Diving into memories, prostitutes and profiteers, gangland jeopardy, a prize, a pansy, a wide Homburg hat and a long blue coat

I made a welcome (and long overdue) return visit to "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari last night, and I'm so pleased I did - a truly top-class evening of thought-provoking literary gems [right at the start of the London Literature Festival, appropriately], and Sophie Ellis Bexter's mum presenting the prestigious prize pictured above, to boot!



Although the room (our usual 5th floor function suite, rather than the cavernous and character-free Purcell Room where previous Polari First Book Prize ceremonies have been held) was packed out, I was surprised that apart from or hostess-with-the-mostest Paul Burston, some of our readers, plus stalwarts Suzi Feay (at whose table I sat), VG Lee, Anny Knight and sexy Lexi Gregory, I hardly recognised anyone. It could be "the curse of Friday" I suppose; so many people have other plans that probably don't involve gay literature...

...but for those of us who love writing, it was a joy.



Opening the show - admittedly in a rather dark way - was the surprisingly cute Roelof Bakker [I always find Dutch men sexy], who is a regular contributor to the Unthology series of collated short stories, now on volume #9. The review on The Short Story website described it thus:

The last short story in the anthology, Yellow by Roelof Bakker is a touching work exploring loss... the story follows the narrator as he comes to terms with the death of his partner, Marek [who drowned]. Loss is a popular subject, but Bakker offers precise prose that avoids cliché, giving us original lines that bubble up beautifully through the paragraphs and are full of emotive veracity: ‘I’m only happy when I swim. Bits of Marek live on in the water, traces of his DNA remain wherever he’s done the butterfly, the breast-stroke. When I dive in, I delve into the past, back into his arms. Memories bob to the surface.’

Truly beautiful...



An equally tragic theme was to follow - as feminist writer and journalist Julie Bindel (thankfully injecting some of her wry humour into an otherwise alarming subject) gave us an insight into her research findings behind her new book The Pimping of Prostitution: Abolishing the Sex Work Myth. From a synopsis she wrote for The Spectator:

We’ve become accustomed to thinking of prostitution as a legitimate way of earning a living, even ‘empowering’ for women. We call it ‘sex work’ and look away. We should not.

For the last three years I’ve been investigating prostitution worldwide to test the conventional wisdom of it being a career choice, as valid as any other. I conducted 250 interviews in 40 countries, interviewed 50 survivors of the sex trade, and almost all of them told me the same story: don’t believe the ‘happy hooker’ myth you see on TV. In almost every case it’s actually slavery. The women who work as prostitutes are in hock and in trouble. They’re in need of rescue just as much as any of the more fashionable victims of modern slavery.

One of the most disturbing discoveries I made was that the loudest voices calling for legalisation and normalisation of prostitution are the people who profit from it: pimps, punters and brothel owners. They have succeeded in speaking for the women under their control. The people who know the real story about the sex trade have been gagged by a powerful lobby of deluded ‘liberal’ ideologues and sex-trade profiteers.

She went on to emphasise how those very same "liberal" voices who defend prostitution as a "life choice" - an oppressed form of sexuality which deserves "freedom" from legal restrictions, akin to the struggle for LGBT equality - are actually further repressing and endangering the lives of the very people they appear to represent. Powerful stuff.



Completing our "triumvirate of terror", the erudite Veronica "V.A" Fearon took to the stage with her customary swagger and her disarming smile, to read from her newest novel featuring the "fearless" gangs negotiator Dani, The Thirsty Stranger. She opened with a suitably "in-character" extract in which our "anti-hero" attempts to seduce an equally sassy woman, a photographer who has no time for her smooth-talking chat-up lines. In the second we were given an insight into a side of Dani that might be less expected; as the maelstrom of dangerous situations she has got herself into bring her an unfamiliar sensation: fear.

As ever, Veronica's work is completely engrossing, and I was very glad to be able to take a breath when "half-time" arrived. After a nip to the bar and a fag, it was time for part two - ding ding!



Without further ado, it was time for our Suzi to take the stage to introduce the Sixth Annual Polari First Book Prize. She read a synopsis of each of the titles on this year’s shortlist "which brings together three male and three female writers hailing from Kuwait to Cardiff, whose eclectic body of work offers a range of perspectives on the LGBT experience":

• Expecting – Chitra Ramaswamy (Saraband)
• Guapa – Saleem Haddad (Europa Editions UK)
• We Go Around In The Night And Are Consumed By Fire - Jules Grant (Myriad)
• Straight Jacket - Matthew Todd (Bantam)
• The Vegetarian Tigers of Paradise – Crystal Jeans (Honno)
• Jerusalem Ablaze – Orlando Ortega-Medina (Cloud Lodge)

Then she handed over to the adorable Miss Janet Ellis to announce the prize winner. After some encouraging and apposite words of support and encouragement for everyone who took part she opened the envelope and welcomed the rather buff Saleem Haddad to accept the prize.



He looked thrilled!



Our next reader Paul Harfleet simply exudes charm. The pioneering campaigner [he was one of the keynote speakers at 2010's "Say No To Hate" rally that I attended] behind The Pansy Project - which encourages victims of homophobia to plant a pansy at the site of their abuse, photos of which he collates along with a description of the incident on the website - he has latterly turned his estimable talents to education, by way of a semi-autobiographical (and beautifully illustrated by the author) children's book Pansy Boy. And here is a video introduction to it (which, last night, he narrated for us):

Paul Harfleet - Pansy Boy

Lovely.



