Whilst looking for a picture to represent this piece I came across the blog of Paul Keane, 'Crisperanto'. In it he recounts a visit by Quentin Crisp to the Yale Divinity School, one quote from this talk sums up the following piece, 'I have accepted the eternal disgrace of being someone who does not have an intimate relationship.' This is out of context and I cannot be sure of its placement, but it is a good place to start...
Imagine Quentin Crisp. Imagine him in all his glory, hat, scarf and smirk. According to his autobiography often out wearing sandals and bare toes, nail varnish on those toes, fantastic garish nail varnish. His face is painted, his manner is effeminate, he does not fit in and he walks down the street, he is braver than you. He is braver than me.
I once kissed a man on national television unashamedly, it effected my life for years and it still does. I went on a date today with a man I know well, I 'know' him, biblically, he is 'my man' - and I could not kiss him. Don't get me wrong, we sneaked in gropes and kisses in pubs across the city, but as he said 'I feel like I'm 16 again'. This was because all those displays of affection were grabbed when no-one was looking. In this context youth was not good, it was an expression of confinement, of censorship. Both of us were uncomfortable transmitting the fact of our affection to others, over the airwaves or even to those next to us for that matter.
To bring you up to speed, I'm too poor from studies to have my own place and he's moved home to save for a big trip abroad but we have known the luxury of privacy, that we could be alone to express affection. Now this is often denied and it has magnified the sensation of 'sensationlessness'. We are often affectionately and erotically mute in public. Now this is not to say that I stand in awe and cheer heterosexual couples groping one another or kissing in public, though maybe I should. The point is, they can do it... usually without censorship. This is all a summing up of the attitude that says 'fine, but don't push it in my face.' This is why we have bars, clubs, streets...ghettos. This is where we can do these things and to be honest I think I have seen more sexual freedom for heterosexual couples in 'gay' quarters too. This is all dandy, its what has been carved out through decades of suffering and political activism, we should be grateful and proud. Yet I want to fucking scream! WHY IN THIS BIOLOGICALLY, PSYCHOLOGICALLY AND CULTURALLY AWARE STATE OF AFFAIRS ARE WE STILL CENSORING OUR COMPLETELY NATURAL AFFECTIONS!? Sorry about that. Now, if you walk down a street in Uganda or Kenya and you will see men holding hands, next to stalls with newspapers calling for gays to be executed. What can we learn from this sorry state of affairs? That affection does not necessarily mean sex is going on behind closed doors? Perhaps. Go to a football match or a rugby match...plenty of men hugging, even kissing and yet no-one bats an eye.(Is it the same in Women's sports?). It depends on staging, on context and on performance. We will hold hands a little differently, kiss a little differently - too lingeringly, and it wont be because one of us kicked a ball between two erect posts - though maybe late on a Saturday night.
This display people recognise as another level of affection, it points to sexuality and to be intolerant of it is to be intolerant of its orientation, its objectification - us.
Despite so much advancement in the law many of us have grown up as queer in an environment intolerant to men holding hands or kissing, unless there's a pigs bladder involved. I like pork, black pudding even - but I just can't be bothered lugging parts of an inflated corpse round with me in order to gain the right to kiss. This needs to stop. Fantastically though younger people are beginning to flaunt it a little more, but again it is still staged, in university campuses, at festivals, its all so 1960's. Yet we should learn from history and I'm betting many young gay men don't know about the likes of Quentin or the drag queens of Stonewall. The older generation need to be a little more like Quentin once more. There has been prejudice, discrimination, AIDS, outright persecution and we're still here, slowly winning those wars, but at the cost of visibility in the everyday. 'Camp', that wonderful sensibility that gave at least a type of visibility is now all too often an insult. 'We want to see "ordinary" gays on TV!' I hear the people cry. I agree, there should be, there are, but I don't see them holding hands in Norwich High Street, Cornwall, Chester, anywhere but the Metropolis. 'Straight Acting' isn't normal either, its a type of 'camp' of 'drag', but one thats very afraid of standing out. This is not about fitting in, ladies and gentlemen, not yet. We need to face the fact that we are a minority, people will dislike us but when the hell did we give away to right to provoke? Thats what is needed, we have the law on our side now we need to take it for a spin and it is the older generation - the ones who have fought hardest and longest for it that should lead the way. The young (though some are showing their prowess) are so distracted by staged affections on social networking/hook up sites that they don't assume a missing performance of it, lets show it to them I say.
Sadly though, we are also our own victims, we have gotten used to subtlety in public so the war of affection is not against societies intolerance of a kiss on the High Street, its a war that must begin within ourselves. The first war of affection must be against our own affectations. This is the lesson Quentin was trying to teach so the rest of us at least would not have to carry the burden of affectionlessness.
In case anyone noticed the picture is John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp. Well done to any who noticed, I thought it would actually be quite an apt photo, but in sheer honor of the man himself here he is as Elizabeth I in Orlando.
Paul Keane's blog can be found at: http://crisperanto.blogspot.com/
