wrongedness.
After Christmas my parents offered me the option of going to Art School. And so I did.
Although Mike suffered very greatly, the world that Mike dreamt of has since come about much as he envisaged it. Almost as if he had written it. And yet he probably died long ago. If not before that then during the AIDS epidemic.
Like me Mike was very much ahead of his time. He also thought of homosexuality as a very masculine thing. I just thought of it as a nuisance.
Perhaps somebody should erect a monument in his name. Perhaps this is it.
