Complicity
Reading over my last post, I cannot but wonder at the gullibility of my younger self. Oh, I always knew there was a recklessness there, but how blinkered was I – and how complicit in my own travails?
     After writing the sentence above, I opened my newspaper and saw a photograph of Mr George Gill, with a party of other respectable citizens, in the company of Scotland's First Minister! That shook me. And I have referred to it in 'The Adventures of Daphne and Maude'.
 









     And I have realised that I was not complicit. But I have been here. In my previous posts I wrote of myself as older than I actually was. I think that was a subconscious shielding of George from his responsibility. The facts are that I was 11 when Mr Gill gave me a Satsuma 'for yourself'. And I was 11 and 12 when he regularly gave me a piece of fruit each time I visited the shop, in addition to whatever my Mother had sent me for. And it was on my 13th Birthday that he gave me the Book of Gor. I had already told him in the shop that I had read The Hobbit so he knew my level of ability – he probably also identified me as precocious, opinionated, resentful that for much of the time I was shadowed by Stacy, and that some people thought we were twins. Twins! OMG!!!
     I was probably particularly ripe for plucking because my conceit in my own abilities, which considered me advanced for my years – well, no-one told me I wasn't – only added to my vulnerability. If you think you could be taken for a couple of years older, you are going to be desperate to step up to that so as not to be identified as merely a child. Remember Just 17? It's not a pretty picture. In it's heyday that magazine was compulsory for a whole generation of girls. But the demographics of it's readership showed that no-one aged 16 or over would be seen dead with it! The market profile of a Just 17 reader was principally in the 11-14 ade group. And there I was: for an hour, every week of the year, I sat in my bedroom and read it from cover to cover. Would I even consider telling telling anyone who didn't NTK my tue age? Answer that yourself in words of two letters!
 
     Anyway, over the weeks after my 13th Birthday I read avidly about Gor, and George gave me his copies of the first novels by John Norman, The writing was not particularly impressive, but at 13 I was more interested in the stories than the language. George's second suggestion that they were Fantasy Fiction was correct, in my view. There was precious little Science on Gor, the lives of it's inhabitants were not much more advanced than the Ancient Greeks and Romans on Earth, but this did not displease me. And our weekly evening meetings were lively as we discussed the rights and wrongs of slavery and the rigid Caste system. I was rebellious at that age – I still am, truth to tell – and thought the treatment of Women particularly outrageous. And George agreed with me. He was always sympathetic to my views and supported my anger. He said he couldn't understand why so many of the female characters willingly submitted to their male Owners. And that was a puzzle to me which I would go over in my head when I was at home.
     Naturally, I kept my gifts hidden. Was it because I knew there was something significant in George giving them to me? Improper gifts for a young girl from an older, married father of children not that much younger than me? Although I hadn't yet seen his children – they went to a Boys' School some distance from my own Girls' School. But I had seen Sandra occasionally, in the shop. She seemed insipid and lifeless to me. I must have been very harsh in those days, very judgemental. I wondered how George, so full of life, obviously strong and vigorous, should have chosen such a pathetic woman to be his wife, I suppose I was comparing her with me, and reckoning that someone like me would have made him a better wife. Someone like me, or, in fact, Me? Even the submissive women on Gor had more verve than Sandra. And I supposed that was the attraction of the books for George. Because they depicted women who were more his type than his wife was.
     Although I did not then know that I was Lesbian, my erotic dreams, which had only fairly recently begun to fill my sleep, always featured women lovers – though, ignorant as I was of how woman made love, such physicality as was involved was mainly restricted to kissing and lively cuddling, rather like wrestling! I had discovered that my fingers, which were very supple, could give me intense pleasure and I was probably beginning to wonder what it would be like to have that pleasure given to me by another, while I did the same for her. But it was all very vague – no Sex Education at my school and no signs yet of any at home in the near future.
     But I was an A-Stream girl, heading for Highers and University, so was I really just stupid, or was I complicit? Did I have an idea of George's likely plans for me, or was I one of those brainy people with no common sense, who can't even tie their own laces? I'm hardly the best person to judge – though in my heart of hearts I'd say it doesn't really matter about me. George was the driving force and from my 13th Birthday, I was the one being driven by him. It's always easy with hindsight to point to the markers which should have alerted me, but I believe that I was too flattered by his complete focus on me – the only person giving that to me – that even if he had worn a placard identifying him as what he was and warning me of the lion's den I was entering, I would have probably laughed at the joke.




 
He taught me to smoke – another secret, because my parents were both very anti-smoking and had instilled in both me and Stacy their abhorrence of tobacco and its evils. So, though they didn't know that I was smoking, on those evenings with George and surreptitiously at other times, it felt like I was giving them the two fingers, which also made me feel guilty. And paranoid, lest anyone should catch me and tell them. And elated that I was doing what I wanted, not what others wanted me to do. I was breaking the rules and they couldn't stop me! I could not see the illogic in this – it was what George wanted me to do. And when he gave me a pair of slave bracelets and a slave collar for Christmas, I felt like I had somehow passed a Test!
     But I had only started. By taking an interest in – and, I should say, a very enthusiastic interest – the Gorean Social Structure, and the subjugation of Women to Men – I was also taking, well, not a stand, more a kneeling position – against my Parents. My Great-Grandmother had been a Suffragette and suffered the barbaric indignity of Force-Feeding in Prison for her activities. My Grandparents and Parents were all politically active, my Father was a Lecturer with The Workers Educational Association and, in his time off from his post at Edinburgh University, travelled the country visiting Working Men's Clubs and Union Branches to give illustrated lectures on history, Art and Literature. Of course, as I suppose is common with other kids and certainly seemed to be echoed among my extended family and school friends, none of us paid a lot of attention to our parents at the time when we could have benefited from them. Mistakes we made might have been avoided if we had only listened. As for me, the one person I listened to, precisely because he seemed to listen to me, was George Gill.
     Years later, when I trained to become a Counsellor, I learned about Active Listening and Reflective Empathy and how to build my skills in these areas. George Gill was a natural – he didn't need any training, he had it all inside him. I also read about Positive and negative Empathy. Negative Empathy is the kind possessed by confidence tricksters, psychopaths and, of course, men like George. But when you are 13 and on the receiving end of the focussed, attentive, active interest of a mature and successful man, your knees melt and you just want to bask in the glow of his smile and encouragement. You will do anything for him. Anything.
     Secretly reading books my parent would probably disapprove of; smoking, again in secret; discussing family problems and enumerating the ways in which my needs were not met at home; reading him poetry I had written – some survive, but I won't post them here, my toes curl when I read them – and glowing with pleasure at the praise he heaped on them and me; going to the pictures with him – oh, did I not say, our evenings weren't all limited to the back shop, nor necessarily to one each week. And if anyone asked me if I had a boyfriend, I would say “No,” but in my head I would add, “I've got a Man friend.”