Work Text:
Graham Chapman is gay. He’s a gay man.
He likes to have sex with other men.
Really just the one man specifically these days, but the point remains - that man does not have a vagina.
Unless it is extremely well hidden, and David is frankly appalling at hiding things. Last Christmas, for instance: a new watch in the sock drawer. As though Graham didn’t constantly steal David’s socks? It was all terribly poorly thought out.
Graham, on the other hand, is excellent at hiding things. He has squirreled away many presents in complete secrecy, has won countless games of sardines and was able to disguise his own poofterness from many people, including himself!
Graham recognises that this latter is probably not the success he sometimes pretends it is.
The chaps always say what a good actor he is. He’s never told them it’s because he has a lifetime of experience.
He’s going to tell them. He’s going to explain to the men he's spending almost all of his time with that he is attracted to men like them, but not them, nothing personal of course, though Terry G could do with a haircut.
He’s going to tell them but he has no idea what will happen next.
For all the time he’s spent doing heterosexual things as though he were a proper heterosexual, Graham has only a vague recognisance of what it might be like to be straight. He occasionally has to remind himself that probably not everyone is unconsciously (or consciously) repressing their assorted sexy tendancies, and really are in fact only attracted to the thing everyone expects them to be attracted to.
What must it be like to be so common in your desires throughout your entire life? What must it be like to not live in fear of the faces your friends and family will make when you say out loud that you love the kind of people that have the same genitalia as you?
He suspects it’s rather dull, in a numbingly pleasant way, perhaps like Brighton.
He has no idea how real live straight men will react to the news that a man who has watched them dress and undress and urinate and so on - with no intent, obviously, because quite aside from Terry G.’s hair, there’s Eric’s odd chin, Michael’s wife, Terry J.’s Welshness and John’s Cleeseness, all of which make them perfectly alright as writing partners and unimaginable as any other sort of partner - will react to the news that a man they think they know is, well, very good at hiding.
(Hiding the sausage - no, no, that’s far too old a joke - if he’s going to pepper a truthful confession about his lifestyle with any kind of humour it’s going to be humour of the highest quality! Aristocratic humour! Completely premium jokes about penises!)
He looks at his watch. (He acted surprised when he unwrapped the package, and David had been pleased, because sometimes acting is very useful.) It’s 11:30. They’ve just planned out a half hour of skits for a show that may or may not be cancelled at any moment and handed it to Terry G. to fill in the empty spots; he’s already tearing things out of a magazine. Michael and Terry J. are discussing a Milton sketch for maybe the next show. John’s meant to meet the tiny woman he’s presently dating in twenty minutes, and has stolen Graham’s crossword to fill in the time. Eric is engaged in entirely pointless task of tuning a ukulele. This is the perfect moment.
I am gay, he rehearses to himself. He can say it, he can say I am a gay man, he can open his mouth and say I am a homosexual.
“John Milton was a homosexual,” he says.
This is proving to be more difficult than he had expected.
“Really?” says Terry J.
“Oh yes,” says Michael, “lifelong romance with a boyhood friend sort of thing. There’s letters, I think.”
“I didn’t know that.” Terry tilts his face toward the ceiling. “We couldn’t incorporate that into the sketch, though, not enough people know about it.”
“Just because you don’t know something, Terry, doesn’t mean the world at large is unaware.” John scratches something out on Graham’s crossword. “I imagine there’s all kinds of things you don’t know.”
Terry huffs, and Graham can see Michael open his mouth to be conciliatory, but now is not the time.
“That’s not why I mentioned it,” Graham says, rather loudly. Eric’s ukulele twangs. Terry G. flips a decimated magazine into the bin. “I mentioned it because it’s something he and I have in common.”
John looks up from his stolen crossword. Michael’s mouth is still open. The ukulele is finally silent.
“Is this,” John leans forward, “a joke?”
Graham feels like he might need to throw up. “No.”
“Of course it isn’t,” John sits back in his chair again. “Sorry, of course not, it isn’t funny. Whatever was I thinking.”
Graham looks around the room - everyone is wide eyed and still, as though he might suddenly produce a feather boa and burst into song - perhaps Hello, Dolly.
“Is it,” there’s something acidic at the back of Graham’s throat, maybe he should go to the bathroom now, “is it going to be a problem?”
“Of course it won’t,” says Terry J., his voice pitched high like it is when he’s nervous or pretending to be a woman. “No it won’t be a problem, Graham, it would never be.”
“Obviously it won’t,” echoes Michael, and Eric lets out a little laugh, and Terry J. looks at him like he’s giggled at a funeral, and, well, Graham supposes he did: the funeral of everyone thinking Graham was a straight man.
“Sorry, I just realised,” everyone now stares at Eric as he trails off. Graham can’t tell if that’s better or worse.
His watch ticks.
Terry G. grins suddenly. “Thanks for letting us know, buddy! I can’t believe that was illegal so recently here. People are idiots, aren’t they?”
“Well, they can be,” Graham says faintly, “when faced with something new.”
“It’s certainly not new,” says John, folding up the crossword. “Greeks were doing it for centuries. I’m afraid you didn’t invent buggery, Gray.”
“Ah, but with effort, I may perfect it one day,” Graham announces, and everyone laughs.
Everyone laughs.
Everyone laughs and Graham decides that he will not run away to Spain as he might have considered doing, had this confession gone tits up.
(Someone might have thrown a punch, someone might have mentioned children, someone might have asked for his resignation from the group, he does not want to resign from the group, he wants to stay with these unattractive men and tell silly jokes for as long as possible, he had not completely realised how much he didn’t want to run away to Spain until just now.)
“Shall we get a drink to celebrate Graham’s newly uncovered perversion?” John says, pocketing the pen he also stole from Graham.
“Yes,” says Michael, and Terry J. starts handing everyone their coats, and Terry G. slaps him on the back, and Eric tucks his ukulele beneath his arm and smiles, showing off his odd chin.
Graham Chapman is gay. He is a gay man. He can tell people this. He will finish that crossword that John has undoubtedly mucked up.