Title of book:

Author: Barbara Gibson

Publication date: 1995

Pages: 172

The plot:

• Male order is a collection of life stories from people who sell sex on the streets of London
• The stories range from those on the fringe of society to those with all the riches necessary for a high lifestyle.

The characters:

• Madser from Ireland
• Jason/Zoe from Wales
• Paul from Wales
• Simon/Simone from Woodford
• Ryan from North London
• Adam born in Germany but British

Highlights:

All of these boys/men have suffered during their life, both during their childhood and later as adults.  Society has not done them any favours!  All suffer from various illnesses at various times, and all have a potential which due to their circumstances have not been fulfilled.

Be prepared for shocks and on occasion’s revulsion, but don’t put the book down

Any weak bits?

• The book is now dated and it is reflected in both the writing and also because you are left wondering if it is relevant to today.  A not very specific search on the Internet threw up these various articles, e.g.
• 11 year olds selling gay sex as rent boys
• A rent boy’s story
• Boys of 15 forced into sex trade

It would seem that life hasn’t changed to a large degree – and with the current recession in all probability the incidences will grow!

Unputdownable?

• It is not show stopper of a book, but it is worth persevering with.

Your rating (1-5 star): 3 ½ stars

Bel Ami by Howard Roffman

Bruno Gmünder

ISBN 9 783867 870375

This is what used to be called a ‘coffee table’ book – they tend to be ‘art’ books or big fat books about graphics, dance, the cinema and such like.  This one contains a couple of hundred pages of photographs of young men (mostly, probably, in their teens) naked.  Or at least not overdressed.  The ‘private moments’ include doubles, trebles and foursomes.  In the Bel Ami manner the boys are not extraordinarily handsome.  They aren’t plug-uglies either.  Some have ‘interesting’ rather than blandly ‘handsome’ faces.

The ‘private moments’ aren’t intensely sexual either, though the target audience -Gay men – almost certainly, wouldn’t mind interposing their own bodies between some of these.  They mostly aren’t ‘muscle Mary’s’ either.  Though a boy in the first set of ‘moments’ has the look of a jolly young Hercules.  Some of the boys pictured within look quite fragile.  There are only three people with dark hair – and only one with darkish skin – I realise this is not a sociological study… but.  One of the dark haired boys is something of a Nicholas Hoult look-alike.

The facial expressions range from the cheeky, to slightly shy (even holding another chap’s virile member) to boys who obviously ‘fancy themselves’.  Most are just charmingly friendly – unlike a lot of Gay porn.  The membra virile look as if they are attached to human beings — unlike the air-brushed items one sees in (mostly, American) porn.  Some of the boys are ‘well made’.  Nobody is particularly weenie.

It is clear in some cases that not much is really happening on the sexual front.  In one picture, one boy is clearly not sucking off the other — but that may have to do with the photographer enabling the spectator to imagine himself in the place of the other, crouching, boy.  But the book is not ‘raw prawn’.  There is some mild[ish] porn in some wanking scenes.  The fact that the boys are masturbating themselves is slightly alienating – though one (twenty-something?) boy looks, apparently, rather longingly at his fellow-poser’s cock.  There are a number of pages showing two very attractive boys engaging in mutual masturbation.

Howard Roffman in some of the outdoor scenes produced an effect of deep perspective, as in paintings.  (Jim Sweeney of Gay’s The Word bookshop suggested I should have something ‘arty’ in a review.)  The individual pictures are beautiful.  The human figures in them do help, quite a lot.  It is useful if Aunt Megs (the one with the money) discovers it in your grisly gaff – it is ‘art’ after all.  Roffman used a digital camera to produce these genuinely exquisite images.  I have decided I am deeply in lust with a chunky boy with longish dark hair.  (Sad, really, isn’t it?)

If you have a mate who likes photography, loitering about art galleries and attractive boys with no clothes on – buy him this book.  Or buy it for yourself – you’ll enjoy it.

Seán McGouran

Simon Gage

Lisa Richards

Howard Wilmot

Thunder’s Mouth Press

distributed by Publishing Group West

ISBN 1-56025-377-0

This big chunky ‘coffee table’ book is authored by three Brits, and published in the US of A.  That’s about as cosmopolitan as it gets.  It is very colourful, but reads more like a collection of articles from the airhead end of queer journalism.  Gay News is described as “hokey and… worthy” which is inaccurate.  The book dates from the good old pre-’credit crunch’ days.  We were all escalating into post-Soviet capitalist Nirvana.  Then the escalator — malfunctioned.

The authors are resolutely low brow (despite the fact that they almost certainly have at least one university degree apiece) and personality-bound.  I can’t really be the only Gay person to think that Absolutely Fabulous was quite funny, on a good night.  And that Judy Garland was a tiresome lush who couldn’t really sing.

