My Mother Had a Brother

"(...) It’s not fictional at all. I didn’t know of the existence of my mother’s closest sibling until I was 16 or 17, because he killed himself. He killed himself within 24 hours of my birth, and the tragedy of that, the idea of wanting to leave this world and at the same time not wanting to because it would spoil the pregnancy of you sister… it’s just horrible, beyond horrible. And my mother told me she thought he was gay. They had a very difficult childhood, a dark childhood, and for some reason she didn’t think it was appropriate to talk to us about it until we got to a certain age. It’s a tragic story about how much more difficult it must have been as a gay man in the 1950s. If he’d held on and beaten his depression for long enough, he would have seen the changes in life that would have made him at least a happy middle-aged man. (...) How can she not have been worried by my sexuality if her brother’s sexuality killed him? When you put your family tree together you understand so much more about who you are. Sometimes I felt that my mum made me feel that I wasn’t manly enough, or boy enough, when I was growing up, which was so out of character for her, because she was such a great mum, and so liberal in her attitudes. And that song is disguised as asking my mother to tell my uncle how much life has changed and that I live a happy life as an openly gay man and I have loads of sex and it’s great. But really in a way I think I’m trying to tell her that I forgive her for that." (tratto da questa intervista del 2004)