And finally, it was time for our "star turn", Diana Souhami - the masterful researcher and biographer of many a famous lesbian, and dryly witty reader - to entertain us with a faboo audio-visual overview of the life, loves and work of the artist Gluck ["Gluck: no prefix, suffix or quotes."], who was the subject of Ms Souhami's earliest published work, and who was celebrated most recently in a retrospective exhibition at The Fine Arts Society during LGBT History Month in February 2017 (with another exhibition to come this autumn in Brighton). Here is a little snippet:

Throughout her adult life she dressed in men’s clothes, pulled the wine corks and held the door for true ladies to pass first. An acquaintance seeing her dining alone remarked that she looked like "The Ninth Earl", a description that she liked. She had a last for her shoes at John Lobb’s the Royal bootmakers, got her shirts from Jermyn Street, had her hair cut at Truefitt gentlemen’s hairdressers in Old Bond Street and blew her nose on large linen handkerchiefs monogrammed with a G. In the early decades of the twentieth century, when men alone wore the trousers, her appearance made heads turn. Her father, a conservative and conventional man was utterly dismayed by her ‘outré clobber’, her mother referred to a ‘kink in the brain’ which she hoped would pass, and both were uneasy at going to the theatre in 1918 with Gluck wearing a wide Homburg hat and long blue coat, her hair cut short and a dagger hanging at her belt.

She did several self-portraits, all of them mannish. There was a jaunty and defiant one in beret and braces – stolen in 1981 – and another, now in the National Portrait Gallery, which shows her as arrogant and disdainful. She painted it when suffering acutely from the tribulations of love. A couple of others she destroyed when depressed about her life.

She dressed as she did not simply to make her sexual orientation public, though that of course she achieved. By her appearance she set herself apart from society, alone with what she called the ‘ghost’ of her artistic ambition. And at a stroke she distanced herself from her family’s expectations, which were that she should be educated and cultured but pledged to hearth and home. They would have liked her to marry well, which meant a man from a similar Jewish background to hers – preferably one of her cousins – and to live, as wife and mother, a normal happy life. By her ‘outré clobber’ Gluck said no to all that; for who in his right mind would court a woman in a man’s suit? Her rebelliousness cut her father to the quick and he thought it a pose. But however provocative her behaviour there was no way he would cease to provide for her, his concept of family loyalty and obligation was too strong.

Courtesy of her private income she lived in style with staff – a housekeeper, cook and maids – to look after her. She always kept a studio in Cornwall. In the 1920s and 30s she lived in Bolton House, a large Georgian house in Hampstead village. After the war she settled in the Chantry House Steyning with Edith Shackleton Heald, journalist, essayist and lover of the poet W.B.Yeats in his twilight years. Both residences had elegantly designed detached studios...

...Mercurial, maddening, conspicuous and rebellious, she inspired great love and profound dislike. Perhaps what she most feared was indifference – the coldest death. Her dedication to work was total, even through her fallow years. Her severance from gender, family and religion, her resistance to influence from any particular artist or school of painting, her refusal to exhibit her work except in ‘one-man’ shows were all ways of protecting her artistic integrity. She desired to earn her death through the quality of her work: "I do want to reach that haven having a prize in my hand… Something of the trust that was reposed in me when I was sent out…" In reaching her destination with her paintings as her prize she took a circuitous path – unmapped, thorny and entirely her own.

Gluck's romantic entanglements were many and varied, including Romaine Brooks, society florist Constance Spry, and "the love of her life" the American socialite Nesta Obermer, with whom she appeared in her most famous portrait in the Art Deco era, Medallion (which she referred to as the "YouWe" picture):



Utterly, absolutely brilliant.



Thus, with the resounding applause for our assembled readers ringing in our ears, it was sadly the end of another great evening.

Next month's outing (on Friday 24th November, and part of the "Being a Man" festival season) will be the official Tenth Birthday(!) celebration of Polari, and promises to be another corker - with Jonathan Harvey, Topher Campbell, J Fergus Evans, Alexis Gregory and Carey Wood all announced. I can't wait!

I love Polari.

Gay Vikings, the Papal curse, thirty-year-old fake news, a Fascist purge and New York resilience

The tail-end of Storm Doris may have subsided, but it would appear that the weather may have been a factor that prevented many of our regulars at Polari from attending on Friday - I went on my own and, apart from our host Paul Burston and one of our readers Suzi Feay, I only recognised among the literati the gorgeous Max Wallis, Polari stalwart Chris Chalmers, and sexy Lexi (with whom I shared a table) at the LGBT History Month 2017 special of "London's peerless gay literary salon"...

Regardless, this was - as ever - and evening of top-notch entertaining and thought-provoking literature.



Our opening reader was a case in point. With a confidence and erudition that belied her youthful looks, Leon Craig (Leonora Craig Cohen) - who has a postgraduate degree in Medieval Studies - read for us a fabulous short story all about the convoluted relationships of two Viking families, the husbands in which were evidently (and quite publicly) enjoying a gay relationship. Told in the first person position of the wife in one of the couples, it was both wryly funny and beautifully evocative of a lost world of savage feuds, intrigues and the privations of trying to eke out a living in bleak climes. Unfortunately, the story itself is not online, but another of Ms Craig's witty pieces is. Here's How to tell if you are in a Viking Saga:

