#something something you and you father are distorted mirrors of eachother

[qcomicsy]

They even had the exactly same gay haircut

[lucky4in]

A Family Mystery Uncovered

Prompts from Piccadilly's book #4

Words used: ☆Sunday ☆secret ☆wallpaper ☆swap ☆sister ☆curiosity ☆island ☆notebook ☆marathon ☆demand

My ears ring from the war that is my family. Their jolly Sunday reunion shifted into chaos in a matter of seconds. I cower behind the sofa as the house rumbles from their screams like canon fire, their words, like poisonous arrows, zip pass me puncturing into the couch. Their weapons seem to have infinite ammo as they never ran out. There was never a moment of silence, a short break. There is no end to this storm I predict.

My thoughts are running a marathon, bouncing off the walls like bullets. I find myself covering my ears, though it did little to block out the noise. I turn my body to the destruction, despite my better judgment and the scene hasn't changed.

A cluster of people crowd around yelling, screaming in the face of the elderly man I once called my grandfather. He doesn't even bother to move as they roar for answers waving around a damaged looking notebook.

At the sight of the journal, I feel the haunting feeling return, like a tarantula crawling up my spine. Like its mocking me of what was once there and is now a mirror. I turn away quickly trying to swat the critters off my standing hairs. I had to wonder what they were doing with that thing? Why was it here? How could they hold that distorted, vile thing and keep the thoughts from creeping in? The books gaze brings back the events I desperately tried to swallow. The wires, the painted glass above, the floral wallpaper, my sister...

...

Maya, my twin, and I never seemed to be old enough to visit our grandpa's study. His house was made of circles bouncing off of eachother. White eggs floating off the ground with levitating steps that appear at the porch when you want to come in. The inside is just has large, the walls arching, not a corner in sight. It was big and mysterious. What could be better than exploring the uncharted? Despite all this, our older relatives would shrug us off or laugh when we asked to venture inside.

"Theres nothing to see" they would tell me.

Even my uncle who's lived there his whole life says it's nothing but an office. This house is the same as it was 50 years ago. If something changed he would've noticed. Our mother claims she never went in and we shouldn't cause it's just plain rude. It would be no different than someone coming into my room when I dont want them too.

But this was different. I knew it was.

Our cousin was coming home that day. Saeva's side of the family are hardcore war heads. Since the beginning of time, Saeva's father and others went into space, loaded their weapons, and blew up battle ships like it was a sport.

Saeva's been doing it for a long time. She'd come home and tell us her stories and show us her beams or sentient weapons. When I was 5, she brought over her cyborg insects for spying and infiltrating.

Our mother caught everyone by surprise when she joined the battle along side her cousins. They were insuperable even in diapers, followed eachother around pretending to be in space. Truthfully, my mother said space frightened her as a child. It was just endless nothingness yet so many deadly possibilities. But there she was. 18, graduating high school, and going into space. Together for 8 years, they flew along side eachother. Having one another's back 24/7...until my mother vanished.

One moment she was firing away, flying her ship swiftly, dodging any laser or out of control space craft, when their commander, our great uncle hears a "oh shit-" and her connection was lost.

They searched the endless void of space for months. My grandpa, her father, even went on the search. After a year and a half of nothing, our mother was presumed dead. I, still a child, didn't quite get it. I thought this always happened. Mom would go to space, be gone for a little while and come back. What do you mean she isnt returning?

Her face was everywhere, on every broadcast, on every hologram, but she wasn't home. She wasn't with us. Our grandparents refused to leave their house out of despair and Saeva's war spirit crushed her.

Miraculously, our mother appeared 2 years later. A farming couple found her, crashed on Mars. It took a while for her to come back to earth because, unfortunately, the head wound brought a little gift for her troubles: amnesia.

If your mother going missing being told she died, in the one place she feared, for years wasn't bad enough, being told she doesn't even remember you was a poison cherry on the cake.

She tried though. She really tried to build a new relationship with whoever she could. Not going to say it wasnt difficult as there was a few noticeable differences about her. Dont remember much, I kinda just got use to it. The family, longing for their sister, their cousin, their daughter back, welcomed her with open arms. Before we knew it, we were a family again.

