"Cruising-Curious"

I feel like Belle de Jour.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by Time Out to write an article about the reality of cruising in London in 2010 for their Sex Issue. I was excited at the prospect, and took to burying myself in the British Library, lost in social histories of gay London and dense queer theory debates.

Fascinating as the research was, it all felt slightly too academic. Here I was in my ivory tower writing an article about strangers fucking in public, without having any experience of what it was actually like to be that stranger or that one being fucked. I had to take it to the streets.

The following article was the fruit of my labours - an edited version of which appears in this week's Time Out:

As my eyes adjust to the dimness, I begin to make out the figures who line the path. I give each one the up-and-down – there are teenagers and septuagenarians, men who dress like shop workers next to city slickers. This is not Gaydar, where you scroll through pages of guys before settling on one – this is personal.

It was with trepidation and buzzing excitement that I’d clambered on to Hampstead Heath on this balmy spring evening. Sweaty-palmed, I’d navigated the muddy slope leading down to the West Heath from Jack Straw’s Castle, all the time thinking: Why am I doing this? As soon as I reached the main path, it was clear that something queer was going on. And now, with solitary men sizing each other up, and sizing me up, there’s no going back: I’m cruising, for the first time in my life. I quickly figure out the ground rules: talking is the ultimate no-no. Instead, communication is made thorough looks, raised eyebrows, and the subtlest of gestures. A stoke of the eyebrow means you’re interested, a jerk of the head indicates ‘follow me’, a couple of pats on the forearm ‘no, thank you’.

I’d always been put-off by the idea of cruising. Not that I had anything against it, you understand – it just seemed dangerous, messy, and cold. London has gay bars and clubs catering to every niche – Heaven in Charing Cross for twinks (slim young-looking boys), XXL in London Bridge for bears (heavy-set and hirsute guys), The George & Dragon in Shoreditch for hipsters – so why would I settle for having sex with just anyone on Hampstead Heath?

Cruising is nothing new. In the eighteenth century, gentlemen would gather in private rooms known as ‘molly houses’ to cross-dress and meet sexual partners, away from the judgemental eyes of society and the law. But, as charming as this was, it was chiefly the preserve of the wealthy, offering no relief for the everyday guy. So what was a closeted Georgian to do? Well, they took their illegal desires outside, and have done ever since. London’s parks became prime spots for men of low standing to get their rocks off, offering – unlike the street or urinals – a relative safety from observation. From St. James’s Park in the 1700s to Hyde Park in the 1920s, and to Russell Square in the latter half of the twentieth century, there is practically no open space in London that has not been appropriated by gay men for cruising at one point or another. Hampstead Heath really took off as a cruising hotspot after the World War II. Initially the ponds were where men went to see and be seen, but inevitably looking wasn’t enough. Men took their desires into the bushes, and in recent decades it’s the West Heath that’s become the hub of cruising activity.

Whereas cruising was a necessity in days gone by, these days it’s easier for a gay man to have sex than to buy a pint of milk. You can cruise guys on Gaydar at home, or with Grindr in your local Starbucks. Why trek through the mud on Hampstead Heath looking for sex when you can have it in the comfort and privacy of your own bedroom?

‘So why am I here?’ I ask myself, stumbling through the murky Heath’s overgrowth. Suddenly ‘UpforitE2’ on Gaydar, who lives a few doors down from me, seems increasingly appealing. Beginning to feel emboldened, I give the guys characters: there’s a Sci-Fi Nerd (a cute chubby teenager with floppy dark hair), Shell Suit (you couldn’t not hear him coming) and Sal (who bears an uncanny resemblance to the torturously closeted Mad Men character of the same name) among many others.

It’s time to take the plunge. I attempt to cruise a tight T-shirt clad guy who wouldn’t look out of place on the cover of Men’s Health. While I’m desperately trying to make eye-contact, he gives me an incredulous look and pointedly turns his head away. Although this is about as anonymous as sex gets, that doesn’t mean that it’s entirely without emotion – and getting snubbed hurts.

The cruising ground has an unspoken sense of camaraderie, though. As I squelch through the dirt I hear a voice: ‘Get out the mud!’ I turn to see a guy in his thirties laughing, smiling at me – he’s a seasoned cruiser, I’m a newbie, and we’re both in on the joke. ‘Thanks’, I mutter, gratefully returning the smile and moving on to the dry path. We all know what we’re doing is taboo, and we’re all in this together. Cruisers are willing to help a brother out, and, surprisingly, it feels safe.

