Moranthology (9 page)

 

I still haven't got round to doing what I propose in this next piece. I really must. I am still haunted by the boy in the playground. I wonder what he did next? I hope he continued to escalate his look commensurately with each passing year, and now walks around Solihull dressed like fucking Batman.

H
ELLO.
Y
OU
L
OOK
W
ONDERFUL.

W
hen I was fourteen, and bored, I used to walk the five miles into town, sit on the patch of grass outside St. Peter's church, and look at people. Obviously, at that age, it was mainly boys I was looking at. And obviously, given that I was sitting in the drizzle, staring at them, and wearing—it's a long story—a red, tartan bathrobe instead of a coat, they would cross the street, and go into Argos, to avoid me. But still, I would look. I would look and look and look. They literally could not stop me.

Anyone who'd seen Desmond Morris's
The Human Zoo
would suggest I was studying humans like animals, but I know that I was not. It was far more formless, and thoughtless, than that. I was definitely just staring—like a mono-browed lollygagger, creating a patch of unease by the village well.

I think that, at the time, I thought that if I looked at people—particularly boys—long enough, I would somehow work “it” out. That I had no idea what “it” was, of course, is one of the hallmarks of adolescence. If I'd been forced to put money on what “it” might be, it sadly would not have been, “Whether my life would be immeasurably improved if I stopped wearing a bathrobe, tried to be normal, and bought a coat, instead.” I was, as you can see, quite hopeless.

We
all
look at people, of course. We cannot help it. Mankind has hot air balloons, and crampons, and mine shafts, and submersibles. Mankind has been on the Moon. Anywhere we look, people get in the way—hanging off ladders, falling from windows, putting their face a little too close to yours to ask you if you're alright. Everywhere we look, we are looking at people. They are like Nature's little screensavers.

But one of the things I most love about this country is that we do not,
will
not, stare at each other. The British will not spend all day gawping at each other in the drizzle, however odd we may look. The entire cast of
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
could roll into Starbucks, with candy-colored cockatiels flying out of their hair, and—after a brief glance upwards—everyone would studiously go back to reading their papers, as if the door had merely been blown open by the wind. In a cramped, crowded nation, we know the essence of politeness is ignoring pretty much everyone around us.

And yet—and yet, this saddens me, also. For while it means we do not cause anguish in the hearts of the sweaty, the harried or the deformed, it means that, with the Olympic Committee of our gaze, we also fail to hand out gold medals to those who actually
should
be looked at.

Yes. I'm talking about people who look hot. People who look really, really hot. Not necessarily classically staggering, like a Moss, or a Best. But those who've put together a smoking outfit, done something foxy with their hair, artfully clashed their shoes with their bangles, or just gone whole hog, and back-combed their fringe until it looks like a hat. Straight boys in pink nu-rave hoodies. OAPs in scarlet ballet pumps. Waitresses with 1940s up-dos. Ghanaian girls in pig-tails and jodhpurs, trotting round Topshop like it's a gymkhana. These are the people who
want
to be looked at. They are abiding by Quentin Crisp's maxim—to live their lives as if they were in a movie. But their tragedy is that, by living in Britain, it's a movie that will be furtively glanced at, for a mere second, and then pointedly ignored.

For those who believe, as I do, that the next stage in human evolution will be neither a giant leap in intelligence, nor partial DNA-merge with robots, but all of us looking consistently better-dressed, it is a crime against Nature itself.

Instance: I was in Solihull last week, in a park. It was starting to look—as all parks must, in the middle of a wet September—a bit like a plate of boiled cabbage, with some swings stuck in it. Sitting on the edge of the skate-park was a boy of about fifteen, who had clearly recently seen
The Dark Knight
in the last few months, and was now desirous to be the Joker. On this day, he was doing so by dressing all in black—skater trousers, knee-length pea coat, beanie hat. When he took the coat off, it revealed a cropped black waistcoat over a white shirt—a shirt that bordered, thrillingly, on blouse.

While the other kids skated—in nondescript trousers, and greige tops—he leaned against the monkey-bars, smoking a fag, and photographed them with an impressively old-fashioned Nikon. Now, I'm not entirely deluded. I know that the photos were probably awful, the cigarettes had a one-in-three chance of giving him cancer, and he was in all probability, a bit of a dick. But I loved him. I loved him for treating his outfit like an atmosphere-controlled space suit, which shielded him from the world he was actually in. I loved that his clothes were a signal to vaguely like-minded people—the opening line of a conversation, which you could hear from the other side of the park.

But as I looked at him, I felt a melancholy steal upon me. I feared that, without the support of a watching world—a couple of thumbs-up here, a “nice one” there; maybe some winks from a bus-driver—he would eventually find that the leaden lure of sweatpants and a Nike hoodie too great to resist, and just give up on being beautiful. There is a paradox in being cool, as I have learned over the years from interviewing pop stars, actors and sundry cultural beacons. They have all noted that one of the little sorrows of being cool is that similarly cool people are too cool to ever come over and tell you you're cool—because that's just not cool. And so, gradually, the entire point of being cool is being eroded.

