OUTING MY SHAMELESS VOICE [1]

BEGINNING

I was aged nine when I discovered a friction sore on my penis. Me, ginger-haired freckled Morgan Minerson- no interesting sexual abuse, no fascinating incest, no cruel screwing with the family pet. I have never loved cats that much. It was all my own fault; months of dedicated ‘orgasm chasing’ after lights out.

The point was it had reached the point where it hurt sufficiently and seemed to have passed the point of self repair; it was at that point of desperation of  where I thought it wise to let both my parents take a look. This was not an easy decision for a nine year old to reach. I had not yet seen my father naked, or another man, or another boy for that matter and they may think I was becoming deformed.

I knew about deformity.

I’d had no access to Films or Television or anything visually informative in respect of sexual matters.

I peeled back the sheets and let them gaze at it.

As always, their combined silence on matters below the belt, left me with no more information than I was obviously not dying. They would surely contact a Doctor on my behalf for that.

It was not a cancer of the cock given to me by a wrathful God for my wayward indulgences. The Welsh, our Welsh had always been low church, virtually non-believers.

I was already having a go at reading ‘The Peloponnesian Wars’ and felt suitably damned for that.

They left me to my thoughts- ma returning up the stairs almost instantly with a small tube of Germolene; a pink ointment with a hint of disinfectant and soothing. No smile. No kiss goodnight.

Almost immediately bathed in my particular aloneness I applied the cream to my prick and finally slept.

They say there is a hardly a fragment or a morsel of one’s experiences of life that you ever really forget- however meagre the feast appears to be. This, five decades or more later, bothers me greatly. Does it mean, I keep asking myself, that nothing is worthless; no, worse than that: does it mean that simply everything that is there to be remembered is priceless. If so that teeters on the sacred. Well, you can ‘fictionalise’ the truth without re-inventing a thing, I think. That is what is so striking about art.

Yes. In the deft hands of Curtis Price, Morgan Minerson will create his truth as art. Is it selfish of me to ‘out’ my voice? Put it this way- it is not an utterly selfless act. Is it in any way cathartic to ‘out’ my shameless voice? Oh yes. I feel a very overdue purification coming on and intend to enjoy every flayed to the bone second of it. If you detect a hint of a smirk that is also just a tad vengeful you would not be wrong. Revenge is best served cold, as the old adage goes, but I am rather warming to it and have every intention of making your face and bum cheeks glow.

I didn’t have a wank for at least a week. It worked. I can highly recommend the skin of youth and Germolene.

It is a deplorable situation being born the youngest of an otherwise grown-up family, a late-comer, a cuckoo and I was going to start this tale with this being the cause of much perceived malevolence. My eldest sibling, already a nurse in training, with ambitions greatly above her station, wanted me aborted, murdered before I was born. She had colluded with my da.

There was strict food rationing in force and we were poor.

This was in 1948- abortion was a serious crime then, it still is amongst the impoverished in strictly Catholic countries.

I have a distinct memory of me fearing this sister as she approached me in my cot. I was almost one year old. She was carrying a pillow and I knew for certain that the thought had crossed her mind to smother me with it.

Cot deaths were not investigated with any suspicion in 1949.

She is still alive.

She is in her mid eighties and still daily wishes me dead. She has even told my brother so on the telephone- “Has that monster taken his death pill yet?”

She deserves a whole chapter of her own.

It’s on its way.