A walking Terry O'Neill photograph, a Yorkshire harridan, dirty deeds in Berlin and a house full of sinister secrets

Just two short weeks since we were enthralled by Mr Russell T Davies for the Polari twelfth anniversary, John-John and I took our seats in the Fifth Floor Function Room at the Royal Festival Hall (at one of the "special tables" for a change) for the last outing of the season for "London's peerless gay literary salon" - a Very Polari Xmas! More treats in store for good little boys'n'girls (and anything in-between) and, as always, our genial host Paul Burston (resplendent in silver shoes, Bowie t-shirt and "bibberty-bobberty hat") was there to welcome them...



With a perfect show-opener, Carolyn Robertson, esteemed author of several children's books about gay parents and adoption [and none other than Will Young read one of hers in a LGBT+ milestone for the CBeebies Bedtime Stories show], treated us to one of her short stories aimed at adults - the tale of a young lesbian couple's seemingly doomed attempt at a "dirty weekend" over Xmas in York. Having had a screaming row with the evidently homophobic middle-aged harridan at the city's tourist accommodation bureau, and facing the prospect of trying to "do an all-nighter" without a hotel room to go to, the couple was fortuitously "adopted" by a gay waiter who let them crash in his room at his auntie's house. But guess who turned out to be the aunt...

It was hilarious, and really broke the ice - with resounding applause from the audience in that packed-out room.



Next up was a familiar face at Polari Ben Fergusson, reading from An Honest Man; the third in his trilogy of Berlin tales [he read from the first, The Spring of Kasper Meier, way back in November 2014]. A typically sinister tale of intrigues, mistrust and secret surveillance in the paranoid world of Berlin in 1989, just months before the wall came down, it followed the budding relationship between young closeted Fritz and a strange individual who seemed to be stalking one of his neighbours. Mr Fergusson's evocation of a very strange and claustrophobic era, and the obviously looming trouble afoot for our naive "hero", held us glued to our seats - and it is no surprise that this novel has featured on multiple "Best Books of 2019" lists...



Like a walking evocation of THAT photo of David Bowie in his Diamond Dogs phase, Professor Will Brooker took to the stage. Here's a man so dedicated to his work he actually spent a year trying to live as Bowie. Now Will has consigned to published form his intellectual analysis of the great man in Why Bowie Matters, his new book, from which he read some passages.

How does one address the apparent contradictions and convolutions of Bowie's sexuality and gender-bending? Many have criticised the man for "playing with" homosexuality/bisexuality merely to sell records; as a way of enhancing one of his multi-faceted personas, only to ditch it all when the next career move, tour or record deal beckoned. Yet, as our Professor argues, are we equally guilty of taking things David said or did out of the context of their time and applying a critique based on our more modern perspectives? Merely because definitions of "sexuality", "gender" and "fluidity" have newer connotations, can any of this be used to define a man who challenged established norms with extreme make-up, dresses and flame-red hair almost half-a-century ago?

We thought this was a superb and intriguing and well-reasoned piece, and look forward to exploring more...

After a break for a pee, a fag and another trip to the bar, it was time to settle down for our headliner, the worldwide best-selling author Miss Lisa Jewell. First off, reading from her eighteenth novel The Family Upstairs - a tangled web of a tale about the intertwined lives of young gay Henry, whose mother has inherited a big spooky house in Chelsea with a mysterious and grisly history, his family, their friends also living there, and another soon-to-be-dominant-in-the-household family (with a pretty son who Henry falls madly in love with) and some very dark secrets indeed. Oh, and lurking out there somewhere, and linked to it all is a woman busking in the South of France. All very enigmatic. We were hooked!



As has become the customary format of Polari, to its benefit in my opinion, Miss Jewell and Mr Burston sat for a more in-depth conversation and audience Q&A that covered topics such as writing styles and genres [Miss Jewell has, like so many female authors, to her annoyance been tarred with the "chick-lit" label on more than one occasion], how characters develop [Henry didn't necessarily start out as a gay boy, she said, he "spoke to her"], whose opinions should be trusted when revisions are suggested to an author's work, and where the inspiration comes from to continue producing successful works of fiction for such a long time. It was a delight to be part of, and the time just flew by.

We wait with bated breath for the 2020 timetable to arrive, but with the customary curtain call, that was indeed it for 2019 - Happy New Year, Polari!

Berlin blackmail, corpses, temps, obsessive painters, a mysterious boy and the lesbian Bermuda Triangle

[Photo Justin David]

It was a somewhat depleted "gang" at this month's Polari - no Paul, John-John, Jim, Emma or Toby. Just me, Wayne, Little Tony, Simon, Bryanne, Val, Paulo, Jane, Anni and a crowd of the great and the good of the glitterati that included the legendary Bette Bourne in attendance, as our host Paul Burston proudly welcomed us to the seventh anniversary edition of "London's peerless gay literary salon" (can it really be that long? Scary).



Opening the show was Mr Ben Fergusson, writer and impresario at the Hayward Gallery on the Southbank Centre, who read for us an extract from his sinister and atmospheric first novel The Spring of Kasper Meier - a tale of blackmail, black markets and black deeds in the seedy underbelly of a post-War Berlin that had been reduced to rubble and a morass of half-lit corners, where one might stumble across a secretive bar, a suspicious character, or both. The piece he read introduced us to the story's anti-hero Kasper and his confidant bar-owner Frau Muller, and hinted at several of the sinister twists and turns that had - or were about to - unfold. A very promising start, we thought. Read an extract of the book here.

