November 26th - December 2nd 2001
Sunday Fab (and Him)
Saturday HIVe
Friday Camp stampede
Thursday Windows
Wednesday Honoured
Tuesday Ten haiku
Monday Queer me
Sunday 2nd December 2001
It was, I have to say, one of the longest, dreariest evenings of the year.
One of those nights that starts too early and goes on too late, when the hours flow like treacle as you look at the clock to be simultaneously shocked by how long you've been there, and terrified by how long there is still to go: an evening filled with lubricious visions of all the places you could have been instead...
But enough of my long, long shift at work last night; let me tell you about Friday.
Friday was, in a word, fab.
Guy's birthday dinner at Joe Allen's was convivial to a degree: 19 men, familiar faces, unfamiliar faces, mixed and mediated by dirt, drama and intrigue.
There will be photographs and, like all our photographs, the most astonishing thing will be the fire-blasted forest of empty bottles dotting the crowded tablecloth. That, and me looking like Peter Mandelson.
But the cake, the cake...
Andy's sister-in-law is i/c cakes, and this year was a triumph of porn patisserie: a two foot marzipan homunculus dressed, or rather undressed, for a night at The Block: the foreskin alone must have taken her hours.
Slicing that up proved a tortuous business, especially once we got it into our heads that whoever got the nipple ring was guaranteed hot sex for the next twelve months.
At some stage, God knows what stage, we decamped... we moved on to Bar Code. I seem to recall Matt's nipples featuring rather heavily here, but it's all a bit hazy: polo bears, sex-toy mouths, Berthold Lubetkin, and pills for your prostate were all in there somewhere.
Fathers were another running theme of conversation, both on the way to Bar Code, and on the way from it, as I enveigled Jonathan to join me on the night-bus to Shoreditch. ("I've never heard you talk about your father," said Jonce. "Well..." I started, and went on for three or four stops. I trust all you on the top deck enjoyed that.)
Jonce claims that the last time he went to The Spiral the bar was a plank of plywood propped up on two beer barrels, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that when He Who Could Break My Heart emerged from the crowd it transpired that the two of them go way back when.
But I was feeling no pain, pre-occupied by my intimate dialogue with a 65 year old Scottish witch in a diamanté t-shirt, a conversation cut abruptly short when she announced she was going to be sick and stumbled out the door.
Best of all though was the not-unattractive young mixed-race guy who coasted up to us, staring wildly at where we sitting.
"Sorry," he said, "But my friend was sitting there, and..." He seemed to be staring at me in particular. "Is this your boyfriend?" he asked, gesturing at Jonce. I smiled.
"Because you're...Wow." I smiled. "Just... wow. But... I have to go home with this guy now," he said. I smiled. "This is my number," he whispered. And pleaded: "You will call, won't you?". I smiled.
And watched as he left, in a perfect cinematic moment, casting desperate looks over his shoulder, mouthing "Call me! Call me. Call me...."
Result.
Jonathan's late late sms to David provides a fitting epitaph to the entire evening: "Spiral was more fun that I would have imazibubed."
Saturday 1st December 2001
How are you marking World Aids Day?
Failing any other response, why not pop along to The HIVe and have your say?
Friday 30th November 2001
Straitened as they are, my financial circumstances have made me noticeably more careful about getting the drinks in; I can only look with acute envy at the story of the man who bought a round for the entire club, and paid £42,608.25 for the privilege. Cheers!
Office conversation being what it is, I can't quite recall how we got from the sad news of the death of JR Hartley to his little-known cover of the 10cc hit, "I'm not in print". But we did.
Not a remotely funny story, I know, but the headline made me giggle: Four die in camp stampede.
Talking of headlines, stand up the person who had the brass neck to title the Belle and Sebastian piece in the Independent today Scots of the arch antics.
And: just the thing for the Pop Quiz: a mobile that can Name That Tune.
Thursday 29th November 2001
Andrew Whiston was getting increasingly fed up with the lack of light in his South London maisonette.
Things got worse when he came back from a weekend away, just over a year ago, and discovered that a poster company had erected (quite legally) a huge hoarding over the front of his house, covering up two windows in the process.
This week, the worm finally turned. He took a saw to the hoarding (quite illegally), and cut himself a new window.
Coincidentally, though possibly not unconnected to his career as a director of pop videos, a whole bunch of newspaper photographers just happened to be passing when he broke through.
Even more coincidentally, and even more delightful for those of us who care about these things, the poster on the hoarding at the time of his carpentry was advertising: Windows.
