Thursday 27 November 2014

Because it was there

I'm at home at the moment, slowly recovering from a groin strain.  With some strong painkillers at last making inroads into some of the worst pain I can ever remember experiencing (in fact at the outset it was so bad I thought I must have got appendicitis - but the Doc when she examined me said not) I'm trying to rest and let nature take its healing course.  I've done something I'd thought of doing before on a number of occasions, which is to do the food shopping online.  I had been put off by pretty steep delivery charges as well as horror stories from people I know who've tried it, but the effect of what I suspect is quite keen competition in the market has resulted in a 24-hour turnaround process with some midweek timeslots of only £1 for the delivery.  So my first order arrived yesterday afternoon, complete and with no weird substitutions, and dead on time - well, two or three minutes early, actually.

The other side-effect of my 'convalescence' has been that I wasn't able to go to my Italian classes this week or last.  Which prompted me to think some more about the question of whether I really wanted to continue with them.  The clincher is/was that in contrast to my enthusiasm four years ago I wasn't really enjoying them much anymore - which in turn raised the question of what the point was of continuing with something you don't like and don't actually have to do.  I began to realize that I'd fallen into the trap of re-enrolling for another year just because it was there rather than because there was anything (such as an eventual qualification) specifically in view at the end of it.  While it's arguably not altogether wise to take decisions under the influence of feeling in pain and generally under the weather, I emailed the tutor to say I'd decided not to carry on.

Thinking back to the debacle which marked the end of my first attempt to learn Italian and which I wrote about in my last entry, I'm not about to give up a second time.  If I've learned anything at all from that, it's that opportunities now are way in excess of what existed then and it's simply a question of re-focusing on what it is that I'm ultimately trying to achieve, and seeking the best way of doing it.  I'm not sure whether I've written about this or not, but as my studies have progressed I made tentative enquiries about doing an A level.  The University, perhaps understandably, made it clear when I asked that I was on my own with that as far as they were concerned so I put it on the proverbial back burner. 

I've on the other hand been fortunate enough to stay in touch with a small group of fellow-students from when we had our Intermediate level classes together and we used to meet up for practice during the long summer holidays.  They started having private tuition and have agreed for me to join them when I'm up and running again, which will give me the opportunity to consolidate what I've learned so far and look at finding an A level course to do in the autumn.

While I'll always regret what slipped away from me the first time all those years ago, I'm determined to do everything I possibly can to make up for it now. 

Thursday 30 October 2014

Of ghosts and skeletons....

So it's Hallowe'en once again: the time of ghosts and skeletons, one of which I let out of its cupboard exactly five years ago this week.  The relevance of all this will hopefully become clear at the end of the story, so keep reading!

I've written and reminisced quite a lot over the last five years about my schooldays: they were happy times, the memory of which I've grown to treasure.  The culmination, back then, was that at the tender age of 17 I left school and went off one October's day down to Exeter to take up a place at Exeter University.  I was overjoyed at getting the grades I needed (two As and a C against an acceptance requiring two Bs), and full of optimism and plans for the future.  I'd always been young for my age, shy, timid and slow to make friends: whether I ignored that warning sign, didn't think it mattered or simply thought naïvely that it was magically somehow going to change I can't say.  But the constant round of partying, socializing and clubbing which is traditionally supposed to mark a Fresher's first experience of University just didn't happen for me.  I don't think any of my classmates from school had gone to Exeter too, so I didn't know anyone, and on the course we were split into different groups for different seminars and tutorials and so on.

The inevitable and predictable result was that after only a very short space of time I was lonely and homesick.  To make matters worse, two or three of the compulsory initial modules covered classical literature and drama, the very things I'd hated most about doing French A level at school.  I'd take copious notes in the lectures, but otherwise it was simply going in one ear and out of the other.  I'd re-read my notes in my room in the evenings and they wouldn't mean anything: it simply wouldn't sink in.  The rest of the time I whiled away listening to the radio or sometimes records, interspersed with an occasional trip to the communal TV lounge, hoping no-one else wanted to watch something else on one of the other channels.  On Thursday nights there was a "formal" Hall Dinner in the evening, so we all gathered together, dressed up in our suits and gowns, to watch as much as we could of "Top of the Pops" just before the dinner started!

