To the Ends of the Earth

I had made a chum, not a bum chum, you understand, but just a guy with rosy cheeks, curly hair, and a sense of humor, who was on my film and language course and also in the GLBT. When I got to the first meeting, I found they’d added a Q to the title.

“Why is that? Aren’t we all queer?” asked someone.

“Exactly,” said someone else.

At that first meeting, I was sitting between a willowy blond youth on my right and a butch-looking woman with short-cropped hair on my left. No one spoke until I said, first to the guy, “If you are G and I am B and”—turning to the left—“you are L, what is there that binds us together?”

A voice from the opposite side said, “And I’m a T.” I turned to see the most beautiful silver-screen model with flowing blonde hair and an engaging smile.

“T for transsexual or T for transvestite?”

Her smile broadened even more. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“You see, that’s the problem. Looking like you do, alluring, charming, whatever, you don’t turn me on at all. What I wonder is how I’d feel if you had something dangly between your legs.”

“So that little bit of hanging flesh and two oval things would make that much difference?”

“I really don’t know. What if the hanging bit was engorged with blood? Would that?”

Sarah, the leader of the group, called us to order, and we talked of other things “on the agenda,” like the preparations for the Gay Pride March—pointless, practical things—while I lost interest until I found I’d been “volunteered” onto the Steerage Committee (whatever that was). Then the sticky buns and coffee arrived, and I chatted to my chum and also to the willowy youth, who seemed to have attached himself to me. Hey ho! Still he was really good in bed, and when he asked, “Are you really bi?” I said no way and hoped that I’d proved it.

And he felt around a bit and then said, yes, he thought that I had.

So the days passed and I learned about films, though I had to change my mind about Film Studies and Languages because the language part was teaching from scratch and I already spoka da lingo real good. Then I learned about journalism from scratch, and that was good because I had completely the wrong idea about it. I thought you just shoved a microphone under someone’s nose and then phoned the noises they made back to the paper, and it isn’t like that at all. No siree.

Anyway, the real exciting thing was the march. I found that being on the Steerage Committee merely meant making placards and banners and stuff. You know, all the hard work. Oh, and I did have to organize the advertising via the university mag and posters round town and in shop windows of any that would take them.

On the morning of the march, I met Jacob at the station as I’d promised I would, and the train was only twenty minutes late, which was good. He’d had to pull a sicky to get the day off and hope, if there were any TV pics, he wouldn’t appear. I said he could hide behind his placard.

Mine said, “I’m pro

ud and I’m gay,” and his said, “I’m gay too.”

He made a minor objection. “I’m proud as well.”

“’Course you are, but it’s the juxtaposition when we walk together.”

He said, “I see,” but I’m not sure he understood, and I wonder if I did either.

We all congregated at the front entrance of the main building, and I dished out the placards and banners we’d made. I was pleased to see that lots of people had come along from the town, and they’d brought their own things to wave.

There were a few boos from some homophobic louts, but they were quickly covered by our chanting, “I’m proud to be out,” which was good as it covered the Ls, the Bs, the Ts, and the Qs as well as us Gs all under one chant. Then the watching crowd cheered, and some slipped past the few police who were shielding us from possible antagonism and joined in. But really there was no need for protection, and soon the police themselves, both male and female, joined the march, a couple even holding the edges of the banners.

There was a band organized by Sarah, I think, because I certainly wouldn’t have thought of it. They played tunes from the shows, both old and new, and people sang and had a fucking good time.

I marched with Jacob, of course, on one side while the willowy youth, whose name was Christian, skipped along on the other. Occasionally he put his hand in my trouser pocket, which, I think, slightly embarrassed Jacob, but not enough to upset him.

A lot of guys really dressed down for the occasion, some wearing little more than a wisp of cloth about their loins. They were roundly cheered and really played up to the crowds, making fairly obscene movements simulating coitus or their idea of it—but all in the best possible taste!

We ended gloriously in Castle Park, where we danced and sang and sang and danced until we could do it no more and, drooping, we returned home. Jacob caught the last train back, and Christian and I (fuck buddies) made our final celebration of the day.

What did we do at uni?

Well, Mondays we watched a film. Though the session was only supposed to be an hour, we always watched the whole thing, except for a few reluctant students who had other sessions to attend and so crept out unwillingly?

Which films? The great films, many starring those gay icons like Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, the Hepburns—Audrey and Katherine—Marlene Dietrich, Gloria Swanson, etc., etc., etc. Why do gay people idolize female stars? Who knows? When I was young, I had, at different times, yearning crushes on Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde and Richard Todd in The Hasty Heart, a film that starred, of course, the future president of the USA, Ronald Reagan, though I never fancied him. We even watched the original English version of Russell T. Davies’s Queer as Folk, and I was amazed at the explicitness of language and nakedness on BBC TV back then. Of course I enjoyed it too.

On Thursdays, the films these actors were in, Sunset Boulevard, Gone with the Wind (four-hour epic), Casablanca, Brief Encounter, we pulled to pieces, “deconstructed,” the tutor called it, found mistakes (not many), and suggested how we might have made the films if we had been the directors. Fun, but I found it fairly unproductive. I wanted to make my own film, and that was exactly what we had to do for the end of the first year.