“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh dear. Tim, do you have a sister as dreadful as this girl? I bet you don’t.”
“I’m an only child.”
Jarrah was watching, ready to pounce. I knew exactly what she wanted to say, so I said it for her. “But many only children are gay.”
“And where would musical comedy be without them!” Dr Franken boomed, surging back into the room. For a small man he has an amazingly penetrating presence. He’d taken off his black tailcoat and wiped off his Groucho Marx moustache. The pince-nez had been transformed into sensible spectacles, and the clown shoes were gone in favour of bare feet; yet he was still an intense theatrical force.
“So how are the ladies treating you, Tim?”
“Very well.”
Jarrah stared at her father hard. “A lady and a lesbian called Frankenstein, Dad, and we’re treating him fine.”
“I take it Jarrah’s told you her news?”
“Yes, just then.”
“It’s taken up a lot of airtime today; but that’s okay, it’s our first family outing.”
“Aside from the vaudeville,” said Jarrah.
“I’m sorry about that, Tim, I’ve been working on a little comedy routine about Texan fundamentalism and the right to life.”
“Plenty of laughs in abortion, Dad – should go down a treat.”
Dr Franken’s smile faded. “It’s going too far, isn’t it?”
“You know it is.”
“But they’re insane.”
“Who, all those male obstetricians?”
“No, the fascists who politicise love.”
“What’s love got to do with it?”
“It’s how they justify their fascism, Jarrah – the love of creation, God’s love for the sanctity of unborn life.”
“It’s still not funny, Dad.”
Sitting in the Frankens’ elegant salon with a fine china cup of Turkish coffee on my lap, I could only think about my parents. The words lesbian, abortion and gay had rarely left their lips, at least not with me in the room; if my mother Sally had been introduced to a Jewish obstetrician called Frankenstein, her mouth would have set in concrete.
“What about you, Tim?” asked Dr Franken. “Any ideas from the veterinary science point of view?”
“We haven’t got to the reproductive bits yet, we’re still learning about feet.”
“Oh-ho, a sense of humour, excellent.”
“Hilarious,” said Jarrah. “Come on, Tim, what do you think?”
My mind was somewhere between a riot and a ride on a rollercoaster. I knew a little bit about fundamentalist Christianity, thanks to my mother, but I’d never been in a family debate in my life and, even if I had, the family Wilde would never have tackled the politicisation of love. I’d certainly never thought about it, but I just couldn’t sit there like a lumbering boofhead.
“I don’t really know how love works,” I began carefully, “and I’m not sure that anyone really does, but …”
“Well, that’s a cop-out,” Jarrah said through a wicked smile.
“Let him finish,” Dr Franken cautioned.
Let me finish? Let me finish what? I had no idea what I was going to say next. All I could do was grab the next wave and try not to land on my head. “But love doesn’t seem easy to control,” I continued, still cautious, “and if you can’t control it in yourself, I don’t see how you can legislate to control it in anybody else.”
There was silence. I’m not saying it was a stunned silence, but it was certainly long enough for me to catch my breath.
“Good on you, Tim, you hit ’em with the perfect combo – left, right, left. Round one to you.”
Joe had appeared at the dormer windows and was now leaning bare-chested against the polished timber, wearing a set of boxing gloves, with sweat pouring down his muscular chest.
“Don’t walk in here like that, Joe,” his mother said quickly, “I don’t want you dripping on the rugs.”
“It’s okay, Mum, I know, I know. I’ll have a shower and in the meantime leave my mate alone, okay? He’s just a good-hearted goy from the beach.”
7
Gradually the Frankens became my second family. Among them I was catapulted into a tempest of noisy debate. Love, sex, music, politics, science, business, medicine and the twists of the daily news cycle were fallen upon with a voracious appetite. During the louder arguments I often thought of the advice from my mother: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, Tim, say nothing at all,” clearly a rare precept among the descendants of the ancient Israelites.
At first Jarrah was a prickly presence. She was always ready to peel away the layers of what she assumed was my supreme Aryan confidence; but, because she was so close to Joe, she gradually accepted me and in time we became friends, although her good looks were always unnerving. Sometimes she caught me watching her with too much fascination and would screw up her face. She still does it today, when I forget myself. Now it’s done with affection privately shared, but she’s always aware of the impact of her physical presence.
About a year after we met she and I were walking alone back up to the house after a sweaty game of tennis when she said, with no provocation, “I feel like some cock.”
I actually stumbled.
“What’s the matter, Tim, not ladylike enough for you?”
“No, not at all. You just caught me by surprise.”
“You thought I should say I feel like some cunt?”
“No, it’s just that …”
“Women are allowed to express themselves sexually, you know.”
“I get that; but if I said the same thing, I’d be torn to pieces by the hounds of feminist hell.”
“That’s the difference between us, Tim, women say things men can’t. It’s fantastic.”
When I reported this back to Joe, he just smiled. “She’s not gay, you know.”
“What?”
“She’s not gay.”
“But I’ve seen her with her girlfriends.”
“I didn’t say she doesn’t like girls – we all do – but that doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian.”
“You mean she’s bisexual?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all, the term is meaningless. Sexuality is a kaleidoscope, you know that. What I mean is she’s straight and has affairs with girls.”
“Why? Is it emotional or physical, or what?”
“Both, probably, just like we are with women. There’s really no difference.”
“She’s told you this?”
“She doesn’t have to. It’s obvious.”
Jarrah did have affairs with men but, as twenty years of friendship went by, the three of us developed a similar trajectory in our emotional lives. As hard as we tried, none of us ever seemed to be able to hang onto a long-term relationship. Three months, six, sometimes a year seemed to be