• You have started a bloody multi-generational feud by stealing cheese.
• You have gone away to Constantinople and left your dashing blond brother to manage all your property. You are confident nothing can go wrong.
• Everyone around you is named Thorolf, except for Thorstein Cod-Biter, who lives over in the next valley. Many say he is part-troll. But they have learnt not to say it to his face.
• The current feud in which you are embroiled seems likely to be resolved by prodding a blindfolded horse off a cliff with poles. This horse is known for its malice.
• You have a very muted reaction to losing your limbs.
• As the house burns down around you, your elderly father reflects that fostering his enemy’s son was probably a mistake.
• Your survival hinges on the arrangement of poorly-maintained paths through a remote swamp. You will not survive.
• Your limp has provided you with the opportunity to become an expert in the convoluted Icelandic legal system. Small, seemingly insignificant comments allow you to manipulate justice for years after your untimely death.
• You have enraged a family of Sami wizards, who like to stand on your roof and sing all night.
• An elderly woman, known for her second-sight, gives you specific instructions to avoid being murdered. You ignore her.
• You think a summer of raiding and mercenary warfare will curb the violent tendencies of your young relative.
• Someone has accused you of being an arse-wizard and for this they will pay.
• Your enemy has made a miniature wood-carving of you being sodomized and nobody asks him why.
• You are a distant ancestor of Snorri Sturluson.
• Your main concerns about Christianity are the bans on infant exposure and the ritualised eating of horseflesh.
• You went to bed with Queen Gunnhildr and she has cursed you with a penis so large it cannot be used.
• Your mother is a kidnapped Irish princess, but didn’t think to mention this for years.
• At the age of three, you were already composing skaldic verse and outdrinking grown men. Your grandparents are very proud of you.
• Everyone you have ever loved, been related to, or looked at flirtatiously during the summer parliament has died in a feud. You are raising your sons to continue the feud.
• Most of your problems can be explained with the phrase ‘cold are the counsels of women.’
• You once exiled someone from Norway using a severed horse head on a stick.
• Greenland is horrible, but you have persuaded people to move there with false advertising.
• You may have died in an unusually horrible manner, but at least this rocky outcrop is named after you.
• If you can compose a sufficiently good poem praising the king, you’re off the hook for killing his infant son.
• You and your cousins once beat a man to death over a piece of driftwood.
• Everyone agrees you have the eyes of a thief.
• No man in Iceland was your equal, so you became a zombie-killing nun instead.

Fab!



Suzi Feay is a long-term Polari-ite, former journalist, book reviewer and grande dame of the literary events world - and a bloody good poet, too, it seems! Overcoming her "nerves", she read for us several of her (as yet unpublished) works. My favourite of these was Save it for the Pope in Rome, a pithy paean to the Eternal City and its effects on the lives and loves of people who pass through its hallowed environs. Again, unfortunately, no online evidence exists; however the following (completely unrelated) clip of a much younger Suzi amused me so much I just had to feature it here - as she tries to keep a straight face while modelling fetish clothing courtesy of Skin Two emporium:

Skin Two makeover

Dr Sebastian Buckle is another whose fresh-faced prettiness masks the astonishing depth of knowledge and historical investigation that underpins his new work The Way Out: A History of Homosexuality in Modern Britain, from which he read us a segment that examined a familiar era for many in the audience, the 80s. As he said:

Rather than ushering in a new period of increased acceptance, 1967 had instead paved the way for a new political hostility and backlash, which was replicated in negative stereotypes played out with increased vitriol throughout the 1980s... [with] prosecutions for indecency, sodomy, soliciting and procuring at an all-time high.

Played out in salacious and outrageously homophobic terms in the newspapers of the day, the consensus of those influential right-wing media moguls in the midst of the "AIDS panic" was that “homosexuality is abnormal, unnatural, a bit evil because it’s wrong.” Such was the power of the press, Dr Buckle provided many examples where, during the key debates that ultimately led to the vilified Section 28, many Tory MPs directly quoted from newspaper opinion-pieces as if they were fact (or representative of public opinion) in the House of Commons. Chilling times. I remember them well.

I was engrossed. Had the (hardback) book not been £32 at the Foyles outlet on the night, I definitely would have purchased a copy.



Sarah Day, opening the second half, proudly informed the audience that her debut novel Mussolini's Island, from which she was to read was genuinely "hot off the presses", only having been published this week. And what a debut! Telling the tale of a little-known and sinister episode in Italy's pre-WW2 history, the forced imprisonment of gay men, her extract focused on the doomed attempt by the book's lead character Francesco as he tried to run away from the secret police who had come for him, and was utterly engrossing. Antonia Senior in The Times summarised the tale thus:

They were degenerates. Embarrassments to the new, imperial, fascist Italy. There was no place in Mussolini’s vision for homosexuality. Homosexuals were victimised and persecuted and, in some parts of the country, rounded up and sent into exile.

In 1939 a group of gay men were taken from their homes in Sicily and imprisoned on San Domino, a beautiful, but poor island in the Tremiti archipelago in the Adriatic Sea. Sarah Day has taken this fragment of history and written a fascinating debut, Mussolini’s Island.

I loved it!



Our headliner was Tim Murphy, a New York journalist on LGBT issues, culture and politics, now turned author. His magnum opus Christodora has also only just been published - and it was from it that he read a wonderful passage that evoked perfectly the "partying-in-the-face-of-doom" era of 1980s New York.

He introduced us to one of the book's many intertwined heroes and anti-heroes Issy - on a night out with her gay friends to one of the many "underground" clubs of the day - who gets herself into a rather unwanted situation; a "quickie" in an alleyway with a handsome stranger. Several consequences of this liaison permeate the rest of the novel: Issy herself contracts HIV and becomes an activist, and she also bears a son - who grows up (adopted after her death) in the "Christodora" building that gives the book its title, and around which many of the stories revolve.

