Sunny’s Story - Part 3

Part 3 - Looking for a ‘cure’ in India   

When dad found out, it wasn’t hysterics or fireworks, just a slow numb disappointment. I mistakenly though that he was taking it well. The reality was that he didn’t fully understand it either. He took me to the pub and we had our first father-son drink. Up until that point, I’d never seen the inside of what was then the Lady Margaret Pub.

One evening at dinner - he said we need to do something about it. I explained that it was just a genetic thing - like being left-handed and that you were just born with it. This still didn’t make sense to them. They wanted me to go to India and speak to someone.

Everyone I knew - even my sister (who I’d come out to a few weeks before), became protective of me and suggested this was a bad idea. My parents wanted me to go to India and speak to medical doctors, spiritual healers etc . I had already moved out at this stage and was having these conversations on my return visits to the house. I knew my parents wouldn’t want to subject me to anything cruel or backward such as Behavioural Change Therapy - just that they needed some explanation and understanding. I knew I wasn’t going to change, but still, I had to prove this was a genetic thing, not a lifestyle choice. Showing them that their efforts to go to India would only fail - was my strategy. So I reluctantly agreed.

When the day came, we went to an Ayurvedic doctor in some far off village. He wore a grey suit and was a large man. I felt that he made a fair bit of money from people’s woes. When asked the problem, my father embarrassingly blurted out, ‘no feeling for sex’. I knew this would lead to some sort of misdiagnosis.

The doctor suggested I go off with two juniors and discuss my biological concerns privately with them, while he spoke to my parents. I was led off to a room where my blood, urine and sperm were going to be analysed. Gosh, it’s probably the strangest wank I’ve had to do. Afterwards, the juniors told me that there was nothing wrong with me. I said I knew that. They asked why they thought I was there, and I explained it to them.

“Oh that’s a cultural problem, or a generational one, we can’t help you’”. It was what I wanted to hear, but they didn’t have the balls to tell my parents. They must have relayed it back to the chief somehow.

When we were all reunited, my dad paid the head doctor some cash for his time and some powders. Take these every morning with water. They were supposed to increase my libido - so probably had the opposite effect of what my parents had intended. I took the powder back home to London. I can’t say I felt any different, but recall going out clubbing a lot more in those coming months. I had, for obvious reasons - started to grow distant from my parents at this stage. When asked how I was - or if I felt any different, I would just give them an honest answer.

Slowly, over the years - I think the magnitude of what they’d done started to weigh in on them. Still, I forgive them, I have to. It was the only way they’d begin to learn for themselves. We didn’t talk about that episode again.

Read Part 4 - My next chapter