We get Hollywood and Queers.  Who really gives a toss what Hollywood thought of queers?  There’s a string of articles about Gay women and men in pop – but not really in rock – music.  Opera singer Maria Callas is mentioned, in passing, as a ‘diva’.  Gay composers aren’t, but there have been plenty of them, Barber, Britten, Boulez — Tchaikovsky is mentioned as exotica, and to push-up the ‘non-Anglo’ count.

For some reason (Art College background?) painters are pretty prominent.  But not film directors.  Ballet is mentioned in relation to Nureyev, Man in pantyhose.  It’s a fairly glib gallop through his career.  The writer is not (or pretends not to be) interested in ballet as a form.  A third of this short piece is about his attitude to the AIDS that killed him.  The article is decorated with a silhouette of a (female) dancer, complete with tutu.  Don Milligan’s website’s Home Page has a fabulous nude photograph of the twenty-something Nureyev.  In his prime he was physically stunning.

Peter Tatchell is mentioned in relation to ‘outing’, as is NGLTF (the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (US)).  The pervading personality cult is not followed through on the political end of things.  We are, probably, meant to infer that reforms just happened, presumably through the gratuitous grace of straight legislators.  The relations between Gay News and CHE (the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (Britain, i. e. England and Wales)) and NIGRA are not noted.  Not even Stonewall is mentioned.  And certainly no non-Anglo-Saxon Gay liberation or rights groups.  Scandinavia was ahead of the pack on our rights by at least twenty years.

It’s a prettily produced book — and it’s your money — buy it if you want.

Seán McGouran

(Ed.) Michael Ford

DartonŸLongman+Todd

ISBN 0-232-52561-7

This is a series of interviews with (mostly male) Gays about their relationships with each other and various Christian churches.  The churches are mostly the Anglican and the Roman Catholic.  The striking cover is supplied by Christiaan Snyman (Christiannsnyman@yahoo.com ) a former member of the Dutch Reformed Church.  The latter is described as “the state religion” in Apartheid South Africa, which isn’t quite accurate.  England’s colonies may have had (Anglican) Established churches the Dutch Republics did not.  Apartheid was also backed by the Most Reformed Church.  The anti-Apartheid jibe was ‘Deformed’ and ‘Most Deformed’.  Christiaan is now what Michael Ford describes as a “mystical” Christian, as opposed to a member of a formal church body.  Being a member of such a body means many things.

Michael Harank is interviewed.  Belfast people may recall he was a speaker at our first Pride ‘ethical’ discussion.  He described himself then as “an American queer Catholic”.  Someone phoned BBC Radio Ulster’s Talk Back to say he didn’t want to hear Michael.  He hated all three items in the self-description.  Michael’s contribution is up beat – a ‘must read’ – he is a long time member of the Catholic Worker Movement.

Belfast comes into Disclosures by way of PA MagLochlainn, President of NIGRA (the NI Gay Rights Association).  PA comes across as rather dry and cerebral.  He isn’t.  As those of us who’ve been at the receiving end of his excruciating puns well know.  But he has made up his mind.  At the other end of the scale – in terms of age, if not belief – is ‘Julian’.  He is a music student and interested in Roman Catholicism.  This book was published in 2004.

Advice is probably now redundant.  He should ‘suck it and see’ to coin a phrase.  He will find the average ‘Papist in the pew’ usually has a radically different attitude to Gay women and men than do the bureaucrats in the Vat.  There are a number of stories here about Catholic priests (‘secular’ and ‘regular’ – meaning ordinary parochial priests and members of Orders) who have had very bad experiences, with the Church as a bureaucracy.  Woytola (John Paul II) great man though he was, imported aspects of the Kremlin’s outlook into the Vatican.  He wanted to look out and see a Church like a machine in the hands of man at the top.

He provoked Catholics in the Rhineland by directly appointing bishops.  There had been a centuries (nearly a millennium)-old input from the faithful.  He refused to shake the hands of a Cabinet Minister in Nicaragua (a priest and adherent of Liberation theology).  The current incumbent of the Throne of Peter is pursuing the same policies, without his predecessor’s great charisma, which made some of his sins against the virtue of charity forgivable.

The date of publication may account for the (somewhat, somewhat – it appears to me) smug attitude of (some) Anglicans.  They may have been made aware of the fact that many in their ranks are like the more obviously Evangelical sects.  They tend to know that queers are destined for Hell fire.  Roman Catholicism, (traditionally anyway), is rarely as prescriptive — ‘twixt the stirrup and the ground something lost and something found’ and all that — (a reference to Saint Paul).

Michael Ford found a lot of his interviewees (a cold word for what in some cases must have been intense encounters — as well as some heartening ones like those with Michael Harank and Patrick Mulcahey in San Francisco) in London.  They include the one representation of Orthodoxy in the book.  One lesbian couple – living in Macclesfield – are Evangelicals.  They have had problems with other Evangelicals, and with the local press, which enjoys sensationalising homosexuality.

