June 31st - July 7th 2002
Sunday Fading fast
Saturday Muddy Gras
Friday Arts
Thursday Gay sports
Wednesday Dental
Tuesday George
Monday Beige
Sunday 7th July 2002
I don't always agree with Peter Tatchell but I agree with this:
We had a beautiful dream, but it's fading fast. In the 30 years since the first Gay Pride march, there has been a massive retreat from the ideals and vision of the early gay liberation pioneers. Most gay people no longer question the values, laws and institutions of mainstream society. They are content to settle for equal rights within the status quo.
See this post-park Observer article also: "like queuing for some forbidden paradise and finding a B&Q garden centre."
Saturday 6th July 2002
I swore blind I was not going to Mardi Gras this year.
March, yes. Park, no. Punters cashing in their pink pounds to the sound of second-rate pop groups is not really my thing. (Well, okay, it is. But I prefer the relative honesty of my favoured bargain basements.)
I even arranged to be working this Saturday to be sure that I resisted the temptation to trek out to Zone Three.
So guess where I spent the first half of yesterday evening?
We'll get to that in a while. Let me begin with sincere apologies to everyone, not least my fellow-bloggers (also assembled on this day of all days), for failing to meet and greet you all in an appropriately fulsome manner; as you'll see, it was something of a rollercoaster ride...
I'd arranged to meet Jonce (and Drew) at The Edge at 1145.
I guess you might be forgiven for assuming that, before setting out, Jonce and I might call each other in order to agree on burning issues such as what to wear. Unless you know me, in which case you'll snort at the very idea of my making a phone call in the first place, let alone worrying about what to wear. First mistake.
Despite feeling light-headed from rising before noon, I began the day without even the faintest hint of a clothing crisis - I have a faded pink polo-shirt that gets dragged out (Out) once a year.
Hurrying down Soho Street past noon, however, it became clear from a great distance that John had opted for pink, too. Shocking Pink. In nipple-clinging spandex, no less. J took great delight in explaining that his boyfriend refuses to be seen out with him in it. After a colourful day spent in J's company, I have to say he may have a point...
Hurrying up to the embryonic blogmeet in Soho Square, I thought I detected a slightly haunted look from the assembling bloggers - hardly surprising, given enormous pre-publicity about the looming threat of marauding hordes of people in sensible shoes.
I don't imagine the sight of J and I popping up in pink did much to reassure them. Drew, our token representative of the sober young persons faction, hovered modestly at a distance; having prepared himself for nuns on roller skates, I imagine he found a benchful of bloggers a little difficult to absorb.
We hit the march at Piccadilly Circus. Or rather, we didn't - since the march hadn't actually reached Eros by that stage.A first for me: I've never seen the earlier stages of the parade before, and had been free to assume that the floats (legislated to travel at the front for some reason) would be spectacular: we gave the world window-dressing, after all.
In the event, what few floats there were turned out to be something of a disappointment, the high point being Neil and Edna as a royal couple, the low point being the entirely unadorned double-decker bus representing the Hackney Lesbians (possibly an entirely accurate representation given my long-held thesis that it's impossible to travel to Stoke Newington without finding at least two dykes hogging the front seats on the upper deck.)
John's shirt was arguably the most colourful item on show. It proved a powerful draw as the parade passed, to the extent that by the end of half an hour the pavement at our feet was littered with flyers and give-aways - almost exclusively dispensed with an accompanying "Ooooooh, I lurv your shirt."
(Kind-hearted soul that I am, I chose not to direct J's attention to the hunkier men hissing comments to their partners behind raised hands. Nor did I bristle at the assumption that, dressed as we were, J and I must be lovers, up to and including the sincere recommendation from a man from the Metropolitan Community Church who wanted us to check out the Blessings Tent when we got to the park.)
In my invariable experience, one goes to the park expecting to meet every gay friend one's ever had, only to find oneself surrounded by a sea of tentative provincial librarians, but this was different.
As we stood, whooping and hollering, familiar face after familiar face scrambled across for an air-kiss or two, many of them in relatively unfamiliar guises: Peter as a gay parent, Craig as a gay fireman, Iain as a representative of (what?!) gingerbeer.co.uk.
