August 26th - September 1st 2002
Sunday Moments
Saturday Thump
Friday Big smile
Thursday Not him
Wednesday Two please
Tuesday Zanzibar
Monday Elektrowerks
Sunday 1st September 2002
Best moment of a weekend packed with moments: on the pavement at the Vauxhall, surrounded by men with their tops off, me tapping Saffina's friend on the chest, mid-harangue, going "Well look, you're gay right.." only to see a look of strangled shock sweep across his face as his eyes goggle in denial and he chokes out "Er: I'm going out with Saffina!"
Serves him right for going out with Saffina.
The minx.
Saturday 31st August 2002
London geography can be damned bizarre sometimes, especially out east.
My (short, efficient, fifteen minute) route to work takes me south down the East London line to Canada Water, where I change for a one stop journey east on the Jubilee Line.
On a good day.
On a bad day, say a weekend when they've decided to cancel the Jubilee Line for engineering work, you climb up into the light at Canada Water in search of the 'replacement' bus service only to find yourself firmly directed onto a vehicle that clearly says 'London Bridge' on the front.
When you protest, amicably enough, that you don't want to travel twenty minutes west, thank you, but simply want to get eastwards over the river, you're told that the only way to get there is via London Bridge.And, amicability evaporating as you face the prospect of being an hour late, you realise that the Little Man has simply failed to understand, so you take him over to a map and demonstrate, with emphatic finger-thumping, the sheer unreality of being asked to travel two miles to the west - thump - and then three miles east - thump, thump - when your destination is plainly visible - emphatic ponting - from where you stand.
And he smiles at your bemusement and trots you over to his superior, a burly man in a white shirt, who confirms that, yes sir, you have to go via London Bridge and, when you ask why, he looks at you as if you're a moron and snorts something about double-decker buses and ceiling heights in river tunnels.
Which makes a crazy kind of sense.Until, much later that same evening, desperate to get down to Brixton and Queer Nation before the transport system shuts down, you eventually find the Canada Water stop for the bus service (five minutes walk from the tube station), wait ten minutes and then find yourself shepherded onto, yup, a single-decker bus...
Friday 30th August 2002
My recent much-touted bout of dentistry cost me £350.
I can be certain of that because, under the NHS, that is the maximum a patient ever pays; the rest is covered by the State.
In my case, I don't know what the total expense would be: when I asked, the dentist just waggled his eyebrows and said, let's just say you've got a very good deal. But.. six hours in total? With a qualified professional and his assistant, plus associated ironmongery and assorted materials? I can't see it being more than two grand, tops, can you?
So explain to me please how Emma Jesson, sometime GMTV weathergirl, gets to spend £50,000 on corrective dentistry?
Thursday 29th August 2002
Long time since I went on a date: I'd forgotten what it's like to stand waiting by the door, desperately checking each person as they come in, comparing their features against a dim memory that you don't entirely trust.
"No, that's not him, way too old. No, not him, way too ugly. Not him, that's.. Scally"
God only knows what hauled Scally to the Swan from the depths of South London last night. Presumably his four friends. They spent the latter part of the evening sitting on the floor in front of the stage, so I guess they enjoyed themselves.So did we.
Wednesday 28th August 2002
The way a story reaches me at work, it can sometimes be difficult to work out which is supposed to be the headline and which a subhead.
I leave you to imagine the reluctance with which, faced with a review of a book about the sexual characteristics of various mammals, I eventually discarded:
Most men find one penis quite enough to deal with
Naming no names, but some of you may find this more relevant than others:
Lopsided people make jealous lovers
Similarly:
US sends sperm for beleagured Brits
Tuesday 27th August 2002
Long ago and far away, in the dotcom-wannabe years, my business partner got it into his head that we needed to be represented at Milia, the annual multimedia trade show in Cannes. And since he was happy to pay for it, I was happy to go.
I can't say it was all that tremendous, though I got to hear some fairly inspiring speakers and we ate quite well; my happiest discovery was the one gay bar in Cannes where, having put BusinessPartner to bed, I spent many happy hours. (A gay bar in Cannes? Well yes, think about it: all those barmen have to go somewhere after hours.)
On my last night, I got drunk enough to buy a souvenir t-shirt, and drunk enough not to care that, this being the South of France, the garment in question turned out to be a ribbed skimpy sleeveless affair rather than the classic tee I was expecting.
On the rare occasions that I've worn it since, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that it doesn't look quite as ridiculous on my ageing paunchy torso as one might expect.
Yesterday, in the face of an ongoing laundry crisis and a cooler than expected evening, I slipped it on beneath a nondescript classic baggy white tee-shirt before heading off to Thomas' gala post-carnival night at Propaganda on Wardour Street.