It was a wonderful story, and certainly whetted my appetite to read more!



And so, with resounding - and much-deserved - applause for all concerned, the evening drew to a close. Because the next Polari (part of the Southbank's Women of the World festival) next month is completely sold-out already(!), it looks as if we're going to have to wait till summer for another outing [sniff, sniff]! I await details...

I love Polari.

Panda Bond-age, toilet sex, mysticism, Maud Adams and homemade porn

Oh, how we look forward to "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari! Last night John-John, little Tony, Paul, Ange and I joined regulars Val Lee (as "Patsy Stone"), the lovely John McCullough, (a very hungover) Alex Hopkins, Krystyna FitzGerald-Morris [to whom I am eternally indebted for many of the photos on this page, see her website], DJ Connell, Toby Tobes, Stuart Wakefield, Peter Daniels and many more in a packed house for the first event of 2013, and what a corker our master of ceremonies Paul Burston had assembled yet again.





Dressed as half-James Bond and half-Panda(!!), Mr B took to the stage in jubilant mood - he has several bits of good news to announce about Polari later in the year apparently - to welcome our largely sex-themed readers for the evening.



Opening the show was dirty-story-writer Eric Karl Anderson (author of the award-winning Enough and editor of the sadly-demised Chroma Gay Journal). His tale of a married man's secretive liaisons with men at a beachside "cottage" (that's "tea-room" to the Yanks) - and in particular the horny encounter with a rent boy who styled himself on James Dean - was at once familiar to many of us in the audience, and also rather engaging. We have had the pleasure of Mr Anderson before (oo-er) at a previous Polari Porn Night way back in July 2009, and we were extremely pleased to see him again. He is such a great writer.



Miss Suzi Feay is a familiar and long-serving supporter of Polari, and latterly has turned her writing talents away from the world of journalism to her own fiction. And what fab stuff it is, too! Choosing a bit of a filthy one to suite the emerging trend of the evening, Suzi read part of her tale of the intertwining (on occasion physically, on the loo) relationships of a bizarre family gathering - fading 60s nude model matriarch, errant and shiftless son, his long-suffering girlfriend and her own teenage son. Suffice to say, although Miss Feay's works remain stubbornly unpublished even on the web, when you do get to read them in print the phrase "Never trust a man with icy spunk" will remain with you forever!





Concluding the triptych in the first half was the enigmatic artist, performer and writer Qasim Riza Shaheen. How does one adequately sum him up? Difficult, sometimes impenetrably so, his interwoven memoirs and mystical fantasy scenarios left us pleasantly soothed and slightly dazed at the same time. Charming stuff, but as he admits, he usually "hides" behind a performance persona, and he felt somewhat exposed being himself. I guess that in order to get the full impact, one needs the costumes and artistry to complete the wheel...



With the audience settled after the fag break, while stroking his pussy menacingly Mr Burston gave a warm welcome to an unexpected and very entertaining reader indeed, as onto the stage came the fabulous Welsh poet, comedian and all-round filth-meister Mel Jones (her own show is called "Friggers of Speech" up the road from us in Crouch End, and she signed a copy of her book for our Paul with the words "Lick my labs"!).



She performed not only her crowning glory Mmmm - a poem that won her top prize in a fiendish pub challenge to write on the theme of bestiality, using only words that begin with "M" - she also read us these two:

You’re Sexy
I don’t try to keep up with the ladies
As they wax, colour, peel and curl
I don’t bother much with the feminine
Or the guff about being a girl
It seems such a waste of resources
All that suffering’s a terrible pity
Especially when you consider the thought
That, generally, men ain’t that picky
They like to suggest that they’d only
Consider a model or WAG
When actually there’s not a woman alive
That some bloke or other won’t shag
It’s a blatantly sexist assertion
But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong
All that alpha male crap masks the obvious fact
That we’ve had the power all along
They’re desperate to stop women twigging
They’d fuck a frog if it stopped hopping
You don’t have to try to entice a straight guy
You’re sexy just doing the shopping
You’re sexy because you’re a woman
With, or without, teeth or hair
You’re the unconquered peak of the mountain
You’re sexy – because you are there
You’re sexy from every perspective
Each crevice and fold a delight
You’re sexy with scars, you’d be sexy with SARS
Men don’t put up much of a fight
So girls, ditch the worry and torment
Buy some cake and the next dress size up
You could be ninety-three, 30 stone, reek of pee
I guarantee – you’d get a fuck

Porn
I don't like Californian porn,
That bland, soulless performance
Where all the girls are perfect tens
And the cocks are all enormous

And no one ever drops a fart
Or laughs, or has a breather
And everybody comes on time
(Which doesn't happen either)

It's not that I don't like a wank
Unless I'm ill or sad
And if a porno gets me off
I don't think that's so bad

But I prefer the amateur
It's much more masturbatory
And knocks the spots off money-shots
False tits and other fakery

My problem with that Hollywood stuff's
Not just that it's appalling
In pandering to cruel stereotypes -
It's all so fucking boring

Let's see some real people, please
With their joyous imperfections
Their bold patches and wobbly bits
And minor skin infections

Let's turn to porn that's made with love
For fun, and freely shared
With every kind of body you could think of
If you dared

Let's celebrate each size and shape
In a porno jamboree
Let's watch a paraplegic romp
With a horny amputee

The more we break from Hollywood fake
The more its power diminishes
And shouldn't we be waging war
On fascist body images?

So let's hear it for home-made porn
The quirky and erratic
It's not got everybody's vote
But it's fucking democratic!

A difficult act to follow, for sure.



