I’ve been working on this for over a month. And by this I mean talking about Alan Turing. I was going to do a podcast episode about him. I then thought of writing a history filled essay instead, and then I thought ‘Oh, how about a short’ for YouTube. No, none of that materialized. Not because I did not try; it was more about it never landing right in any of the ways I wanted to discuss it, and I could not figure out why.
So I decided to let it go. Sort of.
I love intelligent men, not arrogant men, not selfish men. Not men where it’s all about them. I love men who understand who they are, understand kindness, and who are able to stand up for themselves and for the vulnerable. Men who continue to learn and grow outside of themselves. Men who see the world as something to nurture.
My husband is like this. He is one of the kindest, sexiest, and most selfless people I have ever been in a relationship with. And what I discovered about Alan Turing is that he too was a very intelligent, kind, introspective, and sensitive person. I found I became a little infatuated with him. Not in an obsessive way but in a fascinated way. I was amazed at how a gay man in the first half of the 20th century was able to live a life of pride and authenticity at a time that governments persecuted homosexuals just for existing.
In our garage we have a box of stuffed animals that my son collected over the years. There was a point when he was in 2nd grade that he would line up all of his stuffies and pretend to teach them whatever he was learning in school at the time. Cute, right? Well, Alan Turing had a teddy bear he would practice his lectures in front of. Porgy was its name. How endearing is that? I read somewhere that he didn’t have a teddy bear as a kid, so he bought himself one as an adult, and it became his sounding board. His sister-in-law, Beryl, made it an outfit with trousers. Today that teddy bear sits in the Bletchley Park Museum.
Did you know he almost qualified for the Olympics? Neither did I! It was a trial for the British marathon team for the 1948 Olympic Games in London. He came in 5th with a time of 2 hours, 46 minutes, and 3 seconds. A leg injury kept him from being selected.
Reading about him I began to see someone different than what I was taught about him. He even seems more interesting and fun than the guy in The Imitation Game.
It’s unfortunate that history has focused on his brilliance of codebreaking during the war, which, granted, is an amazing detail! The story becomes about his arrest and persecution because he was a homosexual. And I am not saying any of those things are unimportant. But tell us more! Give us a full picture of the man.
His short story “Pryce’s Buoy” (pronounced “Boy”) gives us an even deeper look inside. Here is a link to a transcript of his story. Unfortunately, there are only 6 surviving pages. But they give us a glimpse into his heart and mind. He wrote a story that almost imitates his own life. Possibly to process all of the internal emotions of what he felt after being arrested for gross indecency in 1952. They chemically castrated him. Giving him synthetic estrogen for a year to kill his libido. This was done to a man who, from what I could surmise, lived with no shame or guilt about who he was. He lived an open life as much as he could for the time.
If you get a chance to read the story you’ll see why Professor Sarah Dillon describes him as ‘playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex’ in her research. It’s a great read if you want to learn more about him. I could see what she was referring to. He writes his main character, Alec, as a bit “cheeky” and the story is about an older man picking up a younger working-class man. Similarities to his own life.
Turing was often cast as this lonely, broken codebreaker. But “Pryce’s Buoy” shows another slightly cheeky side of the man. Someone who, even in the year following his conviction, was still funny and creative. And ultimately, it feels to me, unashamed of who he was.
I realized that if he were alive today, I’d want to be friends with this guy. I bet he’d love Pickle Ball!
And so why am I writing this?
Here we are, 70 plus years later, and if he were living the life he led then, he’d still be at risk of harassment and homophobia. 70 years later! Yes, things are better, but as we have seen over the Trump years, freedoms and rights can quickly go backwards. Attitudes are fluid and not always in a positive direction. We have to keep fighting for the fundamental right to exist without persecution.
We have the right to live open and free lives filled with joy.
Queer joy.
Alan Turing left behind six handwritten pages that show how he saw himself from his own POV.
And those six pages got me thinking about who gets to define us.
We do.
- David
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