all manner of topics, though mostly here the gents like to talk about what we get up to. They like to talk filth. And we’re more than happy to oblige, regaling them with tales of our antics.
So today was much like any other until come midnight we get raided, don’t we? Pandemonium spreads through the house like a fire. I’m upstairs sucking a certain high official of the Church of England and he’s taking a fuckin’ age to spend and I’m getting bored and irritated when there’s a storm of banging on the bedroom door and next thing I know there are two crushers in the room and the churchman starts to spend and then like a shot he is hoisting up his trousers and I’m sitting on the bed laughing as he hops around the room with one leg caught in his strides and his jiss flying all over the place. The bluebottles just stand there, not sure what to do. They tell me we’ve been busted and they wait for me to dress and then escort me downstairs, where everyone else is gathered. There are about a dozen crushers all grinning like bedlamites. All the swells, of course, are allowed to go back to their homes and their wives. It’s only us they want. So we’re all loaded into their growler and driven to Holborn salt box. It seems that although I wanted to avoid a life of crime I’ve ended up inside anyway. Ah well, sod’s law always gets you in the end, ain’t that the truth?
Taylor was at his fiercest and foul-mouthed best as they bundled him into the van. It was worth it to watch the air turn blue around them. They’re a bunch of vicious, humourless bastards, though, who’d cosh you without a thought. In that sense they’re no different from the men I grew up with, only this lot think they’re better than the rest on account of that fuckin’ uniform they wear and the authority it brings. I hate the law.
We were all thrown in the holding cell, and it was already packed. It stank worse than a stable, with piss-soaked straw on the floor and the odd turd trodden in for good measure.
Add to that half a dozen unwashed, inebriated men. God knows how long they plan to keep us locked up. I’m due to see Mr Wilde later tonight, so I just hope we’re not in here long.
1954
I’ve been following in the newspaper with great interest the case of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. He and his cousin, Michael Pitt-Rivers, and some journalist called Wildeblood, are being charged for conspiring to incite or commit acts of gross indecency. As I ate my toast this morning, I read with utter fascination about their dalliances with RAF men. It seems England is scandalized by men of different classes having any sort of contact whatsoever. Just as in Oscar Wilde’s time. I remember this Montagu fellow being arrested last October and being tried for indecency with Boy Scouts, but he managed to escape conviction then. Now they’ve got him in connection with two RAF chaps, who are giving Queen’s evidence. Poor sod doesn’t stand a chance. The papers, of course, are having a field day, calling the men involved “Corrupters of Youth.” I wonder what they would make of my relationship with Gore. Would they call me a corrupter of youth? Gore is far more corrupt than I. If anything, he is more likely to corrupt me. Dear God, I wish he would. I want desperately to ask him what it’s like, being beautiful. How does it feel to look in the mirror and like what you see, not hone in on the flaws and the imperfections that can burden a face, nor turn away in shame or, worse, recoil in horror? What emotion is provoked by the desire you must encounter in every pair of eyes into which you gaze? What must it be like to possess that power, that gift? Even when I was young I was ugly or, if not ugly, plain; I knew early on that I was fated to be looked over and promptly overlooked, with my narrow, rounded shoulders and my shortness and my frizzy hair. Even at boarding school I was invisible. I wanted desperately to be initiated into those things about
So today was much like any other until come midnight we get raided, don’t we? Pandemonium spreads through the house like a fire. I’m upstairs sucking a certain high official of the Church of England and he’s taking a fuckin’ age to spend and I’m getting bored and irritated when there’s a storm of banging on the bedroom door and next thing I know there are two crushers in the room and the churchman starts to spend and then like a shot he is hoisting up his trousers and I’m sitting on the bed laughing as he hops around the room with one leg caught in his strides and his jiss flying all over the place. The bluebottles just stand there, not sure what to do. They tell me we’ve been busted and they wait for me to dress and then escort me downstairs, where everyone else is gathered. There are about a dozen crushers all grinning like bedlamites. All the swells, of course, are allowed to go back to their homes and their wives. It’s only us they want. So we’re all loaded into their growler and driven to Holborn salt box. It seems that although I wanted to avoid a life of crime I’ve ended up inside anyway. Ah well, sod’s law always gets you in the end, ain’t that the truth?
Taylor was at his fiercest and foul-mouthed best as they bundled him into the van. It was worth it to watch the air turn blue around them. They’re a bunch of vicious, humourless bastards, though, who’d cosh you without a thought. In that sense they’re no different from the men I grew up with, only this lot think they’re better than the rest on account of that fuckin’ uniform they wear and the authority it brings. I hate the law.
We were all thrown in the holding cell, and it was already packed. It stank worse than a stable, with piss-soaked straw on the floor and the odd turd trodden in for good measure.
Add to that half a dozen unwashed, inebriated men. God knows how long they plan to keep us locked up. I’m due to see Mr Wilde later tonight, so I just hope we’re not in here long.
1954
I’ve been following in the newspaper with great interest the case of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. He and his cousin, Michael Pitt-Rivers, and some journalist called Wildeblood, are being charged for conspiring to incite or commit acts of gross indecency. As I ate my toast this morning, I read with utter fascination about their dalliances with RAF men. It seems England is scandalized by men of different classes having any sort of contact whatsoever. Just as in Oscar Wilde’s time. I remember this Montagu fellow being arrested last October and being tried for indecency with Boy Scouts, but he managed to escape conviction then. Now they’ve got him in connection with two RAF chaps, who are giving Queen’s evidence. Poor sod doesn’t stand a chance. The papers, of course, are having a field day, calling the men involved “Corrupters of Youth.” I wonder what they would make of my relationship with Gore. Would they call me a corrupter of youth? Gore is far more corrupt than I. If anything, he is more likely to corrupt me. Dear God, I wish he would. I want desperately to ask him what it’s like, being beautiful. How does it feel to look in the mirror and like what you see, not hone in on the flaws and the imperfections that can burden a face, nor turn away in shame or, worse, recoil in horror? What emotion is provoked by the desire you must encounter in every pair of eyes into which you gaze? What must it be like to possess that power, that gift? Even when I was young I was ugly or, if not ugly, plain; I knew early on that I was fated to be looked over and promptly overlooked, with my narrow, rounded shoulders and my shortness and my frizzy hair. Even at boarding school I was invisible. I wanted desperately to be initiated into those things about