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º June 11th-June 17th 2001
Sunday Oh
Saturday A Nivea moment
Friday Brian/Josh
Thursday Pants
Wednesday Eating out
Tuesday Who? Sexyfitjock
Monday Screamer
º Sunday 17th June 2001
On the long long night-bus journey back across London from Hope last night, I pondered the idea that all Brazilians have names that end in an 'o'.
I look forward to saying hello to some of the ones I haven't met yet. Rolo, Toto, Tonto; Ergo, Po-mo, Lomo. Andiamo, Imbroglio and Semi-freddo.
Pentimento, Impetigo, Fiasco, Farrago.
Horatio. Fellatio. Statusquo.
º Saturday 16th June 2001
In a similarly nostalgic vein, David asks if we remember our first gay bar.
It's all a bit blurry now, but I remember that in those late-Sixties days most of the action seemed to centre on the King's Road. I remember a half-term weekend when my art teacher and my music master illicitly smuggled me up to London to see '2001, A Space Odyssey' somewhere in Chelsea; we must surely have gone into one of the gay pubs then, but I was either too drunk or too innocent to notice.
Several years later, after I'd left school to live in the big wicked city, I used to roam around town with an ex-schoolmate of mine; every time we passed a public toilet he used to disappear for ten minutes at a time. I assumed he had a weak bladder...
One night he rang and insisted I meet him in some King's Road pub (I don't remember the name but last time I looked it had become a Gap or a Next - was it The Colville?)
I walked up and down outside for half an hour or so and eventually braved an entrance. It was pretty crowded but every head swung towards the doors every time they opened. I particularly remember an over-elegant figure in tight tan slacks, a white silk shirt and a gold-tipped menthol cigarette cocked just so - his gaze turned to meet me with all the grace of an ocean liner turning into dock.
I mumbled an order for a gin-and-tonic, ice-and-lemon and retreated to wait for my friend (who never turned up, as I recall.) After a while I noticed that my leg was being pressured by the knee of a cheeky-looking chappie who was sitting by the door. And an hour or so later I was being buggered in a bed-sit in Pimlico. With the aid of a tin of Nivea, as I recall.
The next morning I remember being astonished when he asked for my phone number: oh, of course! He never rang though. And I never went into a pub on my own again for the next twenty years.
Plus ca change, eh?
Matte, poor Matte, recalls visiting these fair shores eighteen years ago only to end up in a ratty hotel room wanking over a tatty British porn mag (and in 1983 it would have been pretty tatty: Vulcan? Mike Arlen's Boys? Zipper?)
He asks where David, Jonathan and I were when he needed us.
Hmmm. I think I would have been coming to the end of my first affair by then, watching an 'open' relationship become a bad excuse for my boyfriend's boyfriends to move in for some free board and lodging.
We (mostly he) had a short run of show-boys that year: Anthony, the ego-machine with a huge cock; Brian, very sweet but, bless, no cock at all, and the two boys who lived a trois with the property millionaire near Shepherd's Bush roundabout.
If there was much of a commercial gay scene in those days, we never knew it - though I do remember a night at Bang (now G.A.Y.) and walking six miles home through the summer heat from Tottenham Court Road to Holland Park, feeling happy.
You have an enquiring mind - so you are (mildly) intrigued by the plethora of lost-dog posters and tv ads asking "Where's Lucky?"
You are intelligent - so you know that this is the beginning of some sort of advertising nonsense, and that you shouldn't be paying attention.
But you are well-read - so now you know that the ads will eventually turn out to be publicising something that doesn't remotely interest you: a new internet insurance service from Royal & Sun Alliance.
Cool - x thousand quid's worth of advertising budget totally devalued in three sentences.
Ultimate student fantasy? "£42m drug haul in pot noodles"
I'm not entirely up to speed on the whole Templars and Holy Grail global historical conspiracy theory blockbuster thang these days.
But I imagine the news that the Roman Colosseum appears to have been constructed from loot from the sack of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem might be worth an extra chapter or two?
º Friday 15th June 2001
Sexyfitjock update (should you care): the page has been vandalised (unless Josh really is a 6' 11" Asian Scottish transexual.)
My American readers (do I have any American readers?...) may have followed the recent link to sexyfitjock's gaydar page and gone "wuh?"
Be aware then that, just as you have Survivor, we have Big Brother. Two Big Brothers in fact, this being the second series.
Very very much against my better judgement, I ended up being quite taken in by the first series - if for no other reason than that no gay night out seemed to be complete without a discussion of which of the (straight) men in the household we'd deign to do.
I finally got round to watching the current series (updated nightly) a few days ago and I have to say they're a sad and sorry lot. ("I think they should be gassed. Like badgers," said Jonathan the other day, and I agree.)
