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º June 25th-July 1st 2001
Sunday Mardi march
Saturday The odd small scream
Friday Shedding a second skin
Thursday Verbing the noun
Wednesday Advice to royalty
Tuesday Purple prose
Monday Lost weekend
º Sunday 1st July 2001
Up early, after four hours sleep, to meet David, Scally, Jonathan, Mark, Andy and Guy at Green Park for the Mardi Gras march.
I've not seen it debated anywhere, but a moment's thought reveals a cultural problematic in that phrase: here in Britain, and in London especially, we have a long and honourable tradition of taking to the streets to demonstrate our opinions on various causes (Vietnam, Miners, Poll Tax.)
A Mardi Gras parade, on the other hand, is an alien concept for us (not least because of our fickle climate: even unilaterally declaring Mardi Gras moved from February to June can't mend that.)
In the past, given gay men's tendency to jump into costume at the drop of a diamante-encusted, feather-bedecked hat, that has resulted in some dissonance as newspapers illustrate their stories about 'x thousand gay men and women took to the streets yesterday in pursuit of their civil rights' with pictures of transvestite nuns, drag queens and condoms on roller skates.
Although there were plenty of whistles, and a sprinkling of placards (including Pride not Profit), there was precious little politics on show yesterday, despite the event's avowed theme of equal partnership rights.
Precious little carnival spirit either, though the dancers on the half a dozen or so floats did their best to look lively in the face of the odd light shower. (I'm ashamed to admit that the highlight of the march for me was a brief glimpse of Paul Keating dancing nearly-naked on the Closer to Heaven float. I want that man.)
So: not so much a Mardi Gras march as a mildly gay amble; we waved at some familiar faces as they passed (Hi Andy! Hi Alex! Hi Colin!) we joined in for the stroll down Picadilly and then swerved off (Hi Dorian! Hi Garry! Hi tall-skinhead-in-boots-with-a-piss-fetish!) for a drink in Old Compton Street.
Lots of familiar faces in Old Compton Street (Hi Craig! Hi Karl!) which was busy enough to make it impassable to cars - although several cars tried, and got roundly abused for their trouble ("Honey, the last time somebody tried to drive down here at Mardi Gras we trashed their car. For the sake of your windscreen wipers, I urge you to back up.")
Some discussion of why the only music in the street was supplied from a friendly first-floor window (they didn't have any Kylie, we asked); some discussion of why the huge rainbow flag was wrapped around itself the moment it was unfurled; much recognition of people from previous sexual escapades (Hi man-who-likes-to-drink-from-your-toilet!) And then we wanda'd down to Leicester Square to catch the tube to Finsbury Park.
The crowded journey to Pride Mardi Gras is often one of the highlights of the day, with much boa-waving and whistle-blowing. Our journey was enlivened by the driver's announcements: "This is a COCKfosters train. Finsbury Park station is closed due to over-crowding, please disembark at ARSEnal station."
And thence to the park. Of which...more later.
º Saturday 30th June 2001
Rob thinks that these kids book titles have done the rounds, but they're new to me, and I love them, especially:
2. The Boy Who Died From Eating All His Vegetables
5. Curious George and the High-Voltage Fence
6. All Cats Go To Hell
9. That's It, I'm Putting You Up For Adoption
10. The Magic World Inside the Abandoned Refrigerator
11. Strangers Have The Best Candy
12. You Were an Accident
14. Pop! Goes the Hamster... And Other Microwave Games
18. Daddy Drinks Because You Cry
19. Why Can't Mr. Fork and Mrs. Electrical Outlet Be Friends.
Further double-takes (including the odd small scream) from Derek, Anthony, Gill, Jamie, Eliott and John.
º Friday 29th June 2001
Our plan for tomorrow, should you care to join us, is to meet at Green Park at 1230, followed by a pint or three in the West End, and then (unless the weather is really crap) onto the park. (We don't have tickets yet but I don't anticipate that being a problem.) See you there?
Alright, I admit that a major motivation for finally getting a bloody mobile was the need to find umpteen needles in a gaystack at Finsbury Park tomorrow.
And now the discodamaged list comes up with the news that none of the mobile companies have any plans to add extra coverage for the 85,000 people expected in the park. Hmmmph.