Rising to that challenge - and satisfying the "Bond" segment rather than the "smut" theme, Mr Mark O'Connell read for us some extracts from his well-reviewed Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan - described by one critic as "a love-letter to James Bond, Duran Duran title songs and bolting down your tea quick enough to watch Roger Moore falling out of a plane without a parachute" - which apparently has a foreword by Mark Gatiss and an addendum by Maud Adams (from Octopussy).

The story revolves around our hero's transference of childish interest in the likes of Star Wars and superheroes in the 80s to a lifelong obsession with all things James Bond. Beautifully written, Mr O'Connell captures the parallel weird feelings of puberty as experienced by an emerging gay teen, and the thrill of finding out that your granddad once chauffeured Cubby Broccoli around!

Superb. We loved it, as always - the readers, the buzz, the view from the top of the Royal Festival Hall... and the gossip.



I'm quite upset at the fact I will likely miss next month's outing - it clashes with a one-off event at the quirky and wondrous Petrie Museum of Egyptology for LGBT History Month [more about that soon] featuring the legend that is Bette Bourne! It's like the old adage about London buses - you wait ages for a first-class intelligent gay-themed evening's entertainment, and then two come along, all at once.

The next Polari is on Tuesday 26th February, and features Clare Summerskill, Gerry Potter, John McCullough, Marion Husband and Beatrice Hitchman.

Prizes, surprises, gay horses, cami-knickers, schoolmarms and cocks in frocks

John-John, Ange, Emma, Paul and I had our glad-rags on (well, in Miss Bourgeois's case her best cami-knickers - very "Kit Kat Club"!) for the much-anticipated fifth birthday of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari, hosted by "proud Dad" Mr Paul Burston (of course).







Once more resplendent in a flamboyant array of costumes, he introduced to our star-studded audience (including the very lovely Max Wallis, Steven Appleby, Lauren Henderson/Rebecca Chance, Carl Oprey/Charlie Bauer, [a Louise Brooks-bewigged] VG Lee, Toby Tobes, Peter Daniels, DJ Connell, Terry Ronald, North Morgan, Vicky Ryder et al) yet another fine ensemble of talent, for our delectation...



Opening the show, we had the welcome return of Mr Neil Alexander, whose pithy (and sometimes filthy) poetry is always a joy. Such as this:

Fitlad
I’m gonna ruin U fella,
he says
Give yer a good
sandpapering.
Gonna stubble rub U
black n blue.
He’s all talk.
White paint
on grey flannel,
a tongue
licking, thumb
clicking Adidas Adonis.
Dog tag,
ankle tagged,
a number two boss
back and sides:
his hot cockney ring
finger
wheedling me in,
my Veet fleeced cheeks,
his Lynx kissed skin.
Open up wide, he says.
Suck my big cock.
He never mentions
Kylie - or his PhD
on Iris Murdoch.

Fab!



Without further ado, it was the turn of a Polari virgin (although I'm not sure "virgin" is really in her repertoire!) - Mr/Miss Jeff Kristian, host of many a salacious evening at Soho's Molly Moggs cabaret bar, and TV celebrity drag queen-turned-author. His debut novel Where D'Ya Put Yer Willy? sounds an absolute hoot, from the piece he read. Just the novel's description alone is enough to make you giggle:

"Upon the sudden murder of Jewish drag queen Letitia Von Schabernacket, closeted Essex geezer Michael is left a small fortune and fifty per-cent shares in a notorious Soho drag club, Sugar Sugar. But to inherit, he must become a drag queen at the club for six weeks under the guiding hands of his new drag sisters Connie and Chastity, as they try to hide him from the violent Essex mafia and unravel the devious plan that’s hideously thrown them all together."

Camp as tits, dear! Apparently, the book began life a couple of years ago as a planned musical/radio show and evolved into print, and the songs from book will soon be available as an album on i-Tunes. Talk about multi-media!



Following the shower of sequins and lip-gloss of Mr Kristian, the equally flamboyant - in her "Swinging Sixties"-style "London Underground" frock - Miss Cherry Smyth grabbed our attention with her unique, thought-provoking and entertaining brand of poetry. Here she is in person, reading at a poetry event earlier this year:

Cherry Smyth at Open Ealing Poetry

The poems she read for us were a feast for the senses, and Ms Smyth is a lovely woman. Her latest poetry collection is Test, Orange available from Pindrop Press.



Paul was about to announce the fag-break, when it was his turn for a surprise! Our Ange, together with various cohorts among the "Children Of Polari" who use F***book (I don't, and I was not directly involved) had cooked up a big presentation for the fifth anniversary of Polari, and in recognition of Paul's sterling and tireless work in getting such a multifarious miscellany of authors and performers together to entertain us every month. Champagne, a card with specially-commissioned artwork by Jane Eccles (below), a book of photographs from Polari through the years, a t-shirt and much more in a "goody-bag" of treats. Applause all round, I think!



After the break (all-too-brief it turned out, as the queue at the bar downstairs - it has draught rather than bottled beer - meant I stumbled back in after the lights had gone down) it was time for another superb treat!



In an astounding pas de deux, BAFTA-winner Daniel Rigby (who was so brilliant as Eric Morecambe in the BBC dramatised biography Eric and Ernie) and writer Robbie Hudson gave a hilarious (and unexpected, as it was not on the Southbank's bill for the evening) performance of their Radio 4 comedy-drama Warhorses of Letters - a series of love letters between two gay horses(!) on opposing sides during the Napoleonic Wars. Of course. Letters that include this opening gambit by the love-struck Copenhagen:

"Dear Marengo brackets Napoleon's horse close brackets,

I've never written a letter like this before. You probably get hundreds of them and this one might never arrive anyway, because of the wars smiley face, but I would never forgive myself if I didn't send it and so here it is. I have seen pictures of you. You are literally an oil painting. I don't know how you could look so amazing with that dumpy Napoleon on your back.