Wednesday 28th November 2001
Dear Candidate,
You have been selected as a potential candidate for a free listing in the 2001 Edition of the International Executive Guild Registry.
Please accept our congratulations for this coveted honor.
As this edition is so important in view of the new millennium, the International Executive Guild Registry will be published in two different formats; the searchable CD-ROM and the Online Registry.
Since inclusion can be considered recognition of your career position and professionalism, each candidate is evaluated in keeping with high standards of individual achievement. In light of this, the International Executive Guild thinks that you may make an interesting biographical subject.
We look forward to your inclusion and appearance in the International Executive Guild's Registry.
Best wishes for your continued success.
- International Executive Guild Listing Dept.
My goodness, fame at last. A coveted honour indeed. (Shame they couldn't remember my name, though.)
Must remember to respond. Just as soon as I can stop giggling.
Tuesday 27th November 2001
Remember multimedia?
Courtesy of the Wayback Machine, I found some pages whose content dates back to 1992, when I was a sysop on Compuserve's multimedia forum.
The Ten Haiku was an early group-effort to agree on the central concepts of what was then a clearly burgeoning, yet still pretty mysterious, discipline.
Interesting to see what has changed, and what has remained the same. Most noticeable omission of all? The internet itself, which doesn't even get a mention. Oops.
10. Producer/Director...
9. Facsimile transmission...
8. Who is Harry Hypercard...
7. Seriously...
6. Do couch potatoes ever grow eyes...
5. Thank you...
4. The journey is the reward...
3. Alone in my room this evening...
2. Henceforth the map...
1. When dissecting rabbit's eyes...
(And yes, before you mention it, we did know they're not proper haiku - but we were a lot more naive about that, too.)
Monday 26th November 2001
Paul Bailey (or 'Pearl Barley' as AN Wilson prefers to call him) has written what looks like a rollicking good read, called Three Queer Lives.
More of that another time; for the moment, I want to quote from a (not as yet online) LRB review of it by PN Furbank:
"I used to have a homosexual friend who puzzled over the phenomenon of the homosexual 'queen'. The performance - screams, limp wrists, hand on hip etc - was a very familiar one, many of one's friends would occasionally indulge in it: the puzzle was that it was reputed to suggest a woman, whereas one never saw women behave in the least like it...
"One reason homosexuality, in the Christian era, has often been a scourge and misery to people seems to lie in the muddling of sexuality with gender... The fallacy of 'intrinsic' gender - of gender being not a social construction but a biological fact - is, when backed up by sexuality, a dangerous superstition, almost as much so as a belief in 'race'.
"As with the latter it can lead to chauvinism, separatism, 'gay pride' and an affectation of 'otherness'.
"The impersonation [of women by gay men], though a deliberate breaking of the rules of orthodox 'masculine' behaviour, engendered a freak, a monster, unknown to the species or to ordinary human society.
"It was a mild advantage in the term 'queer', as opposed to to 'gay', that it could not be interpreted as a boast."
Furbank's review (which is considerably more sympathetic overall than these - re-ordered, selective - quotes might indicate) gave me pause.
Here in Britain at least, gay men (and women) are currently living through a period of astonishing social change. To take just a few examples at random consider: gay 'marriages', Queer as Folk, consent at 16, David Beckham, and Big Brother Brian. (And as if that weren't enough, I just turned on the TV and caught a strangely synchronistic scene of two men rogering each other rotten in some short Spanish film on, yes, Channel Four.)
As this article says: "The whole gay thing feels like the black thing was a few years ago. No one can remember what the fuss was all about. We are all too busy enjoying ourselves in whatever way feels right."
After years of gay liberationists chanting for gay pride, it truly would be perverse to regret what are clearly distinct improvements in our civil liberties.
And yet, and yet...
I can't help feeling that in the accelerating rush towards equality, we are losing a special and valuable feeling of identity, a pride based on opposition and, yes, boastful 'affectations of otherness', a sense of belonging to a half-hidden community of, yes, 'freaks and monsters' that delights in its ability to embrace everything from hard gay skinheads to outrageously successful drag-queens.
Surprisingly enough, no less an authority than Jacques Derrida puts it very well:
"I have a taste for the secret, it clearly has to do with not-belonging; I have an impulse of fear or terror in the face of a political space, for example, a public space that makes no room for the secret.
"For me, the demand that everything be paraded in the public square and that there be no internal forum is a glaring sign of the totalitarianisation of democracy."
Furbank plainly expects me to be increasingly glad to be gay (and I am, I am). But he may be astonished to hear that I will also miss being able to boast that, yeah, I'm queer too.
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