Kalapati: A Novel About Life

Preface

Imagine that your house has just burned down to the ground and you’ve lost everything. Or your landlord evicts you and you have to leave everything that you own behind.

There are several ways you could react to that kind of situation, be it anger, sadness or frustration. These are just natural human responses to events like these. You know you have to move on. Sitting and waiting is not an option. This actually happened to me at a certain point in my life and there was no way to avoid it. For me there was only one way left – a way that I was prevented from taking.

Until this day I cannot say what it was that blocked this path. There was something that forced me to take another step. And I ended up on a road that turned out to be a school for hard knocks. Along that road lived some very friendly and helpful people. For sure, good people do exist as I found out. And bit by bit you leave the past behind. In this way you create new space, a new you, since your own experiences made you think seriously and take stock. Old values are inevitably swept away to make room for the new life, new and improved, as the old saying goes. And then, suddenly the day comes when you embrace life whole heartedly again.

Kalapati is Filipino for dove. As a child I kept doves and I tremendously enjoyed seeing them fly in formation. I still consider them beautiful birds.

Furthermore, Kalapati is the name given to a young man living here in San Fernando. The guy is disabled. One eye is completely white and I don’t think he can see with it. He can’t speak, just making sounds and he often has this uncontrollable urge to move. Many local citizens think that he is mentally retarded, but I am not so convinced of that myself. Kalapati spends much of his time hanging around the Plaza where he often gets quite an audience when doing his acrobatics. I think Kalapati is a wonderful human being. It is also fitting he should bear the name of such a graceful bird.

CHAPTER 1

The Early Years

"CONGRATULATIONS! IT'S A BOY. And he has a weak back." Those must have been the first words I heard when I came into this world, making a terrible noise on entry (well, I guess I screamed like crazy because that’s what all new born babies do) during that early morning on July 17th. My parents had a three bedroom flat in de Dr. Schaepmanstraat on the outskirts of Haarlem. Right across the street was a sizeable vacant lot with a road going to Amsterdam. Beyond and behind this road was a canal called De Amsterdamse Vaart and then the railway tracks.

There’s not much I remember from that period but I do know that I wasn’t an easy child. This was a fact that I would use much later, whenever I was asked if I ever wanted children. With the genes that made me so very hard to handle I would not even think about it! (The fact that I am gay has nothing to do with it. As my first boyfriend, who had a son himself, always said: Any idiot can make a child)

As a toddler, I once insisted on joining my parents when they went to a nearby shopping street to purchase something they obviously needed. I vowed that I would walk because my parents definitely were not going to carry me. On the way back home I decided that I had walked enough so I asked my father to carry me. Of course I could forget about that. So I planted my little behind on the curb. My parents begged me to get up but I was really fine where I was and not willing to take one step more. After a while my parents decided to continue on their way home, assuming I would follow them. I proved them wrong. A new strategy was to offer a solution; my parents turned into a side street now, in the firm belief that if they were out of sight I probably would panic and would come running. Again they were wrong. In the end my dad did carry me all the way back home. That kind of determination was there at a very early stage! Similarly, one day I had hardly taken a bite during lunch, just because I didn’t like the food. One of the rules was that nobody was allowed to leave the table until we were all finished and dad had made an end to the meal with a prayer. This afternoon everybody was waiting for me but I didn’t touch my food. My sisters were eager to leave the table and my parents decided that it really was not fair since it seemed like my sisters got punished for my behavior. So my father forced me to open my mouth while mom just shoved everything inside. In my memory it was some hours later that mom brought me to bed for a nap. As soon as I lay down all the food came tumbling out. I hadn’t swallowed any of it.

From our family life, I still remember the evenings of December 5th. That’s when we celebrate Saint Nicolas in Holland (think of it as the Dutch Santa Claus). On that night, everybody received presents. And of course it was the Christmas holidays. During those events we were a really close family. My parents never liked the idea of putting up the Christmas tree too soon. Mostly that was done on December 24th. We all helped mom with the tree and The Nativity scene. She never liked trees with all kinds of gaudy colors but rather preferred simpler silver colored ornaments. She referred to that as a ‘white’ Christmas tree. Furthermore, she insisted that the holy baby could only be placed when we returned from mass on Christmas Eve. Because he was born at that time! Why do people put him in two weeks or more before that night? Not that I ever cared about it much but yes, I think she had a point. What I liked very much was the story about why she had chosen the baby with a thumb in his mouth. That she said, is the way babies sleep. They don’t spread their arms in a welcoming gesture.

While we were all busy setting the table after Christmas mass on those nights, dad placed the sausage rolls that he baked earlier that day in the oven and they were served piping hot. Behind our plate we all had a small candle. I still can feel the heat that they produced in our cold room.

The Magi were placed far from the barn and as kids we placed them a little closer every day until they entered the barn on January 6th. On New Year’s Eve we were taken out of bed late in the evening. Aunt Annie (mom’s younger sister) and her husband Uncle Arie were usually there. I liked it when they visited us. And of course every year Uncle Arie brought the most sparkling fireworks I could ever imagine.

At school I did not excel. This saddened my father very much. My sisters did much better and during birthday parties, attended by all aunts and uncles plus their kids, they were the ones my father used to brag about. My brother and I were hardly even mentioned.

