Imagine my surprise when the book finally came, and I flicked to its back cover to find a picture of a black man. “Two Black men kissing fantasies haunted my dreams…”Ī fantasy of 2 Black men kissing haunted my adolescent dream. I hadn’t the foggiest idea why I thought I might find evidence of two black men kissing in a book delighted over by a suspected white killer, but it was the only lead I had to go on. These snippets of information gave me all the impetus I needed to sneak off to our local library to seek out his reading material of choice.
He had taken great lengths to hide his numerous affairs with men for fear they would reck his political career, the papers said.
Black gay men kissing trial#
Thorpe, a British MP and married father of one was on trial for attempted murder. Being as inquisitive as I was then, in my teens, my curiosity was piqued. According to newspaper reports, one of the two men had gifted the other a salacious novel about homosexuality. It was 1979, and the Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott trial was the talk of Britain. I had read a mention of the book in the “News of the World” my mother had delivered every Sunday, religiously. Still, it was the same thoughts of two black men kissing that drove me to order Giovanni’s Room from our local Forest Hill Library. A football sock as a willy-warmer shoved down the crack between my bed and the wall worked just as well as a masturbation method but left no telltale signs. So, I learnt to perfect a new technique instead. She might have sent me for a lobotomy if she only knew the many thoughts of men kissing men running around in my mind.
“I don’t know what you do in your bed every night to wear out the middle of your sheets in record time,” my mother scolded. Soon I was wearing out my bedsheets and experiencing visions that left me in no doubt that I was having carnal thoughts of a non-fatherly kind. But over time, the dreams became more and more erotic. Surely, this was a sign that I was missing the old man. Dragged back to England from Jamaica, kicking and screaming on a plane to a new life among cold, snow-white people. At first, I thought it was a sign that I was missing my father.