THEGAYUK

Tag: Ramblings Of A Gay Man

  • COLUMN | Do the hustle

    For someone who has often led a colourful life, I can be incredibly naive at times. I blush a lot too, due to having fair colouring. Naivety can be sweet but it can also get you into a lot of unexpected trouble. One such example is Amsterdam. Naive people should steer clear of Amsterdam.

    I think it was around 2004 that I went there with my ex partner for a long weekend. For someone who’s in a couple and doesn’t much fancy smoking or eating dope, a lot of the usual delights are a little less than appealing but I went for the architecture and culture, honestly. We flew over and I was bemused to take my first ever budget airline flight. The in flight catering was mini tubes of Pringles, which tickled me and the stewardesses were wearing sweatshirts.

    I loved Amsterdam straight away. The hotel was roomy, if a little dated, the architecture was indeed beautiful and I really liked the giant phallic statue in Dam Square. The people were colourful and seemed laid back and cool, although we did get offered cocaine quite a lot as we walked about. It must have been something about the way I walk. We strolled about along canals, took in the Van Gough Museum and the Anne Frank House and had leisurely coffees outside. It was heavenly. It was autumn time and the leaves were turning brown and the canals looked romantic and picturesque. We did a little boat trip and were generally wholesome, mostly.

    I was perturbed by the bicycle riding epidemic. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never mastered riding a bike and think of it as witchcraft. There were many witches about. The trams were good fun though and full of fascinating looking eccentrics and oddballs. I quickly learnt never to stop and look at a map. This invariably summoned up a beggar who would initially behave as if he was performing a great public service and offering directions, followed by a request for cash, once he’d lulled you into a false sense of security.

    Being an inveterate people watcher, I loved the red light district at night. I found it utterly fascinating and was intrigued by the prostitutes with their tidy little cubicles and hygienic sinks and paper towels. I do like things clean. There seemed to be a definite pecking order with the prettier girls in tiny bikinis getting the more prominent windows and the gigantic Jabba the Hut types getting the more obscure ones. I’m not sure if there was a sliding scale of pricing or not. I didn’t like to ask. Equally intriguing were the men walking in and disappearing behind drawn curtains.

    We decided to try the Sex Museum, thinking it would be amusing and of course it was. We tittered at the antique sex toys, the Victorian porn (men had some fantastic moustaches in those days) and the gigantic penis in the entrance hall. The door with a warning to put off the easily offended puzzled me. On climbing the steps, walking in and spotting the pictures of a woman being remarkably overfriendly with an Alsatian, I realised that I do actually have some boundaries and am, amazingly, still capable of being offended. I scuttled out fast.

    I decided it would be fun to tour a few of the gay bars and had printed off a little guide. There were some amusing sights and a few which made me regurgitate a little. Lots of the bars had back rooms where men go to have sex. Naturally I peeked in. I can’t tell you what I saw as the hypnosis and the electro-shocks to the head have erased the grisly memories. It wasn’t pretty, is all I’m saying.

    There were two bars close together on the map, one advertised as a transvestite bar and another as a “hustler bar”. The transvestite bar was very friendly. I love a bad transvestite and was sadly disappointed to see a bevy of leggy beauties. Move along, nothing to chuckle at here. The bar man was a six foot Japanese boy in a long blonde wig and silver lame frock. I think he may have been 5 foot 2 without his heels and beehive hairdo. He was very chatty and kept a huge variety of items in his bra. They were having a little singsong and naturally, as the drink flowed, we were obliged to join in.

    I asked my ex what he thought a hustler bar was. He thought it was something to do with cowboys so I expected maybe a few chaps in chaps. I later recalled that that’s a rustler, not a hustler. I wondered if it was something to do with pool, thinking of the Paul Newman film. We were both wrong.

    The bar was long and narrow with a motley collection of dodgy looking older men perched on stools. The room went silent as soon as we entered and everyone stared at us. There was a moment a bit like the scene in “American Werewolf in London” when they enter The Slaughtered Lamb pub.

