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

Seán McGouran

Seán Ó Riada (et alia)                                                   £10.00*

AISLING ON THIS CD is extremely short (2′ 12.31″).  It is Nino Rota[ish] in sound and very tuneful.  Aisling means (more or less) ‘vision’.  It was the opening word of many Jacobite (Stuart-loyalist) verses in eighteenth century Ireland.  The piece ‘feels’ like film music.  It would be interesting to know if the composer had a model movie in mind.

The composer is Solfa Carlile who may be the Pre-Raphaelite beauty on the cover.  This is a World Premiere.  Ó Riada’s Mise Éire is described as a British Premiere.  It is made out of music for a (documentary) film on the 1916 Rising.  This Mise Éire (the name derives from a poem of Patrick Pearse – President of the Irish Republic of Easter Week) is a somewhat truncated version of the music for the movie, which may account for the Premiere label.  It may refer to this recording.  Gael Linn issued a recording of the full score in the 1960s.  And put the film on DVD recently.

The above is not an attempt to rain on the LISO’s parade.  It’s a minor puzzlement on my part.  It is beautifully played by the LISO, though one would have liked the strings to be slightly more prominent.  The band is made up of young professional players and students’ in the various London colleges.

Two musicians (Alison Murphy – flute, and Claire Jones – horn) play the solo (vaguely Baroque – in form – decidedly late romantic in sound) parts in Harty’s In Ireland – a Fantasy.  The soprano Niamh Lavery sings in Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate, and in My Lagan Love, which is described as ‘Traditional’.  Composed by Harty, it is based on a traditional (Donegal) theme.  Ag Criost an Siol is described as “by Ó Riada” though he used the same procedure as Harty.  Ms Lavery demonstrates considerable versatility in tackling these three diverse items.

On Tuesday 13 March this year the LISO had a St Patrick’s Day (on The Day itself they were in the City Hall) Concert in St. Paul’s Church.  It is in Wilton Place, a minute’s walk away from Hyde Park Corner tube station.  It is a lovely (Edwardian?) Anglo-Catholic pile with all the Romanist accoutrements, a particularly lovely touch is the tiling in the body of the building.  It does, admittedly, give the place a (very slight) aspect of the public bog.  But it is beautiful, and does not exude a cold feeling.

The pieces played were Choreography for Orchestra, by Jonathan Lee.  The Programme places “(2008)” after Mr. Lee’s name – but he is not a zygote – it means he composed the piece this very year.  (A living composer, where will it all end?).  I am embarrassed to admit that the piece, while not as short as Aisling, has left a very vague memory of a busy score.  Graeme Stewart’s Goblin Market (2008) was odd.  I was under the impression that it was vocalise piece.  Meaning that the soprano (Rosie Coad) was producing pure sound.  But it appeared that she was singing Christina Rosetti’s words.  Talking to other members of the audience, in the interval. I found I was not the only person to be confused.  Putting the singer in the pulpit, above the band, might have resolved this problem.

Graeme Stewart (from Letterkenny – who looks like a young Schubert), wants to “make music… beautiful and grotesque…lyrical… and abstract…”.  He has produced a large number of film (and television) scores.  I hope to hear more of his music — two people were busy with a lap top computer in St. Paul’s — I may get my wish quite shortly.  This vagueness is entirely my fault.  I was rather tired, and the night was bone marrow cold.

The last item of the evening was Stanford’s Symphony No. 7.  He is usually described as being Third Division.  This performance decided me that he’s high in the Second Division.  That may not sound like praise.  But think of his equals — Pfitzner, Arensky, McDowell — even in terms of scope and ambition, he is head and shoulders above them.  The spirit of Schubert hovers over this Symphony.

Dee Flatt

* Money from the sales of this excellent CD goes to the London Irish Women’s Centre.

