Deadpan Dave

There are all kinds and manners of farming in the rural county of Devon, in South West England. There are large scale industrial farmers of beef, dairy cattle and sheep, heavily subsidized big business, right down to subsistence level organic farmers, and down again (or sideways) to hobby farmers, and everything in-between. My friend Dave was in-between. His family kept a few cattle, for home beef consumption but also as a small supplementary income to be drawn from their few fields on the edge of the village. Not a personal hobby as such but certainly a tradition in those parts.

Once, Dave made to attack me with a large kitchen knife. He was laughing maniacally. We were in his kitchen at the time. We had drunk a little. We were used to play fighting on occasion, but he had never picked up a knife before. He swiped it very close to me, advancing up the narrow kitchen, and I shouted for him to back off and told him not to be so stupid. He eventually ceased the knife play and apologized. I thought he had lost it. I was scared.

Dave was one in a series of intense homoerotic friendships I have had in my life. And like the others, it ceased quite suddenly. I feel guilty about this, as though it was me who suddenly ended the friendships, but I dont think that is exactly true. It is more complicated. Dave once told me he was (is) gay. Now he is married to a woman, with kids. When he lived somewhere else in Devon for a while, away from his family home, before he got married, he heard his neighbours talking about him through the wall. He became psychotic. I was not there to help him. I had had enough psychosis of my own to deal with.

Once, I saw him after a long break. I asked him how his dad was. He replied in a deadpan way, ‘He’s dead’.