    Undeterred we headed to the bar for alcohol. At the end of the long bar was a raised platform with a pinball machine and couch and I was gratified to see a pool table. I felt vindicated and as ever, loved being right. I was wrong, of course. At the back of the bar was a curtained off doorway which I took to be the toilets. There were several youngish Eastern European blokes lolling about in provocative poses, languidly playing at playing pool, bending over the pinball machine or stretching out on the sofa. There were two free seats on the settee so I whispered to my ex that I was going to get us a seat on the platform.
    His hand shot out with lightening reflexes and grabbed my wrist: “That’s where the prostitutes sit.” He hissed. It dawned on me then what a “hustler” was and I blushed at my naivety. I’d almost put myself up for sale and I expect the lack of bids would have been embarrassing. I can just see myself now, the oldest prostitute, sitting alone on the couch, as the last boy was lead behind the curtain to the private rooms. We didn’t stay long. I hate to be upstaged.

  • COLUMN | Auto Outed

    When it comes to being gay or straight acting, I definitely sit somewhere towards the more fabulous end of the continuum. Not that I approve of that whole gay/straight acting thing. However good you are at DIY or playing football; you’re not that straight acting with a cock in your mouth. Although, thinking about some of the straight men I’ve met over the years…

    I was a slightly effeminate child. When I say slightly effeminate, I mean that my idol was Wonder Woman and there was always ‘Girls’ World Styling Head’ written at the top of my Christmas wish list in pink glitter pen. I’m sure that I was auto outing myself with every sissy boy lisp and mince. This wasn’t a problem in infant and junior school but once I hit secondary school, I was the target of a fair bit of attention. It was usually the wrong sort of attention (the hostile kind), but I didn’t have to identify myself to any of the other children as being gay. They worked it out all on their own.

    There are pluses and minuses in every situation. As a teenager, I wished that I was less conspicuous and that people couldn’t tell so easily that I was gay. Now, I don’t care at all. I see positives. At least I don’t have to constantly come out to every new person I meet. They seem to work it out for themselves somehow. Maybe had I been able to hide the fact that I’m gay from the rest of the world then I’d be closeted and miserable somewhere; one of the legions of married men sating their desires in grubby public lavs. I’m thankful for small mercies.

  • COLUMN | The twilight world of the homosexual

    I went to the theatre yesterday and saw the brilliant production of The Pride at the Trafalgar Studios. It’s a play set in two eras, the present day and the 1950s with echoes of the historical horrors of the oppression of gay people versus echoes of what we have and don’t appreciate and the horrors of the oppressions we sometimes choose to inflict upon ourselves.

    It’s a fantastic play and I won’t say much more for fear of spoiling it if you want to see it. I’d highly recommend it.

    It made me ponder. Lots of things do. On talking to a friend recently we both laughingly talked about how being gay has become so much less exciting now it’s all out in the open and less clandestine. Both of us, jokingly, talked about how dull being gay is now and yearned for the secretive and furtive days when sex had an element of danger and there was a whole art surrounding the dangerous act of being a gay man.

    Secret languages, knowing looks and basement dive bars all sound so exciting and almost romantic. Visions of buttoned up men in three piece suits, speaking gruffly in clipped tones as they undress and whip out outsized vintage genitals in dinghy back parlours with scuffed linoleum are daring and thrilling.

    Nostalgia is so often skewed and we often yearn for something that didn’t exist. I imagine that the reality was far from my imaginings. There’s no joy in imprisonment, an inability to express yourself at all and terrors such as aversion therapy or being institutionalised and labelled as mentally sick and twisted simply for the way you were born. The joys of being rejected, vilified and hated are limited.

    If I look back at my own life without a veil of nostalgia fogging the truth, I recall churning anxiety and terror. Living with an older man at the age of 18 in 1989, I was three years below the archaic age of consent of 21. This actually caused us both hideous anxieties.

    On one occasion we had a burglary in the flat we lived in and were panic stricken about having the police round in case they realised we were lovers. I remember ignorance, bullying and no go areas of the city. I remember the boarded up windows of our small city’s gay bar. They couldn’t have glass because it would get broken at least once a week by marauding gangs of blokes. It was a common occurrence to be in the bar and the D.J. would suddenly turn up the music to drown out the sounds of a gang of blokes hammering on the boards and shouting abuse. I remember not daring to touch in the street or even to look into each other’s eyes for too long in a bar or cafe.

    I think I’ll try to keep my nostalgia in check for now. I suppose we have the best of both worlds now. The modern gay man can be more open, mostly (I’m not naive enough to believe that rampant prejudice doesn’t still exist and we’ve a long way to go yet) and live the life he chooses. He can also choose clandestine and dirty too; loitering round cruising grounds and risking arrest if that’s what floats his boat. Of course that’s a simplistic view. The reasons people choose to carry out dangerous acts are multi-factorial.