The latter seems to be the case nearly everywhere — Northern Ireland’s Sunday World and Sunday Life, are cases in point.  The pompous Belfast Telegraph pontificates, mostly negatively, and takes Cara-Friend’s money for regular advertisements.  It has some columnists who are pretty homophobic.  Admittedly the Irish News and the NewsLetter have always taken a reasonable line on matters Gay.  And the younger generation of journalists have no problems reporting said matters positively.

On this subject, Michael Ford writes, “conservative views are… deeply embedded in… Protestant and Catholic communities” in Northern Ireland.  This is demonstrably not accurate.  It is true to say that in opinion poll after opinion poll locals claimed they are not fond of fairy folk.  (In the 1970s nobody admitted that they would vote for Sinn Féin.  When they got a chance to vote SF they did so in increasing numbers).  Recently, the percentage of persons responding to an opinion poll who took a dim view of queers, increased dramatically.  But so did the crowds coming out to view the Pride Dander.  As does the number of local politicians who want to be seen walking with the queers.  (And, the May Day demonstration has Pape, Prod, Jew and “Turk”, and non-believers on it.  It’s as well not to get too precious about our Dander.)

Practically any Gay woman or man would benefit from reading this book.  I am an atheist (but probably better described as agnostic – not that it matters) and was fascinated by it.  I was particularly fascinated by the intense cultural hold religion has over people.  Noisy ‘secularists’ would probably describe such people as, — in effect, childish, — or as suffering from a psychological need, due to a failure to be as adult as they are.  Most of the people of this book are not from a ‘hard science’ background.  Patrick Mulcahey, mentioned above, has won Emmy awards for is television scripts, young ‘Julian’ is a musician, Christiaan is a professional singer as well as painter.

A person with a specifically scientific background would have been interesting.  The ‘two cultures’ business is not endemic to the whole ‘Anglosphere’, Ireland seems to have avoided it.  Father Austin Eustace, a parochial priest in deepest Tyrone (and not Gay, so far as one knows) has a doctorate in physics from MIT.  He founded Tyrone Crystal a co-operative enterprise.  He was moved from a lectureship in Coleraine to Tyrone.

Seán McGouran

Southern Tier Editions

HARRINGTON PARK PRESS

(An imprint of Howarth Press Inc.)

ISBN 1 – 56023-430-X

This is a collection of autobiographical essays by Jeff Mann, now a lecturer in LGBT Literature, Southern [US] literature and Appalachian literature in Virginia Technical.  The university is in Virginia ‘proper’, where Mann’s family came from.  They moved to West Virginia (the counties that broke away from the Old Dominion at the start of the American Civil War) and were made into a separate State of the Union.  WV is decidedly plebeian (a mountainy, coal-mining area), and young Master Mann, bookish, and rather effete, dreamed of Old Virginia’s vaguely aristocratic past.  ‘Old Europe’ took his fancy too.  The fact that the leisure class in the one was based on slavery, and in the other on serfdom, seems not to bother him.

He grew into an adult whose favoured sexual practices were (he is somewhat vague about the matter but the label ‘leather / SM’ covers it).  He also became a not entirely likeable person – this is my reaction to what is written in these pages – it is not a moral judgement.  Jeff does make the point several times that his life is that of a sheltered academic, and not the adventurer of his imagination.  His tour of one of ‘mad’ King Ludwig of Bavaria’s castles – Neuschwanstein – is spoiled by ‘people’ and a crying baby.  He seems to have a rather peevish problem with children.  Hets have to have babbies — otherwise were would lovely queers come from?

Other essays are slightly disingenuous Raised by Lesbian refers to the company he kept in his mid-teens in the small town he was brought up in, rather than to the actual thing.  He learned to be ‘discreet’ because the women involved in this group were driven out of their teaching jobs.  He felt he had to leave small-town West Virginia.  Though the furthest he got was Virginia Tech, after a certain amount of perambulation.

He first visited Europe in his thirties.  It included Belgium, but he does not give a chapter to that place, though he was quite impressed by the history, architecture — and beer.  He seems not to have been impressed by the breakfasts of cold cuts.  This is typical of the Netherlands too.  It is worth pointing out that there tend to be mountainous supplies of ‘cold cuts’.  As a veggie, I could complain more than Jeff (though there is always plenty of cheese and warm coffee).  Jeff almost inevitably sneers at veggies — probably de rigeur if you’re ‘into’ leather.

Kilts and Drambuie are about shepherding students in Scotland.  And his (asexual) relationship with a beautiful (intelligent) student.  Jeff is of partly Scottish origin.  There is some matter here, and in Risks, about England.  He and students – a number of times – studied in Brighton, and travelled to London and Oxford.  Apart from a description of a relationship (if that is not too strong a word for it, with an Oxford Don) there is surprisingly little about the place.  Except the odd gripe about ‘bed and breakfast’ establishments.  He and the students travelled through England to Scotland.  There is a rather off-hand description of the Lake District (Wordsworth, and all that) but the rest of the country consists of ‘B&B’s’.

