Swinging London
Yeah, baby!
11 March 1999:
Swinging London
You know how
Austin Powers jumps into his MG and finds Michael York on his car video phone,
welcoming him to Swinging London? That doesn't happen in real life. In real life
I walk up the high street in Willesden Green and buy an all-day zone 1-2 pass
for the tube. It's a bargain, really, as going from one stop to another in Zone
1 costs 1 pound 70 p, and the pass for unlimited rides is 3 pounds 80
p.
I met briefly with Danny in Soho, and
then I met my penpal, W, in Piccadilly Circus. W is Asian. In the UK, Asian
means Indian or Sri Lankan, and Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesians, etc., are
called Orientals. In the UK, I have been told (in bed, no less) that to call
anyone Oriental is to be calling them a nigger, so I guess the UK has to catch
up. W and I went to one of the numerous Caffe Nero outlets for a coffee. I had
an anal retentive tea. I usually opted out of tea offers, but it got too bizarre
for my British friends and relations to contemplate. So I have an herbal tea or
a weak black tea with lots of lemon and cooling water. Being eccentric makes
sense to Brits. Turning down tea makes no sense to Brits. When I first met my
beloved cousin Beryl, she offered me coffee, and then tea, which I turned down.
She then blinked loudly and asked me if I ate meat. I told her yes, and she
said, "Thought I should check. You seem to have a lot of
restrictions!"
I strive to be a good
guest and I consequently eat and drink almost everything given to me, within
reason. And I don't make a scene. I casually ignore mushrooms as if they were
Republicans, or in this case, Tories.
W
led me to Gay's the Word, London's gay bookstore. It's on Marchmont Street near
the Russell Square tube stop. Like everyone else I have known in London, W hates
the tube. After buying No Bath but Plenty of
Bubbles, an account of the London Gay Liberation
Front's early 1970s activities, and
PWA, Oscar
Moore's collected columns about living with HIV for the Guardian, we took the
number 38 bus to Hackney, where W lives with his partner P. No one in Britain
has a lover or a boyfriend. Everyone says partner, so I will
too.
P was in Switzerland on business. W
is not out to his family back home, and his mother keeps sending photos of
lovely 17-year-old girls who would make wonderful prospective brides and
caretakers. It's sort of a British version of
The Wedding
Banquet. It seems like happiness for gay people
too often has a dark lining. I am pretty out and accepted by just about everyone
-- even my chasidic relations -- but don't have a partner. W and P have a
wonderful life but a visit from someone in W's family means the closet is rolled
out one more time. It's very simple to say, "just come out" but it
is a
different culture that he comes from.
If
anything, this is all just proof that the closet is something straight people
need more than gay people do. Going into the closet when someone from home shows
up is not a joyous convenience for W. He is a wonderful person and almost more
importantly, a wonderful cook and host. He had several friends round to meet me
over a meal. It was quite extraordinary, when you think about it. Everyone
around the table was from a different country--Scotland, Australia, England,
America, and Sri Lanka. The three things we five had in common were that we all
speak English, we're all from island (I have spent my whole life in the New York
City archipelago), and we are all gay. Who says no one can get
along?
Meanwhile, to my supreme
embarassment, my stomach, possibly still getting over my wretching on the plane,
made horrible loud noises all evening that, of course, suddenly stopped dead
once I was on the tube. But it was supremely embarassing to have the noise the
Titanic made when it cracked in half coming from my belly during a dinner with
three gay men I had just met. It was
dreadful.
During dinner one of the guests
told us about how police cars can drive right into the centre of Russell Square.
He learned this during a furtive grope with a bloke he met there. I asked if you
can get arrested for that sort of thing anymore, and he said, "It's gross
indecency!" Well, more like fun indecency. Why was I
surprised?
I was surprised because before
dinner W showed me a tape of a Channel Four show that just started airing. It's
called Queer as
Folk and it's about three Mancestrian gay men.
Well, two men and a 15-year-old . The show features reprehensible characters and
simulated sex. It presents a side of gay life that many object to, everyone
watches, and is, to quote Patsy Stone, "pretty accurate so
far."
So with gay characters and issues
saturating the media in Britain, why would I expect a quick shag in the park to
be an arrest-worthy offence?
Meeting my
penpals has been a great experience. Everyone I have met has been very friendly
and interested in getting to know me. I think, sometimes, that gay people have
more of an interest in getting to know other cultures, especially since we are
so often on the periphery. And don't tell me we're not. Give me full civil
rights, marriage rights, and legal recourse for all sexual-orientation
descrimintation, and then we can argue whether or not I am on the periphery. If
you do give me marriage rights I will invite you to the wedding and even toss
the bouquet in your direction.
Posted: Thu - March 11, 1999 at 02:02 AM