    For now, I’ll restrict my nostalgia to clothing and my collection of 50’s china and doff my cap in respect to all those who’ve gone before and made life better for me now. Now those 1950’s gays: they sure wore a mean cravat.

  • COLUMN | Tell It To The Hand

    COLUMN | Tell It To The Hand

    I was horrified recently to read a piece in a quality newspaper where a man described his wife as being “pissed”. He meant angry and not inebriated. How odd and confusing. When did pissed start meaning angry? I also saw an advert on a bus saying: “Do the Math!” Eek. It’s maths. It always has been and always will be. I felt a cold chill.

    It’s not just the Americanism we’ve adopted which drive me crazy (24/7 kills me), it’s the faddy and lazy phrases people over use for a period of time. They’re funny for a minute or so and then are hideously irritating. My rule is: what would Noel say? By that, I mean Noel Coward not Edmonds.

    If I met Mr Edmonds he’d say: “Please don’t hurt me.” as I ran at him with my slapping hand raised, for crimes against good taste. If it wouldn’t crop up in a Noel Coward piece it’s probably not funny and not appropriate.

    My current hate list is this:
    • Putting .com after things e.g. tired.com. It’s not funny or clever.
    • Saying “Back in the day.” It makes you sound like a cheesy local radio disc jockey.
    • “Wine o’clock” was maybe funny the first time it was said or typed but it isn’t now, honestly.
    • “Five items or less” on a checkout. It’s “fewer”, the same as it’s “different from” not “different to/than”
    • LOL/PMSL/ROFL. Really? You’re not really doing that at all are you? So please, don’t type it. It’s silly. What ever happened to “tee-hee” or “ha ha ha”.
    • Text message speech and abbreviations. I hate this. I can’t stand “ya” for you, especially.
    • “Man flu”. Lazy and sexist stereotyping. I had severe flu and everyone kept asking if I had man flu. I had actual flu, thanks and was in bed for a week sweating and suffering. Cheers for belittling it.
    • “Epic fail’. It’s over used and tired.

    Another thing I hate is when people laugh about red hair and being “ginger”. It was briefly funny to do this in the 90s. It’s not now. It’s just banal, rude and tired. Lots of ginger men and women are stunningly beautiful and one of my more promiscuous exes tells me that, according to his extensive research of men’s undercarriages, red-haired men have larger willies. I suspect that this is yet another myth but it would be nice were it true as payback for all that ginger baiting.

    I know this sounds pedantic and picky and I’m sure I say things incorrectly or overuse phrases that annoy others too but I am the man who won’t sing along to a song if it’s grammatically incorrect. I have to adapt the lyrics to exclude the word “aint” or any of those nasty double negatives. Eurgh.

    So in summary, desist please. Period.

  • COLUMN | Cock Eyed

    I was talking to a friend the other day about cocks. It’s a perfect subject for polite conversation on a sunny Sunday over lattes and pastries. My friend and I have similar pedigrees and there was a cock related question I needed to chew over.

    In my thirties I had a period of being quite sociable and my friend remains very sociable too. When I say sociable, I mean the kind of conversations that involve you being naked and muttering just occasional words (e.g. ‘Harder!’ or ‘Yes, yes, yes’). I was newly single after a couple of lengthy relationships, it was all safer stuff and I wasn’t hurting anyone or not that I knew of, anyway. I suspect that there was the odd cuckolded wife or boyfriend tucked away here and there. It was all pretty harmless, very diverting and the only downside was that I had to change the bed sheets a lot and keep up with my depilation.

    After a few years of intermittent promiscuity, I gained a peculiar skill. I began to be able to predict what someone would look like naked. One look at a man fully clothed and I’d get an instant feel for what he’d look like once the layers were stripped away. Musculature, hairiness and penile length and complexion; you name it; I could guess it and was often proved right. It’s not a skill I could teach. I don’t suspect it’s a psychic thing either. Who knows what it stems from? Maybe it’s the nose shape, the hand size or most probably the fact that we often fall into set body types which match up with other features or characteristics. It was just borne of the fact that I was seeing an awful lot of men naked.

    Of course there were always exceptions and nasty or pleasant surprises can lurk in a man’s Calvins. I won’t go into some of the things that I saw but let’s just say that some of them still stick in my throat when I contemplate them.