As discodamaged words up:You stand a better chance texting and you'll also free up the networks for others who need them, like us.
Text only, people.
Given that gay pride events traditionally celebrate the riots outside New York's Stonewall Inn on June 27th 1969, I'd always assumed that they all happened on the same weekend.
Judging by this exhaustive list, however, it seems not only are we everywhere, we're all over the shop as well.
(Londoners, if it rains tomorrow, take a look at this edited version and consider where else you'd rather be than trapped in Finsbury Park with a bunch of straights.)
Akron, Ohio, USA - October 11-14
Amsterdam, Holland - August 2-5
Bangkok, Thailand - November 2-4
Belfast, Northern Ireland - July 24 - August 4
Berlin, Germany - June 16-23
Blackpool, England - September 1-30
Cologne, Germany - July 6-8
Dublin, Ireland - June 21-31
Istanbul, Turkey - June 30
Johannesburg, South Africa - September 24-29
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA - May 11-12
Los Angeles June 15-17
Madrid, Spain - June 25-July 1
Mexico City, Mexico - June 30
New York City, Ny, USA - June 17-24
Preston, England - September 1-30
Reykjavik, Iceland - August 11
St. Petersburg, Russia - July 21-August 1
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA - June 9-10
San Francisco, California USA - June 23-24
Sao Paulo, Brasil - June 14-17
Stockholm, Sweden - August 1-5
Tel Aviv, Israel - June 18-25
Tokyo, Japan - August 25-26
Toronto, Ontario, Canada - June 18-24
Toulouse, France - June 9
Washington, DC, USA - June 10
For more on early gay history, check this out.
MSG 2 MY M8S. ME NOW MOBI.
Yesterday, at 1630 hrs, I shed a second skin - an event that managed to be, at the same time, both head-spinningly transformative and mind-numbingly trivial.
Worth it for the double-takes though from (in chronological order): Steve, David, Rob, Brent, Dorian, Paul, Andy, Alex and Karl.
º Thursday 28th June 2001
Hmmm. It appears I'm currently the world's third best site for filthy jokes for birthday gay men. That's nice dear.
Everything you wanted to know about hay fever (including an interesting explanation of why it's so bad this year - no cows, you see.)
Is anyone else old enough to remember Soap?
The first episode aired in the States in 1977 and appeared over here late at night sometime later. Written initially by Susan Harris, it was ground-breaking stuff - a satire on soap operas that was saturated with sex and which included, gasp, the first openly gay character (played by, yes, Billy Crystal.)
The National Council of Churches, amongst others, hated it; I loved it. The following brief synopses may give some of its flavour:
4. 10/04/77 Episode 003
Jessica and Mary commiserate over a cup of tea; Danny tries to kill Burt.
6. 10/25/77 Episode 005
Corinne moves out; Burt announces the return of his schizophrenic ventriloquist son Chuck.
22. 02/28/78 Episode 022
Jessica, Chester and Benson testify at the murder trial; Burt enters the hospital to cure his invisibility problem.
36. 11/30/78 Episode 035
Eunice leaves with Dutch; Chester, thinking he is Marlene Dietrich, disappears while shopping for net stockings.
46. 03/01/79 Episode 045
Corinne sets out to bring Tim back from his cave and Burt
has an encounter with a UFO.
47. 03/08/79 Episode 046
Corinne's baby begins speaking in Latin and Greek and throws Tim across the room.
93. 04/20/81 Episode 092
Jessica faces a Malaguayan firing squad; Burt walks into an ambush; Chester discovers Danny in bed with Annie and decides to kill them.
What does 'jumping the shark' mean? This (Soap-centric) page uses the phrase eight times.
Oh, hang on, the answer is here: "...the point at which a TV series can be said to be doomed, because its producers start taking desperate action to retain viewers. The site is called www.jumptheshark.com, in honour of the moment in the series Happy Days when Fonzie rode his motorbike over a shark. The show was cancelled soon afterwards."
Bad eyesight and alcohol get me into a lot of trouble sometimes.
I went to the [letter of the alphabet] Bar last night, for [item of clothing] Night, and eventually [verbed] several guys, one of whom was about seven feet tall.