Here is Mr Fergusson talking about the book - which was also featured on BBC Radio 2's "Book Club" recently - on Celebrity Radio:

Ben Fergusson - The Spring of Kasper Meier

[Photo Justin David]

The ever-ebullient Alex Marwood (pen-name of Serena Mackesy, whose book The Temp was a "chick-lit" bestseller) was next to the stage, to lighten the mood somewhat. As a former journalist and columnist for The Independent, she has a knack for observation whether writing about shoes, office life or grisly necrophiliac murderers(!). And so it was that she was able to dip into her pre-Marwood world to talk about life as The Temp, and top it off with a chilling piece from her latest as Alex Marwood - Crime Writer, the semi-fictional account of a serial killer of the Dennis Nielsen type, whose neighbours in the shared house in which he lived never knew he was keeping corpses of people he murdered as companions...

Here's the lady herself, talking about the latter story The Killer Next Door:

Alex Marwood - The Killer Next Door

But it was her hilarious anecdotes of how people behave towards authors at book fairs ("What do you mean, you're not Adrian McKinty?!!") and her list of office "stereotypes" in the style of fantasy characters - The Gollum, the Barbie, the Handsome Prince, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion, and so on - that had us in stitches most of all.



Niven Govinden is no stranger to Polari, and is now on his fourth novel - which is short-listed for The Green Carnation Prize 2014. It was from his newest work All The Days And Nights - a tale of manipulation in a relationship between a dying artist and her husband John, as he sets off on a pilgrimage searching out his past in the portraits she painted of him now hanging in museums, galleries and private homes across America - that he read for us a passage. It is an intriguing construct, with even John's observations on his journey narrated second-hand by his wife back home, and an exhausting one as we tried to concentrate hard enough to keep up with who was supposed to be where, and doing what, during the narrative. Beautifully done of course, if a little difficult to follow.



Quite the opposite was the case with our third reader, Sarah Westwood, who opened the second half after the fag-n-booze top-up break. Sarah famously (notoriously) writes for Diva magazine a column titled "The Rubbish Lesbian", and her short stories are always a joy to listen to. Including this one - Lesbian sex. It's a bit like the Bermuda Triangle:

I mentioned my habit of 'fat-fingering' to a straight friend this week. She went very quiet, and then said, "Is that a lesbian thing?" What? No, it's an inability to use an iPhone thing. It made me laugh, but it also made me realise that lesbian sex is still the big question mark that remains unanswered for a lot of people. In the words of 80's songstress Toyah, "it's a mystery."

I've been asked "But how DO you have sex?" on many occasions. It seems odd, but for whatever reason many people just can't get their heads around lesbian sex. Maybe I'm just particularly flexible, but I've never found it that much of a strain.

Even before I became a lesbian, if I closed my eyes I could picture it with ease, and did, on many occasions. The image wasn't sketchy, and it didn't fade-to-black like a 1940's film when it got to the good bit. But for many people lesbian sex remains as baffling as the Bermuda Triangle - actually make that two Bermuda triangles rubbing together.

In the past when I've talked about "having sex" to some of my straight girlfriends I've noticed that their faces fail to compute. They have the look of someone reading the assembly instructions for an IKEA bedside table. It's as if they are sitting cross-legged on the floor with all the bits laid out in front of them, but they just can't picture how we'll come together.

I think it's the lack of penis that throws people; their minds are desperately grappling with the logistics of how sex is possible without one. It's hard to know what goes where; like a game of naked Twister, there are body parts swinging around, and skin slapping against skin, but they can't see the wood for the trees. Perhaps because there is no wood, or trees - only bushes?

What is it about two women having sex that's so hard to imagine? It's not as if we're aliens from planet Zorb with paint bushes for genitals. We've got all the same bits as straight women, and like them sex comes down to personal preference. There's no "one size fits all" answer.

We might have put people on the moon, but for some reason lesbian sex is one giant mental leap too far. Oh well, as long as it remains the final frontier I'll just have to keep on boldly going where no man has gone before.

[Photo Justin David]



And finally, that maestro of the English language, Neil Bartlett. We love him. An accomplished and respected writer, playwright and gay cultural historian - and OBE, no less - he exudes a magical way with words, not least in the piece he read from his newest work The Disappearance Boy, a heart-stopping passage about the panic-stricken rescue from the path of a train of a strange, mute, emotionless boy. We were gripped!

However, it was his reading of his poetic monologue from those dreadful days of loss in the AIDS era of the 1980s that had us all emotionally drained. Here he is, reading That's What Friends Are For:

Neil Bartlett - That's What Friends Are For

I cried. I was not alone.


[Photo Justin David]

With the rush of adrenalin and emotion out of our systems, that, bar the schmoozing, was that for another month... An absolutely wonderful evening, as always.

Our next outing will be "A Very Polari Xmas" on 12th December, featuring Susie Boyt, Rosie Wilby, Yrsa Daley-Ward, VG Lee, and headliner Jonathan Harvey reading from his new novel, The Girl Who Just Appeared.

Roll on December, I say!

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