    Miss Marple, the elderly spinster sleuth, had similar skills but hers tended towards knowledge of the criminal mind gained from studying the locals, rather than her knowledge of men’s undercarriages gained from a lot of time spent on her back. I like to think of myself as a kind of latter day Agatha Christie sleuth but with a whole different skill set.

    Interestingly, my friend has the same ability. He can guess a girth at 50 paces and is invariably not disappointed by what lies beneath the trouser. Maybe the two of us should take ourselves on a tour of Northern Working Men’s clubs with our novelty act. Just think of the furore we could cause on Britain’s Got talent. We’d certainly winkle out a few interesting winkles and definitely make the front pages of the gutter press.

    On second thoughts, I’ll stick to familiar territory. I have a long term partner now and my guess-the-weight-of-the-sausage skills are probably much less than they once were. I can’t go back to all that. My washer wouldn’t take all that bed linen.

  • COLUMN | Nudity No-No

    My partner used to like to take off his clothes in public. This was a frequent occurrence, the minute he’d consumed alcohol.

    I blame it on the set he was hanging out with; horsey and aristocratic. That sort of running into ballrooms naked at midnight and jumping into swimming pools is more acceptable there than it would have been in the urban backstreets and dull suburbs where I grew up.

    Funnily enough, I’ve always had a bit of an issue with public nudity. It’s not that I don’t like my body. I have the standard love/hate relationship with it that most of us possess. I wasn’t one of those teenagers who strutted around the locker rooms at school in the buff. I was too embarrassed. There was a whole dimension to growing up gay in the 1980s whereby I was mortified that the other boys would think I was ogling their bodies. I’d hastily change in the corner and dash through the showers, hoping to stay inconspicuous. I also didn’t grow up in one of those liberal families where everyone wandered about the house naked. Thankfully: to recall my father happily chatting about the day’s activities whilst stepping out of the shower with water dripping off his appendages is not something I’d want in my memory bank.

    As an adult I’ve had brushes with public nudity, as many gay men have. The obligatory nudist beach on holiday, the drunken visit to a sauna in Blackpool and the ill advised trip to a clothing optional bar in Amsterdam: these things happen. If you’re anything like me then they only happen once. I’m a quick learner.

    I decided to venture to a nudist beach once, whilst on holiday in the U.K. I’d never been naked in public before and decided that it sounded like a liberating and romantic notion to swim naked in the sea. I trekked the standard torturous 3 miles to the gay part of the nudist beach, arriving with aching limbs and a sweaty face. I put down my bag, stripped off my clothes and let the sun warm parts that the daylight had never seen before. I had a sneaky look round and it was like I’d suddenly entered a leather sofa store. The only difference was that the sofas were in the shape of elderly gay men. Expanses of orange leather flesh dotted the horizon as a variety of shapes and sizes of toughened hides stood lifelessly. Strangely, they seemed to be imitating poses from Kays’ Catalogue circa 1978. There must be something about being naked on a sand dune that makes men want to look out to sea with one knee flexed and their hand on hip at a jaunty angle. I didn’t stay long on the beach. There were drawbacks to the idyllic experience of sunbathing naked which I hadn’t thought through a) I’m not keen on sunbathing b) where would I stow my belongings while I dipped in the sea?

    Another daunting experience was visiting a gay nudist beach in a slick resort in Europe. This was a time when I was going through a hate cycle in the love/hate body thing. The sight of gym fit gay Europeans with perfect pecs and all over tans, lolling on designer label towels was enough to send me scurrying back to my hotel room to hide under a duvet. I’d have been like the ‘before’ picture in an advert, had I taken off as much as a cardigan.

    Naked bars, saunas, nudist beaches: they’re not for the insecure like me. They’re also not for the practical minded. Where do you keep your wallet and change, for one thing? I reproach myself sometimes. Why should I be ashamed to be naked? It’s our natural state and think of all that Vitamin D we’d absorb too. Then I remember all those lovely things that you can buy which can flatter and accentuate, hide and mask and make us all look better: they’re called clothes. I’ll keep mine on for now.

  • COLUMN | Freak Like Me

    Last week I saw a tiny little man who was wearing a floral shower cap on top of his turban. He was all of 5 feet three tall, wizened and elderly and a lurid 1970s shower cap topped off his immaculate dark suit exquisitely. I think he was a very sensible man, it was raining after all and no one wants a damp turban all day.

