Categories: Oral Histories
Tagged: doctor who, jim sanger, queer as folk, russell t davies
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Oral Histories
Ten Years of Queers 0
After the first episode of Queer As Folk was screened on Channel 4 in February, 1999, one of my friends told me he’d hated it because he “didn’t recognise any of the characters”. I didn’t understand this claim then, and I still find it hard to believe now. I don’t watch Spooks looking for familiar archetypes among the spies any more than I watched Queer as Folk to see my own peer group represented on the screen. Nevertheless, even if most of the incidents were outside of my own experience, I still thought the stories felt true. I could believe that someone had gone home with a muscle Adonis only to discover he’s a fatty wearing a sculpted harness; slept with someone and not asked their age; not come out at work and had to live on their wits to keep on covering up their secret life; or watched Doctor Who and chanted the dialogue as it occurred onscreen.
Why the hell would you get married? 0
I can certainly say that my friends would have voted me “least likely to get married” for a variety of reasons, not least because of my track record with as well as attitude to relationships. I have been described by them as a cynic, misery and curmudgeon, etc, and I would hesitate to disagree with any of that. Like a lot of gay people, even when civil partnerships were introduced in 2004, I felt marriage had little to do with me.
Categories: Oral Histories
Tagged: civil partnership, gay marriage, marriage traditions, registry office
The Promise of Science-Fiction 0
To describe science fiction as a broad church is a little like saying Leigh Bowery had an eclectic wardrobe. How do you define it, exactly? By its name you’d imagine that all sci-fi had some inherent scientific element, but we know this isn’t true. Political allegories like 1984 and The Children Of Men are often thought of as “sci-fi”, though neither contains much in the way of science. Many consider Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus to be the earliest science fiction novel but, as the full title suggests, discussions of man’s relationship with the elements, and his scientific hubris, go as far back as classical antiquity.
Categories: Oral Histories
Tagged: arthur c clarke, david llewellyn, doctor who, dystopian fiction, frankenstein, j g ballard, kurt vonnegut, science fiction, torchwood
Maurice, the book that helped me to understand my sexuality 0
I don’t really remember what I was like at school. It is strange for me to listen to others who recall their school days because, for the most part, their recollections are vivid. Specific. I do not really have that many specific recollections. Mostly it is a blur punctuated by various schemes to avoid PE class, and the peaks of being an outsider reached in the Technical Drawing class.
And that was school up until the age of sixteen. When it came time to move onward to the sixth form, when school was an option and not a prescription, my experience of it changed. Then, by the time I was sixteen, my understanding of the world had changed and was constantly being changed. It was the year that Merchant-Ivory film Maurice was released.
Categories: Oral Histories
Tagged: daily mail, em forster, howards end, maurice, merchant ivory, passage to india, unspeakable of the oscar wilde sort
Marriages and Unions 0
I had originally planned to write a straightforward account of my first time at a civil partnership for this Oral Histories piece. This month my best friend separated from his wife and as a result I was not sure I could write the celebration I had originally intended. I was the best man for his wedding, at which the photographer was a transsexual and the Father’s speech so detailed the Groom observed that the Bride’s CV would be available on the way out. It was a wonderful day, and one I shall always remember with real fondness. Yet …
Categories: Oral Histories
Eighteen 0
Eighteen years. In the United States, one’s eighteenth year marks the transition into adulthood. The year teenagers graduate from high school and say goodbye to longtime friends. A time to move out of childhood homes and into college dormitories. It is the time we Americans first earn the right to vote for the leaders of our country and are invited to fight for those same leaders. For us, the eighteenth year is a long awaited milestone signifying a time of change.
This year I will be recognizing an eighteenth anniversary. It will be a look back at years spent growing and learning. A time to reflect on the past and plan for the future. A future that, for many years, I never thought I’d see. For, although this anniversary marks the past eighteen years of my life, it does not represent the first eighteen. In 1990 I had already become an adult but experienced a different kind of transition. I was young. I was strong. And, I was infected with HIV.
Categories: Oral Histories