writhing on the shag pile

Going Straight

Jackie Clunes spent a couple of decades as a lesbian icon. Then she 'changed sides'. People weren't that thrilled.

In February 1988, I decided to become a lesbian. For the next 12 years I had relationships with women exclusively. Then, in October 2000, I decided to "go back in" and went straight. The reasons for both these decisions have by turns appalled, fascinated and challenged almost everyone in my life, from my parents, friends and enemies to the loyal lesbian fan base I had built up during my career as a cabaret artist and comedian.

Even in these post-queer "anything goes" times, human sexual preference remains a divisive and explosive subject. Everyone has an opinion, from the biological determinists (both pro- and anti-gay) and their hunt for the gay gene, to the tri-sexual swingers ("I'll try anything once"), yet there is no definitive explanation for why sexualities vary so greatly.

Since jumping back over the fence, I have been asked many times, "How come you felt able to swap so easily? Do you think you're in denial? Maybe you were never really a lesbian? Is it that you just couldn't hack it? So what are you, then, bisexual? Or straight? Do you think you'll ever go back to women? Is your boyfriend scared about that?"

Despite turning over these questions in my own mind again and again over the past two years, I find even I don't really know the answers. Am I just contrary? Am I cowardly? Am I, as some would have it, a "traitor" to the gay "cause"? What was I doing all of those years if this is who I truly am now? Is there such a thing as what one "truly" is?
I had never felt particularly at ease with rigid, modernist definitions of sexuality. I had never once related to the phrase "coming out", to the tearful stories of shameful same-sex juvenile crushes told by so many lesbians and gay men I knew. As far as I was aware, I had not been hiding. There was nothing in my closet except clothes and too many shoes.

To what, then, do I attribute my 12-year stint as a lesbian? I feel uncomfortable even describing it in the past tense, because that in itself seems to make a definitive statement about what I am. I am also deeply aware of how my story could sound - "I was a lesbian but I'm all right now." I dread unwittingly supporting the "All you need is the Right Man" lobby, or the far-right Christian reorientation camps so popular in America's deep south.

I remember feeling intense irritation when Tom Robinson outed himself as a born-again hetero. This was the man who urged us to sing if we were "glad to be gay" and here he was shouting his new conformity from the rooftops. I didn't understand his insistence on his continuing queer status (you are, not to put too fine a point on it, what you eat, are you not?) and felt it was distasteful of him to talk openly about it - be straight if you have to, but I don't want it rammed down my throat!

While I didn't endorse essentialism, I did demand consistency. I was part of the lesbian and gay hard core, with precious little time for, or understanding of, bisexuality, transvestitism or transsexuality. You picked a team and you played for it. But my recent experiences have forced me to re-evaluate my opinions, even though I write this now, flinching a little at the self-imposed inner radical who is shouting, "Go quietly: it's not big or clever to be straight!"
In any attempt to explain my ticket to Lesbos back in 1988, I find myself setting out the political context. At about the same time as my same-sex epiphany, I was finishing my degree at Kent University, a modestly successful redbrick institution full of home counties wannabe Sloanes and public school underachievers.
There were, however, growing numbers of working-class students like me who got involved in student politics. There were weekly demos, rallies, anti-government motions passed at UGMs. We were angry about most things Mrs Thatcher instigated.
Alongside my growing political awareness came a burgeoning interest in feminist politics. The union elected a women's officer, and my consciousness was raised weekly in a wonderful seminar on women's theatre.

It was at about this time that I happened upon an essay by Adrienne Rich entitled Compulsory Heterosexuality And Lesbian Existence. In it, Rich posits that most women are capable of making the choice to be lesbian if they can overturn the internalised homophobia - the "cluster of forces" - they experience with regard to same-sex union. She argues that the heterosexual hegemony is a subtle yet forceful psychological prison from which most women could break free by force of will.
Lesbianism, it seemed to me then, was a logical extension of my feminist thinking, and a radical way to overthrow the capitalist prescription for womankind. I already favoured women's company over men's, found women infinitely more interesting and rewarding companions. The next step was surely to realign my sexual preference so that it fell in step with my feelings about women.