On this bright Sunday afternoon, Saeva returns from space once more and we're celebrating like always. Our mother would be with her if the military hadn't dismissed her. "After a scare like that, an early retirement seems just right" they told her "go home yo your family."

Saeva was back with her loud voice and stories echoing throughout the circle kitchen. This was a rerun of another story, including a sad monologue of believing she would never see my mother again (cue hugs and tears) but I couldn't pay attention this time. My curiosity was too strong, I couldn't rear my gaze from the arched halls.

I saw the hundreds of hands grip the class cups and slithered my way out before the toast starts. I'm right in front of the door. The towering door just smelling of secrets. Griping the knob and turning it, it slams shut again. I jump and turn to see my "intelligent", "wise", know it all sister.

"What are you doing?" She asked with that tattletale voice.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" I answer already irritated. I wince at her loud voice, peeking over my shoulder afraid people heard her.

"Mom said we shouldn't go in there."

"We shouldn't" I repeat "shouldn't is a suggestion. Therefore, we dont have to take her suggestion."

Maya does nothing but give me that sarcastic looks she loves to give people.

"You think you're so smart, don't you?" She asks.

Of course she says that. Everyone says shes intelligent in every way and the kids at school says shes the smart one of the twins. Shes calm, keeps her composure, smooth talker, very studious...and incredibly uptight. even when mom went missing, it didn't deter her from her studies and she never broke character no matter what. She must thinks she's better than everybody because everyone tells her she'll follow in dads footsteps in space travel.

I hold my tongue this one time, reminding myself of the possible treasures that lie behind the door. I grumble.

"Look, everyone has told us that there's nothing to see in Papa's office" I explain "it's not a big deal if I look through a couple of books or fool around with the Newtons Cradle, right?"

Maya is silent.

"Its only for a little while. If there really is nothing there, fine. But at least we know."

She averts her eyes from me. Tapping her annoying foot like she does when she's thinking. I grow agitated those few seconds, looking around to see if anyone has noticed us yet. I watch a couple of our kid relatives run by and a group laughter makes me jump.

"Fine." I turn back to my sister who takes her palm off the door. "But I'm coming with you."

"That's what I thought" I grip the knob again "now hurry up, loudmouth, we dont want to cause attention to ourselves."

She huffs mumbling insults at me as we squeeze through the portal, trying to hide the thud of the door. Together we turn and see... a regular office. It was sorta old fashioned. There was a curved book shelf across from the circular sectional. A brown wooden desk was in the middle of the room matching the wooden floors. Covering the walls were these out of date floral wallpaper.

"Hm" Maya hums, hands on her hips "this is what you came in for?"

"I was aware of what I was getting into smart pants. Come off it!" I stomp off.

"Whatever."

My twin and I seperate to explore the office. I catch a peek of my sister, tracing the necks of the books on the skiny black shelf. I poke the floating tablet and find nothing but the regular software installed on every computer. I plump myself in the spinning chair. I couldn't admit how internally disappointed I was. What type of secrets am I going to find in here? I sigh a bit, digging through the drawers, sweeping away erasers and staplers. I slam it shut and open another. My fingers brush against a familiar object and I do a double take. It's a key. A long rusted looking key. There was a lock on the bottom drawer but the key didn't look like it was going to fit. I felt my faith lift a little and stuff it into my pocket.

I skip up to the couch across from my sister, tracing the walls.

"Ugh" she gags "look at this wallpaper."

I turn my attention to the walls. It was true, these floral walls were extremely ugly and completely different from the rooms outside. Perhaps it was just our grandparents old-ness that made them keep it. I grimace a bit at the touch as the walls are now collecting dust, or dirt, or whatever the heck it is. I turn my head back my sister who's reading a book. Despite knowing how boring it may be, I ask her what's she reading.

"I...dont know" she says "it must be Papas old study book. It's his hand writing."

I tilt my head and step over her shoulder. The writing is hurried its almost incoherent (I wouldn't be surprised if Maya could understand. She speaks nothing but gibberish) but the drawings are clearly blue prints. One of the pictures was an outline of the house. There was a misconception that Papa had built the house himself but he denied saying how lazy he was. The drawing on the next page was a 3D perspective of an eyeball.

"What is that?" I point to it.

"An eyeball" Maya answers simply "it might be the eyeball of his dog remember?"