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

London Gay Symphony Orchestra

Cadogan Hall                                                               July 6, 2008

As I was leaving Cadogan Hall at the end of this performance I heard a man say — “…yes, well… it was alright…” — in a rather nasal London-blasé tone.  Possibly he was being mischievous.  Possibly he has tin ears.  My hairy lugs and myself have listened to Verdi on record (yes, vinyl – even shellac!), on the wireless, the concert hall and opera house for half a century now.  We (said lugs and I) have rarely come across a finer performance than the one the LGSO gave on the evening of July 6. The stars of the show were the chorus.  The chorus did not even exist six months prior to this performance.

An interesting aspect of their performance, and those of the four soloists, was that they got ‘behind’ the Latin of the Requiem.  That is quite remarkable given that the Catholic Church has for all practical purposes, jettisoned Latin.  And the language is probably to be thrown off the curriculum of schools and universities shortly.  The soloists were Deborah Stoddart, Soprano, Stephanie Seeney, Mezzo-Soprano, John Upperton, Tenor, and Paul Keohane, Baritone.  It would be (genuinely) invidious to pick out any of the soloists (and nobody attempted to ‘upstage’ anyone else).  And there was no ‘emoting’ in the quieter passages (this is in a distinct LGSO ‘tradition’ of serving the composer) despite the old sneer (quoted in Dominic Nudd’s programme notes) that the Requiem is an opera in liturgical drag.

Other aspects of this performance were interesting (nearly always a prelude to damning with faint praise) one was the delicacy of the playing by the brass and woodwind.  And by the rest of the band.  This has to do with the delicacy of Verdi’s scoring.  Italians are not supposed to be good at that sort of thing (“Donizetti’s big guitar”, and all that).  Listeners are often presented with a ‘wall of sound’ in the Motown manner, even in famous interpretations of this Requiem.

Another aspect was that the chorus actually sounded frightened in passages of the Dies Irie (‘day of wrath’ — when the Creator of Creation descends from Heaven to judge ‘both the living and the dead’).  Some (again, famous) choirs and choral societies sound slightly discommoded here, rather than galvanised by the fear of God’s wrath.  And of eternal torture in Hell.  The Dies Irie is something of an intruder on the Requiem Mass.  Fauré left it out of his Requiem.  It is, like the Stabat Mater, a medieval poem.  In the eleventh century people seriously believed in pain, suffering and fear.  It was all round them.

I’m slightly alarmed to read in Chair’s welcome, an introduction to the glossy Programme by Nichole Aebi-Moyo, LGSO Chair that the choir “was formed specially for this concert”.  I hope it’ll not fade away.  (There will be “Extracts from Carmen” and the Jupiter section of Holst’s Planet’s Suite, in the World AIDS Day concert on November 29.  Maybe the chorus will be involved in them. The LGSO will share the honours with the Rainbow Symphony Orchestra of Paris, in the Mermaid Theatre, Blackfriars (just beside the tube station).  The choir rather damages some long-cherished myths about queer men.  There are nineteen tenors (including some women presumably seconded from the altos) and 35 basses.

The LGSO’s Guest Leader was Iwona Boesche, formerly of the Krakow Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the City of London Sinfonia.  She and Jan Rautio (the LGSO’s rehearsal pianist) will release a CD shortly (Prokofiev and John Adams).  The usual Leader Jenny Koral was among the second fiddles – there were forty one string players, eleven woodwind, thirteen brass and two percussion.  The latter, Brian Furner, timpani and Ben Martin (on, essentially, a Lambeg) percussed with great vigour and an element of delicacy.  The latter probably has to do with Simon Bowler’s conducting.

The venue has a lovely acoustic, which is just as well as this performance was well attended.  (Crowds tend to absorb sound and deaden it somewhat). The Hall is used for chamber music mostly.  It has the appearance of a plain Protestant church (I should probably apologise for these diversions into ecclesiastical architecture.  They are feeble attempts to give an impression of the atmosphere of the events.)  Given the number of fragrant performers, 180 all told, if my sum is correct, the platform had to be extended.  The less fragrant audience was squeezed in somewhat.  I (utterly unfragrant) was broiled.  So were a lot of the rest of the audience, this may be what the chap quoted at the beginning was actually talking about.  Keeping our attention over a sustained eighty minutes without a break is a testimony to the quality and commitment of the performance.