Artfully though, the producers have thrown several extra degrees of spin into the goldfish bowl this time round. New contestants can be added to the HuisClos household, after a viewer poll. One existing member is a gay trolly-dolly, Brian. The latest write-in contestant, now amalgamated, is Josh (described by The Telegraph as "a homosexual property developer" - which could be handy if you have any homosexual properties.)
Back when Queer As Folk (no, not the American version) was airing over here, gay men had to put up with a lot of well-meaning enquiries from straight friends and workmates about which one of the gay heroes we preferred. "I bet you fancy Stuart" they'd say. (To which the only answer was "Oh please.")
Now it looks as if we're going to have to go through it all again, only this time with 'real' gay men to choose between. Personally, if I have to have an opinion, I'd tend to agree with Matt Wells, writing in yesterday's Guardian: anybody that spends £2,500 on a pair of trousers can fuck right off.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that Josh has a brain like a gong can be found on the (dreadful) Big Brother website where he cites his dream job as "international tennis player." His biggest influence? "Fitness instructor."
Josh's campaign to join Big Brother has been promoted via his own site: joshandpecs.com; this week the Mirror revealed he has a further internet presence as, yes indeed, sexyfitjock ("Music: Wide & Varied; Author: Loads & loads; Dick Size: Average.")
"I bet you fancy Josh" they'll say. Oh please.
Had to happen: Virtual Glastonbury.
Bring your own mud.
Alexander McQueen is to market his own fragrance. A newspaper report says that this is evidence that British fashion is no longer a cottage industry.
º Thursday 14th June 2001
Yesternight, acting entirely on your behalf gentle reader, your columnist selflessly forsook his habitual Wednesday night visit to The White Swan and voyaged out to explore yet another Underwear Night, this one at The Block in Bromley by Bow.
The surreal highlight of the evening was watching a man wandering round with a twelve inch Vacujack hanging out over the top of his scanties.
Then, this morning, news that pants (rubbish or nonsense, 1994) has made it into the new online supplement to the OED.
Good things come in threes, they say, and new underpants often do too, so no surprise to find that the outdated copy of The Independent Review that I picked up later has a front page article called Pants Nation, in which the excellent John Walsh manages to spin nearly ten thousand words out of an anxious nation's discovery that Tony Blair wears Calvin Klein.
It's very amusing piece, with some fine phrase-making (We all know that pants are the portals of discovery, the split veil of the temple, the curtains behind which lie the thrilling stage on which our rudest behaviour is conducted. Pants - the flimsy jailer, the cork on the volcano, the paisley-patterned prison.)
But he also makes a disturbing point about religious iconography: Could this suggest a reason for the iconographical grip these modest garments exert on us - that they're the last straw, the last costume worn by Christ, the final shred of civilisation before everything goes to hell?
I don't think Christ wore a Vacujack, however.
Good to see Little Miss Minkered has booked himself a moving experience with lesbians.
Just one word of advice, Dave: don't expect them to do any heavy lifting. I used 'Two Girls and a Van' (or some such) to move into this flat, and the look they gave me when I made it clear I was expecting them to hoist the fridge up one flight of stairs could have frozen geese out of the sky.
Humiliation second only to a buffet lunch in a gay hotel in Barbados, where the food was possibly the best I have ever tasted. Okay, so I was slightly stoned, but I leant across the lipstick lesbian in front of me in the queue and burbled: "I feel like I've died and gone to heaven!"
And she turned to me, did the full up and down power-stare-plus-two-beats and said: "How wonderful for you."
So what filthy foreign muck did Dubya have to force down his throat in Spain?
The "most beneficial" lunch consisted apparently, of gazpacho, paella, hake, strawberries... and Coca-Cola.
Today the European fisheries commission will announce tough new measures designed to protect Spanish spawning grounds and save the hake from extinction.
We told you to pretend to enjoy it, George. We didn't say you had to ask for a second helping...
I will miss Suck. I think.
You didn't miss the rude pun in Gilbert and George's personal ad, did you?
º Wednesday 13th June 2001
Gilbert and George, those inimitable funsters, answer readers questions in the Independent, as part of the publicity for their exhibition at White Cube2. The exhibition, New Horny Pictures, focuses on personal ads.
What is your favourite personal ad that you came across in your research?
"London Punk Jed 27 years old, f**k-off looking, massively equipped, heavily tattooed, tight-bodied, spit-in-your-face mohican - 0589 172958 so call me or else."
Have you ever considered placing a personal ad? If so, how do you think it would read?
