No Shame by Tom Allen

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When I saw that Tom Allen had chosen to call his book “No Shame” I was hoping for an insightful exploration – the ways in which Shame shapes us is something that I have been wrestling with more and more in the last couple of years. So with high expectations I guess I was also a little nervous, but fear not Tom delivers such a moving account it was a joy to read even when it made me cry.

Tom Allen is a similar age to me, which was sort of surprising as I assumed he was a bit younger than he is, but then to be honest I assume that I am a bit younger than it turns out I actually am, so the surprise is not that we are a similar age more that we are both that old. However I think this added to the power of his story for me – the context is the same point in time, particularly in respect to be experience of growing up gay in the late 90s.

As he puts it - “it was in a sense, illegal for me to be gay. The age of consent for same-sex couples was eighteen, two years older than for straight people. Earlier in the year, a gay pub in Soho had been nail-bombed. There was no legal protection for discrimination against gay people. We were banned from serving in the military… we couldn’t get married… Section 28 was still in force, meaning schools couldn’t say to kids that it was OK to be gay. … these rules set a tone in the world, without me realising it, and action spoke loud in the absence of positive words.” (p103)

I think I am a bit embarrassed to make that point – when many face very real material discrimination, violence even, for who they are – these feels like legal niceties, the difference in the age of consent was almost entirely academic, who was I going to have sex with at that age even if it had been legal. But this plays into the internalising of lack of self-worth – that this inferior legal status was only to be expected, that you should be grateful for the partial decriminalisation and not get above oneself asking for more. I don’t think I ever even dreamt of a day when there would be marriage equality – I am delighted that it is here, but there is a bit of me that doesn’t quite believe it.

This theme run through a lot of the book - when a teacher asks him about being bullied he recalls that “… I knew I absolutely couldn’t tell her because I didn’t want to make a fuss or make it worse. Somehow I thought I wasn’t worth it – things like this were inevitable if I didn’t hide myself well enough.” (p35) I have thought about how at Ravenscroft I did get picked on for my hair, which was a dreadful mess, but I think in a way I was actually hiding by growing my hair, if they picked on my hair they weren’t picking on me – not exactly brilliant logic but it did give me a kind of control...

He refers to always having felt like he was forty-six, having been born middle-aged, and this was another of the points of resonance, I think I have mostly been a bit wary of children and liked being with adults more. I was not so good are team games, and found the conversations of the grown ups interesting.

The struggles of a love life are especially complex when you probably don’t even like yourself, it makes being attractive to others tricky. This can lead to over investing in various “crushes”, possibly sub-consciously the more unattainable the better as that reduces the risk of actual in-your-face rejection. He captures an insight many will be familiar with when he writes that “... they’re called crushes because they crush every part of you and you can barely think or move because the crush is weighing you down.” (p52) They are consuming in your obsession for the person, and in the humiliation when there is no interest in return.

I could also relate to his account of feeling awkward in a gay bar in New York “It was one thing to feel like an outsider around straight people, it was much worse to feel like an outsider when I was surrounded by my own tribe.” (p157) We thought we would walk into a gay bar and immediately be fabulous – turns out even in a gay bar I am still painfully shy and, convinced that I am the most boring person that has ever lived, completely incapable to striking up a causal conversation with a stranger.

But it is not all doom and gloom, he talks of joy of being on a gay cruise ship, completely surrounded by other gay people of all shapes and sizes “I’d never had the luxury of being surrounded by people who were gay like me. It wasn’t ab-normal, per se – it was extra-ordinary, and being extra is seldom a bad thing.” (p190) a normalising of being gay, even if we hold on to the fact that “’Normal’ is not always something to aspire to.” It is one of the things I increasingly realise I like about our holidays in Gran Canaria, staying in a hotel where we aren’t the only same-sex couple at breakfast is surprisingly liberating. I also think this is something I found with YLGC – the mix of people, that there were gay people that were sort of ordinary, you could be gay AND wear a fleece – even in the early 2000s I needed reminding that we didn’t all have to be Elton John.

This ongoing spectre of shame, and the lurking worry that rights so recently won can be lost again, make me value the importance of Pride – I can say, along with Tom, “I’ve come to learn that the concept of Pride is perhaps best seen as a goal or even as a verb and something we are all striving for on our personal journeys – to learn that we are all valid, important, and ultimately, enough – while we hopefully work towards achieving this for other people.” (p223)

I was reading this as the first couple of episodes of Its a Sin were on the telly (I was going to say “aired” but then I remembered I am not America). I think the reflections Tom makes on it in this podcast say a lot of the things I am feeling in response to it https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/its-a-sin/id1049741444?i=1000507080231

Like Tom, I am of a generation where I know friends that are living with HIV but those even a few years older were in the midst of that initial wave where their lives have been dominated by friends dying of AIDS – and these experiences are worlds apart. Reading Tales of the City has also been unpacking this for me.

I grew up with the legacy of fear of AIDS, rather than a direct experience of it, probably not really aware of how far treatment of HIV had already come even then. I knew I wanted to have sex, I knew that having sex meant the risk of getting AIDS, there was therefore an association in my head between my sexual desire and disease – and it lingers even now.

My understanding of what gay relationships could look like was shaped disproportionally by Philadelphia and Brokeback Mountain – I was trying to think of a joke to make about that, but there isn’t one really – the message was if you are lucky you might find love, but it will come with a whole heap of pain. Living life like Cinderella, if I am at the ball I am holding back, I am waiting for midnight when it will all turn to dust.