...You are an Arabian too, aren't you? Maybe we are distant cousins even! That doesn't matter for horses of course. I am only two and you are at least twelve, but that also doesn't matter for horses, as you know. Anyway, people tell me I look older than two.

I am a racehorse. It is so lucky that I didn't become a warhorse, or we'd have been mortal enemies, and that would be a nightmare. The word nightmare always makes me think of lady horses that want to seduce me. Lady horses, or mares, are always trying to seduce me. They don't get very far.

Maybe you are only interested in lady horses brackets mares close brackets, but when I saw the pictures, my equine gaydar pointed due south wink.

I hope you reply.

Love,

Copenhagen, kiss kiss hoofprint

And so it goes on - excellent and hilarious stuff, indeed. We were in stitches!

The BBC apparently thinks so highly of it that the series - featuring Stephen Fry as the snobbish Marengo and Mr Rigby as Copenhagen - returns to the airwaves on Wednesday 28th November. Listen to some clips.



How does one follow that? With another "double-act" of course, as our headline reader Susie Boyt [she of the Judy Garland obsession that led me to be able to wear the diminutive diva's hat at Polari in February 2009] was joined by the effervescent Suzi Feay ["two Susies for the price of one!"] to play out the slightly twitchy conversation between a schoolmarm and one of her over-enthusiastic pupils. Here is just a snippet of the passage that she/they read from her forthcoming novel The Small Hours:

To know someone well without a scrap of evidence. Was there a hero bold who held Miss McGee’s heart? What, for that matter, was her daily lunch routine? Of course, it was probably vegetable soup, of a refined calibre, naturally, half a sandwich to follow, on some exquisite bread, but it wasn’t quite the same as actually knowing.

Of course, Miss McGee didn't for a second give anything away. Her garments, well fashioned from high class materials in plain shades, were almost extravagantly nondescript: skirts, jerseys, neat shift-style day dresses, shoes, nothing creased or mended or outlandish, yet what they said, these assorted, irreproachable clothes, depended on the way they were worn, and the way they were worn was exactly what it was impossible to read. There was nothing in her you could pin down: her hair of uncertain colour, her skin of indeterminate years. She was a sort of mouse de luxe; in fact she was Supermouse. She could be anything you wanted.

‘It’s nearly time, isn’t it?’ Harriet said. The clock’s black hands on the table between them could not tell a lie. ‘Nearly time,’ echoed Miss McGee, with an indulgent quarter smile.

And then Harriet could not wait a moment longer, her walls came down, her banks broke. ‘You, you’ve just helped me so much,’ she cried out to the woman opposite her who had loved her more than anyone she knew. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. Wouldn’t want to be. Thank you! Thank you so so much! I thought endlessly about a present, the perfect thing, but nothing seemed good enough – good enough! - and then, I suppose, what I’m certain I knew you’d most like from me was nothing at all, and so I reined myself in. Which doesn’t exactly come naturally, as you know. I do wish I’d brought something now. For my own sake in a way. When I act against my feelings I always get into hot water.’ She spoke the simple words as though a motto she had memorised.

Harriet closed her eyes briefly. Miss McGee had torn away great swathes of unfactual landscape, they had done it together. The colour of everything was compromised when the world failed you at every turn. Miss McGee saw this completely and she saw just as strongly that it wasn’t at all true. They resituated things, they resuscitated and reframed. They had a rampage. Both admitted after time that their subject had a lot of potential; this child they were raising together could be powerful and headstrong - some of its judgements were entirely tyrannical - but these could be good things.

‘And I saw such a beautiful bowl from the nineteen fifties, quite severe, architectural somehow, very dark brown with a thin white line beneath the lip. It was so discreet. And I very nearly got it for you. I would have done, but there was a tiny chip at the base I wasn’t happy about, thought it might tempt fate somehow. Not even sure what I mean by that. Send me scurrying back before the year was out perhaps. Wish I had got it now, perhaps it’s not too late, but anyway, for now, a million thank-yous!’

Miss McGee moved her head a fraction. Was there a twelve degree upsurge in her thinnish, shallow smile? Was she about to utter, ‘De rien!’ or ‘The pleasure, my good fellow, was all mine?’ Or ‘Oh! Come Come, My Dear’. Miss McGee, intelligent, Kleinian, remote had never once called her My Dear. It would have been to them both utterly scandalous.

Harriet had not quite stopped talking. One minute twenty two, she saw.

‘It’s odd in a way but for years and years, when you think about it, I put my happiness completely in your hands, didn’t I? And for some of those years, probably for most of them you were the most important person in my life and I suppose, you know, what I’m trying to say, I think, is that’s a very big thing to lie between two people.’

Miss McGee nodded. ‘Yes it is,’ she said.

‘And I suppose, I can’t help thinking was it very, I don’t know, very mad of me almost to throw myself into things so, so fully, to give myself over to it so completely, the process? I mean I’m sure not everyone does that … Of course, obviously it may have helped things to work, helped the things we were talking about to … to take, but I don’t know…’

Miss McGee looked at her with a sort of shimmering frankness. ‘It was brave of you,’ she said. ‘It was very brave.’