What the cool people need, then, is some gawping, moon-faced, resolutely non-cool person to come and tell them that they're cool instead.

To this end, I am about to order 1,000 old-fashioned calling-cards—string-colored, Verdana typeface, single-sided. They will read, “I just want you to know, I really appreciate your look.” And I'm going to walk around London, handing them out as, and where, truly necessary.

 

Part Two

H
OMOSEXUALS,
T
RANSSEXUALS,
L
ADIES, AND THE
I
NTERNET

In which we demand employment quotas for women while using a lengthy analogy about a pelican, nerd out with the gayest sci-fi series ever—
Doctor Who
—and point out that the internet was invented by humans, and not dystopian robots, or Satan.

But first: back to me and Pete in bed again.

 

You might think there's too many of these conversations. On that basis, you would immediately be able to strike up a cordial and mutally agreeable conversation with Pete.

F
IRST
T
IME
E
VER
I
S
AW
Y
OUR
F
ACE

I
t's 11:38
PM
. The children have finally gone to sleep. The foxes have not yet begun their nightly panoply of dumpster diving, bag-shredding and mad fox love. It's the Golden Hour. It is peaceful. It is time for sleep.

“Pete?”

“No.”

“Pete?”

“No.”

“Pete?”

“I am asleep. No.”

“Pete—what's the first thing you think of when you think of me?”

“What?”

“When someone says my name, or you think of me—what's the picture that comes into your head?”

“Please remember that I just said ‘I'm asleep.' Please.”

“For instance,” I say, turning over into my “Interesting Chat” position. I have intrigued me with this question. This is a good question. “For instance, when I think of
you,
straight away—quick as a flash—I see you standing at the kitchen table, wearing a cardigan, and looking down at a pile of new records that you've just bought. You've put one on, and you're kind of bopping to it a bit, and you're eating a slice of bread and butter, while you wait for the tea to cook. You might be humming a bit. That's my go-to image for you. That's your essence. That's what I think of, when I think of you. In the kitchen, with your records, all happy.”

There is a big pause. Pete appears to need a prompt.

“That's what I think of, when I think of you,” I repeat. “So what about me? What do you see in your head when someone says my name? ‘Cate.' What's in your head? ‘Cate.' ‘Cate.' What do you see? ‘Cate.' ‘Cate.' ‘Cate.' ‘Cate.' What you getting? ‘Cate.' ”

There's another pause.

“ ‘Cate',” I say, helpfully. Third pause.

“Your face?” Pete replies, eventually.

“My face?”

I am hugely disappointed.

“My face?” I repeat. “I see a whole scene with you in it—I can even see what record you're holding: it's the best of Atlantic Psychedelic Funk. It's a gatefold—and you've just got . . .
my face?”

I am determined to make Pete see that he actually sees more than that. There's no
way
all he sees is my face. We've been together seventeen years. I have blazed a cornucopia of images into his head. I've given him a visual love pantechnicon. The material is endless. Instance: he's seen me dressed as a “sexy Santa,” falling off a castored pouffe. He's got loads in there.

“Okay,” I say, patiently. “Look
down
from my face. What am I wearing?” I think this is all key questioning. I want to know what, in Pete's mind, is my “classic era”—my imperial phase. Does he remember me most vividly from the early years of our relationship, when I was a young, slightly troubled teenager with a winning line in bong construction—but also the dewy appeal of innocence, and youth? Or does his subconscious prefer me now—a far more rational mother-of-two whose knees are going, and who says ‘Oooof!' every time she sits down; but who will also never again wake him up crying because the central heating has come on in the night, and she thinks her legs have melted, and got stuck to the radiator?

There is another pause.

“You're wearing your blue and white striped pajamas,” he says finally, confidently.

This time, I pause.

“Blue and white striped pajamas?” I am wounded. “I've never had blue and white striped pajamas.”

“You did!” Pete sounds a little panicked. “Once! Blue and white striped pajamas.”

“Pete,” I say, quite coldly, “I am a woman. I know every item of clothing I have ever owned. And I can tell you now—I have never had a pair of blue and white striped pajamas. Are you sure you're not getting me confused with the boy from
The Snowman
?”

“It's far too late at night for me to deal with you accusing me of imaginary pedophilia with a cartoon,” Pete says, despairingly. “Again. And anyway—you
did
have blue and white striped pajamas.”

“I once had blue and white
Paisley
pajamas,” I say, grudgingly.

“There you go!” he says, triumphantly. “That's near enough!”

“No!” I say, outraged. “That's not a
memory.
That's not a
real memory.
You've made those pajamas up. You've just got this . . . fantasy version of me in your head, instead.”

