Singular life
Romantic excuses
Petronella Wyatt
Afew years ago I was in Venice with a party of friends. It included a distinguished male journalist who was then single. In the bar of the Gritti hotel he was picked up by an American woman called Peggy Sue. Her sexual voracity equalled her size. She fol- lowed him back to his hotel on the other side of St Mark's Square, chatting sugges- tively, and ended her sentence with a proposition.
The next morning I asked him if and how he had managed to shake her off. He smirked and replied, 'I did, finally, at the door of my hotel room. I took a deep breath and told her I was gay.' As the man was a well-known, predatory heterosexual, one fell about. Gay? Surely she didn't believe that? 'Well, she did actually,' he countered. 'In fact, she didn't seem at all surprised.'
I had forgotten this story until last week when someone was relating the tale of a man who had just broken up with his fiancee. They had been engaged for five months when he suddenly sat her down and confessed he was gay. So she had to call off the wedding. It was all too heart-rending. A few days later I heard from an acquain- tance about a married friend of hers. This woman's husband had ceased to want to sleep with her. His explanation was that he no longer felt attracted to women and had come to realise that he was a repressed homosexual.
This was all very sad but final until two things happened. The 'gay' former fiancé was spotted in a hotel in Mauritius canoodling with a voluptuous blonde. The husband, meanwhile, was seen in Caviar Kaspia with a redhead (also on the distaff side). Both, it would seem, had mysterious- ly rediscovered their heterosexual urges.
It then occurred to me that perhaps one had hit upon the great Bunbury de nos jours. The ultimate sexual/romantic excuse — for heterosexuals, that is. The old ones appear so creaky by comparison. All those male lines that went: 'I'm tired tonight. I've been working since eight in the morning. I'm just not up to it, darling.' Or, 'I have to attend a business weekend conference in Prague. So I'm afraid you'd better put away that little La Perla body, dear.'
But saying one has gone gay is simply unanswerable. It really is. It brooks no con- tradiction, no qualification and no quarter. It also absolves the man of all blame. The wife or girlfriend is obliged to feel deeply sorry for him — more sorry for him than for herself. He can't help it, poor thing. It was indeed noble of him ever to have tried to make love to me when all along he fan- cied Julian Clary. You can't attack the guy because gays see themselves as a persecut- ed minority. 'Darling, if you insult me one more time I'll ring up Peter Tatchell. Real- ly I will.'
But I don't see why it shouldn't work for women as well. Then one could always have just a little Bunbury in the oven. Just ticking over nicely. When one isn't feeling like sex but doesn't want an irrevocable split one could say one was having 'a les- bian moment. It will pass presently but, just now, it's very strong. Those purple and orange boxer shorts really bring out the Jane Bowles in me.'
There is the story of an encounter between Noel Coward and the masculine- besuited female novelist Edna Ferber. Coward to Ferber: 'You almost look like a man.' Ferber to Coward: `So do you.' Of course they really were gay. But perhaps homosexuals who are sick of their partners might cotton on to the ruse of having a het- erosexual afternoon once in a while.
'Not much TV work around then?'
Previous page
