November 17th 2003 - November 23rd 2003
Sunday Happy?
Saturday Oops
Friday So I marched
Thursday The Conscious Vagina
Wednesday Bliss
Tuesday Vote Arnie
Monday Little boys
Sunday 23rd November 2003
One of the few joys of sifting through the mountain of spam that arrives each day is the random poetry that results from having a page called Death Tolls with its associated email address.
The subject of one of the 135 messages I downloaded today? "Death, are you happy?"
Saturday 22nd November 2003
What's that you say? The British Blog awards 2003? Oh. Are they doing that again then? Oh. I seem to have missed the deadline. I guess that makes life a little easier.
Friday 21st November 2003
Standing at the back of yesterday's just-say-no in Trafalgar Square I spotted, crammed up against the front wall of the National Gallery, a young couple clenched in perma-lip-lock. On the wall behind them, a placard "Snogging For Peace"; scrawled in chalk on the pavement in front of them, a waiting list of couples scheduled to join in the marathon embrace.
I stood around for a while looking for some cute male I could invite to join me but alas, their attention was entirely focused on the foot of Nelson's column.
(Best report of the march: Sam Leith writing - of all places - in The Daily Telegraph: "I didn't want the sky cluttered with helicopters, roads closed, and thousands of policemen working overtime at my expense, just so the President could get his photograph taken meeting the Queen. I believe that though there was a respectable case to be made for the invasion of Iraq, it wasn't the one made to us by our leaders. So I marched.")
Thursday 20th November 2003
London Review of Books. Bless
Henning Mankel's recent series of police procedurals set in the southern Swedish town of Ystad, with Inspector Kurt Wallander as their hero, is a perfect illustration of the detective novel in the era of global capitalism.
Also well worth reading: Jenny Diski reviews (and hates) The Story of V: Opening Pandora's Box by Catherine Blackledge
But even the thinking vagina is not enough for Blackledge: not only does it have a mind of its own, it also has an unconscious. Some spontaneous abortions, apparently, 'can be seen as a woman's reproductive organs unconsciously deciding not to go ahead with this pregnancy'.
As if having to contend with the unconscious mind scuppering our overt wishes wasn't hard enough, we now have the vagina's unconscious, id and superego getting in on the act. And what form, I wonder, would a conscious decision by the vagina take?
Wednesday 19th November 2003
I stayed out all night this Saturday, and was consequently in no state to get to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern this Sunday afternoon (especially in the light of their latest somewhat eccentric queue management policy, that keeps you waiting for up to three-quarters of an hour, grrr).
Instead, I finally got round to checking out a venue I've been meaning to revisit for several months now - and I had a really great time, details of which I'm happy to share. Up to a point.
Although I don't kid myself that Blogadoon has the influence to shift hordes of punters hither and yon at a stroke of the pen, the place was so crowded that I'm reluctant to bring any further pressure to bear - especially in a part of London that was recently famous for printing tee-shirts that said "You are here" with a map, on the front, and "Now fuck off back where you came from" on the back.
So I'm be naming no names. Keen readers and close friends will no doubt work out where it is I'm talking about, and the rest of you will just have to resort to sending me large amounts of cash...
On Saturday night, attempting to explain why I wasn't so keen to join him at Duckie that evening, I sent Jonathan a very arsey text message complaining that "...the bar or club that I really fancy - mellow, 'stylish', cruisy - probably doesn't exist in this country".
In the end, of course, I did go to Duckie, and I did have a good time. But it still wasn't quite what I was looking for. ("Too...throngy"). So the next night, eager to find at least something to redeem the weekend, I headed north to check out developments at...let's call it The Crown and Compasses.
The last time I was at The Crown was in late summer. The pavement outside was packed, the interior of the pub entirely rammed. It was very buzzy, slightly edgy, altogether intriguing. What interested me most was my inability to put my finger on quite what was going on: a good-looking, good-humoured crowd, seeing and being seen but with no overt attitude, a sprinkling of drag, a few fierce women, several pretty men - it wasn't a gay bar as such, so far as I knew, but it was way beyond gay-friendly. Hmmm.
For a year or so now, I've been quietly concerned about how the social scene that I know and love will respond to the increasing 'normalisation' of gay sexuality; I don't want to live in a ghetto - but, secretly, I quite like drinking there: outlaws have the most fun, after all.
Maybe, just maybe, what I was seeing at The Crown was my first experience of a post-gay bar: inclusive, mixed, smart, social - whilst still fundamentally oriented at a slight angle to the rest of the world.
Much of the apparent success of The Crown (previously, I think, a shoe shop) was said to be due to one guy, a drag-queen come d-j come barman whose name has escaped me. I'd also heard that, since last summer, he and his crew had upped sticks and moved themselves, parthenogenetically, a few hundred yards up the road, to a converted church that hosts assorted art exhibitions and has a big bar.
So my first intention, around 9pm last Sunday, was to head directly to the church to check it out. I was asked for four quid at the door, which I hadn't expected, and, gazing past the doorman into the bar, all I could see were seven or eight drag queens - not quite the evening I was hoping for. So I smiled politely, turned on my heel, and strode down the road to The Crown and Compasses.
I wasn't expecting much. The move to the church, I'd earlier assumed, would have creamed off the bulk of the happy hordes I'd observed on my last visit. Now, judging by the emptiness of the church, they'd all folded their tents and moved off to pastures new. Wrong.
The Crown was rammed, so much so that I pretty much gave up on the idea of forcing my way to the bar, and settled for standing near the door clocking the crowd - amongst which I was delighted to spot The Dane (qv). Better yet, he had an empty seat beside him and, better still, I finally managed to squeeeeze my way to the bar.
This time around, it all seemed much less perplexing. Quite a few familiar faces: the smarter side of the crowd that I vaguely know from drinking in this postal district over a period of ten years. A couple of stand-outs (a wizened yet welcomed seventy year old, a trio of Lundgrenesque models with cheekbones out to here) but otherwise a pretty homogenous mix of young, intelligent people, slightly more men than women, ranging from foxy to slightly foxed.
The music - which I hadn't been able to hear from the pavement the last time I was here - was a clever mix of electroclash and euro-pop: cheerful, ironic, and, after a pint or so, jiggle-inducing to a degree.
Mellow. Stylish. Cruisy. And, yes, post-gay. I enjoyed it enormously. And when, coming up to closing time, The Dane said "You are coming up the road, aren't you?" I of course agreed. And found the church now equally busy.
Slightly before midnight, a drag-queen in a white ball-gown and a dirty brown mac festooned with fairy lights climbed onto the podium in front of the huge video screen showing highlights of the royal wedding and declaimed some impromptu poetry that featured a lot of snow.
Bliss.
Tuesday 18th November 2003
About ten years ago, when the political ambitions of one Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger were known only to a few, and the infamous nude pin-up photo known to even fewer, I amused myself by making a little movie and sending it to a man I knew quite well who was something of a mover and shaker in the burgeoning dot-com empires of the west coast.
He replied, very diplomatically, something to the effect of "I have not viewed your movie. Arnold is a good friend of mine. I have no particular interest in seeing him naked and would not wish to place myself in danger of any conflict of interest."
Oops.
Monday 17th November 2003
I kinda doubt that there are many fans of hypnotist Paul McKenna reading Blogadoon but if there are (or if you're Anna, Stella, Donatella), ponder this little bit of everyday homophobia, in a profile from today's Independent:
There's a lot of pressure on women now. The fashion industry is controlled by gay men who want all the girls to look like little boys.
......previous week