Papa had a childhood dog that he promised he'd put back together when he got older, but his love for the robot dog must have diminished over time. Papa is a florist of sorts. He sells plants and herbs which completely deters from the rest of the family who majors in some sort of technology. He said he was never smart enough in school and it was way to complicated for him, so he works with plants of any kind.

"What if Papa's creating a floating eyeball, that shoots beams and makes loud noises-"

"Unlikely" Maya interrupts shutting the book and walking towards the desk. "You know creating weapons, even minor ones, that aren't with the military are against the law. So are impersonating an alive or deceased person for identity theft, hacking into someone's prosthetic, letting your sentient creation loss without a chip, or creating something altogether without a permanent... Raleigh got a fine for creating a skeletal arm and attaching a slingshot to it. They're serious about this stuff."

"Yeah yeah smarty pants" I run ahead "just because its unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen."

"Quite being so childish."

I felt my blood boil a bit. Stop being childish. As if that's a bad thing. She just needs to learn to loosen up! She's always cradled with all the attention she doesn't know how to have fun!

"Quite being a smart ass" I grumble.

"That's what I go to school for. You should try it" she replies.

I snap around with my fist balled. "The only reason you get attention is because you're so-"

Before I know it my ankle bumps into a small barrier and I'm falling. My hands instinctively curl to grab something. A harsh shush sound reaches my ears before I hit the ground.

"Myles!" My twin yelps, dropping the book.

I lift my head and rub against the sore spot as my vision begins to sway. My sister grabs my arm softly asking if I was ok, adding a sharp insult "stupid" and to "be careful". Once my sight was finally in order, my jaw drops at the sight in front of me. Behind the ugly wallpaper rests a door. I small wooden door that we could easily duck into. My twin finds my gaze and we stand connected to each other staring at the hidden door.

My Heart was beating a mile a minute. I couldn't believe it. A secret! An actual secret that I found! Take that cousin's! Take that mom! Take that Maya! I couldn't find the strength to jump around and celebrate. I shuffle around in my pocket and bring out the key. I shimmy towards the door with my shaky hands and jam the key inside. It's a perfect fit. A loud click makes us jump and the door works itself and opens. A short creak followed the door opening and nothing else.

We slowly look at each others shocked faces and turn back to the door. I bend down and picked up the notebook my sister dropped and slowly step into the room. It was much larger than the office behind us and why more in the now. There was no color compared to the rest of the house but whiteness.

Small portraits and windows hung on the walls and even on the ceiling like some sort of mural. Tanks and cylinder blocks had nature's plants resting in them reminding us of Papa's green thumb. The center of the room had a large pad in the middle, singing with beeps and boops.

"Wha...what is this place?" Mayas voice makes it to my ears.

"I dont know" I look up at the ceiling. Sunlight breaks through the small windows. "This sure doesn't look like nothing to me."

"You can say that again..."

I wonder towards the large pad and my sister follows close behind me. No plant in the chamber escapes our gaze as we walk slowly through the room like a booby trap was going to appear with one mistep. I couldn't help but think to myself. Where did this room come from? How was anyone able to squeeze this in with the rest of the house. It's not visible on the exterior, not even in the backyard. I grip open the book searching for that page of the house... dang! I dont remember what page it was on!

I noticed then how most of the pages were missing. As in ripped out. Where did they go, I wondered.

I feel my sister walk past and I speed it. The screen brightens and we recognize the flashing lights and rising and falling numbers. Weird symbols follow behind one another and erases themselves before returning again.

"What is this?" I ask.

"Its...its a control system but..." Maya looks up "it's not connected to anything. Theres no computer, no healing tank, theres not even a hologram."

While Maya was rambling away, I start paying attention more to the letters that I see. I've given up on trying to understand the symbols, but the words I cant read stil dont make sense. One file read "pineapple" another said "boomerang" and "Cerberus" like the 3 headed dog. It just raised more questions. It was clear that these were code words only the maker could understand.

Moving a step closer to Maya, I squint at one file name that said "green eyes". I dont know why, but my heart began to speed up. It was something about that name that sent a chill through me.

"What's this?" My shacky finger closes in on the file name.