“Fantasy version of you! I've hardly gone into my brain, cut out a picture of your face and stuck it onto a picture of . . . Carol Chell from
Playschool,”
Pete says, agitatedly.

“Carol Chell from
Playschool?”
I ask.

“She's a very pretty and lovely lady,” Pete says, in a firm and non-negotiable manner.

“Carol Chell. Well,” I say, staring up at the ceiling. “Well. Carol Chell. We've learned a lot tonight, haven't we? We really have learned a lot.”

I let a vexed air fill the room. Let's see if you remember
this,
I think.

 

T
HE
G
AY
M
OON
L
ANDINGS

L
ast week I was compiling a quick-cut YouTube montage of humanity's greatest moments—what can I say? The kids are seven and nine now; weekend activities have moved on from cupcakes and coloring—and came across an awkward fact: there is no Gay Moon Landing.

There are single, iconic images for every other blockbuster moment in humanity's progress: the Civil Rights Movement has Martin Luther King, giving his speech. The suffragette movement has Emily Wilding Davison, trampled by the King's Horse. The triumphs of medical science: the mouse with the ear on its back. And the Space Race has, of course, the Moon Landing—Neil Armstrong making the most expensive footprint in history.

But there is no single, iconic news image for gay rights. There's no five-second clip you can put in that marks a moment where things started getting better for the LGBT guys. The Stonewall Riots in '69 are an obvious turning point, of course—but footage of it needs captions to explain what's going on. Otherwise, it just looks like a lot of late-sixties men of above-average grooming experiencing a very unwelcome fire evacution from a disco, while a load of policemen hit them. Anyone who went clubbing in the rougher parts of the Midlands, or Essex, at the time will have seen scenes almost identical. It's not particularly gay.

Perturbed by this lack of relevant news footage, I went on Twitter and asked what people would regard as a putative “Gay Moon Landing.” There were dozens and dozens of replies: David Bowie and Mick Ronson's homoerotic sparring on
Top of the Pops,
John Hurt as Quentin Crisp in
The Naked Civil Servant—
dumb with lipstick, blind with mascara and brave as a lion. Seminal teenage fumbling/nascent emancipation in
My Beautiful Laundrette
and
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.
Cindy Crawford—straight—acting all geisha, and slathering a beaming k.d. lang in shaving foam on the cover of
Rolling Stone.

All of these instances crashed into people's front rooms and started things: conversations; realizations about sexuality; imagining, for the first time, a possible future. In that way—millions of lights, sparking up in millions of minds—they
were
news events; albeit ones that never actually made it onto the news.

Because what was notable was that nearly every single instance of a Gay Moon Landing suggested was from pop, TV, magazines or film. The history of gay rights, and gay progress, has included keynote speeches, legislation, protest and rioting—but the majority of its big, watershed moments have taken place in the art world. It was good to be gay on
Top of the Pops
years before it was good to be gay in Parliament, or gay in church, or gay on the rugby pitch. And it's not just gay progress that happens in this way:
24
had a black president before America did. Jane Eyre was a feminist before Germaine Greer was born.
A Trip to the Moon
put humans on the Moon in 1902.

This is why recent debates about the importance of the arts contain, at core, an unhappy error of judgment. In both the arts cuts—29 percent of the Arts Council's funding has now gone—and the presumption that the new, “slimmed down” National Curriculum will “squeeze out” art, drama and music, there lies a subconscious belief that the arts are some kind of . . . social luxury: the national equivalent of buying some overpriced throw pillows and big candle from John Lewis. Policing and defense, of course, remain very much “essentials”—the fridge and duvets in our country's putative semi-detached house.

But art—painting, poetry, film, TV, music, books, magazines—is a world that runs constant and parallel to ours, where we imagine different futures—millions of them—and try them out for size. Fantasy characters can kiss, and we, as a nation, can all work out how we feel about it, without having to involve real shy teenage lesbians in awful sweaters, to the benefit of everyone's notion of civility.

Two of the Gay Moon Landings Twitter suggested were
Queer as Folk,
from 1999, and Captain Jack kissing the Doctor in
Doctor Who
in 2008—both, coincidentally, written by Russell T. Davies.
Queer as Folk
was cited as a Gay Moon Landing because, when it aired, it was the first-ever gay drama, and caused absolute, gleeful outrage. Conversely, the
Doctor Who
gay kiss was a Gay Moon Landing because it caused absolutely no outrage at all. The two were separated by just nine years. I would definitely call that another big step for mankind.

But then, perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree here. Maybe I don't need to look for a Gay Moon Landing, after all. As someone on Twitter pointed out, “The Moon Landing itself is pretty gay. A close-knit group of guys land in a silver rocket, make a really dramatic speech, and then spend half an hour jumping up and down? Please.”