Drew left us at this point ("He's here, he's queer and he is going shopping") so we joined the parade and processed down to Parliament Square, taking in some of the zanier exhibitionists en route: the religious maniac with his decorated carrier bags, the man dressed entirely in neckwear, the lesbians roosting on the war-memorial giving a mass Aaaah! to every beribboned canine as it passed.
Indeed, there were a lot of dogs; a lot of compensatory eye-candy too, most especially the men from Gaydar.com whom (after a swift drink with Darren and Jim in Whitehall) we spotted displaying themselves opposite the Houses of Parliament.
I don't think their semi-transparent white briefs were making a political point but, to be honest, my mind was on lower things by this stage, not least the the special delivery package brandished by the zomboid gum-chewing brunette whom (and I find this difficult to forgive) J somehow managed not to capture on film.
Old Compton Street was, as is increasingly traditional, utterly crushed with queens. More air-kisses. More beer. More ooooooh-lurv-your-shirt. More gossip about the carnally-connected. More the more the merrier.
One couldn't help but notice that the erstwhile Rat and Parrot, home of several blogmeets in the past, was doing its noisy best to publicise its new gay incarnation; let's hope none of the more sensitive souls from Soho Square decided to pop in there before moving on, as J and I did, to bid Luke a fond farewell at The Marquis of Granby.
Superfluous to point out that Luke had chosen a venue just a spit away from a popular gay bar: on this day, of all days, I imagine le tout West End seemed similarly situated, something of a trial for any blogger not entirely out to his friends...
After an all-too-swift drink with la crème de la crème of the blogging community (plus Tom), John and I pursued our dizzy progress towards the so-called Party in the Park. (Which, you'll recall, I had vowed not to attend. But it's a special day, ok? So I'm allowed to be inconsistent. Especially when someone else is paying.)
Things began to go downhill at this point, despite J spotting some of the Gaydar boys on the tube platform and rushing over to show them the pictures he'd taken. ("Oh. I didn't recognise myself with my clothes on.")
The long journey out to Stratford, the new Mardi Gras location, seemed to take forever, particularly since I was very conscious that I had to be back at Canary Wharf to start work, by special dispensation, at 8 o'clock prompt.
John had been text-alerted that the walk from the tube station to the park took at least an hour, a second-hand jeremiad that I'd airily dismissed as excessively doom-laden.
No-one in their right mind is going to choose a venue that's that far from the nearest public transport, right?
Wrong.
You can be sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this, so let me be amongst the first, ooh matron, to put my oar in.
I'm relatively athletic compared to most urban queens: let's face it, we know people who will send a taxi to the all-night garage if they run out of skins. And, I swear, I wasn't especially drunk: two, three beers?
And yet rarely have I found my spirits sinking so low as at the prospect of walking for at least three-quarters of an hour through the industrial wasteland that separates Stratford tube from Hackney Marshes.
It didn't exactly help that there were salutary hints of homophobia along the way.
A car sped past with a man screaming "Homos" out at us. Big black men with big black dogs stared sulkily from outside pubs. Two small children giggled "Poofs United!" from behind a fence. (Admittedly, given our shared costume, I find that last remark faintly witty: see one of our recruitment specialists in ten years time, child.)
All along the path to the park, we passed people wearily trudging back. Most of them had the good grace to pass no comment, though we heard at least one angry punter advising people to turn back now, and save themselves the effort.
At every turn of the route, sulky stewards made a point of chatting amongst themselves rather than having to face people and tell them that, sorry, there was still a good half an hour's slogging ahead of them: I couldn't help but compare and contrast the voluble encouragement we got during The Walk for Life a fortnight ago (which, at 10 kilometres, turns out to be a slightly shorter than the total distance we clocked up yesterday.)
Buses passed us, none of them going where we wanted, most of them bearing "Service Unavailable" as their destination. I won't be surprised to discover that some secret plot by local government operatives lies at the heart of this fiasco, a conspiracy theory given extra credence by the noticeably heavy police presence and rumours that reached us that, at one early stage, the park was not admitting people because no-one had bothered to finalise the liquor license.
When we finally, finally!, reached the park we realised that there's a very good reason why they christened it Hackney Marshes: not so much Mardi Gras as Muddy Gras, exacerbated by the sun's consistent refusal to shine.