Tears started in the suburbs of Harriet’s eyes. She spoke slowly and with emphasis. ‘Well, you say brave, but really it was you... what I mean is, it was you who made throwing myself into things seem like the wisest and the safest, seem like the only thing to do.’

There. There was their perfect ending gleaming lustrous before them.

Both women exhaled. Harriet blinked. All it would take now was for her to rise from her chair and murmur another thank you and issue a firm goodbye, then walk clearly and with strong direction out of this room once and for all. But, it transpired, there was a postscript. She was still sitting firmly in her seat. She had always been hopeless at secrets. Well that was not strictly true but - Besides, could you really, sensibly, squander your last thirty seven-seconds with the best person you knew?’

Intriguing - and brilliant!

It was not over yet, folks. It was time for the announcement of the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2012! Suzi Feay joined Paul B and Linda Riley of Square Peg Media (who donated the £1000 prize) to make the presentation. And the proud winner - and he looked genuinely stunned by the announcement - is the lovely John McCullough, poet and author of the excellent collection The Frost Fairs. A well-deserved honour!



As Paul B said: "The judges were impressed with the polish and precision of the language, the confidence of the writing and the scope of the work. The Frost Fairs isn’t a one-note collection, but one that covers many themes and strikes many chords, from modern transatlantic relationships to hidden gay lives from the past. It’s also surprisingly mature for a first book - a debut which doesn’t feel like a debut.”

Here is just one poem from this fine work - and possibly one of the best evocations of Brighton I have read:

Reading Frank O’Hara on the Brighton Express
I might believe we are stationary.
It’s only everything out there kindly
hurtling past, the grey verticals of Clapham
revealed as bars of a song. I might lend my ear
to catch cirrus chit-chat then touch down
at Gatwick and watch parked cars nuzzle
in tidy rows. Which reminds me to sort
my manners out, to raise a hand to waving trees
whizzing backwards, plastic bags in their branches
brilliant flags announcing carnivals
in Balcombe, Wivelsfield, Hassocks.

I could trill like a starling myself, bless everything
outside and within this case of human fireworks:
the silver-chained lads probing Burger King bags
like lucky dips; the Tannoy woman who is Our Lady,
surely, with a mobile altar of Ribena and Coke;
the suits with Guardians hiding Heat magazine.

I might realize Brighton doesn’t exist,
is being invented for our arrival,
the shops plugged in, the prom laid down,
the smiles carved in random pebbles
there where buses have names
so we can get knocked down by Dusty Springfield.

I could conjure up crowds auditioning
for the North Laine, all dreadlocks and posturing,
benefits and big schemes, with different kinds
of queen walking different kinds of dog –
vital clutter that dashes or repairs
Brighton dreams, that brings death or a boon
for the West Pier, swaying over the surf.

It all glides on towards salt-caked houses
and the united panes of Betjeman’s station,
though it’s not him but you, Frank, who I picture
in the station café, coughing your lungs out
above a latte as you eye the black waiter.

In just a moment I shall pass the gates
of heaven and find you,
my memories of travel left in the ticket machine
as we stroll out down Queens Road,
the sun on our skin, the sea shining so whitely
that we stop and stare and keep on staring.

Breath-taking.





With resounding applause for Mr McCullough, and for the evening's readers, it was time, reluctantly for the evening to end with the usual mingling - it is true what they all say, Polari is one of the best evenings in town, and the crowd is definitely one of the friendliest anywhere!

Our next outing (because of Xmas) is early - on 10th December, and among the crackers (geddit?) on the bill is Bethan Roberts, author of My Policeman. Many more will be announced soon, no doubt...

As always. I am looking forward to it!

UPDATE! (20:45): Just found out that "A Very Polari Christmas" will also include the delightful Helen Smith, Diriye Osman, the fantabulosa Marcus Reeves and... the return of the magnificent Celine Hispiche!

I'm looking forward to it even more now!

Polari

Purple willies, homo-friendly youths, a haunted foster-child and stiletto heels on cobbles

We braved the elements last night to get to our beloved Polari ("London's peerless literary salon") for the last outing before its summer break (there isn't one in August), and were treated to a fine and varied evening again!

Paul Burston, master of the quick-change ("the Grace Jones of literary events" indeed!), started as he meant to go on - in "50 Shades of Grey" (not the book, the outfits) to suit the weather - before introducing the first of our guests, Vicky Ryder.



One of no fewer than three nominees for the Polari First Book Prize 2012 [more later], to read for us, Ms Ryder's tale of a strange childhood in sunny Nuneaton Ey up and Away provided a much-needed slice of jollity to open the evening. Including this piece:

The shopping bags landed with a thump on the kitchen floor and she raced past me to the toilet.
"I've done a bit in my pants", she shouted, as I timed her wee with the red second hand of my new Timex watch.
Fifty four seconds. Disgusting.
I hoped it would never happen to me.

"Tea up, Mother" shouted my mother towards the back toilet, and my nan emerged blowing her relief into the air like cigar smoke.

She looked down at me disapprovingly.
"Jack Moss showed himself off on the bus and Madam here sat staring at him, as bold as you like".
"It was purple, Mother", I ventured.
"You should have seen it".

My mother shook her head, looking at me as though there might have been a mix up at the hospital.
"Dirty beggar", said my nan. "He wants locking up".

I yearned to be dangerous and to this end had forced the boys in my street to have a look at my own private parts, even to touch them.
But they had not been frightened.
Merely bored and obedient.

"You've got to feel sorry for the family, though, haven't you?" said Nan. "She's a lovely girl. She works in the hairdresser's on the corner of Pool Bank and Abbey Green."

"It's awful".
I tried desperately to feel sorry for the family but could only see them surrounded in glory.