The chapter on Ireland is a bit ‘touristy’.  He investigates his Ferrell ancestry in Longford.  But the rest is a gay travelogue Dublin, Cork, Galway.  The only thing interesting about Sligo is WB Yeats.  There is a substantial art gallery in the town.  At least three generation of Yeats’s are on show – along with other artists.  Sligo is quite small, Jeff claims that it had no Gay social infrastructure.  There is no indication of when he was in the place — or why.  It appears not to have been the Yeats Summer School.  At present Sligo, not merely has a ‘scene’ it has a Pride.  (The first Pride in the latest series in Ireland was Galway’s Bród in 1990).

This book is well worth reading.  It is written by a person who has a genuine (almost childlike) curiosity about what is happening around him.  The dismissiveness (about Sligo, and Belgium’s culinary inadequacies) is quite human.  (I may have given the impression above that Jeff is a monster of self-satisfaction — he’s not.  But I’ve a suspicion he really wouldn’t.)

Cassells Queer Companion

William Stewart

Cassell

This large, fat, 278 pages book, claims in a subtitle to be a Dictionary of Lesbian and Gay Life and Culture.  Stewart, in his Introduction rightly backs away from some of the implications of this because this companion / dictionary, published in London, virtually ignores Europe.  It is heavily American, to the extent of consistently using the word “butt” rather than “arse” or “bum”; it’s that sort of queer companion.  There are words from all over the place to describe Gays.  We get the African-American “bull-dyke”, but not the Hiberno-English “bull-root”.  ‘Ireland’ is represented by the usual platoon of Ascendancy oddities; the “Ladies of Llangollen”, Somerville and Ross, Oscar Wilde, and Roger Casement.

I am sure the latter is not ‘family’, the only evidence that he was one of us is the ‘Black Diaries’.  The “sexy” bits were written (by common consent, after the rest of the mundane stuff) in different-coloured ink.  Every aspect of Casement’s sexual behaviour happened – interestingly – to chime in with [very] straight men’s prejudices.  He liked ‘em big, he liked ‘em young, and he liked ‘em working class: classic ‘rough trade’.  His sexuality only came into question when he became a ‘traitor’ and came within the remit of British Military Intelligence (the well-known oxymoron).

If you were a Military intellect, searching around for something to smear a member of a minor, landless, Ascendancy family with, surely you’d go “bingo!” (or the Wally equivalent), and think “Oscar”.  Wilde was staunchly republican in his politics; Casement, like Wilde, was very famous.  In his case, for exposing the slave conditions in the Belgian Congo [then the Congo Free State — the private property of Leopold 2 'King of the Belgians', (who didn't particularly like any breed of Belgian)) - upstart 2010] (now Zaïre).  [Now the 'Democratic Republic of the Congo - upstart 2010], and in Peru.  (Casement thereby made powerful enemies).  Even in the course of the Great War, such a person could not go before a Court Martial and be executed, almost out of hand.  Especially as Britain was desperate to get America involved in its war on Germany.  The fact that much writing on this matter is based on trying to defend Casement from the ‘slur’ of being homosexual should not blind us to the fact that their evidence is sound.

Gay women and men have remained in the closet, in most instances, for all of their lives, especially in Casement’s time.  (He was judicially murdered 81 years ago).  For men of Casement’s class and background, a certain amount of homoerotic feeling was allowed-for, all those “Uranian” poets in English vicarages, and “men’s men” in the military – Herbert Kitchener of Ballylongford, County Clare, being a fine example).  Casement was a goodish poet, how come he never referred to the youths he was (allegedly) having vigorous nookie with?  He does not seem to be the sort of person who would be consciously dishonest about his deepest emotions.  His only expression of what the tabloids call “romantic” feeling was for Alice Milligan, an Ulster Protestant Gaelic Nationalist like himself.

Scotland is represented here by Jimmy Somerville and the Scottish Minorities Group(!), the SMG became the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group, and then OutRight Scotland, in the [past] fifteen years.  A short flick through Gay Times‘s invaluable listings would have been in order in compiling this book.  CHE [the Campaign for Homosexual Equality] is given rather short shrift, as is Friend, and the Switchboards.  OutRage! is given lots of space, as is “Peggy” Tatchell, which may be the reason why Australia is quite well covered.  Contemporary Ireland is not mentioned: no NIGRA, no Jeff Dudgeon, no David Norris, and therefore, no mention of Strasbourg, or the European Court of Human Rights.  There is no mention of GLEN (the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network) and its successful drive for equality of citizenship in Éire.

This is a well-designed book, with chunky, readable print, and makes an interesting bedside book (if only for the number of sexual practice it describes) or for dipping into for – not especially useful – facts.  It is not by a long shot, a Dictionary of our lives and cultures.  Unless one is a sex-obsessed disco-bunny living in central Manhattan, or London.  William Stewart, or one of his contributors, claims that Gays (“gay” = homosexual men, here), love opera because it is camp.  The soprano always ends up dead, or heartbroken because of some man.