Taking that next step came fairly easily to me: 1988 saw fierce resistance from the gay community to the government white paper on local authority "promotion" of homosexuality in schools and colleges. Middle England had applauded the bill, certain that anything less than a damning polemic against sodomy and sapphistry in the classroom would result in a nation of junior buggerers and pint-sized carpet-munchers. In reality, we knew that if the clause became law, no open discussion or even uncritical mention of gay people would be allowed in state schools.

This nasty little piece of homophobic, paranoid Tory propaganda was based on one ridiculous, wrong-headed assumption, viz, that gayness can be taught, caught or absorbed by suggestive osmosis. Give a class full of chimps a mirror ball and some rollerskates and they will eventually re-enact the video for Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive. Mention Colin and Barry as a couple in the same breath as Den and Angie without batting an eyelid and all the boys will go limp-wristed and start looking wistfully at Sir. Praise Martina's backhand volley and the girls will start wearing jodhpurs and calling themselves Stephen.

Of course, this is nonsense. You can't teach someone how to be gay! I mean, can you! Can you...? I remember a small voice inside of me at the time thinking, "Well, actually, yes, you can teach some people, given the right circumstances and a base-level willingness to learn - a bit like piano lessons." The only difference between my thinking and the government's was that I thought it would be a rather lovely thing if more gay people were created - some are born gay, some achieve gayness, some have gayness thrust upon them.

I achieved gayness for 12 years, and most of the time it was wonderful. There were a number of things about it, however, that eventually drove me to distraction, some of which were also to do with the era. The late 1980s/early 1990s was a transitional time in queer politics - people were still trying to work out what the project was. Did we want equality? Equal rights within the law and a seamless integration into the straight world? Or supremacy, with straight society acknowledging its innate capitalist flailing infrastructure and our inherent superiority?

As in any period of uncertainty, the bumptious rose to the fore. The most radical among us struck fear into the rest with their certainty and their expert deployment of feminist guilt. I was frequently berated by the Lesbian Police in bars and clubs; for wearing red lipstick (apparently an obvious allusion to my vagina and therefore an invitation to men - why not women?), for wearing a black biker's jacket (blatantly disrespectful to victims of the Nazi Holocaust who would be reminded of German storm troopers every time they saw black leather) and hilariously, on one occasion, for having "too much fun" with my mates. (Didn't we know we were excluding other women in the bar and probably making them feel inadequate because we were laughing so loudly? And, besides, with female circumcision still at large, what were we doing laughing in the first place?)

This all sounds ludicrously Kafkaesque now, given that the lesbian community has lightened up considerably of late (last year I judged a lesbian pole-dancing contest - is that progress?), but at the time I remember genuinely worrying about such accusations. We all tried to be such Good Lesbian Brownies, and we all desperately wanted to earn our Anti-Gendering badges; our only dilemma was who would sew them on for us. I suppose in retrospect, the long, cold winter of Thatcher's reign had necessitated a knee-jerk polarisation against the endemic homophobia, institutionalised racism and casual misogyny that characterised her government.

That's if I'm feeling generous. On a more cantankerous day I might just say that those humourless, neo-fascist spoilsports gave lesbianism a bad name. You had to be an Über Lesbian. You had to have only other lesbians as friends, you had to employ only lesbian tradeswomen (who, in my experience, emphasised the "women" above the "trade"), you had to be poor, you had to live in Brixton or Hackney, you had to wear ethnic hats and dangly wooden earrings, you had to care about your gay brothers a bit because of Aids but mostly you had to hate them because, let's face it, basically they're still men; you had to cycle, you had to be veggie or preferably vegan, you had to shop at Gap or Mr Byrite and be either massively fat or vegan-skinny; you should preferably never have slept with a man (= Lesbian Supreme) and you had to be largely dismissive of any cultural event that did not take place at the Drill Hall or the Oval House.

This insular existence broke down through the 1990s. Gradually, we came to gain confidence and lose our paranoia. I had a series of fascinating, challenging and intense relationships with women until the dawn of the new millennium when, after a particularly painful and drawn-out break-up, I decided that for me being a lesbian was not all it was cracked up to be.