    I often see a man who dresses as an Edwardian gentleman. He must be in his 50s and is tall and rotund. He sports a series of fetching waistcoats stretched over his ample belly and he has a huge waxed moustache that sprawls over his face. I saw him walking through the city centre one evening and he was also wearing a cape that night and carrying a sliver topped cane. I admire him and often smile at his outfits, commenting on a particular natty cravat or a dashing checked trouser. I asked him once if he lived in a re-created Edwardian house and I was gladdened when he affirmed that indeed he did.

     

    There used to be an elderly woman who walked around the streets with a small white poodle in a huge Silver Cross pram. He was harnessed in by his lead and would sit quite happily, yapping at passers-by as he was wheeled around in style. She would merrily chatter away to him as they strolled.

     

    I always admired a tall thin elderly lady who lived nearby. She would set out from her house with a very purposeful gait, striding briskly, head down, sending people scurrying out of her way in terror. She always wore a blue raincoat and a matching hairnet and had a full beard. She would often smile at people, revealing a lot of missing teeth, and give a jaunty wave with her hand held high. She’d shout “Hello!” at deafening volume. Occasionally she’d appear with a huge brown dog on a lead that would drag her around and she’d trot along breathlessly behind with a happy expression on her whiskery face.

     

    I could write all night about these people. There are scores more of them in my mental bank of people I regularly see. To me, these people are rational and normal. No one wants a wet turban. They must become so heavy. Why not arrive in style in a shower cap if it keeps you dry? The Edwardian style suits a large man and if you can get away with sauntering around in full costume then why not? It’s fun. Poodles are unwieldy things to carry around. They wriggle so. If you have a spare pram to hand going to waste then why not convert it into a poodle carriage? I’m sure he was a good listener to as she talked away. If you struggle with messy hair and don’t have time to shave your beard then why not be proud of it? Walk along with a tooth deficient grin and shout greetings at full volume. The depilatory process can be wearing to maintain. Brazen it out.

     

    My point, I suppose, is that “normal” is all about perception. Maybe we’re the mad ones for spending time plucking stray hairs or walking around with wet hair when we have perfectly nifty shower caps to hand?

     

    I asked on social media last year for people I knew to come out of the closet and admit their inner freakiness. The response was quite phenomenal. People admitted bizarre rituals, filthy habits and strange beliefs. They collected nail clippings, believed that their identical twin was better looking and were scared of sponges or wet wood. They ate inappropriate foods, had attachments to unusual items and perceived things in peculiar ways. All perfectly normal to me. It doesn’t take much chipping away at the surface to reveal a great big scary freak underneath. As for my odd habits, well, I describe them enough on here.

     

    My definition of strange is a teenage boy in canvas shoes on a wintery day, walking along with trousers halfway down his thighs and buttocks showing. Wearing jeans with elasticated ankles and a baggy gusset that makes it look like you’re wearing a nappy, suits no practical purpose and looks pretty odd. Surely we should stop stare and point.

     

    I think madness is to spend thousands of pounds on a huge white wedding party, inviting people you barely know to attend the protracted rituals and wasting money on a frock you’ll wear once and then look back on with blushes as the fashions change. I’m puzzled by people who watch TV constantly, celebrate Christmas with gusto, believe in vengeful deities or find clowns endearing. Now that is very weird.

  • COLUMN | Sunset Strip

    Cabaret and burlesque is currently making a big impact on the entertainment scene. Watching some quite subversive cabaret the other night, I began to think about nudity. A beautiful woman had just stripped to her underwear and was putting the tit-tassels to good use. Usually, I watch a show and think: ‘I could do that!’ As the tap dancers reach a frenetic climax, the actor hits his dramatic high point or the trapeze artist spins on his aerial swing; I like to think that give or take a couple of lessons, I’d be great at doing this.

    Of course this isn’t true at all. I’m terribly clumsy, have no acting talent and am no good with heights. This fantasy of my own performing ability does not emerge when I watch strip tease. I know I couldn’t do this, ever. The reason being this: I have no desire to exhibit my naked body. Stripping is not for me.

    As a teenager, I loitered shyly on the gay scene and the weekly schedule in the small city where I lived included a drag act on a Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon. Bingo on a Sunday night and a stripper on a Friday. I became pretty blasé about their naked bodies gyrating in a small back street bar. Swinging cocks splashed baby oil over a bar full of men who were just tipsy enough to not be too worried about getting the stains out of their best Burtons Menswear jackets. There was always a local vicar who had barged to the front for a good eyeful, craning his neck and applauding with gusto as he leered at the sun bed orange flesh.