Dee Flatt

PS. To get to Cadogan Hall go to Sloane Square tube.  Turn right at the exit, and up Sedding (this is not a misprint) Street.  There is a large, white building with the words Cadogan Hall in large black letters on it.  (I managed to lose myself on two occasions attempting to get to the Hall).

PPS.  A purely sociological cum anthropological note; having my nose pressed to the edge of the platform I couldn’t help noticing that women look after their footwear better than men.  And there were some seriously expensive booties in there.

l l l l l l

On a somewhat more serious note go to www.lgso.org.uk and find the WE’RE ON A MISSION statement printed on the middle pages of the programme on July 6.  One decision “is to broaden our remit and develop a family of ensembles…”.

One of these, (the London Gay Symphonic Winds), will have four outings over the summer.  Including The Twelfth, (at Lewisham People’s Day — not an Orange ‘Field’).  It will open and close the International G&L Football Association’s World Championships, and will be at London Zoo’s Gay Sunday (the mind boggles (in a refined sort of way)) on September 14.

The LGSW are available for Civil Partnerships, bar mitzvahs etc via the above website.

Two other groups advertise in the Programme, the

New Burlington Quartet

(e: enquiries@nbq.org.uk,

and

www.nbq.org.uk).

And also;

Fivesome, a wind group

(e: contact@fivesome.co.uk,

www.fivesome.co.uk,

phone 07956478512).

The latter details are in red on a black background, which might be readable on a billboard.  On a quarter of an A5 page it is a wee piece difficult.

Other ads are for the English Touring Opera (see Susannah on the 254 route — they will be doing Carmen this Autumn), and the London Gay Men’s Chorus.

I hope one of the ensembles developed will be the mixed voice choir which made such an impression on (one member of the audience, anyway) on July 6.

Especially the lovely person third from the right… but I digress…

Dee Flatt

(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

Gay Times 250

One of the positive things about this exercise in masturbatory self-reference were the articles by / about other 25 year olds.  The most vigorous and up-beat being that on Mervyn Boyd from mid-Antrim.  It was interestingly off-centre to have something from rural Ulster (Paisley’s heartland into the bargain).  It speaks volumes for Mervyn’s spirit that the other subjects came from large, settled urban Gay communities.

The victory in the Dudgeon case at the European Court of Human Rights is noted under the 1981 heading in the chronology, as is the change of law in 1982.  Then — nada, so far as NornIrl is concerned.  No mention of battles with the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), of the Carpenter Club, of our 1984 ‘InterInsular’ Conference.  There is no reference to the law being changed in 1994 – six weeks after the change in GB.

This oversight is probably due to GT‘s positively unhygienic relationship with Stonewall and New Labour.  The distinct lack of urgency on the part of the latter, in doing anything substantial about our legal lot, clearly upsets some of the editorial team.  Old Labour, and the Unions, were it is crudely hinted, anti-Gay.  NIPSA (the NI Public Service Alliance) sent a very senior officer to the 1984 Conference.  ‘Blue-collar’ unions have put into effect policies protecting Gay workers.  In the nature of things their votes were needed to put such policies through the various Congresses.  Local governments’ with good Gay policies, Manchester, for example, are distinctly Old Labour.

Old News

There is an element of mealy-mouthing about Gay Times‘s own origins and its absorption of Gay News.  The latter title had been sold by its editor (who did not own it) to a man, it transpired, who did not have the readies to buy it!  The title was sold to a third party and it struggled on for a while.  So did Gay Reporter.  It was set up by members of the GN staff who claimed that it, (Gay News), was ‘political’.  (And therefore, it seemed, ‘left-wing’).  And it was ‘dominated by lesbians’ – two, out of two dozen employees of GN were women!

