Ahhh, my brother Neil!

I've been hearing a lot from my family recently, not surprisingly since I'll be seeing them in just a few weeks for the first time in several years. The younger sister, Kirstie, the one I'm closest too (even if she does support Sunderland Association Football Club instead of Newcastle United), emailed me yesterday with a couple of tid-bits of news. The first threw some of my travel plans for a bit of a loop - by the time I get over there, my parents may well have moved down South to St. Albans, to be near my sisters. I'd planned to spend five days in our home town of South Shields, on the North East coast of England, but they may not be there!

The second piece of news concerned my afore-mentioned brother. I knew that he'd moved to France recently, but here was my sister asking if I knew how to reach him, since he'd apparently not told anybody else in the family where he would be. That's ... kind of typical. I think that during the first few years I was living in the States, my parents saw more of me than they did of my brother, who, at that time, lived twenty minutes from their house!

The last photo I have of my brother Neil, on a trip he made over here a few years ago.

I wish that my brother and I were closer, but, at this stage of our lives, I can't see it happening. And yet we grew up not five feet apart from each other, sharing, throughout our childhood, the top floor bedroom with the sky blue ceiling in our house on Grosvenor Road. Before we reached our teens, we had, I suppose, the kind of relationship that any pair of brothers might have. He was only a year older than me, yet we were very different. I was really a well-balanced kid before I hit my teens - outgoing (yes me!), yet bookish, always outside skinning my shins playing football or cricket with my neighborhood buddies, or climbing the cliffs down by the beach, or crabbing in the rock pools. Neil, on the other hand, was quiet, moody, serious, impetuous, rather bad-tempered - he just didn't come off as a happy kid.

Yet we shared a secret life of hilarity, at times. Every night, once my parents had forced us to lay down whatever novels we were reading, and switch off our bedroom light, we'd lie in our separate beds (before you get any ideas!), and listen to the roar of the waves about a mile distant. One of us would sooner or later pipe up "Do you want to play Baby Mousies?" And so we'd play ... "Baby Mousies". It was a fantasy life we'd invented - a world populated by talking mice - I played the character Margaret, and my brother played Pat. Two female mice? Yeah. There was also a peripheral mouse named Mary. There was only one male figure in that entire world - the train driver, Kelvin. Each night, we'd live out a different story - and speak the parts in high-pitched squeaky voices. The only story I remember at all is one where the house was supposed to flood, and all the mice nearly got drowned, being saved only by the lucky arrival of the No 23 train from Hexham, and Kelvin, it's driver!

After a few years, our games stopped - inevitably one night, one of us asked "Do you want to play Baby Mousies"? and there was silence from the other. I guess we were too old for it, and our roles seemed to be reversing. I was withdrawing into myself, becoming quiet, and anxious, while my brother was starting to expand. He was still as bad-tempered as ever, but he started suddenly to have friends of his own, instead of hovering around the edge of my circle of friends. He started to have more of the balance of power between us. His body started to change long before mine, too. I remember hearing him moving rythmically during the night time. I'd ask him what he was doing, and the movements would pause, before his voice would come across in the darkness - "I'm doing my exercises - go to sleep." Well, it's true, all of a sudden, Neil was developing a strong, lean, athletic body. But I don't think that was coming from his night-time "exercises"!

At this age, I'd realized, with shocking suddenness and clarity that I was a homosexual. So my brother's newfound masculinity, and moody strength left me feeling diminished and effeminate in his shadow, particularly in that as I'd mentioned, I'd retreated somewhat into an internal life of my own, partly due, perhaps, to the recognition of my homosexuality. At night, sometimes, while he undressed for bed, I'd leave our bedroom curtains open, and pretend to stand at the window staring out (a common activity in our suburban lives), while I was secretly staring hungrily at my brothers bare chest reflected in the glass. My family weren't wealthy, and we often had to make do with clothes that were a little shabby. Neil's pajamas were getting a bit raggy, and whenever he was out, I'd carefully enlarge the holes in them so that at night, while he lay reading, I could see more of his skin exposed.

My awe of his virility lasted many years, and, I suppose, even stayed with me after we'd both gone to college, years later. While, on the surface, we then related to each other as polite adults, under that there remained, for me, a sense of inferiority. Years later, I realized that Neil had felt a vast inferiority of his own with respect to me. He'd seen me as being so successful at high-school, always bringing home perfect grades to my parents, that he'd felt he could never fulfil the expectations placed on an older brother.

At the age of twenty one, I cut out on my own, and headed for grad-school in the United States, a departure that surprised my whole family (and me!) During my second year in Philly, I started to deal with my homosexuality, and finally edged out of the closet.

Early out-of-the-closet days - with my first love, Shawn - the guy who gave me the dogtag I wear all the time.

While I was going through that, I received a startling letter from my brother. With little preamble, he told me that he had something to tell me that would shock me - that he was gay, and was living with another man. To say I was shocked would be an understatement; I practically fainted. My heart beating like crazy, I grabbed the phone and started to call him, before I realized it was three in the morning in England. Here, my brother was admitting to me that he was gay, expecting me to reject him, and meanwhile I'd always assumed that he just knew that I was gay!

Over the next few months, before my next trip to England, I started to dream about the new relationship I hoped Neil and I would forge together. We'd talk about our childhood. I'd tell him of my early fantasies about him, and we'd laugh about it. We'd talk about our feelings for our parents, and about little mysteries about how come we both appeared to be lacking foreskin even though neither of us had been circumcised. Yet once I met up with him and his boyfriend in London, apart from the obvious fact that his bad temper had permanently departed, little in our relationship seemed to change. The barriers were still there; barriers that are so deep that I can't even explain what they are. We're just two brick walls to each other. And I don't even know if I'll see him at all on my trip back to Europe this Summer.

The last time the four of us siblings were all together in the same room - 1989!