The worst time was the weekend when there were no classes.  Saturdays I generally used to go into town for a spot of "retail therapy".  Most weeks it was just window shopping as although my parents had given me access to a savings account they'd started for me as a small child, it was only supposed to be for buying books and emergency essentials!  Sundays were especially awful.  I couldn't go home for the weekends - it was a four or five hour train journey each way even supposing I'd had the money for the return fare, and I think I managed it once in the whole term.  There was a payphone downstairs in the entrance hall, but this was in the days long before mobile phones, when "trunk" calls were prohibitively expensive.  So that just left letters and I wrote home as often as I could, eagerly checking my pigeon-hole each morning for a reply from home.  Somewhat peversely, in the light of what I've just written, I gave no inkling of how unhappy I was: I suppose I just didn't want to worry anyone.

Eventually Christmas came, and back home in all the excitement and festivities marking the occasion, I got a respite from my worries.  Returning in the New Year, I somehow hoped things would get better and I secretly resolved to try harder to make it all work.  If anything, it got worse.  The long dark nights and cold dismal days of winter and early spring did nothing to lift my low spirits.  I started to get lethargic and lose what little remaining interest I still had in the course - I couldn't settle down and I found myself struggling to keep my head above water with the work.  That said, it wasn't all bad: I was thrilled to hear that in my Italian language classes, which I'd started from scratch, was really enjoying, and which had been the main reason for my choosing Exeter in the first place, we were already up to an O level standard!  And I remember too the weekly trip up the hill on the other side of town on a Friday afternoon to where the Language Laboratory was situated, for the bizarre highlight of the week - a session listening to our own choice of current French pop songs, decyphering the lyrics and singing along karaoke-style!

The rest of that second term passed in something of a blur, proving I daresay the truth of the common supposition about the mind blotting out memories of unpleasant things.  Be that as it may, the next thing I recollect is the morning when I was upstairs at home, in the last week of the Easter vacation, helping my mother make the beds.  I was absolutely bricking it - in the knowledge that we were due to have exams just a week or two into the new term, and I had never been less prepared for anything in my life.  The phrase "preoccupied with failure" doesn't do my confused feelings justice, but then at that moment my mother suddenly looked me straight in the eye and said: "Why don't you tell me what's wrong?"

I sat down on the bed, tears welling up in my eyes, and blurted it all out: it was as if a dam had burst.  I wish I could say I felt better afterwards but I didn't.  I felt an abject failure: I'd let my parents down, dashed their hopes and denied them the pride of getting their only son through University successfully.  If there's been a lower point in my life - before or since - then I can't think of what it might be.  But my mother simply sat down on the bed beside me and said gently: "Well, if you don't like it, don't go back."  My sense of relief was indescribable.

I don't remember what my father said at the news, from which I deduce that I must've left it to my mother to tell both him and my sister - quite probably something along the lines of "This is what we've decided...!"  She was on the other hand insistent that I had to go back down to collect my things in person a couple of days before the new term started - a sort of object lesson in cleaning up your own mess after you.  While I was dreading it, the process of de-registering or dis-enrolling or whatever the proper word is for it turned out to be pretty painless.  In fact the general reaction from all the tutors was: "But why didn't you say anything??"  I didn't know how to answer that then and I don't really know now.  The closest I can get is to say that there were so many things wrong that I just honestly didn't know where to start.

My father gave me the news that one of our neighbours, who was a college lecturer, had offered to talk me through the idea of enrolling on a local language course as a day student instead.  But, with all my hopes dashed, what little self-confidence I had in tatters, and my plans for the future in ruins, I said no.  I'd fallen at the first hurdle and I didn't want the consolation prize: I just wanted to draw a line under it all and move on to something completely different.  My father was a bit disappointed and I can now see why.  I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't occasionally wondered idly over the years whether I shouldn't perhaps have swallowed my pride and tried to salvage something more from the wreckage.

In the emotional aftermath which followed, the whole episode rapidly became something of a taboo subject at home, and those few friends and acquaintances who were 'in the know' soon picked up on the vibes that I didn't want to talk about it.  On one of the rare occasions when it was mentioned, my mother confided in me that she believed the problem stemmed from the time I was put up a year in Junior School, becoming thereafter always the youngest in the class, and thus going off to University a year before my time - and she said she wished that hadn't happened.  Perhaps she was right: my emotional immaturity certainly added to my problems although I have considerable doubt as to whether an extra year on its own would've made that much real difference, taking into account all the other factors at play.  Whatever the answer, as time wore on, there was less and less need for anyone to even know it had ever happened and thus my 'secret' had lain hidden for some four decades before I plucked up the courage to "confess" and write about it.

