MARK SIMPSON.com

In case you thought I was joking when I wrote about the gentlemen of the British press being unable to leave George Michael’s toilet parts alone, today’s Sun newspaper, twisted sister tabloid to the News of the World scandal sheet that ran the original front page Hampstead Heath expose, provides further, lurid proof of the seriousness - violence even - of their passionate fascination.

In a torrid piece titled ‘Are there no depths George won’t plumb in pursuit of lust?’ by Kelvin Mackenzie, a former editor of the best-selling paper, and legendary figure in the world of tabloid newspapers, we learn that it isn’t just his penis that they can’t leave alone, it’s also his balls.

‘I can’t stand George Michael,’ McKenzie informs us, ’and every time he tries to laugh off another vile gay sex exploit I dislike him a little more…’ 

Oh, come now, the lady doth protest too much.  Go on, admit it, you love him.

Mackenzie goes on to whine at length about how he is personally affronted and disgusted by the fact that George Micheal can have no-strings sex when he wants it - for free - and, worse, that his partner doesn’t mind.  All in all, it is quite insufferable, isn’t it?  Well, it is if you look like Kelvin Mackenzie.

Alas, sexual jealousy can be an ugly, violent, even murderous thing.  Amplifying and in fact spelling out the NOTW’s criminal incitement fantasy about Michael having ‘his throat cut’, Mackenzie writes:

‘… one day I suspect Michael will come a terrible cropper pursuing his sexuality.  There are some nasty people around.’

Indeed there are, Kelvin. 

A few paragraphs later, at the end of the piece we discover where those nasty people are.  They’re not on Hampstead Heath.  They’re writing for The Sun:

‘Personally, I’d like to give him a good kick in the balls.  Unfortunately he’d probably enjoy it.’

But not as much as you do writing about his privates, Kelvin.

Mackenzie has a previous in this area.  He’s a bit of a gay sex pest.  Actually, he’s a major gay sex pest.  He was after all the editor of The Sun during it’s ‘heyday’ in the Eighties, when it was utterly obsessed with gay men and their sex-lives and did its best to whip up hatred for homos - give them ‘a good kicking in the balls’ - and portray AIDS as a ‘gay plague’ which queers richly deserved because of their promiscuity.

Because, in other words, they were having too much fun.

Yes, there are some nasty people around.

 

 

Why are the gentlemen of the popular press so interested in George Michael’s manhood?  Why won’t they leave it alone?

In 1998, after stalking him for years, in a painful pincer movement with Beverly Hills Police Department’s finest, they succeeded in catching him short in a men’s toilet.  Now they despatch a flash photographer to follow him up to Hampstead Heath’s cruising area at 2am and then plaster the results all over the front page.   No wonder Michael angrily turned to the snapper and snapped: ‘Are you gay?  No?  Well f**K off then!’

Personally, I’ve never been that interested in George Michael’s toilet parts.  I used to live a mile or so away from Hampstead Heath and cruised it myself many times (before the internet spoilt everything), and have seen Mr Michael down there – but we never bumped uglies as he just isn’t my cup of peculiar and judging by the press reports, I’m probably not his.

The tabs appear most shocked by the fact that Mr Michael ‘who could have anyone’ allegedly chose to have fun in the dark, in the bushes with an unemployed 58-year-old pot-bellied man who lives ‘in a squalid flat in Brighton’.  Yes, how awful.  What a terrible crime.  Perhaps he should have shagged the straight flash photographer instead?  We know he has a nice job and he probably has gym-membership too. 

Of course, there’s more hypocrisy wafting across this story than poppers on a warm Saturday night on the Heath.  Michael is lambasted for his ‘sick’ and ‘sordid’ ‘crazy’ and ‘addicted’ behaviour and advised to ‘seek counselling’ (plus rather a lot of barely-disguised queer-bashing encouragement in the form of ‘warnings’ that he ‘could get his throat cut’).  But part of reason why the tabs are so interested in this story - and why they can’t leave George’s penis alone - is precisely because many if not most men can perfectly understand the appeal of anonymous, no-strings, no-romance sex.  It is this freely-available aspect of the homo demi-monde which most fascinates many straight men.  Because they usually have to pay for it.  Unless they’re very lucky.

