It’s very hard to find a point, without making it an issue, to be out. You have to ask how it will affect your relationship with the person who sits at the next desk who’s a raging bigot – or your boss who’s also a raging bigot So for me, coming out at work was a gradual process. As I got to know them and they got to know me and they slowly developed a respect for me professionally, I let it be clear that the person I lived with was a woman.There was an element who thought: “She’s a tough ball-breaking woman, so she must be a dyke.” I found the insecurity of the macho men amusing more than anything. I was confident of myself professionally and in my relationship, so that made it easier. If I was having problems it would have been very difficult.I felt that the price of being out was far less than the price of the closet and what that would have done to my dignity and integrity.
Hiding is not a grown-up thing to do.However, I get annoyed about being described as a lesbian novelist. I am inevitably, to some extent, representative of my community, but I am an individual too. I was accused of selling out when I created my heterosexual heroine – Kate Brannigan. These people did not understand the commercial imperatives of the marketplace and the necessity of writers to eat. My local bookshop sells five times as many copies of my Lindsay Gordons [lesbian amateur sleuth] from the crime section shelves as they do from the gay and lesbian section. I forced myself out of the ghetto.Because I am in the public arena, people know I am a lesbian before they shake my hand.
Sometimes I wish it was not the first thing they knew about me, because they make judgements that are often based just on having seen Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit on the TV. I think: “Hang on, I’m probably much more like you than not like you.”I have heard it said that lesbians make crime writers because in the conventions of a crime novel, the detective is in some way an outsider. For much of our growing-up period, adolescence and young adulthood, the experience of being an outsider has been very strong. Particularly woman of my generation understand what it is to feel like a freak who doesn’t belong. I suspect this is something I draw on when I write about the hunter, who is outside the rest of society because we turn to them to save us, and the hunted who by their anti-social behaviour are excluded.I want to carry on writing books with both heterosexual and homosexual protagonists because I want my writing to reflect the world I live in and not just one corner of it I certainly don’t think of myself as an “ism”. My partner has a very affectionate tendency to prick my balloon from time to time and remind me of who I am and where I come from. We have a standing joke in our house: “You’re not an international lesbian cultural icon here!”Interview by Andrew G MarshallVal McDermid’s new book is `The Wire in the Blood’, published on 6 November by Harper Collins (pounds l6.99)..
If any more friends tell me how they want to stay close to both Beloved and me I’m going to scream. I am sick of people telling me proudly how they have managed to maintain relationships with both parties of other divorced friends. One person even told me how grateful she was that all her buddies stayed in touch with her ex What? It’s all madness I want my friends to be on my side … my female friends must spit in his eye and my male friends must break his jaw at the first available opportunity. They must loathe and revile him and revoke all previous good opinions Stuff this spirit of liberal fairness I demand the totally partisan. I mean how the hell is this “staying close to both of you” baloney supposed to work? Let’s just imagine it, shall we? I go to stay with my old friends for a weekend.
The weekend before, Beloved and Bonk have been doing what comes naturally in the spare bed where I am now expected to sleep. If I look carefully enough, I’ll probably find samples of their hair entwined on the carpet. And what do my old friends and I talk about? Everything except “them”. Our work, our gardens, where we are going for our holidays … it begins to approach the level of conversation you have in the hairdresser. I’m too polite to ask how many screams they heard coming through the wall of the spare room and just exactly how Beloved is looking 10 years younger since he started wearing bright orange silk shirts on a regular basis.
But I suppose “staying friends with both of you” is all part of the belief that we should live in peace with our ex-partners: that I should have Beloved, and Bonk, round to dinner, and let him talk about how wonderful life is now that he doesn’t have to endure me anymore; that Bonk and I should exchange knowing glances about Beloved and all his little ways that we both adore and know oh so well; that I should set a calm example to my children – “Oh yes, darlings, Daddy did break my heart, but it’s just a silly old heart and I don’t really mind a bit now we all eat mushroom risotto together.” What sort of example is that? How to be a completely unfeeling bastard, that’s what sort.No, if that is civilisation, you can keep it – from flying buttresses to desktop publishing, from stuffed olives to power showers, stick the whole thing in a skip.