    The routines were often samey and on the more obvious and tacky side of ‘fantasy’. The three foot stage would be peopled by unconvincing policemen, cheap and stained ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ air force pilots and construction workers who were so manicured that they had clearly never seen a cement mixer. The routines were mostly the same and give or take an inch here and there, the physiques varied very little with their inflated muscular, just the wrong side of deformity, and their rubber band constricted penises. There was the odd exception.
    On one notable occasion a hulking man pulled out a cucumber from his obligatory giant holdall, bent down on all fours and rammed it straight up his sphincter. This was fine and earned a healthy hum of approval. Approval turned to horror as he pulled the said fruit back out of his arse and bit the end of it off. A bar full of slightly uptight gay men gasped in unison and considered the food hygiene implications. Of course, there was always talk of the odd performer who over stepped the mark with audience participation, but I never witnessed this, which I have no regrets about.

    There’s nothing wrong with cheap back street bars, ropey strippers or the joys of the hen party crowd. In all its place and its own particular and unique merits. Striptease can also be a real art form and burlesque (and indeed Boy-lesque) combines the art of dance, glamour, drag and strip to make an often dazzling spectacle. Just don’t ask me to do it. I’ll be the one dashing to cover myself with a towel in the changing rooms.

  • COLUMN | Insecure Me

    My insecurities are boundless. They seem to straddle all the domains: physical, social and intellectual. I’m even insecure about other people’s emotional sturdiness.

    I went to the theatre yesterday and sat next to a very well groomed actress. We got talking (how else would I know she was an actress?) and it turned out that she sees more theatre than me. Her breadth of knowledge was extensive and her ability to critique was impressive. Naturally, I felt a little inferior. She was stylish and had poise and I felt like a crumpled sweaty heap in a theatre which sorely lacked air conditioning. As I sweated and reddened she gracefully flicked a stylish fan across her unblemished face.

    Sitting at a cafe in Hyde Park later, I noticed a well groomed gay couple sitting at the table next to us. They spoke in clipped tones, dripped money from every pore and made me feel slightly shabby in my chain store clothes and with my flat Midlands vowels. As I got latte foam all over my cheeks they daintily sipped their tea.

    Walking by us was a very handsome man with his girlfriend. Naturally, I had to appraise him. It’s the duty of the gay man. He had broad muscular shoulders, a chiselled jaw and striking eyes. He also had a better head of hair than my thinning mane, model good looks and a dominant way of striding forward. Of course, I felt inferior and my insecurities rose to the fore again as I contemplated my weedy upper arms and face which could only model as a ‘before’ in an advert for cosmetic surgery.

    Thinking back later, I felt a rush of satisfaction as I wracked my brains to look for these perfect specimens’ feet of clay. The actress sat in the wrong seat in the theatre, initially and displayed a clumsy gaucheness, apologetically fumbling her way back to the correct seat. Of course she’s an expert in theatre too. It doesn’t make her next in line for a Nobel Prize. It’s just that theatre is her business. Ask her questions on my chosen career subject and she’s have surely floundered. The well groomed gay couple were perfectly poised in the cafe but as we left the park we saw them walking purposefully, several feet apart. They’d clearly had a row and their body language positively screamed pent up rage and resentment. Speaking like a BBC announcer and wearing good clothes does not equate happiness. As for the dishy bloke: he passed us again and the rear view was less than appetising. He had childbearing hips and a set of buttocks that would have fed a family of four for a week.

    I wonder why I feel the need to compete, to mentally compare myself and score points. Maybe it’s evolutionary, maybe just societal. Whatever the case, if we meet then you can sure I’ll be looking for your flaws. You know what though; I’ll like you so much for having them.

  • COLUMN | Turkish Delight

    I made an embarrassing revelation a few weeks ago about my shameless quest to save cash and how I had a £5 haircut that was like total carnage. Today I upgraded and went for a £10 haircut. I’ve not only upped but have doubled my ante.

    I was feeling slightly sticky after a brisk stroll from work. The weather was hot and stark and I couldn’t face the bus with its heaters constantly blasting out in spite of the 30-degree heat. Walking felt like the better option. Every bus journey of late has left me on the brink of throwing up in the aisle. I stopped off by the station near where we live at a light and airy barbers which looked clean and vaguely stylish. Being greeted by a hot six-foot bloke in his early 30s with olive skin and good arms made me forget the sweat pooling in my crevices.