Most people just like the music.  In performance, as opposed to records, the baritone can get as much applause as a shrieking Diva.

***

upstart 1997 February (Vol. 9, No. 2)

The Ghost of Roger Casement…

[Dear Editor]

In his review of Cassells Queer Companion, in upstart, Sean McGouran has taken the opportunity of a mention of Roger Casement to relaunch the old Republican myth that he was not a homosexual; in Sean’s words ‘not one of us’ but ‘an Ascendancy oddity’ smeared by ‘British Military Intelligence’.

In fact Casement was not from an Ascendancy background, but from a North Antrim family that was well-connected but not particularly well-off.  He started his working life as a clerk.

I do not intend to try to prove that he was gay, but everything about his life and career is consistent with that orientation, and very little reveals a heterosexual side to his existence.

The Black Diaries seized by the authorities are unique in that the custodian of his papers in Belfast, FJ Biggar, destroyed the remainder of his diaries before they too could have been seized.  Biggar, another Protestant nationalist bachelor and antiquarian, was an MP.  We have no other diaries to compare but, if forged, the author would have needed an enormous knowledge of homosexual haunts (and habits) here and around the world, to be aware of cruising grounds, such as the Giant’s Ring.  Yes, it was being utilised before the 1st World War!

Sean mentions a brand new fact – if accurate – that the ‘sexy bits were written in different coloured ink’.  Different to what?  Surely not the other words in the page.  That would be monumentally silly for the authorities to let happen, given the amount of time and effort required to construct these diaries, if they are forgeries.

In truth, if the authorities had wanted to blacken Casement they would never have invented copious, complicated diaries (one dating as far back as 1903) with all the risk of inaccurate facts, dating and sequencing.  Three or four incautious love letters on House of commons notepaper to his gay researcher were all that it took for the News of the World to crucify Jerry Hayes MP in 1997.

Negative evidence (such as a lack of poetry about his love of youths) is taken by Mr. McGouran to disprove the ‘Casement as Homosexual’ view.  Yet it is plain that most of his private papers were destroyed.  His heterosexual poetry is also absent.  What does that indicate?

One poem entitled ‘The Nameless One’ (which was thought to be original by Casement, but suggested now to be by a contemporary, Symonds) is to be found in his papers in Dublin.  It was written down in his hand, and presumably so copied because Casement appreciated its sentiments:

‘I only know ’tis death to give

My love, yet loveless can I live?’

Casement certainly liked rough trade; but was also escorted by a number of males, mentioned in his diaries, who do not fit into that category.  In his famous play about Casement,* David Rudkin brings to life one such character, Millar, who overnights with Roger at various hotels in the north.  He was plainly not rough trade, nor was Adler Christiansen, the Norwegian who accompanied Casement on his travels in Germany and who came to the attention of the authorities as a conspicuous homosexual – and who was to betray him.

Why write a gay man out of history, when his gayness got him hanged?

Jeffrey Dudgeon

* Cries from Casement As His Bones Are Brought To Dublin

***

upstart Vol. 9, No. 4., 1997

Rattlin’ Roger’s Bones

The last line of Jeff Dudgeon’s letter (upstart, Feb.) reads: “Why write a gay man out of history when his gayness got him hanged?”  It may be pedantic, but Casement lost his knighthood, and was hanged, because he engaged in a series of acts of treason against the Crown.  (They included: attempting to arm the Irish Volunteers, and Irish Citizen Army; attempting to recruit Irish POWs to a military formation; fighting against the Crown; engaging, in America, in a propaganda war against the Crown.  And landing in Kerry on Good Friday 1916, from an ‘enemy’ submarine.  Admittedly without the hundreds of rifles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition he had hoped to bring to Ireland).  In the midst of the Great War any one of the above activities could have got him hanged.  Casement’s sexuality did not enter into it, except as a lucky (?) break for the Brits, who desperately wanted the US in the war on their side.  (In this context, it must be admitted that Casement’s Republican colleague in New York, John Devoy appears to have found the Diaries convincing).

Jeff writes “His heterosexual poetry is also absent…” but unless I am mistaken some of Casement’s verse was published after his death – some of his “private papers” must have survived.  Jeff also place an exclamation mark after his assertion that the ‘author” of the Diaries would know that the Giant’s Ring was being “utilised” before WW1.

This little publication has said, over and over again – till we bored ourselves – that any Peeler worth their keep not only knows where the current cruising ground is, but also knows where the punters will move next.  Military Intelligence (…) would have asked Special Branch about this aspect of things.  And they would have asked the local police (possibly even by phone; we are discussing matters relating to 1916, not some unimaginable historical period).  The London Metropolitan Police would have known about their own patch.

So far as upper Congo, or upper Amazon, were concerned, presumably the “author” would have invented.  Jeff also says it would be “monumentally silly” for the authorities to make a haimes of a forgery.  It was the middle of the Great War (triggered by the UK).  These people thought Concentration Camps were a good idea in South Africa.  And appeared to by surprised to find that the Afrikaaners hated England.  And, surely monumental stupidity is a prerequisite for Intelligence work?