Having nothing much better to do - The [Colour] [Bird] has been especially dull these last few weeks - I waited for the seven-footer outside when the bar closed.
Whilst I did so, another guy walked slowly up the road. He looked slightly familiar and I wandered if he'd been one of the other guys I'd [verbed].
I inspected him very closely as he passed: really quite cute. So when he did one of those oh-silly-me-wrong-road about-turns further up the road, and walked back past on the other side, I followed him.
Several oh-silly-me turns later, I smiled at him as he passed, and said, "Was that your [body-part] I had my [body-part] in just now?"
He stood there looking rather startled for a while, and then replied: "Nah. I'm just out for a walk..." Turned out he'd never been in the [letter of the alphabet] Bar in his life.
Somehow though, I think he'll find himself there before long. Hopefully, with me [verbing] his [body-part].
º Wednesday 27th June 2001
I hate this combination already: Jack Kerouac, Francis Ford Coppola, Brad Pitt, Joel Schumacher.
"The cult activities consist of members of the carefully selected audience performing ostentatiously lewd acts designed to encourage the masturbator to the point of ejaculation. Ideally, he ejaculates into his cupped hand. Ideally, he then eats his semen."
Question: is the above:
A) a description of the secret ceremonies in the innermost shrine of
Amun at the
Temple at Karnak in approximately 1400 BC?
Or,
B) a description of most gay webcam meeting rooms, circa 2001 AD?
Answer: bizarrely enough, it's both.
Prince Phillip, irascible old bugger that he is, turned 80 at the beginning of this month. So you'd expect him to take full advantage of his Senior Citizen's Railcard, right?
No, c'mon, be honest, you wouldn't.
But... he does, he does. The National Audit Office re[ports that older members of the Household, including the Duke of Edinburgh, had been using their OAP rail passes for the past three years.
I don't imagine that will make much impact on the estimated £7.5 million cost of Royal travel for 99/00, but it's a cute gesture.
But if Her Majesty really wants to become a familiar presence in the everyday lives of her citizens, might I humbly suggest that a good way to start would be by having her record all the announcements on the Tube?
"Members of the public are reminded that begging is an offence. Please do not support buskers or beggars."
"The next station is: Oval" (Actually, it's kinda cuboid but hey.)
"Mind the gap" (I always hear myself mutter: "I don't really mind the gap, I think it's quite a nice gap.")
Sob, Sob: Dave (aka Minkered aka Uncle Hedgehog) flies out today to begin his new life in the Colonies.
So, all of you, please join me in reciting these lines from one of Oscar Wilde's letters to Bosie:
London is a desert without your dainty feet, and all the buttonholes have turned to weeds: nettles and hemlock are the only wear.
º Tuesday 26th June 2001
I took a vacation day Friday and drove back to New Orleans and parked my truck on the edge of the Quarter and walked through Jackson Square and Pirates Alley, past the deep green, shaded garden behind St Louis cathedral, and down St Ann to Clete Purcell's office.
The building was tan stucco and contained an arched foyer and flagstone courtyard planted with banana trees. An 'Out to Lunch' sign hung in the downstairs window... Clete lived in a one-bedroom apartment with a balcony that gave onto the street. The ironwork on the balcony was overgrown with bougainvillea, and in the evening Clete put on a pair of blue, baggy, knee-length boxing trunks and pumped barbells out there under a potted palm like a friendly elephant.
- James Lee Burke 'Purple Cane Road'
There are probably better quotes to pull to illustrate just why I enjoy James Lee Burke in general, and Purple Cane Road (the latest Robicheaux novel) in particular.
But my point is to wonder how Jonno, and Richard, and (temporarily) Ralph feel when they read these descriptions of their home turf.
For those of us who've never had the pleasure of the city, reading Burke (and Anne Rice too) is like taking a little travel trip without coming out from under the duvet - I dream of po'boy sandwiches, beignets and mufflettas (whatever the hell they are.)
But do those who know New Orleans squirm when they read: Clete cut the engine and let the outboard float on its wake through a stand of cypress towards a levee and a tin-roofed stilt house that was shadowed by live oaks that must have been over a hundred years old...?