"No! Dont touch that-"

Maya was interrupted by a rumble. The pod dissapeared into the floorboards and steam escaped from under us. Before we knew it, the center we were sitting on left the floor and the island floated into the air. My twin and I instinctively grab eachother and gather close together. Our necks snap left to right as the windows and photos spin into the walls.

Suddenly, a burst of light and color spilled under our shoes. Looking up, I stare in shock as the ceiling opened like an egg and stained glass took over. Streams of color rained on the blank chamber bringing with it life...and a terrible discovery. I noticed the small windows and photos were swapped large tubes and pictures planted on the wall. The pages resembled the open notebook nicely.

I notice then what was in the tubes. Arms. Legs. Thighs. Limbs of all kind, but they weren't real to which I was slightly relieved. In a smaller jar stabled to the wall, those familiar eyes in the book were found. In the middle of examining the sketch, the book was snatched from me. I was going to tell my sibling off but...I couldn't. I noted my sisters face, an unfamiliar look that she never wore. That I was for sure her face muscles could never pull together. But there it was. Wide eyes, trembling lips, shacking limbs. Fear. She was afraid. Her mask broke.

I knew something was wrong.

And now I was scared.

She was briskly flipping through pages until she stopped. I peek over her shoulders. Alas, the handwriting was still unrecognizable. I turn to my sister to see if she has a clue. Her eyes were tracing the paper going back and forth. So she can read it!

She let's out a whimper as her trembling hand flips the page.

"What?" I ask.

She says nothing, silence seconds past and she flips the page again.

"What?! What is it?!" I ure her to say something. Internally praying for her to talk to me. The broken record has stopped and I feel so alone even if she's here physically. My heart matches the beat of my twin as I close in on her.

"Maya... Maya please..."

...

...

...

Her breath hitched. Her eyes bigger than before and this time, she's as frozen as a statue. I ask her what's wrong for like the millionth time shacking her a bit this time. She slowly turns her head to me, which doesn't answer me at all but her eyes tell me something worse. I follow her eyes as she turns to the tube behind us.

A whole person was in the tube, wires intermingling with her limbs and her eyes shut. She floated there sleeping peacefully.

Mom... it was our mom.

But she was different. Something about her was different. She looked so...so...real! Like a doll... a string less puppet... like a corpse.

...

A thought occured to me suddenly. Green eyes... mom had green eyes didn't she? When she got back from space... her eyes were green weren't they? But what if they weren't green. Was it just my kid imagination? Was it just all in my head? Or was it a malfunction? An error that could be corrected but was already in a deep enough hole? Does... does this mean mom is...?

...

As a little kid, I was known for being a cry baby. I swore to be the bravest kid, bragging that I went down the big slide and jumped off the swings and flew, when I did none of those things and when I got to the top of the big kid slide, I bawled my eyes out.

But I wasnt a screamer. Never a screamer, I could toast to that.

So when I did hear that scream, I thought it was me. I jump and see my sister. Mouth wide as she shrills, eyes leaking tears, and pupils shrinking at the sight before her. She drops the book, backing away. I don't notice how close she's getting to the edge until it's too late. I reach my fingers to grab hers, I fall to my stomache to get a better chance of catching her, I call her name...

Thud!

We got her to the hospital...we're told she'll be ok...

I couldn't even speak when they got me down and they were just as speechless when they got a good look at the room. They all collectively turned their gaze to Papa, who didnt say a word but look on in shock and sadness. I open my eyes to find myself behind the couch once more. The battle ongoing, the screaming ceaseless.

"What have you done?!" Saeva cried, voice cracking "That was my sister! Your daughter! How could you do this to us?!"

Finally, after hours of nonstop noise, it's silent. For once, Papa is going to respond! I curl deeper into a ball hearing nothing once again.

"SAY SOMETHING!"

Please, I think please for the love of god say something. Anything!

...

...

Saeva screams in despair and frustration, a perfect war cry, and the chaos started again. I feel my breath beginning to leave me. I feel faint, but how could I sleep after all that? But then again, if I do sleep, do I want to wake up? Do I want to come back to this twisted reality?

In the midst of all this, footsteps make it to my ears. They stop in front of me and I slowly uncurl myself. The familiar, kind smile meets me. Welcoming me. Comforting me. That same smile that dried my tears when I scrapped my knee. Telling me that everything would be ok.

"How about we leave this place and go home, huh, Myles?"

