Trilogy, and a few home truths

I took my Mum to watch Trilogy last week. That’s not the most exciting news for some people, but it was a big thing for me because I was inviting her in to a world which she wasn’t really a part of. It also meant taking her to Edinburgh, which reminded me that my tentative attitude towards the city isn’t wholly the fault of staunch Glaswegians, but also the result of my upbringing. With my mum’s very down-to-earth mother born and bred in Airdrie, closer to Glasgow both geographically and in terms of its allegiances and dietary habits, my view that Edinburgh wasn’t as much fun had probably been drummed in from a much earlier age than I thought. We had lots of fun. But, it did make me realise a few home truths. We’d bustled my poor Dad off to see some stand-up over at the Pleasance, but that was a given. (Over lunch my Dad, flipping through the Arches brochure and coming across the now infamous naked women photo from Trilogy, leaned across to my Mum and said, quite seriously, “Do you realise what you’re letting yourself in for?”) But anyway, my Mum decided she did know what she was letting herself in for, and we went and saw the play. I’d experienced this phenomenon before, but my Mum is slightly preoccupied with people’s sexuality. This is genuinely not out of any prejudiced bias, but simply out of curiosity. She will often ask if someone is gay, never failing to add “not that it matters, of course”, and in some even unwittingly cementing it with the classic bigot’s defence of “you know I love that Matthew from next door, and he’s gay.” No man who has ever expressed a passing penchant for brightly coloured shirts, expensive hair products, or musical theatre is safe. Considering the setting, she didn’t know who to begin with, so settled on a man who had greeted us at the door. It continued throughout the night. In the middle of Part II, after a barrage of naked dancing, the stage emptied, and an innocent voice whispered, “Are they going to get naked again?” When Norman Mailer appeared on screen, she asked, with a kind of bewildered surprise, “Isn’t that the man your dad likes?” I think it was a little too much for her. Not the nudity, or the feminism, or wondering whether my dad’s a misogynist, but the pretending and the sense that she was going to ‘mess up’ at any moment. She’s put up with a lot from young people wanting to make a stand – my precocious vegetarianism at the age of 7, for example, narrowing an already dwindling group of foodstuffs which I deemed edible, or my eldest brother devoting his life to helping monkeys. I felt very protective as she felt the need to admire the play in front of other, more bohemian mother-daughter units sipping Fair Trade wine in the cafe and nibbling on mezze platters of assorted ‘leaves’. My mum calls it lettuce. It’s all well and good seeing the play with a group of people with a similarly liberal lifestyle as yourself – mid-20s, works for the Arts Council, enjoys the Guardian crossword with over peppermint tea with friends - but my Mum isn’t from that circle. She enjoys the Guardian crossword and loves Woman’s Hour, but sometimes she buys The Telegraph, because it’s the only one on the rack, and it’s not a big deal to her friends. It reminded me how arrogant and self-absorbed young people can be – myself included – when we’re set on a valiant cause. It’s so much easier for us – which is great, because it shows that things are changing. My mum and I chatted about it animatedly on the way back to the train station, where we met my Dad – “you didn’t get on stage, did you?” – who, for the record, has never read a Norman Mailer book in his life. Whereas I knew I was heading back to my west end flat, where I’d pick over the play with my flatmate for days, over (fair trade) coffee and wine, my Mum would be going back to the time-consuming task of being a working mother of a certain generation, worrying about the mortgage and whether her children are eating enough leaves.