When we place a personal ad, it will read: "Two much-maligned middle-aged artistic gents seek silent sublime zonked youngsters for eating out."
Stop it stop it stop it - too many names, too many faces!
At BarCode: David, Jonathan, Sven, Langley, Dorian, Paul, and Chris from Family - amongst others.
At the mini blogmeet: Vaughan, Daveo, Matt, Cal, Mo, Darren, Tom - amongst others.
At the pop-quiz: Dave, Guy, Andy, Nadine, Wendy, Lush - amongst others.
And its only Tuesday.
º Tuesday 12th June 2001
A little note to any European heads of state who find themselves in danger of being overwhelmed by Dubya's so-called technological superiority.
Lean across and ask him: "What was that I read about how mobile telephone masts can detect stealth bombers?"
Coincidentally, a v. Bridget Jones article in today's Guardian about straight internet dating.
I had been mailed by a 19-year-old whippersnapper, asking whether I was "up for it with a strapping lad." To which I could only reply: "I have shoes older than you."
The article doesn't seem to be online, but its seems that straight net dating is much the same as the gay version - only ten times slower. (And no gay journalist would have let the term "whippersnapper" pass without comment.)
My straight readers (do I have any straight readers?... do I have any readers??) may be forgiven for not knowing about gaydar.com: it's one of those arcane masonic things we perverts keep up our, ahem, sleeve.
Gaydar is an on-line dating resource, the idea being that you keep leafing through till you find something you fancy, give them a ring or an IM, and they turn up on your doorstep an hour later, grinning, smelling of cheese and looking twenty years older than their photograph. (Cock snaps are common but not mandatory.)
So far, we've found exceedingly informal portraits of Dame Edna and Holly Johnson. (And, yes, I'm on there too. And no, I didn't. And I don't.)
But look who The Daily Mirror has found: sexyfitjock.
And no, it's not Andrew Sullivan.
Travel broadifies the mind. Advice to President Bush on travelling to small foreign countries, from today's Guardian:
1:00pm: State lunch with King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia. Don't ask what it is. Just eat it.
Speaking of walking, I'm very much enjoying David's copy of London Walking. (Part manual, part meditation, it's published by Ellipsis who also published Gay London.)
A flavour of its attitude may be savoured in this extract from "Linking/consumer geomancy" where (after a discussion of ley lines and the "black stream" that may connect the pyramid in the churchyard of St Anne's Limehouse with the pyramid on top of 1 Canada Square at Canary Wharf) Simon Pope offers a more modern way to divine a direction:
Method
1 Purchase, borrow or somehow acquire a pack of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum.
2 Open the packet.
3 Hold the sticks in the left hand.
4 Hold the sticks at chest height.
5 Let the sticks fall to the ground.
6 Note which way the arrows on the wrappers are pointing.
7 Walk in the same direction as the majority of the arrows.
For added complexity, use Coolmint gum which comes sheathed in wrappers with double-headed arrows.
David Cheal's review of Madge's first gig of the Euro-tour appeared in the Telegraph yesterday. To get the best of it, read it out loud in pompous ex-colonel telegraph-reader voice:
"...the sight of a posse of dancers wearing electric torches as eyes being stuffed, wriggling, into a hole in the stage like lizards in a bucket... is one that I will always treasure."
The beautifully-refashioned Daveo has "good childhood memories of the Timelord."
But I bet I'm the only blogger who remembers the very first episode of Doctor Who: my entire prep-school population was called to the dining room one Saturday teatime. We were astonished to discover the headmaster's television sitting there. "There is a television programme we think you might enjoy," they told us. And after that, it became a weekly fixture.
(Actually, I remember this twice. The BBC was so astonished by the reaction to the first episode that they repeated it the next Saturday.)
º Monday 11th June 2001
Mandelson's hissy-fit victory speech:
"Before this campaign started it was said my political life was over. I was facing political oblivion, my career in tatters and apparently never to be part of the political living again.
"Well...they underestimated me because I am a fighter and not a quitter."
Actually, Peter dear, neither of the above. Try screamer.
You'll recall the day that David walked across London, phoning me the while so that I could cyber-Boswell his progress here (now archived as The Walk Across London.)
Now he's written up his own (much more detailed) account of that epic east-west traverse, here. Compare and contrast.
Alerted by Tom to the row occasioned by gay radical Michelangelo Signorile's revelations about the conservative gay pundit Andrew Sullivan's use of the net to find HIV+ partners for unprotected sex, I set out to make a short blog entry.
But it grew, and grew, and grew - reflecting the complex interaction of judgements about internet sex, barebacking and outing that characterises the whole affair.
You'll find an overview of the whole thing, and my views on it, here.
......previous entries