So, is there anything sexy about looking over your shoulder the whole time for police, getting scratched to death by thorns, and having the life buggered out of you by a man you wouldn’t look twice at in a bar? Frankly, there is.

Cruising liberates you from the idea of what a hook-up should look like. I would be lying if I said that the Heath is a place where appearance and age are irrelevant, but it is true that in the gloom these things matter a lot less. The fleeting encounters you have when cruising lead to an understanding of the have nots in gay culture – the flabby, the closeted, the small-dicked.

Technology has permanently changed the face of cruising, taking away the risk, the mess – and a lot of the excitement. Cruising on the web is a double-edged sword – simultaneously creating virtual intimacy, yet often failing to deliver actual human contact. It would be callous to dismiss the internet as only creating isolation, though. Websites dedicated to old-school cruising are vital in spreading knowledge of established cruising spots to the uninitiated, and offering tips on safety and etiquette – I don’t know what I’d have done without squirt.org.

My night on the Heath was the hottest I’ve had all year. I got on the tube not only sexually gratified, but with a feeling that I’d been a part of something special – and nothing about it felt sleazy. Will I do it again? Try and stop me!

Beehives and Becky Sharp

Since last Autumn, there's been one beehive that I haven't been able to get out of my mind. Not Gaga's gravity-defying riot of lilac, Joan Holloway's chic sweep, or even - I'm embarrassed to admit - Tracy Turnblad's hair-hopping hootenanny. No, my mind always returns to the elegant up-do of London-based gallerist Maureen Paley.


I'd first read about Paley in the preview Issue 0 of The Gentlewoman, where she talks of her love for Sissinghurst and Vita Sackville-West's gardens ('very inspirational'), setting up her first gallery in her Hackney home in 1984, and her inimitable beehive. She comes across as a forthright businesswoman, but what's really affecting is her sense of emotion and wonder. I've never been more tempted to see an astrologer than after reading Paley's description of seeing a Jungian psychologist who reads the stars scientifically. 'It was like consulting an oracle', Paley says, 'she described a huge task I would undertake'. But the accompanying Paul Wetherall portraits really consolidated my appreciation for Maureen and her mop - attained simply by backcombing and hairspray.

Is admiration for a hairstyle a justifiable reason for visiting a gallery? That remains to be seen - but I can certainly think of worse motives. Last week, I trotted down to Bethnal Green to check out Donald Urquhart's Bi at Maureen Paley's two adjacent galleries. Urquhart has fascination with divas of yesteryear - literary heroines, silver-screen stars and faded icons. His stark black-and-white drawing style recalls graphic 1940s Hollywood publicity shots, but it also has a hand-drawn emotionality reminiscent of comic books.

Before achieving recognition as an artist, Donald Urquhart had been a postman, fashion journalist and party promoter. When he was rejected from Glasgow Art School in the 80s, he travelled from his native Scotland to become a part of the thriving London performance art scene headed up by Leigh Bowery. In the 90s he ran a club night called The Beautiful Bend, which brought his first taste of success in the art world. At The Beautiful Bend, Urquhart plastered the club walls with photocopied line-drawings of gay characters, gothic plague-doctors and camp heroines. It was only a matter of time before his work was spotted by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, and later she of the beehive herself, Maureen Paley.

Bi is a curious title for an art exhibition. On the surface, it refers to the fact that this show takes back in two different spaces, a couple of doors down the road from each other. But it the name is also reflective of the diversity of Urquhart's subject matter - as he says, 'biographical works as well as an array of bitter pieces, instructional wall charts and studies in style.' Urquhart combines elements from disparate sources to create a new enquiring subject.

Take, for example, Urquhart's new muse in Bi - Becky Sharp, the mendacious anti-heroine of Vanity Fair. In Urquhart's portraits, Becky appears as Bette Davis, whose acid-tongued persona is a perfect fit for the character.

The drawings of Bette in the role function as a trailer for a Davis-starring Vanity Fair adaptation that doesn’t exist. We all know the feeling of building up our own (often inaccurate) picture of what a fictional character looks like, and creating our own visions of the person in our mind's eye. Urquhart gives us a glimpse into his own private adaptation, fusing the real and the fictional in order to create something that is ambiguous in its could-have-been-ness. Urquhart's vision is essentially a more subtle version of Francesco Vezzoli’s Trailer for the Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula, a teaser for a movie that never has and never will exist.