I can't, and won't, criticise the party itself because I eventually got to spend little more than an hour enjoying it. I dare say many gay people (and quite a few sympathisers) had themselves a roisteringly good time. As they should, having paid £17 to get in and with beer at £3 a can.
But to finish on a final note of vulgar irony: the long walk there and back, tightish jeans, the traditionally underfurnished toilets and a touch of festival tummy combined to give me a bad case of what I can only describe as, ugh, adult nappy rash.
Homophobes in the House of Lords, take note: by the end of day (and my soporific shift at work) anal sex was the least of my preoccupations.
Friday 5th July 2002
Crafting a tight headline is especially difficult for a news story, especially if the subject of the story is itself lexicicographically lengthy. That's why The Telegraph allows itself 'gay' in a headline but reverts to 'homosexual' in the copy. ('Ian Duncan-Smith' has yet to be referred to as 'Tory boss', but it's only a matter of time.)
In the arts, however, it's a lot easier to deliver maximum punch in minimum space. Hence:
Thursday 4th July 2002
You can forget the Full Monty. If it's an extended view of male dangly bits you're after, then Take Me Out - the new play by Richard Greenberg - is just the show for you. Privates are frequently on parade in the locker-room and full-frontal shower scenes..
Paul Taylor's review of Take Me Out goes on to complain that the central topic of the play - what happens when a major sports star comes out - is not best served by a cast of characters that divides too neatly into two camps: "the stereotypically dim or artificially educated".
For a more balanced debate, check out ongoing furore about the sexuality of real-life baseball players - originally spawned by an article from the editor of Out magazine claiming that his lover "plays in the majors" (fnar fnar) and more recently spurred by Mike Piazza's denial that he is gay.
In other sports news (admit it, that's not a phrase you ever expected to hear on Blogadoon) an out lesbian has made it into the Wimbledon semi-finals (surprise!) and The London King's Cross Steelers lost to the Los Angeles Rebellion in the Mike Bingham tournament ("Cries of 'This one's for the Queen, boys' proved superfluous in San Francisco, where it's always done for the queen, and the lads from the mother country failed to prove themselves invincible".)
Plus, a Blogadoon exclusive, we find the smoke that sent everyone looking for fire about the sexuality of Sol Campbell.
(And if you can't bear to read about sport but don't mind looking at pictures, check this out.)
Wednesday 3rd July 2002
Three thoughts arising from my visit to the dentist on Monday:
What is the etiquette on eye-contact when someone is looming over your face from above at a distance of approximately four inches? What is the etiquette when the eyes in question are big, and brown, and fringed with generous dark lashes? Me, I always stare fixedly at the loose vent on air-conditioning unit way up on the ceiling. (But I was always a little unsound on eye-contact, even at the best of times.)
Fuss though I may, I admit that I'm not finding this prolonged course of dental treatment quite as alarming as first I feared. Which is not to say I'd want to book it as a holiday. The largest part of the apprehension is undoubtedly psychological and no doubt related to fear of penetration. Which should make passive male homosexuals ideal patients?
Jade's a dental nurse, apparently. Would you really trust her to respond accurately at those terse muttered instructions to pass some esoteric piece of equipment? On the other hand "suction please Jade" sounds about right.
Oh, and don't think we patients haven't noticed that said items are always passed from nurse to dentist below the eye-line of the prone patient, thus confirming the unspoken suspicion that the intrument has flanges, barbs, spikes and, for all we know, turrets.
Tuesday 2nd July 2002
(but not with those eyebrows)
Monday 1st July 2002
Utterly bizarre day at the RVT yesterday, what with people phoning their boyfriends to tell them they're falling over, boyfriends going home drunk after drinks at their boyfriend's ex-boyfriends, ex-boyfriends having fisticuffs despite they're being there with someone else's boyfriend, new boyfriends, old boyfriends, potential boyfriends...
Maybe it was a theme night and nobody told me?
Having now survived root canal treatment whilst coping with a hangover, I'm ready for anything.
I'm a tad happier with having been to the same school as Tim Henman, what with him being not only moderately successful but borderline cute these days.
But I still think his magic-word-of-power is: BEIGE!
They say a good headline should paint a picture.
So picture this: Lesbian rush for sperm donors
......previous entries