In the same issue of the NOTW that exposed George Michael’s ‘sick’ behaviour one of the stars of reality TV show BAD LADS’ ARMY (someone whom I would like to bump uglies with) bragged that he had had sex with nearly 500 women before he reached the age of 21 and would often pick up three women a day on holiday.  I’m guessing that their age, their looks and their employment status weren’t exactly major considerations.  Naturally, the article was as admiring and envious of this laddish behaviour as it was condemning of Michael’s.  What’s sauce for the straight goose should be sauce for the gay gander. 

This is something that Michael successfully argued himself after he was caught in that Beverly Hills lavatory in 1998.  His single ‘Outside’ sang the praises of public sex.   It was probably precisely his success in turning around this humiliation that embittered the tabs against him.  The tabs hate it when they’re out-tabbed by their victims.

Inevitably, Michael’s long-term partner was mentioned in the Hampstead Heath expose to give a veneer of journalistic value to the story, but in fact Michael has been very frank about the ‘open’ nature of his relationship.  This is a degree of honesty with the world that few celeb gay couples show - even though many of them are in relationships more open than 7-Eleven.

Michael’s visit to Hampstead Heath just before a major comeback tour, wasn’t very clever, wasn’t terribly grown-up, and it may or may not be a sign of ‘compulsive’ behaviour, but it is certainly not a matter of national importance.  Or even terribly interesting.

Male sexuality, gay or straight, is not very easily domesticated.  If it were, then the tabloids would be the first to go out of business.  

And Hampstead Heath wouldn’t be so busy at 2am.  Even if nowadays newspaper photographers compulsively cruising for a story outnumber the punters.

 

Berlin Bromley, Bertie Marshall (SAF Publishing)

by Mark Simpson (Independent on Sunday, 23/07/06)

 

“Oh, Bertie, when are you going to write your memoirs?� asks punk academic Jon Savage at a chance meeting with the author in Berlin. He replies: “Oh, I don’t know, Jon… what would I write, a teenage boy lost in suburbia, prostitution and drugs?�

This, you’ll be glad to hear, is exactly what we get, in this “post-glam, pre-punk version of The Naked Civil Servant�. This memoir consists of the day-dreamy reminiscences of a pathologically, fabulously narcissistic 15 year-old-boy, perpetually trapped inside 1976 and his own lip-glossed, suburbohemian delusions. He re-christened himself Berlin after reading too much Isherwood and tried to re-create the Weimar Republic in Bromley, Kent - and came perilously close to succeeding.

This is the gloriously pointless autobiography of a boy who never really did anything but take Mandrax, wear lots of make-up and turn tricks. A boy who was in at the birth of punk, but somehow managed to absent himself when it threatened to get too real. A boy who should have been the leaderene of the New Romantics, a movement he personally prefigured, but who told Steve Strange “it’s not gonna happen,� and went back to Bromley just before it spectacularly did, to take some more Mandrax and daydream his life away (with the odd side-trip to hardcore Earls Court gay cruise bars).

Next to Bertie Marshall’s passivity, Quentin “if you like…� Crisp looks like a particularly perky contestant in The Apprentice. Still, it’s a bonus that he spends as much attention on his writing as he once did on his eyeliner. No one is more aware of his gloriously wasted life than Marshall. His honesty is as breathtaking as Marshall’s profile used to be. Even if you find yourself wondering whether honesty and truth aren’t always quite the same thing (Marshall is also a novelist), you’re left with a clear sense that a life spent as a passive observer, even of your own life, can make for powerful prose.

Essentially, Berlin has one main claim to fame. You might not have heard of him, but you’ve probably heard of that party, held at his mum’s semi-detached in Bromley while she was away. It was attended by his friend Siouxsie Sioux in plastic Ribena apron and fishnets (and nothing else), taking welts out of the artex ceiling with her cat-o-nine-tails, the rest of the Bromley Contingent mouching around, and the Sex Pistols shagging everywhere (save Johnny Rotten, who just snorted speed and grinned a lot).