I innocently thought I was engaging in an aside, not “relaunch[ing] the old Republican myth” that Casement was not Gay.  When I referred to “Ascendancy oddities”, I didn’t really mean Casement and Wilde.  The Ascendancy, like any other hierarchical social formation, had a large base (younger sons, dowryless daughters, the drunk, the daft, the defective, and the bankrupt), they could not all be absorbed by the Church by Law Established, or the administration.  Some had to go out and get a real job.

Jeff wrote: “I do not intend to prove…” that Casement was Gay.  That is because it is not possible.  In the long run my opinion is as valid as is Mr Dudgeon’s.

S McGouran

Charles Spencer

Penguin

ISBN 0 14 00.5155 4

This edition was published in the US in 1979.  The first publication (US / UK) was in ’74.  The cover has an image derived from an illustration by a chap called Erté.  It is (probably) of a male person.  Ladies’ nipples were nearly as shocking as chaps appendages in the 1930s.  And a right tit is shown.  It is rather a good design.  It is a poster, described (p. 146) as “delightful” for a ballet school in Hollywood.  The figure is so effete that one — momentarily — wondered if American ‘hairy apes’ were right in giving ballet a wide berth.

There are three authors Philip Dyer covers Diaghilev’s early days, the exhibitions of paintings, the World of Art magazine, the adventures in Paris with exhibitions, and the opera troupe.  The latter introduced an entranced public to the talents of many people, especially the great bass Feodor Chaliapin.  Charles Spencer writes about the Ballets Russes, and Diaghilev’s Heritage, though ‘legacy’ might be a better word.  One chapter The Ballets Russes – Modernism, deals with the company from mid-Great War, until Diaghilev’s death in 1929.  His text implies that the group became less Russian, and more cosmopolitan, in this period.

The ‘Russian’ period may have had an element of the folksy, but it was hardly backward looking.  Stravinsky was encouraged to produce scores like The Rite of Spring – revolutionary music, and choreography (by Nijinsky) but based on Stravinsky’s very Russian idea.  The Russian painter Roerich designed the, comparatively minimalist, costumes and decor.  Prior to that the choreographer, Fokine, was a radical reformer even a revolutionary.  Mr. Spencer writes that elements of Disghilev’s turning from Russian, (to ‘modernist’) themes was forced on him by war and revolution.

(It wasn’t just Russia’s revolution.  A jaunt to Portugal in 1917 was ruined by a military coup).

Amid all the ‘modernism’ he attempted to revive a big, ‘classical’ ballet.  Aurora’s Wedding, used Petipa’s choreography and Tchaikovsky’s music for Sleeping Beauty.  It was a (commercial) disaster.  But not an artistic one, it gave the hundreds, probably thousands of ballétomanes who attended something of an insight into Russia’s ‘classical’ ballet tradition.

The Heritage chapter begins “Diaghilev’s bequest to the World of Ballet…” was pretty extensive.   Charles Spencer points out that others took Russian ballet to ‘the west’ before he did (or at least, simultaneously.  It was a matter of months rather than years.  His paths crossed with one of these pioneers, Anna Pavlova.)  Diaghilev left an idea of what ballet should aspire to – using the finest artists that could be found – and having a permanent company.  (Later, would-be, ‘Ballets Russes’ degenerated into ‘scratch’ companies, with no consistent training or artistic outlook — and often no Russians.)

He was not a great age when he died (at 57).  Most of his collaborators lived long after him.  They make up a roster of some of the most important artists of last century, dancers, choreographers, composers, conductors, painters, including Picasso, Prokoviev, Ansermet, Balanchine.  Many dancers provided for their retirement by opening schools.  In practically every town the company visited.  It visited an awful lot of towns from Budapest to Buenos Aires.  Many dancers founded, or helped found, companies, or enliven already existing ones.  The Ballets Russes encouraged pre-existing ballet companies to take stock of their own traditions.  There were groups like the Ballets Suédois which gave his Ballets Russes a run for its money in the 1920s.  This list could be extended to very great length.  Diaghilev either spotted energy along with talent, or infused people with his own energy.

Martin Battersby contributes Diaghilev’s Influence on Fashion and Decoration.  Charles Spencer, in his Heritage chapter quotes Arnold Haskell to the effect that Diaghilev’s, and not Pavlova’s, work now looks “old fashioned”, because it was consciously ‘modern’.  That is not quite the case in reference to interior decoration and clothing.  It is mostly too fussy for modern tastes.  But some of it is quite striking.  Some of the clothing is fairly simple, with big motifs on a plain background.  This is rural Russia strained through cosmopolitan painters’, then Parisian couturiers’ perceptions.