Thomas' club (formerly Lowdown, then Off the Hook) was one of the most interesting venues I found during my discover-gay-London explorations. It's a black club, playing black music and, as you might expect, it's attitude has attitude.
White guys that go there (and plenty do) find themselves putting on a rapidly changing series of mental masks, from Guardian-reading We-Is-One, through I-find-your-culture-so-fascinating and right out the other side to get-outa-my-face-sistah I'm-just-here-to-dance. Well, I did anyway.The mood of the club has also subtly altered over the years. As Lowdown, in a basement up an alley behind GAY, it was quite cruisy, quite scarey but basically friendly with occasional aggressive affrays (I found myself paying some guy twenty quid reparation one night, after he'd danced his polyester sports top onto the end of my cigarette and melted a miniscule hole; no way I was arguing with him, no sir.)
Later, at the Velvet Rooms on Charing Cross Road, everything seemed to get a lot blacker, and a lot less colour-ful. To my innocent yet paranoid eye, things seemed to get a lot more gangsta and the aggression, though less overt, seemed more pervasive. I didn't go there as much and latterly, what with the death of Chris McKoy and my working most Monday nights, I hardly went at all.
But Thomas (intelligent, skinny, white, German) remains a friend, and I'm fascinated to see what he'll do with the challenge of seeing the Charing X rd premises torn down to make way for the redevelopment of the Centrepoint plaza.
This Monday's post-carnival gala was a one-off in collaboration with Liberte (a North London lesbian affair, by all accounts): a perfect opportunity to reacquaint myself with Thomas and his club, albeit somewhat challenging in the wardrobe department.
Lacking anything remotely knock-em-dead (I never did manage that label-queen look), I followed my usual reactive tactic by throwing on a pair of jeans and the aforementioned t-shirts aiming, theoretically, to impress people with my so-over-all-that-fashion-malarkey attitude.
It's a very silly strategy at the best of times, and I'd forgotten that it demands the maintenance of high charisma output at all times - not the easiest of things to do in a gay black club where, trust me, you don't find many shrinking violets.
Propaganda, it transpires, is a very swish bar indeed and, much to my surprise, Thomas' patrons displayed an attitude that matched it very well.
Blame it on Carnival, blame it on the higher than usual woman-to-man ratio, blame it on that milieu's unparalleled ability to match their mood to the venue, but it turned out to be an exceptionally cheerful night, which I enjoyed with virtually no trepidation. (My mood even survived being charged four quid for a bottle of Budwesier, a new record.)
It was a good-looking crowd, pretty mixed, and most of them were dressed to impress in a low key yet smart fashion. (With a couple of exceptions: is this year's street-look really going to demand that sweatshirts be worn rolled halfway up the chest?)
Things got pretty sweaty pretty quickly, and I soon began to regret my layered t-shirt approach. As I stood talking to Thomas, I also noticed a higher than usual proportion of sleeveless skinny tops. So, to hell with it, when I needed to dance I took off my baggy tee and hung it out the back of my jeans.
Only to discover that, in that place, in that crowd, if you have to have writing on your chest, ZANZIBAR - CANNES is not such a bad option...
Monday 26th August 2002
Sunday equals Vauxhall; Vauxhall equals Sunday.
By dint of jumping straight out of bed into some clothes and onto a train, I managed to get myself into the queue outside the RVT at the unprecedentedly early hour of four thirty - but even that wasn't early enough to get in for the show, dammit.
(The Beehive crowd had the best plan: send someone straight from lunch table to procure 14 wristbands before the hors d'oeuvres even hit the table.)
After joining Andy and Adam for a brief chorus of disgruntlement on the knoll (and explaining, not for the first time, that those of us who complained long and loud about overcrowding before really don't have the right to complain now), I toyed with the idea of Dukes but settled for a disco-nap at home before setting out for LA3's gala night....
I like LA3 (affectionately known as La Trois) though these days I find it difficult to summon the stamina to get there after the RVT without chemical encouragement. But I particularly wanted to check out Elektrowerks, the venue they've taken to taking over for special occasions.
And it did not disappoint: a huge mazy warehouse with cruisy bits, dancy bits, chatty bits; sensible door-staffing, unexorbitant bar prices, halfway decent toilets - for those of us who are jaundiced by seeing the the standard greed of gay nightlife jacked even higher at holiday time, LA3 at Elektrowerks has a lot to recommend it, not least a large crowd of horny haveable men.That said, I had my usual problem with the music, most especially in the downstairs room which, whenever I braved it, seemed awash with the most idiotic twiddly hoover nonsense (and idiotic twiddly dancing to go with it).I spent most of my time in the upstairs room, which was sprinkled with familiar faces (you know who you are) but, even there, I only felt moved to terpsichorean excess on a couple of occasions: I left around three, not dissatisfied, and walked - wee, wee, wee - all the way home.
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