Dear Oscar,

I hope this letter finds you well.

My preoccupation is with a phrase that sprang to mind when I was preparing to write to you, which is:

We may be equal in our suffering but not in our success.

I do not know where the phrase came from, nor why it should come into my mind, other than that in seeing the levels of association I have with you made me think that my understanding of your suffering is because I too share it. No, I have not had the same experience as you, and not lived the same life, but there are elemental points of reference that would bring us close together. The classification system which makes of us ‘homosexual’, our shared origins in Western Europe, our racial inheritance, and our state of gendered being (as it is defined binarily). These become over-arching and definitional, at least in the ways in which the societies around us will wish to make us known. In effect it is how we will be reported, even though what we actually share is a sort of very common humanity, which we share at the root with everyone else. The systemic reference points by which we are known only come into being once others and their judgements, culturally governed, come into being. We might be able to look at each other simply as human entities, and it is at this point that I can share your heartache, your indignation, and your suffering. In essence it is the same as understanding anyone else.

But what I would not be able to share with you is the level of your success, which grew from privilege; it is the sort of privilege experienced by only a few. There are not so many people on the planet who have the sort of access to success that you had, who move in circles where the currency is self-promotion, and where works and sayings and the very presence of self are celebrated. You were a very fortunate individual. As you scan the full span of humanity and history you must be able to see that you were far more fortunate than most, and that it was advantage, of class, of rank, of consequent education and access to an intellectual marketplace which brought about your glittering career. In some strange effect it was not you. It was not actually you who made it all happen, but it did all happen because of the world that surrounded you.

It is odd to note that I can easily assimilate your pain, but not your glory.

With best wishes,

Algernon B. Duffoure.