CHRISTMAS CAKE AND CHEMICAL CASTRATION.

 

 

Tom.

I wanted her out of the kitchen. It’s not a big space with no real work surface apart from the kitchen table, and I needed all of it to make the Christmas cake. I don’t need anyone’s computer cluttering up the place and offering to make me a coffee means she’ll just get under my feet. Tottie was not leaving. She wanted to see how I was going to make the cake, so she ensconced herself at the small table in front of the window. Thankfully I made the mincemeat a few days earlier so the process was quite straight forward. Being a Christmas cake there’s a few more ingredients and if I was following a recipe I could be sure that at least one thing would be missing. Normally I would have put in some glace cherries but homemade gooseberry jam would be a suitable substitute. I slapped everything in the mixing bowl and added flour until the consistency looked right. As usual there was no measuring involved, which still baffles Tottie.

“It all looks horribly complicated, do you really need all that stuff?”

I scraped the mix into the tin which I’d double wrapped with brown paper to stop the outside burning. It would be in the over for a good two hours or more. That done I sat down to run my finger around the mixing bowl, delicious.

“Surely you shouldn’t be eating it raw”.

“Just what sort of deprived childhood did you lead if you’ve never licked out a cake mixing bowl?” I think I touched a raw nerve there. A knock at the front door and a package for me, my medication. There was some different paperwork with it which I felt obliged to read. It turn out to be mainly a list of side effects that I should look out for. It made for horrific reading and pulled no punches. Possible falls and bone breakages. I knew there was a reason I walk with a stick. Thickening of the blood and blockages in the heart or in part of the brain resulting in death. Well that might explain why they’ve had such trouble getting blood out of me. There are times when I wonder if this treatment isn’t doing me more harm than good. To then be reminded that you’ve been chemically castrated is a hard one, and the only way I’ve found to handle that is to ignore it. In the scheme of things sex now seems a pretty insignificant part of life. So, yes my body revolts me, and I make sure to shut my eyes when taking a shower, but there is so much more that fills my days. Do I feel less of a man? Yes, obviously, but does it affect how I relate to other people, no. I have been fortunate in my life to have never been seen as a threat by women and this has enabled me to have had several very close working relationships. Being invited on girl’s night out is something that very few men experience, but believe you me they are a riot. Women really do know how to party. The physical problems and pain I have in getting about are a constant worry, but there again it often amazes me what I do manage achieve. The advances in the treatment of prostate cancer have been considerable, but that also means that there are many more men like myself who are facing a very different existence. There has over the past decade been a plethora of different sexual orientations demanding our attention. I remind myself that however we look at each other, we all have more in common than we have differences. I am not about to spend my remaining years fight some imaginary frustrated corner of oppressed chemically neutered men. Thankfully I have more important creative things that demand my attention.   

Uppermost at the moment is preparing for the Doll’s House exhibition at An Lanntair Art Centre, which kicks off on Dec 5^th. The show will include a large Mystery Hotel that has been created over the past months by schools and general public. They have been supplied with a flat pack box in which they can build a bedroom and bathroom. I’ve seen a few that have already been returned, and that has inspired me to have a go myself. In fact I ended up with two. The first seemed quite straight forward and perhaps contains a certain element of how I feeling just now. There is no bed, but a coffin fills the space. Our dearly departed friend has done just that since the coffin lid has been pushed sideways and there is clearly nobody in residence. The second is the complete opposite with a large four poster bed, and the somewhat untidy occupant would seem to be a keen reader of anything and everything. Detail becomes all important as you construct these rooms, and a story will often evolve around the person living there. The idea of making things smaller in order to get people to look closer seems to make no sense and yet we do it every day. We see a magnificent mountain range and take our mobile phone out to capture a tiny image so that later we can share than moment.