The very last thing that you could ever admit was that you were a poofter. People got called poofters who were… it was just an insult, really. It wasn’t an observation. It wasn’t an accurate identification. You know, if your hair was slightly long, or you tripped over your boots or something, you know, poofter would be as readily the word that came to people’s minds as any other. But the one thing you could never admit was that you were in the company of other boys whom you might want to fuck.

And of course, you played along with it. You pretended. So your conversation never betrayed you.

And I had a pigskin wallet, of which I was rather proud. It was a kind of pale, shiny thing, and I carried a condom in it. Condoms in… so long since I’ve seen a condom, I don’t know how they are now produced, but they used to be in tiny little square packets, and they were rolled in a ring. And I had this in my wallet, and the process of wear and tear... pulling it out of your pocket... this ring shape came through on the pigskin.  And people would say, 'What’s that?' And I’d say, 'That’s my French letter'. Which somehow convinced them that there I was, sort of, ready for any maiden who might throw herself at me. And so… so it, I don’t think, ever occurred to anybody that I was queer. There were temptations. They had to be resisted.