18. One orgasm and done #2
Greta gave a small smile as she looked down at Dylan, who was watching her with her head resting on Greta’s thighs.
‘It was more protracted than him suddenly kicking me out,’ she answered softly, her fingers buried in Dylan’s curls.
‘I grew up believing that he resented me…for Mum dying. It was strange, I just always got the feeling that he didn’t like me, even when I was little…
like he didn’t have time for me. He always made me feel like an inconvenience he couldn’t quite fold into the version of himself he wanted to present to a world without Mum.
It was all so incredibly odd.’ Greta gathered her hair over one shoulder and sighed.
‘He had suspected I was a lesbian, that I was different, so he watched me closely. To be fair, I was an odd kid.’ She huffed out a breathy chuckle.
‘But I was just super clever and obviously grappling with my sexuality.’
‘When did you know…that you were gay I mean?’
‘I was young, really young, about eight I think but I didn’t have the words for it all.
But he knew and he became obsessed, utterly obsessed, that I would bring him shame…
I think, actually now looking back as an adult, that he secretly wanted me to bring him shame, so he had something tangible, something concrete to hold onto.
It was all just so bizarre.’ She drew in a long breath, pushing her back into the headboard, the memory clearly still heavy.
‘We argued and clashed every minute of every day, it was exhausting. We had a particularly brutal blow out just after my fourteenth birthday and he searched my room.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yep. I had managed to get a copy of the Pink Paper, not an easy feat in the early nineties but where there’s a will—’
‘There’s a gay.’
‘Exactly,’ Greta chuckled. ‘Anyway, I hid it in my room.’
‘The classic under the mattress stash?’ Dylan grinned.
‘The very same,’ Greta said in a sing-song voice before her expression faltered.
‘So, yeah, he found it because of course he did. He was just waiting for something, anything, to finally make it about me rather than whatever version of me he’d decided I was meant to be to make him like me.
It was like he had this simmering anger sitting there’—she laid a palm over Dylan’s heart—‘all the time. Then, he suddenly had what he wanted, something to show the world, to justify his anger. The anger that had gnawed away at him for years.’ She exhaled slowly and shook her head.
‘I understand the anger that comes with grief is all consuming, I get that, but I was just a child…’ She trailed off with a heavy sigh.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything that upsets you, G.’
‘I know.’ Greta smiled while her fingers idly tangled in Dylan’s curls.
‘He wasn’t even staunchly religious but that’s the hill he chose to die on.
Mum was much more devout apparently, they both were before I was born but it was as though his grief took absolutely everything from him.
He wouldn’t admit he was just a horrible bigot…
he falsely justified his prejudices by hiding behind our faith.
Which just makes me so angry because Judaism isn’t like that.
Certain communities are quite liberal, ours was really, but he was a Torah cherry picker and twister.
I don’t know…I just didn’t fit into his idea of what a child should be.
He used to rant that’—she shook a fist in the air as she imitated her father—‘“It’s not who we are. You will not ruin what is left of this family!” And so on and so forth.
’ She rolled her eyes. ‘The absolute worst thing he used to say was that my mother would have been ashamed of me and that it was better that she died without ever knowing me.’
‘Fucking hell, Greta.’
‘I know…he was something else. Of course the political and social climate of the time didn’t help.
The media, Section 28, they just compounded everything.
Homophobia neatly packaged as political policy gave people like him the language they so desperately wanted…
Like they were guarding something sacred just by insisting no one in our world was allowed to be different.
It’s so fucking arrogant. Oh and he absolutely agreed with Thatcher, that no one should be strutting around under the impression that they had “an inalienable right to be gay!”.
’ Greta’s impressive Margaret Thatcher impression induced a short burst of laughter from them both, cutting through the seriousness before Greta’s expression became solemn again.
‘If he said that line once he said it a thousand times. As I got older his obsession just got completely out of hand, he started to discuss me within the community, sometimes at Synagogue. Some agreed with him, most didn’t but I don’t think he was able to garner the support he wanted so he latched onto the few who shared his views…
which was enough for him to feel justified.
