Of course, I’d dabbled in fetish—who hasn’t? I remember heading to Hard On in the nineties; I was in my twenties; I found it funny: everyone seemed to take it so very seriously. Obviously, I wasn’t ready, and also the scene wasn’t ready for me, or those like me. I was a femmy boy—I didn’t feel welcome in this underworld of hyper-masculinity. But the fetish subculture has transformed with the times, embracing trans-masculinity and those, like me, just doing things ‘their way’. Leathermen have edged the mainstream in film Pillion and, on the applications, you’ll find a ‘kinky’ tag on the profile of every other gentleman.
I was introduced to the pleasures of Recon by Piero Toto, a fellow fetishist and poet (we’re part of an elite set) who has translated one of the poems in the collection into Italian. We can blame him, then, for poetry touching upon dom/sub dynamics (‘His Master’s Voice’), gear and its price-tag (‘On the Privatisation of Pleasure’), the liberation of barebacking (‘Uphill Farming’). As someone who grew up in the shadow of the AIDS pandemic and had, pre-PrEP, almost never had sex sans condom (but could nevertheless be found crying with relief at the clap clinic, on occasion), this was something it took a while to get my head around.
And there’s been other stuff to work through: when I was a child, homophobic bullying was on the curriculum in every playground; when I was a teenager, it was sanctioned by government legislation. When I sank to my knees in an Oxford dormitory and (finally) became a ‘practising homosexual’, I also became a criminal—I was nineteen, the age of consent twenty-one—though that had nothing on coming out to my mum (who looked me up and down like I’d done a shit in the middle of her living room). The bad stuff doesn’t just disappear now that things are better, something I examine in ‘Scar Tissue (Mansize)’. ‘Lost Property’ looks at management of trauma with narcotics, and the difficulty of then managing relationships. But ‘Straight Shame’ finds that fractures with biological family can heal over time, ‘Medusa, Ma Sœur’ celebrates chosen sisters, and ‘A Good Likeness’ pays tribute to strong women like Madonna who’ve become gay icons.
Some queer icons get their own poems—Derek ‘Prospects’ Jarman, George ‘Sleeve Notes’ Michael, Freddie ‘Mercury Rising’ and Bette ‘Bourne Rad’. ‘A Gaylord’s Prayer’ traces queer ancestry back to antiquity; ‘Old Queen as Ecosystem’ salutes the pioneers of recent history. Queer venues past are honoured in ‘Blitz Club & Caravan’, the praises of the Vauxhall Tavern, still present, are sung in ‘Pleasure Gardening’, and ‘I Hear a Queerphony’ couldn’t have been written without another institution, one with whom I’ve played for almost three decades—London Gay Symphony Orchestra.
In the book’s introduction, I mention our recent performance of Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Both were gay men, and it’s not difficult to read the song ‘Somewhere’ as an expression of hope that ‘someday’ we’ll ‘find’ a ‘time’ and ‘place’ of acceptance for all of ‘us’. I found it incredibly moving to be part of that particular performance, with that particular group of musicians, because it feels as if, just as we’ve finally found somewhere like that place, and begun to build a home in it, they’re trying to tear the foundations back up again.
But we won’t let them. We’ll gather our protective gear and our strength from those who’ve gone before; our day can seem dark, but they defied darker, and I hope this collection will give others hope for our queer future.
Homography is out now. It’s available in paperback and ebook from inkandescent.co.uk and all good shops.
