Prison is a profoundly heterosexual world. Homosexuals don't seem much attracted to crime, which, among other things, is a sort of heterosexual male club. It is an essential part of the club that women and children are waiting at home.
I find talking to these family men difficult in here. I find random attempts to make contact sticky enough at the best of times. But when they mention their partners or children, and I am forced to admit that I am alone, the conversation often comes to an abrupt and chilly end.
Most prisoners are not deeply prejudiced. It is more that they see me as slightly less than a human being. They see their families as serving sentences as hard as their own. Although they have caused pain, they are living for their loved ones. Someone who cannot make even this claim to selflessness is not worth spending time with.
But I do find virulent prejudice among my fellow Christians. The chaplaincies in prisons are heavily dominated by evangelicals. Their clientele is mainly black, and particularly homophobic. Recently, I was in a session of the Alpha course, and one black inmate—perhaps suspecting me—insisted on reading out the passage from chapter one of the letter to the Romans, where St Paul condemns homosexuals.
I felt driven to admit that I was gay, and to plead that the gospel of Jesus is a gospel of love, including all. But the prisoner rejected this argument. Those leading the group made ineffectual efforts to intervene. But my opponent concluded by saying that I could never be his brother—and that the chi-chi man would not enter the kingdom of God.
Attempts to develop fellowship with such Christians are not easy. I have one friend among them, an intelligent and saintly Anglican doing ten years for fraud. His presence helps me through the sessions where we flick endlessly from one passage of the Bible to the next under the direction of our mentors.
And I am not alone in feeling isolation. Evangelical Christianity, under the guise of fellowship, tends to turn everyone into strangers. Recently I attended three days of teaching on the kingdom of God. On the final afternoon, the visiting preacher was reaching his climax, the vision of heaven and hell towards the end of the book of Revelation. One of my fellow prisoners, who had been napping, woke up as the preacher said that only those who have faith will enter heaven.
Concerned, the prisoner asked about his children, father and grandfather, none of whom were believers. The preacher told him that his loved ones would be cast into the lake of fire if they did not have a personal faith in Jesus Christ.
I think the prisoner's faith began to die at that moment. He said little, but looked troubled as the preacher moved on to describing the eternal delights reserved for the faithful. The chaplain laid his hands on him in a gesture of comfort. The preacher said that he was sorry to discourage him, but had to tell the truth. The chaplain's wife assured us that we would feel no grief if we found ourselves without our loved ones in heaven.
I visited that prisoner later in his cell, and he told me that he did not wish to be in heaven without his father. I tried to explain that Christianity does not necessarily depend upon literal faith in the Bible. I told him that the final selection of the books began around 382AD, and therefore that for more than three centuries, Christians had not had the Bible. I said that I believed in a loving and merciful God who had room for an awful lot of people. But the next Sunday, the prisoner wasn't in church. Instead, he had his hair cut to prepare for a family visit.
So our days resolve into a struggle to feel togetherness and beat isolation. I am a writer, so some degree of isolation is necessary for me. If I had a family, I would, like Dickens or Tolstoy or Muriel Spark, make their lives hell. It is just as well I am a solitary homosexual. I am forced to betray everyone I meet.
At least I am spared the pain other men feel. My fellow prisoners give little overt sign of how much they suffer. They want to survive, which means they must deny their feelings. But the blankness on their faces tells its own story.
I long to return to the world of literary and intellectual types I know in London. One of my fellow prisoners is of this type—a brilliant scientist and businessman, very rich, also serving eight years for fraud. He is a convinced materialist, and himself a superb biological specimen. Prison is a breeze to him. He is always reading some improving book as he exercises on the cross-trainer in the gym.
I sometimes have intellectual discussions with him, which I enjoy, but usually they are abruptly terminated when he goes off to make yet another phone call, to his wife, his children, his competitors or his employees.
We are all ultimately alone. Families can only alleviate that to a certain extent. My solitude is such that I have come to the conclusion that the only true union is with God. But my materialist friend would say it is my biology that is driving me to this conclusion. In the end, the only solution, for him and me, for the preacher and his victim, is to endure until we know or do not know, as the case may be.
