Limehouse tarts, Burundi beats, dystopia, hunky policemen and a singing Xmas tree!

A strangely festive evening last night, for me, the eternal Grinch. Of course, the occasion was a special one - the last outing in 2012 for "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari.



Suitably attired in Dickensian top hat and undertaker-black suit, our host Paul Burston welcomed the eager crowd - me, little Tony, our Paul, Ange, Roland and "Polari virgins" Suzanne (all the way from Germany) and Jonathan, and literary types such as Karen McLeod, DJ Connell, the very cute Polari prize-winner John McCullough, Rebecca Chance/Lauren Henderson (and entourage), Alex Hopkins, Toby Tobes, Suzi Feay, photographer Krys, and many, many more (the room was full to bursting) - to another packed evening's entertainment.







And what better way to open proceedings than with the magnificent "modern day David Bowie" (or if you prefer Elaine Paige's description "a new Tim Rice") Mr Marcus Reeves?



One of our favourite performers du jour, he entertained us to his new single Black Tears, and - here in the footage I recorded of him performing at Gay Lifestyles in October - the fantabulosa Mad, Bad World:

Marcus Reeves - Mad, Bad World

To find out how you can help Marcus complete his debut album Quicksilver, visit his website.

Whew! How do you follow such an extraordinary performance? With a little lust, of course!



A rare beast - an out-gay Somalian - Diriye Osman is a multi-talented man. Artist, model, campaigner, and a fine writer to boot, he read for us a tantalising extract from his rather salacious tale of a camp boy's obsession with his grandmother's new boyfriend, titled Shoga:

‘Is it not true? And furthermore, this business of me braiding your hair has to stop! You’re a boy not a lady-boy!’

‘You know you love me,’ I smiled, ‘besides, what’s wrong with being a lady-boy? It’s a good look.’

She pulled my hair and said, ‘Waryaa, if you grow up to be gay, walaahi I will do saar.’

‘Saar’ was a brand of Somali exorcism. The ‘possessed’ – which was code for the mentally unstable – were put through their paces. Healers would beat drums to release spirits from the possessed, who would shimmy and shake, and if they got too frisky, would face the kind of beat-down usually reserved for criminals. Such superstition has always been rife in the bush and my gran, a country gal through and through, knew its effectiveness at deterring unacceptable behaviour.

I smiled now as she flexed my follicles. My grandmother did not know that I was gay and that I’ve always loved being gay. Sure, Kenya was not exactly queer nation but my sexuality gave me joy. I was young, not so dumb and full of cum! There was no place for me in heaven but I was content munching devil’s pie here on earth.

I was seventeen and I specialized in two things: weed and sex. And there was only one person in my neighbourhood who served both those dishes on a steaming plate for me.

Boniface.

But I’ve missed a beat, my bambinos. A narrative without a back-story is like meat with no bone; there’s no juice to it. So let me take two steps back.

My family moved to Kenya in ’91, after my dad hauled our asses from Mogadishu. I don’t remember much about Somalia – I was only a toddler when we fled – but over the years Mogadishu assumed mythical status in our lives. It became the kind of place that could only truly flourish in selective memory. It was years later that I learnt the precise term for what my family and millions of other Somalis had experienced during the war: post-traumatic stress.

But my father was not one for wasting time. He got to work and started amassing a small fortune by selling blankets and medicine to NGOs headed for Mogadishu. My mum did her bit and became a pharmacist in Hurlingham. Whilst baba na mama made money, my gran took care of home.

All that changed in ‘94. My parents were driving home from Trattoria Restaurant one night when they got stopped by the police. The cops ordered them to get out of the car but my dad refused. Kenyan police are the shiftiest crooks this side of the Sahara. If they want to extort you, nobody can stop them. If they want to make you disappear, no one can prevent it. My father knew this so he refused to get out. Without missing a beat, the police fired three shots in his head. Then they blasted my mother’s brains out when she started screaming. Their bodies were found floating in Athi River the next day. I was seven years old.

Whilst my gran’s peers were settling quietly into old age, she now had to support both of us. We owned our small maisonette, so housing wasn’t an issue. My parents had taken out life insurance but it wasn’t enough for us to live on. My grandmother took half the cash and invested it in a small import/export business she ran out of our living room. The rest went into my education.

As the years passed, gran decided she needed help around the house. She found it difficult to bend over and clean floors and cook three meals a day, raise a teenager and run a business. She didn’t want another woman in her home. She wanted a man who was strong enough to cook, clean and carry water to the tank. She wanted a man to protect us from burglaries. Basically, she wanted a budget superhero: a blank canvas she could mould into a domestic god.

Enter Boniface.

Boniface was from Burundi and my grandma dug this. She dug the fact that he was a refugee like us but I was more impressed with his muscle mass. While she saw enough brawn to carry three sacks of bariis at once, I saw prime beefcake. Papi was beautiful and he looked like he was packing. I licked my lips and locked and loaded.

Wow.



Right on cue, to break us out of our reverie, we applauded the very welcome return of the splendiferous Celine Hispiche!

Stalwart of many, many Polari evenings during its five-year history, Celine has veered from Music Hall (supporting and duetting with Marc Almond at Wilton's in 2008) to punky dance music (with Dave Ball in the band Nite Wreckage, whose inaugural performance we went to see in 2010), and back again - her long-awaited "Music Hall musical" Betty May - the Musical: Tiger Woman versus The Beast will premiere early next year at the swanky Brasserie Zedel. I think this will be a must!

No footage exists online of Celine singing the choon she chose last night Limehouse Sway, nor indeed any of her Victorian repertoire (unfortunately), so here instead is Nite Wreckage and Popbawa!

Celine & Nite Wreckage - Popbawa

Marvellous.



After the break, it was the turn of the very lovely Helen Smith (a fellow blogger), to read from her "dystopian" novel The Miracle Inspector, set in the aftermath of war and in the midst of a tyrannical and seriously disturbed society where you need to have your wits about you to survive, as our "hero" the poet Jesmond appears to be able to do. It is beautifully-written, and definitely left us wanting more. Here is the lady herself, reading the very extract with which she entertained us last night...

Helen Smith - The Miracle Inspector

Our headliner of this very special Polari was the petite Bethan Roberts, whose novel My Policeman sounds a most fascinating and emotional rollercoaster of a tale, a menage-a-trois of relationships between a woman and a (forcibly closeted - the story is set in the 50s) gay man and their mutual love Tom, the policeman of the title. The piece she read - brilliantly I might add - was the gay man Patrick's first meeting with the gorgeous Tom, and was funny and poignant. Here, Miss Roberts explains a bit more about the book...

Bethan Roberts - My Policeman

Just when you thought it was safe... It was time for a finale, as Marcus Reeves returned to the stage, sardonic as ever, as "The Singing Christmas Tree"! With his wonderfully camp take on the "classics", he even managed to get the whole audience waving in time to I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day by Wizzard. Truly extraordinary, as you will see...



A "Very Polari Christmas", indeed!



And so, with tears in our eyes we bid farewell to our culture fix until next year...

Our next Polari will be on 28th January 2013, with headliner the literary luminary Christopher Fowler.

Polari