Re-reading what I've written so far, I'm glad I opened up about it all five years ago.  The catharsis then has served to put it all into some sort of proper perspective and I think that on the whole I can take a more benign view of the experience.  I do still feel sad, thinking back: I was after all desperately miserable and what should've been one of the happiest periods of my life ended up seeming like an unmitigated disaster.  I feel tinges of regret, as I have done from time to time over the years when something would suddenly or unexpectedly remind me, for something which was simply not destined to happen - and I don't think those will ever entirely leave me.

But it's been the wistfulness which was the legacy of my abandoning my study of Italian 45 years ago, with nothing to show for it, that acted as the catalyst behind my decision to enrol for weekly classes, taking up in 2010 from where I'd left off.  On the whole both enjoyable and productive, it nevertheless hasn't been all totally plain sailing. I'm no longer as sharp as I was back in 1966, my memory isn't as retentive and I don't spend enough time in between classes immersing myself in the language anywhere near enough to being halfway fluent.  This year, my fifth, will be my last (on this course, at least - the current Advanced 2 being the top level).  I was a little in two minds about carrying on to the end, in fact, the price tag of £320 for the course fees being one deterrent.  But it seemed a shame not to finally finish what I'd started, particularly as the Advanced levels are only run in alternate years.  

I'm finding it hard going: in fact after the first or second week, for the very first time I gave serious thought to dropping out, almost regretting my decision to re-enrol.  I struggle rather haltingly to contribute to oral discussions, I still cannot decipher recorded dialogue except by lucky guesswork, and the level of some of the reading texts we've been practising with has had some quite advanced vocabulary.  The interest level has varied and I daresay that's inevitable.  On the plus side, my reading is usually OK and I generally put the stress and intonation in the right places.  My grammatical work is on the whole spot-on, but I've yet to start either the first written assignment or prepare the presentation I have to do: I can't work up any real enthusiasm for either.  Somewhat unexpectedly, I was heartened to find at the end of this week's class, when we were talking amongst ourselves, that I'm by no means alone - I detected a noticeable feeling that this year's level is a big jump up from last year's and we wonder if the real problem is that we've just reached the natural ceiling of our ability?  Maybe I should confide discreetly in Laura, our tutor, who has always been both friendly and approachable?

But then as I sit here pondering upon the implications of that last paragraph I can suddenly hear echoing in the distant corners of my mind the plaintive, rather haunting cry of that poor lonely 17-year old from my past.  He's calling out to me :"Hey, Donny, you can do it!  Believe in yourself!  Don't give up on me now, you can do it, you know you can!"   I can't let him down a second time.                

Thursday 17 July 2014

Nasty surprises

I received the unwelcome news recently that my remaining nephew (my sister's oldest son) had died suddenly - at the relatively young age of 41.  I gather the cause was heart trouble, although I at least certainly wasn't aware that he had any sort of history of it.  That said, we certainly weren't close: in fact I hadn't seen or heard from him since the day of my sister's funeral back in November 2011.  Somewhat ironically, the only real contact I used to have with him was when I'd bump into him unexpectedly in the street occasionally - we were both at the time working in Stratford!

As far as I can make out, he hadn't really had much of an easy life.  He dropped out of school under rather mysterious circumstances which I never really did get to the bottom of, although I had my suspicions.  He had a failed marriage and then coping with my sister's ill-health in her final years must've taken its toll I would guess.  But as far as I could see he always seemed chirpy enough underneath it all.  My one enduring memory of him is of this poor little frozen kid on his moped, going round to our house to visit his grandparents!

It's had one rather unexpected knock-on side effect, though.  I've now inherited the family photo albums, which belonged to my father, then to my sister and finally to nephew and which his father very kindly put on one side for me to go and collect, realizing their sentimental value.  I'd previously borrowed a couple from my sister, back around the Christmas of 2009 I think it was, to scan in some of the old snaps of me (I haven't in fact got any of my own).  So now, with around eight or ten albums, plus boxes of dozens if not hundreds of loose photos, many of which I don't recollect ever seeing before, I reckon it's going to take me the rest of my life to finish the task!  Rather sadly in a way, I shan't then have anyone to leave them to - but then again I suppose I ought to take the pragmatic view that after my death it's really not going to matter much.      