His Joan Crawford As Mildred Pierce is a stark, flattened-out representation of the star - but this is no Warhol's Marylin. Whereas Warhol made Monroe luridly reproducible as a comment on her commodification, Urquhart re-infuses Crawford's image with humanity and vulnerability. His work recalls scrapbook doodlings of movie stars - complete with epigrammatic quotations – and each piece bears the marks of love and affection. None of this is beyond a joke, though, and you only have to look at his 2007 Joan Crawford Alphabet (F for ‘Fuck-me pumps, anyone?) to see that Urquhart gets it.

Fundamentally, Urquhart is interested in the women behind the image. His admiration is not for the glossy surface- his fetish is for the real, often tragic, people beneath. His Little Edie is tender, not grotesque; his Crawford is poised, ready for whatever the world has to throw at her. In Bi, we experience Urquhart's heroines as idiosyncratically as he does, and are encouraged to join him in appreciation.

Bi by Donald Urquhart is at Maureen Paley until 23 May.

For more on Donald Urquhart, check out his excellent article Four Women in MAP.

[Below: Little Edie Flower, 2007; Donald Urquhart at the Miami Ball of Artists, 2007]

Creamy Goodness

My talented and charming friend Stuart Sandford just opened his first ever solo show - entitled TWINK - at Gallery Daeppen in Basel, Switzerland. His work explores adolescent sexuality and pin-up fetishism (themes never far from my mind) and I was flattered when he asked me to write the exhibition text for the show.

TWINK by Stuart Sandford is at Gallery Daeppen, Basel, until May 8th.

Check it out if you can!

Not Myra's Place

I almost called this blog something completely different – ‘Myra’s Place’, after Gore Vidal’s heroine Myra Breckinridge. I recently read Myra Breckinridge, and was enthralled (and half-appalled). Myra is a Hollywood-obsessed dame living in 1960s Los Angeles, and the novel takes the form of her diary. She is also – and I quote – ‘a dish, and never forget it, you mother-fuckers’.

The novel follows Myra on her quest for vengeance against the male species. You see, her recently-deceased husband Myron was a ‘fag’, and a power-bottom to the extreme who aimed to possess (straight) men by taking their forbidden cock. Alas, Myron’s insatiable lust for power (i.e. cock) just couldn’t be satisfied, and he killed himself. So Myra takes it into her hands to exercise revenge on the male species, to emasculate them and rob men of their macho supremacist bullshit for once and for all.

Sure, there’s not much that pisses me off more than macho bullshit, and I toyed with the idea of playing Myra. She is, after all, full of fascinating theories, not least her insight that between 1935 and 1945 no irrelevant film was made in the USA, and in these movies – only these – the full spectrum of the human condition can be glimpsed. But, ultimately, playing Myra was too big a task for me. I find the films of Hollywood’s Golden Age fascinating – and I plan to dedicate a number of blog entries to them – but many of them are transparently propagandistic and inane star vehicles.

So I decided to name the blog after a line from one of one of my favourite movies – the 1958 Douglas Sirk film Imitation of Life. It’s often forgotten these days, but at the time it was Universal’s highest-earning film – surpassed only by Jaws in 1975. The film is a double-headed maternal melodrama – a white mother who neglects her daughter in view of her career, and a black mother whose mixed-race daughter runs away to make her own life as ‘white.’

Let’s fact it though – Ibsen this ain’t. The script is cliché-laden and often saccharine to the point of sickliness. With a lesser director, Imitation of Life would be close to unwatchable, but through Douglas Sirk’s (Brecht-trained) lens, Imitation of Life becomes a painstaking exercise in human selfishness, claustrophobia, and miscommunication. It’s one of the most pessimistic films I’ve ever seen.

About halfway through the movie, a neckerchief-clad John Gavin confesses to Lana Turner that he’s bored of his life as an Ad Man. Flute trilling in the background, he utters the words that every homo the world over has felt at one time or another:‘Did you ever get the urge to let yourself go and follow the wind or a star, maybe even a dusty old rainbow?’ To explain the significance of the metaphor would be an insult to your intelligence.

I imagine Douglas Sirk reading this passage in the script for the first time, thinking that it was ridiculous, and what should he do? Tone it down or camp it up? He trusses Gavin up like a Christmas tree and hams up the melodramatic music – Lana Turner, of course, needs little help in looking comically expressionless.

And, like Sirk, we can react, we can laugh, we can call 'bullshit'!

This will be a blog about movies and being a homo in London, and I’m very happy to have you here.