My relationships had all taken the same pattern - idyllic start, passionate intensity, massive conflict, slow merging of identities, rebellion, more conflict, couple therapy in hideous lesbian cushion-rooms with salt-and-pepper-haired dykes who nodded too much in phoney displays of empathy, tears, splitting up, dividing of friends and kd lang CDs, huge separation anxiety dramas in pubs, clubs, on the street, in cars, in supermarket car parks, hours on the phone, guilt, abusive letters, slurs and lies, silence.

In many ways, this is all standard-issue break-up stuff, straight or gay; but I couldn't help feeling my answer lay back on the other side. I longed for my mind back, my own personal head space and the blissful state of basic incomprehension between man and woman which means you don't have to waste years talking about your bloody feelings.
I wanted gadget-free sex, friends that were my own, something different to get my teeth into. There was something so exhausting about being a lesbian, and maybe I just wasn't cut out for the hard work. I spent an asexual summer working myself up to crossing back over.

My friends didn't think I'd really do it, and deep down I wasn't sure if my "I'm going back to men" was just injured bravado. In the event, I chose a sort of halfway house and went out with a gay man. Somehow it seemed less shocking. It was still a world that I knew, and the most free-thinking queers would still embrace me as a comrade because at least I was keeping it in the family.

The trouble started when I eventually began seeing straight men. It became clear that I was serious. I had to go through a weird reverse "coming out" process, filled with all the same fears of alienation and insecurities about acceptance that I went through when I first announced my lesbianism all those years before. I had to tell my queer friends, who at first laughed, then looked horrified, then decided they'd just have to learn to love me for who I am .

There is an inverse phobia in many parts of the gay community which decrees same sex = good, mixed sex = bad. There are solid reasons for this heterophobia. Heterosexuals are everywhere, and their creeping omnipotence must be resisted, the heterophobes reason. Queer people, stuck in a ghetto, on the margins of society no matter how many soaps show gays kissing, are prone to caving in and joining the straight masses.

This must be guarded against at all times by constantly undermining everything that does not bend. One gay friend looked crestfallen before announcing that he felt as though a sheep were missing from the fold, and could not relax until it had returned. I felt irritated beyond measure - I was still me, I wasn't "missing", and as far as I was aware I wasn't in a flock - but also vaguely guilty.

I couldn't help but buckle slightly under the weight of the "sellout" inference. Was I selling out? Was it just that I didn't have the guts to walk "the road less travelled"? I remember Graham Norton sighing when I told him I'd gone straight. "You lesbians are useless, aren't you? You just can't stick at it." My parents, who had recently announced they'd had to "climb a mountain" with me "but had come down the other side smiling", were baffled. Brought up in an Irish Catholic working-class environment, I had quietly appalled them with my "lifestyle choice".

But, bless them, they had tried. They had welcomed my partners into their home, they had come to the Albert Hall to see me hosting a Stonewall Equality Show, my dad had even stuck up for me in my absence when a homophobic friend had sneered about lesbians after seeing me on a gay quiz show. My about-turn confused them even more, and my mum took to quietly disapproving of any boyfriends I brought home. Apparently, she was heard to opine that I should find myself "a nice woman".

My straight female friends were more vocal. "Oh no! You were my token lesbian friend! That's so mean of you!" shrieked one selfless soul. I think for your average hetero lady, the idea of other women flying the lesbian flag and showing that life can be great without men is a kind of insurance policy; if training men to be more like women really does get to be too much like hard work, there's always the love of a good woman to fall back on. Straight women therefore like to keep at least one lesbian within reach, just in case (as my friend Scott Capurro puts it, most women are only one lap dance away from licking pussy).
Straight male friends were even more upset when I told them that no, actually, I didn't on the whole prefer being a lesbian. They'd look so disappointed, I had to suppress the urge to shout, "April fool!" My lesbian fans, when I first started leaking bits and bobs about my new status in my act, would hiss, boo and walk out. At first this hurt me deeply. It came as a huge shock that even though I was still me in my head - a complex mixture of gobby, shy, cynical, optimistic, hard-bitten and innocent - to them I was a two-dimensional entertainer with a "100% Lesbian Or Your Money Back" guarantee. I thought they had liked me for what I could do on stage, not in bed.