Sunday 16 March 2014

Showing off my assets

Since my last entry - yeah, I know, that long ago - one of the realities of the sitution has become increasingly apparent.  If you have a pronounced pair of boobs, as I do, there's a limit to the extent to which you can hide the fact.  If I were a female, who would be expected to have boobs and probably have no compunction about displaying the fact, then this wouldn't be a problem and there would be no reason for me to sit here and write about it.  If I were a full-on crossdresser then it would form part of the wider picture which all that entails.  But I'm not and it doesn't.  I dress like a guy (outwardly at least) except that now I'm a guy who has a very obvious set of girly tits!

Up until now, I've either just worn T-Shirts around the house and left anyone to whom I answered the door to draw their own conclusions, or else worn a hoodie or sweater when out.  But with warm spring-like sunshine, and a trip to the supermarket in the offing, it dawned on me that it was time to stop being a wuss about it.  After all, it was my decision to keep them when I found out I'd got them: I love having them and in my own way I'm proud of them.  So sod what everyone else might think,

Armed with that positive thought, I set off.  Most of my T-Shirts are neither close-fitting nor baggy, so I chose a standard blue medium one.  I must admit I did a sharp double-take when I saw a reflection of my profile in a shop window, but maybe the full frontal was a little less obvious?  Who was I kidding?  But then I was forgetting: self-consciousness always magnifies any perceived problem tenfold, and the reality is that in any case the majority of supermarket shoppers are way too wrapped up in their own affairs to even notice what anyone else is doing or looks like.  After all, was I checking out all the other guys to see if they looked like they had girly tits?  Of course not (well, I wouldn't have been otherwise)!

Maybe next week I should wear my "Smile if you wish you were gay" T-Shirt.

Saturday 18 January 2014

The Greeks have a word for it

The word in question is "gynecomastia", which I didn't know, because I had no reason to look it up, means the formation of breasts in males.  Or, to use a word which I did know, the development of "moobs".  And the reason for displaying this particular piece of knowledge is that I've come to the realization that I now actually have the aforesaid!

Whereas in photos me taken of when I had my nipples pierced in 1999 I'm as flat-chested as the next guy, the acquistion over I suppose the last couple of years or so of what I rather naively thought was just a bit of fat in the chest area has culminated in the appearance of two clearly defined "boy-boobs" as I like to call them.

I won't say I had mixed feelings at this discovery, I'll be honest and say I was thrilled.  I think they're rather cute: they're very pert and firm (so far, at least), and I think they suit me.  I'd never really consciously wanted them because I'd never really thought about it, and the times over the last decade or so when I'd worn a basque, the little cups were pretty empty.  Now it's different.  Some sort of naturally shifting body hormone balance has given me enough to comfortably fill a 36B, and I say "comfortably", because I now wear an all-in-one corselette to keep them nicely firm and in shape.  I could've chosen a bra instead, but the odd couple of times I tried on one, I didn't go for it much.  Some guys look drop-dead sexy in a bra, but I'm afraid I'm not one of them.

Casting my eye back over that last paragraph, I can't help thinking how lucky I am.  When I researched "gynecomastia", everything I think without exception that I found told me how to go about getting treatment, usally unpleasant-sounding surgery, to get rid of these unsightly, psychologically disastrous imperfections  Had I still been a teenager, I'm sure I'd have wanted to do likewise: I imagine that's what "normal" males do, and I daresay I'm in the minority in now choosing to flaunt them rather than have them removed.

But I'm kinky enough to enjoy my morning routine in the shower, soaping up my boy-boobs and playing with them a little, and then dressing, finishing off with a tight T-Shirt to proudly display my nice girlie bustline.  I can and do hide it under a baggy hoodie or sweater when I go out, though!

I'm curious to know how things will develop now.  From what I've read, my boy-boobs are unlikely to shrink away on their own: they may even carry on growing further.  Will I end-up looking like a she-male, perhaps?  Time will tell, but somehow I'm always going to remember 2013 as the year I grew boobs.