The book has a very full index, a (rather sparse) chronology of Diaghilev’s life and (career is hardly the word — possibly ‘life-work’ is better).  All but ten of the 150-odd pages have monochrome images, often more than one.  There are ten colour plates with 22 images.  One full-page image is Mr. Erté’s ambiguous offering.  Other’s are Bakst’s appealing portrait of Nijinsky as the Faun, from the l’Aprés-midi d’un Faune (a sexual scandal manufactured by Diaghilev — and Nijinsky).  There is the somewhat sinister costume design for the Blue God, also by Bakst.  A very striking image by Natalia Gontcharova of the Evangelist, St. Mark for a ballet (La Liturgie), which was never performed, takes up a page.  Traditional Russian ikon meets Cubism head on — it is very effective as an image.  It would be difficult to carry it off as a costume, though Diaghilev’s practical contribution to the company (and to theatre in general) was imaginative use of lighting.

There is not really a great deal here about Diaghilev’s sexuality, possibly something to be thankful for.  It is claimed that Nijinsky was dismissed from the company for being AWOL rather than because of his marriage.  Diaghilev dropped collaborators in a quite cold-blooded fashion.  Massine was dropped just as was Nijinsky.  Lifar was with him at his death, though the young composer-conductor Igor Markevitch had replaced him in his affections.  Lifar and Diaghilev’s long-time amanuensis Boris Kochno engaged in competitive mourning at the funeral.  A further aspect of Diaghilev’s legacy was that there was no money in the kitty when he died.  His effects were used to pay off the Company’s as well as his own bills.  His effects included costumes and scenery, which were dispersed to the four winds.  The Ballets Russes was no more.

Áine ni Phól

Tim Fountain

W&N (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

ISBN978 0 279 85262 9

Tim Fountain’s one… (um) person… show Sex Addict caused uproar in the early noughties.  He writes that it upset Right and Left.  He only quotes various Right wing (that upper case ‘R’ is apt to this particular occasion), like Quentin Letts and Taki.  (The latter Thatcherite (except that she was a bit too socially-mind) jail-bird, described him as a “freak” – and, of course, a poofter.  I assume Tim Fountain took this as a compliment.  If anyone is freakish ’tis Taki — a filthy-rich Greek who has become a comedy Blimp — to ‘fit-in’ in Belgravia).

As a result of this scandal Tim decided to explore ‘Britain’s’ actual sexual mores.  Like most English people Tim doesn’t appear to know what ‘Britain’ consists of (it’s England and Wales – Wales, doesn’t really get a mention in the text).  He took his show to Glasgow (it started life at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe) and chose a ‘student’ (as opposed to a miner) to have nooky with one particular night.  Tim Fountain’s background is vaguely middle-class (not being English, I can’t really interpret his hints.  In Ireland (even ‘the North’) there are only three classes, working, middle and what’s left of the ‘upper’ class).  He appears to have assumed that the miner would be a troglodyte.  And not cheerful handsome boys like those I encountered at the Labour Party conference during Scargill’s strike.  We were lobbying for somewhat different purposes.

Tim goes back to Bradford (scene of his first sexual encounter in a ‘cottage’ – ‘public convenience’ to you).  He eventually finds a (sixteen-year-old) cottaging.  In an interview with the suspicious (as you’d expect) cottager, it become clear that he only cruises as an adjunct to his finding sex partners on the internet.  Tim’s further adventures include an encounter with a fraffly upper crust couple (a mixed double) who run a centre for those who like discipline.  One customer is a middle aged Japanese man who traverses the globe to dress up as a maid and be told what to do by the (rather horsy) lady of the house.

There are other encounters with people who fancy animals – including horses – fortunately some people dress as animals to save on ruptured colons.  There are, of course, clothes fetishists of various kinds.  Tim’s text is said to be wildly funny, but that is mostly a matter of his wicked asides.  He generally takes his subjects seriously, even when he thinks their sexual tastes are verging on the balmy.  But he clearly found the pish sessions in a [London] King’s Cross pub very difficult to deal with (I was going to write ‘swallow’ but -fortunately – that was not part of the experience.  Tim does not mention it – but ‘brown’ usually goes with pish-’yellow’.)

It would be pointless to recite all of Tim’s adventures — you’ll enjoy his exploration of the Anglo-Saxons at play (and probably be appalled at least once by the goings-on).  He only touches on ‘infantilism’ – no, it’s not a euphemism for pædopilia – it is dressing as an infant.  Meaning, essentially, in a towel masquerading as a nappy.  For hard cases it involves brown and yellow.  It was all the rage among east Ulster’s (heterosexual) perverts about thirty years ago.  They saw fit to tell volunteers on the LGBT Helpline (Cara-Friend) all the gory details.  (Your guess is as good as mine – presumably C-F’s non-judgemental attitude to sexual exploration?)

A small problem is that Tim seems to feel the need to make places even more ‘gritty’ than they are in reality.  The area around Strangeways Prison in Manchester is presumably even more grim than it was before the old gaol was burned down.  But it is definitely inner city.  The ‘ring road’ (a series of motorways) is miles away.  North Road, London N7 does not lead to an industrial estate (are there such things left inside the M25?).  Its ‘vista-stop’ is a rather elegant Edwardian tower.