Enough for him to stop hearing it as his problem and start calling it tradition.
’ She air quoted the word tradition and quirked a brow.
‘Then the Pink Paper happened and…’ She trailed off and sucked her teeth.
‘But I didn’t care what bizarre version of family he was trying to protect.
Something deep inside me just knew he was trying to erase me before I even had the words for what I was.
I didn’t have the language, I didn’t have the understanding or the clarity, but I knew I wasn’t going to disappear quietly into it.
When he confronted me, that day, I just wouldn’t say it…
I would not say, I am not a lesbian, though I didn’t fully understand what that meant.
I couldn’t say it, I could not be what he wanted… I knew, I just knew it was wrong.’
Dylan looked up under her lashes and grinned. ‘You feisty fucker.’
‘Hmm. You’d do well to remember that,’ Greta warned, with a playful tap to Dylan’s nose with the tip of her finger.
‘My relationship with my father wasn’t salvageable.
He didn’t want it…I didn't want it…I couldn’t stand it, Dylan.
’ With her watery gaze fixed on Greta’s, Dylan scrunched her lips together.
‘I ended up moving in with Eddie and Elaine…they were my only relatives really…well the only ones that seemed to care. They are on my mum’s side, third cousins three times removed, or something ridiculous like that.
They were the type of relatives you see at weddings and things but they just…
well, they stepped up, time and time again until they were there constantly.
They were the only people that helped me.
My teachers watched me drowning—their hands were tied by the ambiguity of Section 28, I know that, but Mum and Dad were the only people that threw me a life jacket.
When I think about how different it could have been for me…
either forced to stay with my father, or… well, God knows really.’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, G.’
Greta billowed her cheeks, letting the air escape slowly.
‘I just love them so, so much and I absolutely would not be who I am now without them. They got me through the rest of school…I almost had to repeat a year but luckily I was bright and didn’t fall behind.
They put me through university, loved Muriel like she was their own...
’ Her voice trailed off for a second before she pulled herself back with a deep, steadying breath and watched as Dylan’s hand moved over hers, interlacing their fingers.
‘After she died, I threw myself back into work too soon. There were times I would literally bury myself in far too much just to feel the threat of a nervous bloody breakdown rather than the crippling pain of losing her.’
As Dylan’s chin puckered and trembled, she placed their hands over her own heart. ‘I’m sorry you went through that. Truly I am, G. It must have been horrendous.’
‘It was. Jesus, it was utterly horrendous. It happened during the Covid restrictions, albeit the lighter ones but the world was still insane. She collapsed on her way into the office, on Deansgate. She was just nipping in and coming straight home. No one on scene tried CPR…they just waited. She was lying on the fucking floor and they…if she’d have made it home to me, if it had happened here, I could’ve…
’ Greta trailed off as her chest began to heave.
Dylan pressed their hands hard against her sternum.
‘They let me in to see her eventually… I sort of knew the A&E consultant from medical school, but she was alone for so long, she was—’ As Greta’s voice fractured, she softly closed her eyes and allowed a beat to pass.
‘She still looked so beautiful. I’ve seen enough dead people in my time to know they don’t just look as though they’re asleep.
They’re cold and hard, like solid wax, but she was still so perfect.
’ She sucked both lips into her mouth, her brow heavily furrowed.
'That is such an unimaginable loss.'
‘It’s that word isn’t it? Loss…such a simple word.
Four letters that make a tiny word yet the meaning is—well, it’s gargantuan.
I didn’t just lose my wife. I lost my life and the person I was then…
she died with Muriel.’ She flicked her finger over the corner of her eye.
‘I lost so much more than the tiny word loss can convey... I can’t eat certain foods or smell certain smells, or listen to certain songs, go to certain places, because it’s just too painful.
I lost everything I knew and loved, my entire world, in the time it takes a heart to beat one last time. ’
‘I’m so sorry, Greta. That’s…it’s horrific,’ Dylan said softly.