The Gay Blade

Why Ban Poppers?  Amyl. Poppers. Rush. Jungle Juice. Leather Cleaner. "Room Deodorizer" (That one always puzzled me in my teens when I'd see that description in gay magazines - why did gay men need to deodorise their rooms so much?). They've been part of gay men's life from before I was around, and I've been around a while. From dance floors to bedrooms, we've had a lot of fun with them, one of the most innocent of all recreational drugs. The rumour is that they used to pump them through the air-con at Alfies in the 80s, but I don't know if that is true. We certainly used to take them out dancing, and of course for sex after dancing. Some dancefloors stank of them. Getting your arm jostled as you had the bottle up to your nostril and getting a dose up your nose was a hazard. I worked on Craccum a bit when I was at University, and I remember another volunteer was a chem student and brought a marmite jar full of his own pure product made in the universit...

I gather I'm in a minority, but I really like man-buns. I've heard so many friends put them down. Suffering from GOMS (Grumpy Old Man Syndrome) I think. I always think criticising the hair of a younger generation is a dangerous sign that the speaker is getting conformist, slipping into the same sort of middle-aged attitudes we hated as kids and about to launch into "Back in MY day we never ..." sort of platitudes. I regret that I have never had long hair. When it was in in the 60s and 70s I was too young, and Kings Prep had a strict "no hair touching the collar" rule. Kings College was a little more relaxed, and longer hair had become normal by then. But by the time I left school and could make my own decisions punk was in and my hair was short, and dyed in as many colours as I could find. My hairdresser once stole a lime green from a colleague for me. My older brothers, especially the oldest two, really went for long hair in a big way. I remembe...

Top? Bottom? Pitcher? Catcher? Vers? Vers/Top? Vers/Bottom? Pig Bottom? Dom Top? I mean, do you prefer to fuck or get fucked? Or do you really enjoy both? Or are you desperate and will do anything? For gay men, these words matter. You see them scattered all over internet hookup sites, used as ways of signalling just what we like to do in bed. That's not that new really. In the old days we used to use a bunch of keys on a belt-hook, or a bandanna. If you wore it on the right, you were a bottom, if on the left, you were a top. You still see it a bit in the leather world, but as a common code among gay men it seems to have pretty much gone. And I remember reading that back in the 50s and early 60s, a lot of gay men said they only fucked, part of not taking on a femme identity. That's changed now. And it talks pretty openly about arse-fucking too, when you use those words. That's a subject that a lot of people don't like to talk about, but it's a core part of ga...