#5 E

A touching story about a friendship across generations and the lasting impact that relationships can leave.

E image credit:Unsplash

Transcript: I met E when I got my first job in Norwich. I don’t want to say too much about his life as that’s not my story to tell and I think he’d have hated it! I was actually always a bit scared and shy of him to be honest as he was such a presence, but he had a great sense of humour and anecdotes.

When he became ill a few of us would pop round to see how he was getting on, I’d come and cut his hair and give him a shave. He’d always been so well turned out at work, but his flat was a state and he had stopped looking after himself. It was never mentioned outright but we knew he was gay, we knew there had been boyfriends, mostly young troubled lads who took advantage of him. Homosexuality would have been illegal right up until he was 40 years old. He was also a Catholic, the church and state having embedded a deep sense of shame that I imagine many of his generation shared.

When he died we cleared out his flat, purposely getting rid of anything personal before the nice guys from Oxfam came and took whatever was worth selling on.

I have thought of E really often these last few years. As I’ve worked through my own identity as a queer person, how I feel within the community and particularly here in Norfolk. I wonder what kind of person he really was or would have been, the life and loves he’d had or would have had. I wonder if I’ve ever felt the same tiny glimmer of shame and secrets that he’s carried with him, and that feeling of always being on the periphery of something, and maybe even the periphery of yourself. I wonder what story he’d have told us if he could.