Femi Otitoju in Framed Youth

Femi Otitoju in Framed Youth: Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, 1983 via London Community Video Archive

Transcription:

Femi: Just last year actually my mother found out that I was a lesbian. It was a bit unfortunate because I was preparing for Gay Pride Week, and I thought this year Gay Switchboard was gonna have a ‘Lesbian for Gay Switchboard’ banner so there was I, a white sheet out on the middle of the floor, tin of red gloss paint and the cat sort of bit amused.

And I just about got it finished wondering if I was gonna go around the edge in black paint, there was this rap at the door and [I thought] it’s the cat again but no she’s here. And it’s my mother;

‘Hello dear, I just arrived, I thought I’d surprise you I didn’t ring you from the airport’

I thought ‘Duh’.

‘What are you doing? Lesbian for gay..ahhh!’

There’s paint this way, cat gone flying against the wall and…It was hell. It was awkward.

The way in which she found out was really awful, really painful for her. Then the next day, you know, there was the Gay Pride March and she had run into the banner and I had the other. And she ends up saying ‘You’re not going’. Like this, back and forth.

They sort of had 11 kids before and they’d all gone out and gotten married and had kids and behaved just the way she wanted them too. And then there was Femi, who didn’t.

Um but she sort of says

‘Well I know why you’re a lesbian dear because I brought you here to this country when you were so young, you were brought up by white people’.

You know? And I said no it’s not that, that’s not it mother.

‘Oh, ah! It’s because when you were 16 you went into those Scientology cults. I know that these cults, you know, they like the Moonies, they get you all mixed up and all kinds of things that you don’t really want to be a part of.’

(Interviewer says something intangible)

Femi: Yeah, there’s gotta be a reason for it. But now she just sort of says, she talks about her kids and their own success stories and then she talks about…Femi.

Father was just told last year ‘Oh by the way dad I’m not getting married because I am a lesbian HAH’

It’s incredibly amusing. Well, and he said that he is really good in that he is so uninhibited by it in the way that he can say to his friends, when I am around,

‘Well yeah, everybody knows that this is how we want girls to behave, oh expect for lesbians because Femi. I haven’t forgotten about you.’

And he can actually say things like that and crack little jokes which I think my mother will never be able to do.

Interviewer: In some ways it’s better.

Femi: Yeah it’s a lot better.