As it turned out, the readership wanted ‘politics’ (the term, by Reporter standards, seemed to cover any attempt at analysis of books, films, telly, or anything else.  They were Thatcherites, we should all behave like atomised, mindless consumers.  GR was such a roaring success that the title was given to Millivres.  (It disappeared off the masthead of Gay Times many, many moons ago.  ”…incorporating Gay News” reads better than “incorporating Gay Rubble“, even sixteen years after the demise of the former.  And even for people who have never seen a copy of the “legendary” News.

GT in this jubilee edition emphasises its Blairite loyalties by joining in the vilification of Serbia.  It (Serbia) is, needless to say, under the current régime, anti-Gay.  They managed to contact some Gay people in Belgrade who have a suitably servile attitude to “the Allies” who were bombing their country to obliteration.  We can only hope such people form a peculiar minority, otherwise legal rights for Gay citizens of Serbia are generations away.

Gay Times and upstart (formerly Update) are the same age — our career-paths, admittedly, have been somewhat different.

O Gay! (and others)

O Gay is a fairly regular publication from Derry / Londonderry, and has been on the go for several years now.  It used to be called In Yer Face – though it wasn’t particularly, carrying a glutinous article on the death of Princess Di[ana].  Your editor, in IPR (the Irish Political Review), wrote an article about it One parasite down…, and a follow-up Diuretic.  The motivation was not dislike of Di, as a reaction against the tidal wave of hysteria.  O Gay is cheerful and very colourful, but it is oddly anonymous.  There is very little sign of the Second City’s (not entirely kindly) humour.  But, if you sent a fiver to Foyle Friend’s address they may cheer up and send you a year’s worth of editions.

Outcast is reasonably new — the first edition was September or October 1999 — and it is produced by everyone who is irritated by the Stonewall / Gay Times / New Labour nexus.  As this means nearly everybody in the UK who is not an actual member of the three named bodies it may well have a great future ahead of it.  At present it is rather worthy, in the manner of magazines for sectional interests, trade union journals, say, rather than a self-proclaimed (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase) Queer Current Affairs mag.

Gay News, despite the fairly bland title, was always vigorously opposed to calling agricultural implements anything other than spades.  Gay Noise, a magazine launched partly because of a feeling that (the other) GN was becoming bland (and party out of its collapse), headlined the shooting of John Lennon thus; Manhattan landlord murdered! Possibly you do not need to be quite so brutal to make a point, but high-mindedness and caution look quite similar.  [There followed the address and subscription rates for Outcast - upstart 2010].

Nobody would accuse Scots Gay of being high-minded.  It did carry, (last November), a furious editorial telling Stonewall where to get off.  This arose out of that organisation’s trip to Scotland, in the course of which it told the natives how to go about agitating in their own Parliament.

Byzantine Ulster

(We too, had a visitation from a person who told us how to organise a campaign against Section 28.  Stonewall did not realise that our local governments do not run education.  They never have.  When that turned out to be a bummer, they turned to homophobic bullying in schools.  The chap they sent across (who was not a particularly bad and certainly not an arrogant person) did not know anything about the Byzantine complexities of the educational system in place in Northern Ireland.

He currently thinks it is run by the Ministry of Education and the ‘Council of Churches’ (?) and not:

the five Education and Library Boards,

the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools,

the NI Council for Integrated Education,

and,

An Comhairle Gaelscoileanna.

Overseeing all this (basically paying salaries) is the Department of Education.

There are some ‘Christian’ schools run by fundamentalists, but they do not ask the State for money.

He did not seem to be all that clued-up about education in Great Britain, not recognising the term ‘ILEA’ (the – admittedly now defunct – Inner London Education Authority).  It had very good policies on Gay pupils / students — and teachers — and teaching about variant sexualities.  Thatcher wound it up for being too useful).

Scots Gay (which has taken over from the now-defunct Gay Scotland Garry Otten’s razor sharp Scottish Media Monitor (it makes NornIrl’s media seem positively pro-Gay)) has a… robust attitude to life, Scotland, the world and everything.

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