You could make Tim somewhat more solvent by buying this book — it’s a very reasonable £6.99.  You might get it at the library – my copy is going to my local library -or possibly to Gay’s the Word‘s second hand shelves.

Seán McGouran

PS (It’s been re-printed, in paperback, and is now £7.99.  That’s still a reasonable price.  And it’s available in Gay’s the Word.)

Text by

Bruce Benderson

ISBN 978-3-8365-1452-1

This very large – or tall – book, is not entirely user-friendly. But if you have a taste for what might be called the Higher Sissiness, you won’t be too concerned. All the better for seeing (lots) of pleasing male flesh – and muscle. James Bidgood, a corn-fed boy from the US Mid West came to acknowledge his homosexuality before Stonewall and its consequences. He was a drag performer, a couturier, a window dresser, and a (slightly obsessive) film director.

It is this latter role that takes up most of Bruce Benderson’s essay. Bidgood’s magnum opus Pink Narcissus was never completed. Hollywood got to hear of him and offered rather measly quantities of money. Also offered was crass intervention into Bidgood’s baroque, (or should it be rococo?), inventiveness.

His experience of Hollywood, and parting company from his muse Bobby Kendall, drove Bidgood into a long depression. But a reassessment of Gay / LGBT artistic efforts pre-Stonewall, and the issuing of a mangled version of Pink Narcissus on DVD, brought Bidgood back out of his shell. And possibly back into his studio.

The last phrase is a bit redundant as nearly all of Bidgood’s material was shot in his rather small apartment. Including a “swimming pool [of] “semen”” which might have damaged the property of those downstairs. Bruce Benderson does not speculate on what the neighbours would have felt about gallons of – presumably fake – semen and numbers of naked youths cascading through their ceiling! This is the sort of situation that appears quite pedestrian in the world of James Bidgood.

The dust jacket is decorated with a still from a short, Apache, (as in Parisian thugs circa 1900 – not Native Americans. Bidgood could have made a seriously big deal of beautiful ‘Indian’ braves). The ‘Apache’ in question is played by Tommy Coombs. He is a Bidgood ‘natural’. He looks good in screamingly sissy outfit. And is built like a prop-forward. Like Bobby Kendall he is husky, broad shouldered and (cough) VWE. He also looks even better without any clothes on.

This book is a serious study of an interesting (and influential) Gay artist. It is especially interesting in that Bidgood was working in the American art-form. The stills in the book are very interesting, though the Higher Sissiness is never going to make a comeback. They have to be put in the context of his ‘motion pictures’.

Richard Lyttle

Mark Merlis

Subtitled ‘a novel’, this is something of a biography in disguise.  The most substantial character, Tom Slater, is based on FO Mattiessen.  He was a major English (literature) scholar.  He committed (probably) suicide in the early 1950s.  He was about to be exposed as queer.  He was a Marxist, and probably a member of the American Communist Party (CPUSA).  His patrician background may have saved him from persecution on the latter charge.

Tom Slater is treated by the central figure (definitely not ‘hero’) of the book, Reeve, in a slightly condescending way.  His platinum cigarette case looms rather large.  This is a puzzling ‘Anglo-Saxon’ trope.  Why shouldn’t a Communist have a platinum cigarette case?  (Doesn’t ‘cigarette case’ sound antiquated?  It’s nearly as obsolescent as ‘snuff box’.)

Reeve sneers at Slater’s nervous approach to his sexuality.  And the succession of ‘Wheaties eaters’ with whom Slater has what Reeve surmises is very low level sex.  One ‘Wheaties eater’ eventually betrays Slater to the thrusting, meritocratic Dean of the Ivy League college where Slater is a lecturer.

Reeve, of plebeian origin, enjoys working class rough trade.  Despite which he has no sympathy with working class people, either politically or in personal relationships.  Reeve also got the shove from the college.  He becomes a bureaucrat.  At this stage looking forward to retirement.  He is in his early sixties.

As well as losing his job, Reeve was done out of the legacy Slater left him.  A Slater relative essentially blackmails him with his sexuality.  Reeve signs over the money, accommodation and library he was willed.  Reeve regrets this.  It is pointless for readers, looking at this from this side of ‘Gay Liberation’, to jib at his behaviour.  Everything was stacked against him – especially in 1950s America – a penniless, plebeian queer who could credibly be accused of being a ‘Communist’.  He could have ended up in the US’s prison system rather than its civil service.

I found Reeve’s relentlessly downbeat character a bit tiresome.  But that’s how people who felt they had to keep their head’s down behaved.  He was not heroic like Harry Hayes.  Or exotic like Quentin Crisp.

There is a small personal triumph for Reeve at the end of this story.  It is worth waiting for.  The book is very well written and (like Reeve), witty in an understated way.

Seán McGouran