When I turned eleven years old I got the most memorable present ever: the hit single ‘The Happening’ by The Supremes. My mother had this desk with a built in sewing machine. Under that desk we kept the radio. It was just one box with a dial to select a channel and another dial for the volume. Every Saturday during lunch we listened to the Top 30 and as soon as I heard the first note of The Happening I jumped up, ran to the sewing machine and laid on the floor with my ear against the radio. This single ushered in a lifelong admiration for Diana Ross. In high school our English teacher, Miss Coby van Graven knew from day one that I would turn out to be gay. Because you adored Diana Ross so much she once said when I asked how on earth she knew about this even before I did. We remained friends for years after I left school. During this terrible period in school I hardly had any friends. I guess I never did fit in, even at this early time.

After I left high school I didn’t feel like going to college. Having a job was more attractive to me and I started working in the same office where my father worked. It was a giant building and I do believe there were more than three thousand people working there. Soon I had several friends there. All ladies and we liked to spend our daily breaks together, going out for walks in Amsterdam. My father always proudly pointed at me and the girls, telling his colleagues See that guy with all the girls around him? That’s my son! What a huge disappointment it must have been for him (and my mother) the day I came home and announced I was gay. It's a good thing that my parents never knew what I got up to in the first years after my coming out.

Almost every night I went out cruising. Weekends I liked to spend in Amsterdam. It was in the mid-seventies where disco was to be heard in most places. We were having the time of our lives. At the time I was blind to the total emptiness of this life. We just liked to party as much as possible. Nevertheless I did have serious relationships. First there was Hugo who I met when I was nineteen years old. He was thirty eight and had a son of sixteen. We were together for three years except for the weekends when he used to visit his brother in The Hague.

Then there was Harmen, four months older than me. We lived together for three years. He could be very short tempered and after a few drinks even violent. I lived with Martin for three years. Our relationship was built on being true and honest, whatever happened. It turned out he couldn’t be honest at all because he ‘was afraid of my response’.

Years later there was Ruud with whom I lived for about six years. Until one day he found a younger lover and, when I went to work on that fateful day, I found out that he had taken back my key to his apartment (recently I started renting my own apartment next to his. We used it as a place to store things). When I came home that afternoon I asked him about the reason for taking back my key. He told me he wanted me to start living in my own apartment. Basically I had no problem with accepting that it was over. What really hurt me then was the fact that he obviously was afraid to tell me. And he admitted that he too was afraid of my response. There he had me. That indeed made me furious. For two months we didn’t talk to each other until October 3rd, when our city had its annual festivities. Not planning to go anywhere that day, I invited Ruud and his new lover Mick for dinner. We are still good friends to this day.

Also I had something going on with Herman. It wasn’t exactly a relationship. Frankly I can’t define it. We often met in the weekends but sometimes we didn’t see each other for months. But somehow we always got back together. Herman had this kinky side and he was very dominant. I guess that’s what I liked about him. But it didn’t take long for me to find out that he kept me away from friends and relatives. Nobody was to know about ‘us’. That bothered me a lot. In February 2002, after almost seventeen years, I finally gave in and planned to have it all his way. That summer I couldn’t reach him after he came back from a vacation. A week after he returned he answered my phone call. He was hospitalized as soon as he had left the airplane because of kidney stones. At least that was the story he told me. We have met only twice since that occasion. In September he sent me some small personal belongings. In the brief letter he said ‘due to an uncertain future’. It turned out he had cancer in his esophagus. A few weeks later not only did he not answer any calls, but his answering machine was disconnected. Since I knew he was going to be operated on I called the hospital and was put through to the IC unit. The nurse in charge told me that following the hospital’s policies information was given only to one person. That turned out to be Elma, Herman’s lady friend with whom he had a platonic relationship. Elma and I knew about each other but had never met. On the telephone she was very friendly and told me Herman was on assisted breathing and assured me that she would call me as soon as things changed. She kept her word. It was on a Saturday afternoon that she called me and told me that Herman had passed on. Quite sober and businesslike I took in the news and asked when the funeral would be. The answer was shocking. He was buried on the Tuesday before and Herman had strictly told her to inform me after the fact. He didn’t want me to meet his relatives and friends, afraid they would learn more about him than he had ever told them. The players from his double life had to be kept separated. Two days later I wrote a poem and made a compilation of songs that expressed my feelings about Herman and me as well as about his death. For the front cover I used a picture of Herman while the poem was on the back. An extra copy was made for Elma. She visited me at home and we talked for a few hours. It turned out to be some sort of Surprise Show. Unpleasant surprises though. Herman appeared to have fabricated stories. Kidney stones? He never had them and no, he was not taken into hospital that summer. On and on. It was all very disappointing and it was about time that I should perhaps throw in a cliché: wounds heal, but the scars remain. In March of the following year Elma and I visited his grave. I cried, she consoled. Due to my current circumstances we have never met since.

Back into the past now. After two years in the big office I applied for a job in another office, right near our house. There I found office life dull, offering little challenge. Those same faces and the same stupid jokes, day in and day out, were more than I could bear. It now surprises me that I worked for twelve years in that place! The time had come to spread my wings. For a few months I worked in a small grocery store, had great times working as a bartender and eventually committed myself to photography. That had been a big hobby with my father. He had taught me a lot and now, for the first time, he appreciated my choice. A friend and I started working together making pictures at weddings but I couldn’t earn enough money to get by and so I was very happy when a job as photographer position was offered in a local hospital. I knew it would be one year only, but that turned out not to be a problem; soon I realized I would like to study nursing. The course was fine but my age seemed to work against me. I was already thirty plus at the time and my colleagues overestimated my abilities. They set tasks