Of Oedipus in Kent, trans lives, the dyke of desire, a giraffe and a Tutu

It was a dark and stormy night on Wednesday - it was pissing-down - but despite the weather I, and a handful of stalwarts including Our Paul, Emma, Toby, Simon and chums, made our way to the cavernous surroundings of the legendary Heaven nightclub under Charing Cross... for the very welcome return of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari to its home city, after too long away!

With our "hostess-with-the-mostest" Mr Paul Burston presiding, we were in for another treat in store, with another selection of class acts:

Jake Arnott, Alice Denny, VG Lee, John McCullough

First up, Mr Jake Arnott, one of the UK's most successful crime writers - among his works are The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers, both adapted into much-lauded television serials. In his customary style, acting the roles of the characters, Mr Arnott read for us a dramatic segment of his new novel Blood Rival - heavily based around the multiple historic Greek stories of Oedipus - in which the anti-hero Eddie Pierce has "inherited the crown" (and wife) of the previous Kentish gangster kingpin Lee Royle, who was murdered in an apparent road-rage incident. During their efforts to uncover the secrets and lies left behind by his death, Eddie confesses that as a teen he had been raped by Royle - yet still loved him, nonetheless; and it was this desperate desire that drove his ambition to live up to, and eventually take over the "throne".

Mesmerising stuff!

Jake Arnott - Blood Rival

Next was Alice Denny – a Brighton-based performance poet and judge for the Polari Prize 2026 - who read for us some of her pieces, tackling gender, love, loss, sexuality, marginalisation and injustice. Quite downbeat, but heartfelt.

Although it seemed that Paul B was hesitant to offer us a break, I think we needed it. A pee, a fag, a top-up and some mingling - and it was time for part two...

...opening with the faboo John McCullough, another stalwart - he won The Polari First Book Prize 2012 - reading selection of quirky, often quite amusing poems from his new collection Crowd Voltage. Like this one:

You're working-class my lad,
don't you forget it, said Mum.
She was talking to a giraffe,
a lanky boy prone to ideas
above his station, soft ways
of slipping skyward.
I loved being a giraffe,
a vegetarian in fairyland,
the staircase of my neck
leading nowhere sharp.
I loved not being a lion
even though that meant
being hunted, carnivores slashing
at me till I galloped away.
I loved withdrawing to invisible
acacias - cathedrals of leaves
where my elastic tongue,
licked what it liked.
Because I loved discovering
other giraffes, entwining
bodies and probing necks
or simply standing together
as a crowd, a forest
of extravagant breathing.

We love him!

Our final reader was the lovely Polari stalwart VG Lee, everybody's favourite "Provincial Lesbian"! She read for us a segment from her forthcoming new novel Our Shadow Selves her short story The Last Gold Star Lesbian, focusing in on the experience of a lesbian of a certain age, whose life is drifting along in a shabby seaside town, and the frisson that she experiences when a long-distant butch "crush" of hers swans back into town - and she finally gets the attention she deserves!

There is no footage of the actual passage VG read for us, but here she is in full form, a few years ago:

VG Lee on the Polari tour, 2015

Then, by way of an encore, we had a faboo live set from the effervescent Son of a Tutu!

Son of a Tutu - And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going

Despite the somewhat smaller then usual audience (I blame the rain), all concerned got a well-deserved ovation:

We love Polari!

A mattress of one's own, literary Lesbians, popperbating - we're gonna do it anyway!

Braving the cold and drear that this time of year always brings, John-John and I trolled into town on Wednesday for the last shout of "London's premier gay literary salon", Polari, in 2021 - the culmination of its fourteenth year, indeed. Our hostess-with-the-mostest Paul Burston took to the stage at Heaven nightclub to the strains of I'm Still Here by Eartha Kitt. A tribute to Stephen Sondheim, but also by way of an introduction to his personal recollections - on this World AIDS Day - of the struggles he and fellow campaigners of the early '80s encountered, in those terrifying early days, to get recognition and viable medical assistance for gay men in the "firing line" of that pandemic; and with the huge emotional strain of all the losses we all suffered.

Read the full piece at Paul's blog.