Do they throw up their hands and cry "Dear god, not more bougainvillea! And stilt houses, oh please!" in just the same way we Brits shiver when we hear Hollywood versions of cockney? (And if you thought Dick van Dyke was bad, check out Marlene Dietrich in Witness for the Prosecution.)
Maybe they'll tell us. In the meantime, if you like hard-boiled page-turners featuring an ex-alcoholic detective with a soldier's history and a poet's heart, read Purple Cane Road. Seriously good.
º Monday 25th June 2001
Hmmph. David may think that Davids are better-looking than Ians, but has he checked out the Daves?
I've been very conscious that this blog has been a little short on personal content over the last week or so. But what can I tell you, my life has been like that too.
Yesterday more than made up for it though...
My, but my imagination leads me down some strange byways at times. Literally, yesterday.
Having memorised the directions to Dave's farewell party (Winchester Court, off a street that starts with an H and runs between two of the roads that radiate from the Elephant and Castle roundabout) I set off in fairly good time with booze in a bag, several chilled cans that I resolved not not not to broach before I got there, ascetic hero that I am.
I don't know the Elephant that well but I had a very clear mental picture in my mind. Winchester Close is shown as a dotted line in my A-Z, so somewhere south of that large red-brick hotel that fronts onto the green there would be some sort of mews where a small house with loud music would have burly men hanging out of the windows.
Difficult to miss, right?
Wrong. Especially when, very foolishly, I didn't appreciate that these days a Close is simply a posh name for a block of flats. And that I'd chosen the wrong radial road to start with. And that there are, doh, quite a few streets that start with an H.
Nonetheless I had a very pleasant time wandering in the summer sunshine up and down Hayles Street, which turns out to have a very quiet and attractive quartier hidden behind it, backing onto the Imperial War Museum, complete with the very epitome of an urban garden square and some lovely mews properties, none of them, sadly, with burly men hanging out of the windows.
Prospects perked up when I broached the first of my rapidly warming cans and heard loud singing from what looked like a pub but which turned out to be Sunday service at the Salvation Army.
And I commend the effort displayed at the derelict building on the corner of Church Yard and Newington Butts, where some psycho-geographer has laboriously covered the boarded up windows with lengthy hand-written quotes from the masters (including something by 'Hakim Bey', whom I once met at a conference in Amsterdam, and who turns out to be a pleasant portly elderly American.)
An hour or so (and several cans) later, I found a working phone box and reluctantly called for help. All expeditions must have an end.
When I eventually admitted defeat and phoned for directions, Hampton Street and Dave's party proved very easy to find: difficult to hide fifty big men in several small rooms, even when most of them turned out to be, um, not altogether situate in this dimension.
Presenting Dave with the domain that we'd bought him took several tries: one to give him the card with www.minkered.com written boldly on it, another to find him again and point it out, one more to hold him down and explain, very slowly and clearly, what we'd done. I think he got it in the end, though.
(One puzzle: I have a vivid mental picture of an eight year old boy hanging over the basement railings saying "sorry!" to the backs of half a dozen party guests as they retreated from the terrace. What did he want? Money, food, drugs? Sex?)
And then it was time for the Vauxhall, on foot. Three gay men striding the streets of south London pointing out the landmarks: "I shagged a Frenchman that lived over there." "The flat with the venetian blinds? I shagged his flatmate."
Much grassy knollage at the Vauxhall yesterday, lolling about before and after the (slightly odd?) show from Edna, chatting to Andy (who was travelling in convoy with a flotilla of exes) and Guy (when he had no-one better to do, which wasn't often.)
My intimate conversation with Ben was interrupted when someone flopped himself down next to me and said: "You... I see you... wandering about... and your hair... wandering with you... and you dance... whereas your mate..." David and I exchanged perplexed glances and by the time we'd stopped giggling, he'd gone again.
Dunno what that was about, but it's nice to know I've been noticed, at least. I guess.
Mind you, I recall wandered up to Dame Edna at one stage and saying "You were very strange today." To which he replied, quick as a whip, "Not as strange as you, dear."
I ended up last night in Dukes, several pints the worse for wear, talking nonsense to Paul G.
The last thing I remember was saying to a stranger: "I'm sorry, I'm too drunk to do this. Could we try again when I'm sober?"
Dunno why that should be a problem; he was, after all, giving me extremely explicit instructions.
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