The Gay Blade

I went to a book launch at The Women's Bookshop the night before we moved back to Level 3 lockdown here in Auckland. It was packed, a great night, a celebration. And deservedly so.  The books is "Crossing the Lines" by Brent Coutts, and it's excellent in so many ways. Just look at that cover!We've been doing this stuff way before Ru Paul. Crossing the Lines is a book that adds hugely to our understanding of the world of gay men in New Zealand, and it does this by giving us a rich historical context and background to a world few know much about or have thought of. If you think "gay history" seems a bit forbidding, don't be put off. This is fascinating, and more than that, it is in places deeply tender and moving. He is telling real stories of real gay men who might seem distant in time but whose lives I believe are familiar in so many way to our own. He shows us what it was like to be gay, more accurately to be homosexual, the term they used, in New Z...

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...

The term "homosexual" really seems to have fallen out favour these days, and I think that's a pity. I've noticed it for quite a while, but it really came home when I saw someone comment on a post on Facebook that attacks a right-wing politician's views on us, asking "Who uses that word to describe us anymore?" I admit it's not my go-to term, but I think the word deserves a bit more love. "Homosexual" as a term to describe same-sex attraction and activity was invented in 1869, by Karl-Maria Kertbeny , an Austrian novelist.  He coined the word at least ten years before anyone came up with the word heterosexual.  Kertbeny was protesting a proposed anti-sodomy law. Imagine how brave you'd have to be to even raise that topic back then.  It was a revolutionary term at the time.  It was the first time in Western culture (and many others) there was a term to describe us that wasn't linked with judgemental and derogatory religious and social...

Something strange is happening in Manurewa. Labour MP Louisa Wall is being challenged for selection to the seat she currently holds there, and she’s being challenged by some in  her own party. This is the sort of thing that usually only happens when there’s been a scandal of some sort, but in this case there isn’t even the tiniest whiff of one.  It seems that some group in the Labour Party organisation has taken against her, but it’s hard to see why. Looking at the Spinoff’s 2019 list of MPs who are flops she doesn’t get a mention, but a couple of Labour Cabinet Ministers get rated as under-performers by a range of different commentators. No mention of Louisa. Some say that there is discontent in her electorate, that she’s not seen as doing enough for it, but from her social media she seems to be a busy and engaged local MP. It's hard to believe, but there are also some young Queer activists who think she's not radical enough and are hoping she's...

I’ve already lived through one plague that killed so many friends and pretty much upended the world we’d built and taken for granted. I didn’t think I’d have to do this twice in my life. But here we are. There are some parallels  and differences that strike me as an HIV+ gay man from the wealthy developed world. One thing is how the public health message around Covid has been handed down here in New Zealand, calmly, kindly even, but firmly handed down from authority. With HIV/AIDS, the response,(condom use, safe sex) was driven by the community.  It was gay doctors in the USA, watching what was unfolding in their communities, in the face of offical indifference or hostility,  who led the charge on this, and it was a huge piece of behavioural change to push. We gay men had created a culture that celebrated sexual freedom, to put it mildly, so to try and get gay men to change our behaviour in such a fundamental way was an amazing feat. Because the voices urging...

I take a real pleasure in reading other people's diaries. After they're dead, of course. The Diaries of Virginia Woolf are still one of my favourites. Diaries of gay men hold a particular fascination for me, and I've been following one on Facebook called Mr Lucas .  Follow it - it's fascinating. As the pinned post at the top of the page says :  " Mr Lucas has been buying sex since the 1950s. An unremarkable man, he led a rather remarkable life. Born in 1926 in Romford, he lived a quiet unassuming life as a civil servant in the department of trade (I think he did something with contracts, but that’ll become clearer as we go on). But, by dint of his sexuality, he also lived a very active life in the sleazy streets of 1960s Soho. That is, when he wasn't cottaging. Or paying guardsmen for sex. Or pining for a normal life." They are a treasure trove of a side of gay life largely gone from most Western countries, but still, I imagine, very similar to the...

There's an old line that straight men are afraid of gay men because they're worried we'll treat them like they treat women, and I think there's more than a grain of truth to it. I've been watching the #MeToo movemen t arising from the  fury so many women have at the way sexual assault has been used against them, and as in the case with Anthony Rapp, we see Kevin Spacey also accused of doing this to men. I have felt  invisible in all the commentary on this topic that I've seen reported, the assumption is simply that what applies to heterosexual women around consent applies to all. I don't think it's that simple. It doesn't resonate with my lived experience. I want to explore that disconnect, between things that are so real for so many of my female friends and women in general, and my own experiences. If I think of my own sex life and the encounters I've had. I estimate I'd had sex with around 1,000 men by my early 20s, and maybe 2,0...