To be honest, I’m a bit of a loner. Not a lonely person, just someone who’s not always consistent about the company of others. I’d say I’m definitely aligned with the idea of having my fortress of solitude, when needed. And in considering the importance of having people in my life – letting them through the gates, or more unexpectedly, with my guard down – there’s been some key friendships, associations, which have passed through various stages of who I’ve been in the past. If there were to be signposts on a map of who I am, then at the opposite ends of a defining line, there are undoubtedly two people there, each of whom coincidentally has the same first name, is the same age as me, and was present during some of my most vulnerable times. One of those friends was born in Glasgow and is likely still living there – John A., whom I’d known throughout my childhood. And the other friend, John M., lives here in Edinburgh, and he’s the main person who helped me during the consequences of a later-life turmoil. John A. and John M., each in their own way, are strong in identity with their individual places of upbringing, and there’s little that would suit them as friends with one another, if that were possible – but they’re significantly fixed together by who they were to me.
I know in my actions that I’m long enough removed now from the fallout of past dysfunctions – far from when I needed to attend a Mental Health Charity, where John M. was the man there that talked to other men, and he’d listen, and stay calm despite the crisis. And earlier, back in youth, with John A. – my childhood friend, when he and I would lose ourselves in the escapism of exploring our local area, returning frequently to established territories we’d claimed in our minds as being our own, while alert to the possibility of finding new ones. In long-awaited summers, or outside in every type of weather, John A. would always turn up at the door of my home, ringing the bell to see if I was coming out to play. And together we’d make fantasies about venturing into far-flung imaginary spaces.
In my interaction with John M., I tried to stay grounded in the reality of adult self-responsibility and the challenge of facing what it meant to be a man who was struggling to recover his own self. Some moments were like an echo of childhood – when John M and I each considered the meaning of existence – though as adults we wondered directly about the psychological aspects within us, with themes of nature versus nurture – rather than about any TV, Cinema, and Comic-Book depiction of a cosmic quest – which is instead what would’ve interested me as a boy. John M. has a strong social conscience, with a wish to be part of a societal shift, hoping it happens before he retires, gets to play golf, and sees a permanence of improvement in the lives of people. He’s a man who defended me often about who I am as a man. Advocating. Speaking up. Staying within reach, while I sought out my own way. He’d phone, checking on my wellbeing, asking to meet. It was an unstable period of my life – believing that all I had left was an inner darkness projected out onto the world – and John M. helped me hang on. And I owe him that.
As a young boy, my family moved to Scotstoun, in Glasgow. My Primary school there had tall iron railings, old and Victorian. And at age 7, I’d stood as close to those as I could, away from the other children in the playground. I didn’t want to be seen. But John A. came up to me that first day at that new school, and remained as my friend until my late teens. What linked us was the commonality of being treated as outsiders. Rejected by other boys in school or the neighbourhood, we never took part in the football or any groups. And later at High School, we couldn’t avoid the feared boys that controlled other boys, and we were singled out, bullied callously – subjugated by other boys that were maltreated – and all of us dominated by the adults in charge of us. Unsurprisingly, like me, John A. was a boy who inhabited his interior world of dissonance. This showed in our inability to cope with the things asked of us at school. With me labelled by teachers as lazy, and John A. branded as stupid. In the background around us lay our specific working-class landscape of Parental problems, with marriage, money, or other conflicts. Our parents were non-educational as children, non-career skilled as adults, and felt a necessity to be concerned about what specific people might think of them, such as the Teachers, the Church Minister, and the Doctor at the Surgery.
As teenagers, there was a day when John A. had me go to Partick with him, he’d found out there was a derelict railway tunnel. The majority of it had been filled in; only the mouth of the entrance was accessible. I could feel the rubble beneath my feet as I followed John A. into the darkness. I’d been very afraid of the dark, and its overwhelming presence can still make me uneasy, even though I know now that lack of knowledge gives the unknown an unreasonable infinity, along with an undeserved aspect of power over us. Growing up, John A. and I never shared anything emotionally, genuinely, about what our lives really felt like. We weren’t equipped to. We just played. Acting out pretend characters in pretend places. Differently, however, decades later, with John M., when I cried with him, one evening at his Charity workplace, in revealing how lost I’d felt as a man. Sharing this with my friend in a bare moment of truth.