I look up further at the structure of the woman in front of me. The ball in my chest rising more and more at the same time. Once my gaze meets the dark pools of my mothers brown eyes, I feel the tears finally escape.

--------

If you like to write or be creative, perhaps you need inspiration, go check out this book! It's the best!

[boomboomclub]

My husband planned on making a nice dinner and hemmed and hawed about going to the liquor store for some beer. I encouraged him to do as he wished and he went. I was having a nice time last night (things are hard, so I try to embrace a little levity when I can get it). I was playing the kid’s recorder, goofing off, solo-ing terribly to a David Byrne record that he put on. The kids were enjoying some screen time. My husband joked, “Would you like me to film this for you? It could be a vanity project.” He injected only a little bit of disdain and I disregarded it.  He seemed like he was enjoying my making a fool of myself and I was too.

Later, we ate dinner, and after, our daughter asked for an orange.  As I was at the counter peeling it for her, my husband said, “One of your legs is much larger than the other one.” 

Aside from saying I looked like Ben Franklin or David Foster Wallace (lady’s dream comparisons), he’s never really commented on my physical appearance. On occasion, he has said I looked nice when I’ve spent unreasonable amounts on my hair and makeup before an event. It’s fine, I don’t need a lot of complements on my physical appearance (I generally believe if people are sort of fit, content, and move around a little then they probably look ok) and I can even handle jabs too -- but the proportion of my legs was something that I was pretty sure about and, considering the status of our relationship, it stung when he said that.

I looked down and laughed, “No, it’s not. Do you have Other Body Dysmorphia?” He then started digging in a serious way, and brought our 4-year-old into the debate asking her to -- get this -- pick which of my legs was different. I found a piece of string, measured the largest width circumference of my calves and proved to myself that my calves were not disproportionately muscular and let it go. It made him angry that I did that.

Later that night, I got my daughter ready for bed as my husband cleaned up dinner. My daughter always likes to spend some time with her father at bedtime but right as I put her down, he started playing electric guitar at a loud volume. I went down to ask why he was doing that at our daughter’s bedtime and he again became angry, explaining that he had wanted to play guitar all day but couldn’t because he had cooked dinner (as though it was my fault he decided to cook dinner and go to the liquor store.) He started cussing and yelling at me.  (this is something that I have been guilty of too -- but I have begun to recognize my triggers) but eventually came around to saying goodnight to his daughter.  When things escalate my lately my refrain is, “You have to talk to me if you want something. We can make a plan -- but I can’t read your mind. Things are tense right now. I feel like we really make an effort to be gentle to each other”.

At the end of the night, after he put the kids to bed I tried to talk to him as he was writing an email to his friend. The only thing he said was, “I never want to start a fight with you.” Which, judging from the past several months, I guess I should interpret as “I never want you to confront me.”

When he acts like this: when he lies to the therapist while he sits next to me in couples counseling, when he makes me question my sanity, when he denies that things he did happened, when he tells me that I’m expressing my concerns to manipulate him or start a fight, I feel like my world has turned into a hallway of funhouse mirrors.  The funny thing is: I know that he is distorting reality. He’s treating me terribly, his relationship with his son is rocky, and so far, he’s treating our daughter fairly well – but I don’t know how long that will continue. If he wants an ally, it could be indefinite -- she does remind him of his mother’s family.

Here is why I stay when things are so bad:       

·             He wasn’t always like this so there is a part of me that knows this isn’t him. He used to follow social norms: if he accidentally hurt someone, he could apologize. If I hurt him, he could tell me and I could say “sorry”. If someone was happy, he would join in their happiness instead of trying to bring them down. He didn’t blame me for all of his feelings of disgust and irritability.

·             By spending so much of last summer fighting, we’ve taken so much away from our children. I want us to try to do something right for them – and divorce is terrible for them. Because we have young kids, we will also still be in eachother’s lives if we get a divorce.  we will still disagree about parenting, he and the boy will still resent each other, I just won’t be around as support for the boy when his father yells at him  to "be a man" or kicks a soccer ball at him.

 Here is my plan for now:

·             Keep going to therapy, embrace that I am fine. I’m not perfect -- but I am definitely not the vain, manipulative, monster that someone is trying to convince me that I am.