The glory of their tragedy.
They were like the Kennedys.
They would salute and lose both legs to cancer.
Their eyes would shine with a shared sadness and they would be beautiful.
All because of one small, purple piece of flesh that should have stayed nestled inside a pair of Co-op pants.

"Why didn't you tell the bus driver?" my mother asked.

"What, and have to change hairdressers?" said my nan.
"Don't be daft"

Hilarious.

"How do you follow that?" was the question our next speaker Mark McCormack asked. "With some dull, dry statistics, of course!" However, the research that he has painstakingly put together is very much more than that.



Mr McCormack's study of adolescent boys in three senior schools in the UK provides a positive message to counter all the media-grabbing horror stories about anti-gay bullying in our schools. In the interviews he conducted for his book The Declining Significance of Homophobia he finds evidence of how heterosexual male students are inclusive of their gay peers and proud of their pro-gay attitudes. He finds that being gay does not negatively affect a boy’s popularity, but being homophobic does. Not dry. Not dull - very uplifting, actually!



Closing the triple-bill for the first half was a last-minute substitution. Michael Wynne was due to read from his Confessions of a Sex Addict, but could not attend [one wonders what had distracted him...] so former Literary Editor at The Independent on Sunday and stalwart "friend of Polari" Suzi Feay stepped into the breach. Paul had apparently asked her to "be filthy", and some of the pieces were mildly near the knuckle - but in the main they were very accomplished, sometimes almost Gothic in their impact! An interesting turnaround ("poacher turned game-keeper"?) for a journalist to enter the world of fiction, and we wish her every success with it.



After the break it was the turn of the rather sexy Mr Stuart Wakefield. His novel Body of Water appears to be unsettling stuff, even from the early passage he read to us. The story - of a very odd, disturbed boy fostered by well-meaning middle-class parents - gave only the merest hint that there is something deeper, darker to come, but was gripping and absorbing nonetheless.

Three months into my placement with them and they still hadn't cracked. I knew I should ease up but my compulsion to misbehave, to find out how much they were prepared to live with, was too strong.

I spat in my dinner if I didn't like it, then I spat in theirs. I lashed out at them when they reprimanded me. Most nights I sneaked out of my room to hang out with the rough kids on Primrose Hill.

But Ruth seemed impervious to my wrongdoing. She regularly picked me up from the local police station, oozing charm and issuing apologies to all concerned. A quiet word with the sergeant and everyone would be smiling. We were usually on our way within a few minutes.

"What did you say to them?" I said the last time, my feet up on the dashboard of the car.
"I tell them what you're really doing".
"What's that?"
"You know what; now put your feet down"
How could she know me so well? We drove in silence but she caught me looking at her a few times. She smiled at me and patted me on the leg. We didn't need to speak...

...I, by the time I started secondary school, became Leven, a nickname representing the eleventh child they had fostered."

Of course, one of Leven's secrets emerges as he comes to the realisation that he is gay. His infatuation with the rugby-boy son of the equally fractured family next door is obviously just the beginning of his adventures...

Fab stuff, indeed! John-John bought a copy of the book, which Mr Wakefield duly signed.



And so it was time for our "star turn" - the fabulous and fascinating Alex Drummond! We had a reading from the immaculately coiffured transgender role model Alex at a previous Polari, and once again we were treated to an intimate revelation about the experience of stepping out - for the first time - in female garb; an extract from his/her new book Grrl Alex (parts of which were previously collected together under the title Queering the Tranny).

And here is Alex reading that very piece - wonderful!

Alex Drummond - Grrl Alex

As the hairspray and stilettos faded off stage, it was time for Paul to announce the long-list for this year's Polari First Book Prize. He was joined by two of the judges - Suzi Feay (again) and Joe Storey-Scott, of Prowler Soho, who read the rules of the prize:

The Polari Prize is for a first book which explores the LGBT experience and is open to any work of poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction published in the UK in English within the twelve months of the deadline for submissions (this year 1st February, 2012). Self-published works in both print and digital formats are eligible for submission.

The ten long listed books are:

• Rory's Boys by Alan Clark (Bliss/Arcadia Books)
• Pennance by Claire Ashton (self published on Kindle)
• The Frost Fairs by John McCullogh (Salt)
• Becoming Nancy by Terry Ronald (Transworld)
• Exit Through The Wound by North Morgan (Limehouse Books)
• Body of Water by Stuart Wakefield (self published)
• Modern Love by Max Wallis (Flap)
• Ey Up and Away by Vicky Ryder (Wandering Star Press)
• Grrl Alex by Alex Drummond, (self published)
• Perking The Pansies by Jack Scott (Summertime Publishing)

All good! [Although I must admit to being absolutely entranced by Becoming Nancy] Anyway, the short list will be announced in September. The winner will be announced at the Polari 5th Birthday on Monday 26th November - and for the first time this year, there is a prize of £1000 (courtesy of Square Peg Media, publishers of G3 and Out In The City).



What a fab evening!

Our next Polari is not until 24th September (how will we cope?) - but it's back with a bang, with none other than the genius Jonathan Harvey, the man behind house favourites here at Dolores Delargo Towers: the play and movie Beautiful Thing, the wonderful TV series Beautiful People and the Pet Shop Boys musical Closer to Heaven (as well as Kathy Burke's Gimme Gimme Gimme, Dawn French's Murder Most Horrid and episodes of Coronation Street)!

Also on the bill are the Warhol-ite performance artiste Penny Arcade, plus authors Adam Lowe and Adrian Dalton.

We love Polari!