Taking up the baton the marvellous Neil Bartlett, a genius of the literary world and a Polari stalwart, read an extract from his recently published collection of tales (all stories based upon his imagined histories of various places he has lived) Address Book - a hugely emotional and touching recollection of a grimly homophobic era, revolving around the sheer joy and freedom a "queer dancing-queen” in 1987 feels when he finally gets “a room of one’s fucking own” and, braving all the public hatred, abuse, stigma and discrimination he endures on a daily basis, goes to buy his own, his very first, mattress. It sounds mundane, but by gawd, the tears were rolling down my face. I love Neil Bartlett's writing!

Here he is, talking about the book and how he came to write it.

Neil Bartlett talks about Address Book

Purchase your copy from Inkandescent Books.

It is always a joy to hear our next reader Diana Souhami - even if this time round, she read from prompt cards throughout - with her encyclopaedic knowledge of the lives and loves of historial Lesbians. She read for us a synopsis of her magnum opus No Modernism Without Lesbians, as here:

Polari presents Diana Souhami

Weirdly, other than our readers, Paul B and the ever-lovely Justin David, there were no regulars with which to shmooze during the break, so with a top-up of booze and a fag - time for part 2...

A former journalist, writer Adam Zmith recently produced his first book Deep Sniff, an in-depth history of Amyl Nitrite - better known as poppers - and its interwoven connection with the LGBT community. It's a convoluted tale, indeed! None other than the brilliant fellow author Jonathan Kemp reviewed it for Queer Guru, so I'll let him take up the tale:

From their humble beginnings in mid-nineteenth century, introduced as a source of relief for angina sufferers, to their ubiquity within gay life, from dancefloor to bedroom, Zmith recounts it all with lusty relish. He introduces us to Antoine Jérome Balard of Montpellier, France, the man who started it all when, in 1844, he passed nitrogen fumes through amyl alcohol and discovered that inhaling the resulting pungent vapour caused his face to redden and dilated his blood vessels, lowering his blood pressure. At the time, he couldn’t think what earthly use it would be, but twenty-two years later, a young Scotsman, Thomas Lauder Brunton, used the vapour to relieve his angina patients’ pain. Pretty soon, it was being sold in small glass vials that you ‘popped’ to release the fumes.

Recounting poppers’ history is interesting enough in itself but understanding their place in history is where Zmith excels. Using episodes in the history of poppers, he explores, imagines and extrapolates on, among other things, gender norms, popperbators, science fiction, and the AIDS crisis. He adorns his book with gems of stories – like that of Roland Chemist on Praed Street near Paddington Station, London, who sold 185,700 ampoules of amyl nitrite in one year, compared to Boots Chemists in Piccadilly who sold around 288 ampoules. We learn about W. Jay Freezer the man who marketed poppers to gay men specifically – establishing the magazine Drummer to serve as a platform for advertising the product to its hedonistic readers. He dreamed of poppers being sold alongside shampoo and nail polish remover in supermarkets. Then, of course, AIDS hit, and anything associated with pleasure-seeking were shunned. For a while, amyl nitrite was considered the cause of what became known as HIV.

There’s a rich diversity of ideas, facts and musings here. Alongside an account of popperbating and a section on queer utopias as imagined by sci-fi writers, there’s a chapter on the police raids in 1986/87 on London’s iconic queer heritage public house, The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, to seize the poppers being sold there. The seven uniformed officers wore unnecessary surgical gloves. In protest at their provocative prophylactics, Lily Savage, who was on stage at the time, gave the Old Bill a Scouse mouthful and told the crowd to riot, earning herself a night in the cell.

Fascinating stuff - I need a sniff now!

Then, in a flurry of chiffon and attitude - it was time for our "headline act"...

Son of a Tutu, for it is he/she/they, is an award-winning drag queen and LGBTQ+ activist (who also landed a role in the film version of Everyone's Talking About Jamie). She chose her songs carefully for the occasion - recalling Neil Bartlett's piece about gay men being verbally abused by straight strangers, she said she needed to sing Sweet Caroline "to reclaim it from the football thugs".

And, reminding the audience of the fact that Labi Siffre's anthem of resistance was not, in fact, to do with racial discrimination (despite it being adopted by anti-apartheid campaigners), but about his own life experiences as a gay man, this:

Son of a Tutu - Something Inside So Strong

​Not a dry eye in the house.

And, with the customary curtain call, that was it for the year...

We look forward to the treats in store in 2022 - we love Polari!