·             Be attentive and loving to my children and accept that I am the only one who is providing warmth and security to my son right now.

·             Get the kids out into the world and let them dive into what they are great at. Help my son find positive male role models and reinforce that he can be like a good man that he admires if he wants to. Listen to him.  Encourage him to defend himself.  Let him know when he is right to be upset and when he needs to reframe his thinking (e.g. it’s ok for your dad to ask you to clean your room; it’s not ok to for him to hurt you or make you feel small or scared.)

·             Give back to my support system, spend time with them, try to have fun, try to provide warmth

[samiraahmeduk]

You never forget your first time. I was 19 years old. I descended into a weird, cramped basement where student actors brought to life a weird, twisted sexual triangle. Going to student drama productions in odd spaces around the University was one of my greatest joys of those years in the late 1980s. But this one was like no other. I knew nothing about author or play. It was like being trapped in a nightmare version of a British tv culture familiar and strange from old sitcoms and Carry Ons and earnest black-and-white archive news programmes. Twenty year olds were dressed in nylon negligees and leather trousers and those weird sixties NHS specs playing a sexually frustrated older woman and man; an Adonis like something out of Richard Hamilton’s 1956 collage Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Modern, So Appealing?

Richard Hamilton (1956)

That performance of Entertaining Mister Sloane and one shortly after of What The Butler Saw sucked me in to a lifelong fascination with Joe Orton, whose plays were hugely popular among students, 20 years after his death. After graduating I would spend evenings after work listening to the audio version of Kenneth Williams’ brilliantly articulate if misleading published autobiography about Joe Orton, and reading Joe Orton’s own graphic diaries alongside them. I endlessly rewatched Stephen Frears’ film of the John Lahr biography Prick Up Your Ears, which remains one of my favourite films of all time, thanks to Alan Bennett’s delicate screenplay.

Most of all I was intrigued by the Malcolm Gladwell-10-thousand hours-esque ten years from RADA to fame. Fifty years after his appalling murder I asked to make a special Front Row for Radio 4 on Friday Aug 11th about this remarkable talent. A working class man of incredible determination and graft, who spent a decade in London reading and writing and honing his skills before fame came. Special thanks to my wonderful producer Ekene Akalawu who did such an amazing job shaping this programme and editing it.

London made John into Joe Orton, but we wanted to go back to people who knew him and to Leicester, the city that bore him.

The house on the Saffron Lane estate is gone. Joe’s sister Leonie told me she’d pleaded with the council to keep just that one house. The replacement bungalow has a tiny shabby blue plaque easy to miss and almost too high to read. As I look at it I think with frustration of the lucrative tourist industry around Paul McCartney’s National Trust owned council house in Liverpool. I wonder why the councillors of Leicester didn’t see that too?

With Leonie Orton at the Pork Pie Library, Leicester 7th Aug 2017

The Pork Pie Library (it wasn’t called that then, officially) is just round the corner. Leonie Orton, Joe’s youngest sister, who’s become his proudest and most generous champion, drove 3 hours from Norfolk, where she now lives, to talk to me. It’s a stunning art deco building which hasn’t really changed at all since Joe first started bringing her – she was 4, he was 11. She leads me to where they’d go – the children’s section. He’d read her Enid Blytons and Alice in Wonderland. She remembers how much he loved reading Shakespeare and Greek classical drama. One time they walked out and he produced a copy of Black Beauty he’d nicked and gave it to her: “Here, you can keep that.” She was too young to be able to really think about what he’d done. It’s not that anyone thinks the theft is alright. What hits me again and again is the breaktaking sense of anger and defiance of authority alongside the self-instruction that comes from every aspect of Joe Orton’s life. It’s a privilege to talk to Leonie for an hour. Sorry we couldn’t fit it all in the programme.

With Sheila Hancock

Sheila Hancock, who starred in the Broadway production and a 1968 BBC film of Entertaining Mr Sloane shared amazing stories of their friendship. Both had been born the same year, both working class and both overlapped at RADA though they didn’t know eachother as students. She fondly remembers walking with Joe around Greenwich village, pushing her pram, having Sunday lunch with her mum. Given his murder by his partner Kenneth Halliwell, she still feels regret at whether her encouragement of Joe to leave Noel Road and move on might have contributed to their arguments. Her insights into why his work has such enduring power and the impact of it in the still very deferential early 60s is hugely valuable.