Perhaps the old lesbian cultural binoculars were still around after all. In Edinburgh last year, one woman sat stony-faced (and no one gives stone like a dyke) on the front row for the whole hour, before bursting into tears and almost splitting up with her girlfriend of eight years in front of the whole audience. She was devastated by my u-turn, and hadn't realised how much she had invested in me as a dyke icon.
Although I felt for her, I found this quietly appalling. And when I started going out with men, I discovered they have a vested interest in lesbianism being great, too. They had bought wholesale all those soft-porn images of big-haired, talon-nailed girlies oohing and aahing in faux ecstasy, so anyone who disavows them of this fantasy automatically becomes the person who first told them Santa Claus does not exist. In the brief time I have been back on hetero turf, I have "dated" several men, and without exception they all asked for a blow-by-blow account of just what lesbians really do in bed (oblivious to the inappropriate terminology of the request).

Now that I've settled with a lovely, handsome, sensitive, kind and loving man, the "going back in" is getting harder. My first forays into heterosexuality were greeted with sceptical sneers and disappointed but good-humoured jeering from the gay world. There would be gossip pieces about me in the gay press, lesbian icon that I was, but it always felt as though they thought that one day I would get back on the path of self-righteousness. It was probably just a phase.

As time wore on, and my stand-up material became more explicitly heterosexual, this friendly fire became openly hostile. According to a lesbian friend of mine, I was recently named "Most Disappointing Lesbian Of The Year" in a lesbian magazine. Some women stopped talking to me altogether. The gossip pieces have become more vindictive and accusing in tone.

Part of me finds it hilarious, especially the Most Disappointing accolade, and it amuses me greatly that there is still this school playground mentality in some sections of the gay "community", this adolescent gang whiff about lesbian politics. But another part of me cringes with shame; when I unexpectedly bump into old lesbian acquaintances, when my guest appearance at a lesbian gig is greeted by a few stifled boos, when I think of ex-girlfriends reading this and feeling rubbed out in some way. It is tempting to hide, to refuse to comment, to avoid any debate about sexuality.

But as a writer and performer, my material has always come from my personal experience. I find the many possibilities of human sexual expression infinitely fascinating, not least my own. If there is one woolly belief to which I know I subscribe, it is this: that one's sexuality is on a continuum, the polarities being absolutely straight and absolutely gay. Most of us fit somewhere between the two poles, and depending on what and who we experience in our lives, we may slide about a bit.

I love talking about this theory, such as it is. I love getting people to place themselves on the continuum. Richard Madeley claimed to be absolutely straight (most heteros, bless them, do). I begged to differ. We settled on "a bit camp". It's interesting. Of course I want to talk about it, laugh about it, exploit it in a vulgar and sometimes controversial way. Some of my audience have been profoundly unhappy about this, but isn't it a mark of political maturity that one can withstand contradiction and difference? I've been called a scab, a sellout, a mainstream wannabe. I have been found guilty of crimes against the lesbian state.

And I am not alone. There's a quiet ex-lesbian minority of hasbians out there, having a gay old time with men after years of sapphistry. I know seven. Two are pregnant. Slowly we are seeking each other out; a quick nod here, a sly wink there. We know who we are. I have had hushed conversations in the corners of parties with fellow ex-dykes where we discuss how we have politically browbeaten our boyfriends on gay issues, and have made tearful phone calls to gay activist friends, promising we will still be on the barricades come the gay revolution.

We are still on your side, gay world. Don't think of us as the enemy. Don't hate us for having a life and not a gay lifestyle. For God's sake don't call us bisexual. Perhaps, in a weird inversion of the old "It's just a phase and you'll soon meet the right man" cliché, we just never met the right girl... Now only Catherine Keener could bring me back.

From Guardian Weekend 14th June 2003