Gay stand up comedian Alan Carr

When I told my friends I fancied being a stand-up comedian, unfortunately they all laughed.  Anyway, there I was one dreary, rain-soaked Saturday in January attending a comedy workshop for this potential Bill Hicks-cum-Joan Rivers-cum-Larry Grayson. I’d just taken early retirement to cope better with rheumatoid arthritis in my knees, and as I walked in (stiffly) I’d never felt less funny in my life.

My gaydar told me that I was the only one there, and my select group of wannabe gagsters as I later discovered consisted of a fit ex-para (who I made sure sat next to me), a Jo Brand-type nursery teacher, and  a loud psychiatrist along with his lanky, much quieter son, who turned out to be a racing driver.  The course was run by a sometime  tv cartoonist and  experienced sitcom writer,  and his pretty wife who kissed us on arrival and performed lunch.

The first excercise was for the class to guess who we were in real life - instructions had been given to divulge no personal information up to that point.  They concluded, after much judging by appearances,   that I worked with young people, was married and had children of my own.  And it was then that your jobless, childless gay brother went into demolition mode with some relish, and began to enjoy the ride. Read the rest of this entry »

One of our Mothership Gay Dating members, piratepete, has just lost his mother. We post the usual condolences, but feel it’s far from enough. It’s a time of extreme anguish we have in the end to all  go through alone.

Even a deeply held faith may help little at first; we begin to question everything we’ve been taught, and can acept no facile answers. Guilt comes like an unexpected tsunami, though we hardly know why, erupting from some reccessed honeycomb of the soul, terribly laying waste our immediate pleasures and future plans.

It’s a given that gay men are devoted to their mothers - they carried us for nine months, protected and made sacrifices for us in early years, and at best stood by us when they found out our sexual proclivities. I recall entering the hospital room where my own mother lay dead, and how the tears shot out of my eyes like some lachrymal orgasm. Gay men probably find it more difficult than their straight counterparts to cut free from the apron strings, and it’s essential to our wellbeing that we do so in the living years. Read the rest of this entry »

The Golden Gate Bridge

Recently, two strong earthquakes shook Southern California - such reminders must give an edge to life for residents of San Francisco awaiting ‘the Big One’ (and this time even the basking Bay seals moved off). Imagine reducing your possessions to those you could grab in moments, fleeing as the house collapsed. However, some see more threatening cracks in the city’s fabric of gay liberation.

In 1963 the first gay bar opened in the area now famous as the Castro. It stood at 2438 Market, close to Castro Street itself, and was named The Missouri Mule. When it closed a decade later, thirty gay bars had come and gone, while others were arriving.  By then the area was attracting same sex couples from the brashness of New York to the peace and beauty of the West Coast in confluence with the hippy movement and the hipster Beats. Love-ins on Haight-Ashberry met the Castro Clone (Levi 501s, check shirts, and ‘taches) as gay men distinguished themselves by a proud hypermasculinity.

Behind the quiet facade of his camera shop future gay martyr Harvey Milk dabbled in porn movies, newly desirable low rent houses became cells of gay activism, and long-haired marchers hoisted rainbow flags ( designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker) to show the way. When Milk was assassinated in 1978, demand for the rainbow flag increased dramatically. Read the rest of this entry »

Dame Shirley Bassey's new album 'The Performance'

Welsh singing legend Dame Shirley Bassey has been lured out of blissful seclusion in Monaco to record an album of 11 new songs specially written for her by the likes of Gary Barlow, Rufus Wainwright, the Pet Shop Boys, along with others of note. Simply titled The Performance, this offering from the 72 year old ” girl from Tiger Bay” raises questions quite apart from its musical merits, namely the nature of the relationship between gay men and their adored divas in decline.
 
It’s well-known that Shirley Bassey avails herself of means of preserving her looks and holding back the effects of time. and the results speak for themselves. However, the album’s cover shot makes her look so improbably youthful you might think she had been at the vampire juice.

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Mothership member John Hartley explores the parallels between the gay and vampire cultures

Twilight

With films like Twilight, its sequel New Moon, and tv productions such as True Blood capturing the collective imagination, vampirism is enjoying its biggest revival since Bram Stoker launched his mould-breaking novel Dracula on an unsuspecting world in 1897.

When I speak of dating gay vampires for real, many of us will be aware of guys who can drain the marrow out of a relationship financially and emotionally, and not a few will have met the devouring suction kisser, but what I’m talking about here is a form of historical consciousness.

From a gay point of view (unless you’re a confirmed chubby chaser), these ultra-lean, pale and darkly handsome men who deliver the ultimate in lovebites, prove endlessly fascinating. Read the rest of this entry »