There was a large family: a divorced mother and four brothers, together with what Stefan referred to as his ‘primary friends’. It was a rare weekend that the ‘Dutch connection’ didn’t operate in one or other direction. This situation – just like the anal standards of domestic order he insisted upon – was a ‘non-negotiable’.
The large Dutch Catholic family was a constant presence. ‘Mama’ was an interesting person. She read a lot, and was prone to politically incorrect outbursts. Her English was poor, but quite good enough to invite me to her ‘gay salon’ on our first meeting. She made a great fuss of me and told me how much she preferred me to her daughters-in-law.
The three of the brothers I got to know were loud and hearty in the Dutch manner. When they weren’t ranting about money matters they were raving about the family’s other chief obsession: schizophrenia. Sadly, the absent brother was schizophrenic and permanently hospitalized. Often it was suggested we visit this unfortunate, but Stefan forbade this – to the mystification of both myself and his other brothers. Apparently he was worried about what the schizophrenic brother might tell me.
The deceased father figured as largely in the family rap sessions as the poor brother. A functionary in the Rotterdam shipping industry and accomplished pianist, Papa had deserted the family, and – worse, it appeared – had bequeathed the replacement wife his treasured piano.
No forgiveness was ever to be forthcoming from what seemed to me an unusually unhealthy matriarchy. I was shocked when Stefan boasted of having spurned his father’s deathbed appeals.
Stefan’s three sets of ‘primary’ friends were largely survivors from his days at Leyden University. He was adept at playing them off against each other. He took pains to reassure each set that they were ‘ultra-primary’.
Omnipresent were the Deiters: Patricia, a large Belgian girl, her husband, a kindly Dutchman, and three daughters. I saw so much of them they began to feel like my own family. Only the occasional, obviously cheaper gift served to remind me I was only on licence as Stefan’s partner. Next in the pecking order were the Geeris’s. Stefan, together with the Deiters, regularly mocked this couple as vulgar ‘nouveaux riches’. Their flaunting of their wealth, it seemed, was at odds with Holland’s famously hypocritical conventions of financial modesty. Last in Stefan’s pecking order of ‘primary friends’ were his former neighbours on Amsterdam’s Herengracht, a bisexual dentist and his pathetically trusting wife.
Needless to say – in spite of a decade of birthday and Christmas cards, family weddings, and shared holidays – I never heard another word from Stefan’s Dutch clan once I too had been consigned to the ranks of his ‘ex-s’.