    He was a talkative barber. I never know which is worse: the surly ones who ignore you or the prattling ones you have to make an effort with. This one was entertaining and to be honest, he had such a handsome face that I really couldn’t have cared if he read out the cricket scores. I’m a fool for a swarthy man brandishing tools (or scissors).

    He began the snipping and was actually very nifty. My eyes occasionally noted his handiwork although I must admit that he did appear to have what looked like a small mammal nestling in the front of his trousers that drew my eye. I started to feel very warm indeed under the cape type thing.

    “I am from Turkey! I am living here one year and I practice my English. Do you mind me practice talk?”

    “I’d love it!’ I exclaimed with a smile, like he’d just offered me a winning lottery ticket.

    We began to make small talk and I tried hard not to look at the ageing pink thing in the mirror that was being groomed by this Adonis.

    “Is very hot in Turkey. Is hot here too, no? For Irish man like you is bad when you are very pink.”

    I wasn’t offended. Irish is fine with me. They have great writers there and the drinking culture is great.

    “Is also very bad in the day. Turkish people sleep from perhaps 12 till 5. Is 42 degrees there today. For a man like you is very hard to go outside when he has a patch of…what is the saying!…on his head. What is it I say?’

    “Bald patch?” I replied, instantly feeling just a little more humiliated.

    He nodded vigorously: “Yes! Big bald patch!’

    I smiled coquettishly in spite of dying a little inside.

    We carried on like this for a while: me getting pinker, him getting more unfeasibly handsome in spite of his casual lack of tact in front of this aging red faced sweat machine: “You have very hairy neck! Do any barber tell you that you have very hairy neck?”

    I decided there and then. I’d rather he’d spoken to me in Turkish. I wouldn’t have understood a word, but in my mind he’d have been telling me how beautiful I am and how he wished the men of Turkey were so fair and ravishing.

    As it was: it cost me ten quid, I got to glance sideways at a hot man with what looked a massive schlong in his slacks and my hair looks great. Everyone is a winner but my poor pride. I’ll be back for more in a month.

  • COLUMN | Starey Mary

    My partner and I made a rare sortie into a central London gay bar the other evening, on our way to see a play. He was craving a cool pint of beer and the nearest decent bar just happened to be one where the more stylish boys hang out.

    I’m pretty accustomed to gay bars and am a jaded pub goer, having launched myself on the gay scene at a slightly scandalous 16 years old but my partner has never really partaken in the scene much at all, being a much later starter and having lived in more rural areas. It sometimes takes an outsider to spot something and pinpoint a factor that you take for granted.

    My partner noticed the constant staring. Being slightly vain, he loved it. Its normal practice in a gay bar to be appraised and I don’t even notice this anymore. The quick look up and down, the sideways glance and the full on full body scan are all perils that you face when entering a bar. It’s habitual, standard practice and is done without thinking and with no terrible breach of etiquette. In fact, it is the etiquette. I wouldn’t even think it rude were someone to look down pointedly at my crotch to see what I was packing or to perform a lengthy examination of my buttocks. It’s just the way of the gay. It often ends in dismissal (I’m with a partner, I’m over 40 and therefore unavailable/decrepit and not necessarily worth the effort) but can end in a brief eye contact, a mutual appraisal or a mutual disdain.

    We talked about it and I explained the code of practice in a gay bar to my partner. I explained that it’s often meaningless; that gay men appraise men, just as straight men appraise women and it’s as much a habit as biting your nails or chewing gum.

    I have a thousand sneaky ways of looking attractive men up and down in the street. Lechery has to be a skilful art at times. There’s the brief sideways glance at a hot businessman on the tube, over the top of a paperback novel. The window reflection study of a scantily clad hottie in shorts on the top deck of a bus is a classic manoeuvre. The distracted ‘just casually looking around but my eyes have accidentally taken in the lycra cyclist with the muscles and I’ve noted that he appears to have a massive penis’ is a very retro one which is easy to perfect, provided you can feign the right level of nonchalance.

    Let the Starey Marys stare in the bars. It’s not at all intimidating unless you let it be so and is actually, quite flattering should their facial expression register a glimmer of approval or lust. If they dismiss or grimace, then just let it amuse you.

    They clearly have no class or taste or you’re just in the wrong bar.