John Lahr, author of Orton biography Prick Up Your Ears

John Lahr, who wrote the definitive biography Prick Up Your Ears told me he’d come to the conclusion that revenge was what motivated the greatest comedy. He felt it had motivated Orton and also his own father, the actor Bert Lahr. He also reflected on the sheer power of Orton’s eloquence; how his love of precise language is a skill that is being lost in our instant sharing age.

I also asked John about the modern accusation that his biography, framing Orton by his murder, could be seen to have unfairly defined this writer by his sexuality and his tragic death; a gay martyr. John firmly challenged that idea.

With Dr Emma Parker at New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester

Nor did we shy away from difficult questions about Joe Orton’s sex holidays exploiting teenage boys in Morocco.  Both Leicester University’s Dr Emma Parker and Nikolai Foster, artistic director of Curve theatre, acknowledged how he was a working class iconoclast, who nonetheless displayed a colonial mindset as a sex tourist. Dr Parker does point out that it’s clear from his diaries that he never slept with boys under the local age of consent. And it seems important to acknowledge the importance of British criminal law in persecuting and distorting gay men’s lives.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery Dr Parker and I took a closer look at copies of some of the remarkable book covers Orton and Halliwell made and reflected on their excessive 6 month jail sentence for criminal damage. If you thought it was just tearing up books and scribbling in the margins, look again. Dr Parker also had some intriguing theory about Orton defacing only the Arden editions of Shakespeare, used by grammar schools and universities, not the cheaper Everyman editions which he owned and loved.

Nikolai Foster, Curve Artistic Director

Nikolai who directed an acclaimed Curve production of What the Butler Saw, starring Rufus Hound earlier this year, is passionate about how much Orton still speaks to modern Britain about class and deference and sexual taboos. We had a wonderful conversation about how Orton and working class talent is still held at a distance by the theatrical establishment; how much of a battle there still is for fair access and respect. Watching many of the films in the BFI archive, some of them being screened at BFI Southbank this month, it struck me that his work really comes truly alive only as theatre including the potential of TV, rather than the cinematic films which tried to open the stories up into other locations. The Bacchae-inspired TV play The Erpingham Camp, about a revolt in a holiday camp, is still remarkable viewing, and connects like an arrow to the world of Chris Morris and Black Mirror.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Like Curve, Soft Touch Arts, a community based arts project, has done fabulous work to engage young people in Leicester in Joe Orton’s work. Jenna Forbes, who grew up on the Saffron Lane estate, like Joe, was wonderfully passionate, thoughtful and articulate about how he changed her life. At the exhibition they’ve put together there’s a boardgame based on his life. Jenna told me today how it was the most popular object on the opening night of their exhibition on Wednesday. There’s also art work by young prisoners and a copy of Generation X – the 1960s book about young people’s attitudes that Joe Orton got quoted extensively in, after lying about his age. Do visit their show, right opposite the Joe Orton exhibition co-curated by Dr Parker at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Leonie says what really makes her angry is the thought that now, she and Joe would, should have been sharing their stories, and reminiscing. She’s 71; he would have been 84. They should be golden years. Grief must be compounded by an anger we should all feel that he was robbed of all the years he would have gone on to achieve so much more. Her terrific memoir, I Had It In Me, raises important challenges to some of the artistic licence taken in the film of Prick Up Your Ears. It reveals unpleasant truths about how the family was been treated over the years by the literary establishment of agents and lawyers as Leonie tried to take responsible ownership of his papers. I’m most shocked by the fact that the original London diary has disappeared. Only partial typescript copies survive of the original that John Lahr was able to use in his research. The last few days of entries in the days before his murder have never been found. There are theories about whether that was to protect famous names. Perhaps some or all of these papers are sitting in a lawyer’s vault. It still feels as if there’s a middle class attempt to control and limit the raw power if what Joe Orton could do with words.

My Front Row Joe Orton special  produced by Ekene Akalawu is on BBC Radio 4 on Friday August 11th at 715pm and iplayer after.

Filth, fury and the funny way Britain feels about Joe Orton You never forget your first time. I was 19 years old. I descended into a weird, cramped basement where student actors brought to life a weird, twisted sexual triangle.