You’re single and a little lonely. You’re at a party and there across the room you see your ex…and he’s looking fit. You say hello, before long you’re at ease with each other and laughing, and a few hours later you’re in his bed having mind-blowing sex ‘for old time’s sake’.
The next day he calls and you arrange to meet for a coffee. You clearly like each other, fancy each other and are enjoying each other’s company. Should you get back together?
Maybe. Relationships are complicated things, and often there are no right and wrong answers. Assuming you’re both single, there are some questions you can ask yourself when you’re thinking about what to do: Read the rest of this entry »
Gay friendship is vitally important to our lives and happiness, and, as I will argue here, matters for the rest of humanity too.
At a gay student meeting I attended in London at the beginning of the 1980s, someone said, “As gay people, we cherish our friends”. ‘Cherish’ seemed a quaint word to some, raising a few sniggers, but as I look back it was spot on, for it means to love and care, to value highly, and to retain in the mind, embracing past, present and future in its scope Read the rest of this entry »
What really makes gay people happy? The coalition goverment has proposed a happiness index, which will assess the general psychological wellbeing of the country. Defining happiness is a very complicated exercise, however, and I’d like to think for a moment about what really makes us as gay people happy.
When Terry Sanderson’s book, How To Be A Happy Homosexual was published in 1986 , it dealt with practical matters and gave encouragement to those feeling oppressed. With the relative liberation past decades have brought us and increased self-belief, it’s useful to look at what makes us happiest now. Read the rest of this entry »
Edward I, the father of a gay king, founded the East Yorkshire port of Hull on the Humber Estuary in 1299. His son, the Prince of Wales (Edward II), though married to Queen Isabella, found a guy called Piers Gaveston much more to his liking. Poor Piers was executed on crossing the Earl of Warwick, homosexuality then being a capital crime.
There’s a kind of poetic justice then in the fact that Hull’s post-2004 gay scene has played its own special part in reviving the region’s fortunes after severe job losses amongst seafarers and trawlermen. There’s a subterranean courage here, aptly symbolized by a huge, stylish aquarium (The Deep), that would have made both Edwards proud. Read the rest of this entry »
Having been born with a tiny hole in both earlobes, I’ve sometimes joked that I was a pirate in a previous incarnation. Cosmo Jarvis’s recently released ‘Gay Pirates’ single was Twittered by Stephen Fry, and by all accounts intrigued Elton John. Jarvis, twenty-one, born in the US, and a talented filmmaker, plays the part of a bullied pirate in the song’s video. His attraction to Sebastian, another young pirate (You’re my land ahoy/ You’re my boy) ends with them with hands tied being forced to walk the plank while sharing a lingering kiss. Cosmo sings:
“I’d be under the sea, but you hold me above, ‘cos you’re the man I love.”
While the bloodthirsty deeds of real pirates are well-documented, far less attention has been paid to the recurrence of pirate figures in gay culture. This image can be strong and positive, or dark and disruptive.