The climax of the party, and possibly of Marshall’s life, is where the next door neighbour, a little old lady called Mrs Hall, leans on the doorbell to complain about the music. Marshall hides behind SS’s fishnets and plastic apron strings while she answers the door and spits: “Oh, fuck off.�

Trouble ensues when Mrs Hall, “trembling with fear and rage, eyes filling up behind her Fifties fly-away glasses,� calls Sioux a “little slut�.

“How dare you call me a slut, you f****** old c***!� snaps Sioux. “[She leant forward and gave the old bag an almighty slap across the face, knocking her glasses into the nearby privet hedge.�

The most famous moment in Marshall’s life happens at the age of 15, on page 58. And he’s observing it from behind SS’s fishnets.

Personally, I wouldn’t have Berlin, or Bromley, any other way.

 
Copyright Mark Simpson 2006

‘If a picture can paint a thousand words then why can’t I paint Roo?’

Someone today kindly emailed me this picture of Ronaldo ‘making up’ with Manchester United team-mate Roo after the World Cup hissy fit.  I’m not sure whether the old cliche is always true but spornographic images are always more eloquent - or just hotter - than words.  Certainly it renders yesterday’s posting somewhat redundant. 

And it makes me warm all over to think that Ronaldo can put that big, pouting, ref-pestering Portugese gob of his to a useful, pacifying purpose (defusing the boner Roo had to pick with him without getting split in two).  I only wish the apology were a little more explicit.  Not to mention convincing. 

But, alas, even Photoshop has its limits.  This amusing example of homemade sporno currently overheating tens of thousands of Inbox’s around the world does at least prove something: when it comes to young sporting bucks, I’m definitely not the only one with a dirty mind.

 

Does England and Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney (in the white) read Out on the sly, perhaps hidden inside a copy of Zoo?  He seems to be taking ‘Sporno’ to new extremes.

British tabloid The Sun claims today that bit-of-rough Roo has confided in ‘talks with pals’ ‘over breakfast’ that ‘pretty boy’ Manchester United team mate Christiano Ronaldo has finally tormented the scouse scallyboy too much.  I know how he feels.

A frustrated Wayne is now supposedly vowing to ‘split him in two’ next time they meet in the locker rooms of Old Trafford.

The Sun describes Christiano as a ‘slippery winker’ – so it sounds as if he’ll be ready for Roo.

Either way, I sincerely hope one of them remembers to switch their camphones on.  This historic encounter should be recorded for, erm, posteriority. 

(And in case you think my report is slanted and fantastical, you should have a look at The Sun’s.)
 

 

 

 

Is Superman gay? 

This ‘pressing’ question about what the Man of Steel does with his flying package (’is it a bird? is it a plane?’) when it’s not held in by industrial strength spandex seems to be enormously exercising the media in the run up to Bryan Singer’s ‘Superman Returns.’ 

All this shocking speculation about Superman’s Supersexuality has been prompted by a not very shocking article in an American gay magazine about gay interest in superheroes.  It didn’t actually claim Superman was gay but was cannily given the front-page headline ‘How gay is Superman?’, and the wagging tongues got wagging.  Things have reached such a pitch that Singer, (openly gay) director of the upcoming blockbuster, felt it necessary to deny Superman is gay and stated ‘he’s probably the most heterosexual character in any movie I’ve ever made.’ 

Now, leaving aside the fact that Singer is perhaps best know for directing ‘The X-Men’, starring characters with names such as ‘Wolverine’ and ‘Magneto’ and ‘Storm’ who sound like gay pornstars, he and his studio are no doubt worried that talk of Superman being gay might keep the teen boys away from the box-office, and no blockbuster can afford to offend the delicate sensibilities of teen boys.

I’ve never met Superman (though I keep looking), and I haven’t seen the new movie yet (I don’t use Bittorrent), so I can’t really comment.  But of course, I won’t let that stop me: 

Let me just say this: in my expert opinion Superman is not gay.  OK?

But he’s probably not terribly straight either.  If he was, would he use the word ’super’?  Would he work out?  Would he wear stretchy-tight clothes and a rubber cape?  Would he oscillate between being ‘mild-mannered’ and brazenly exhibitionistic?  Would he use so much product in his hair?  Would he stay single?  And smooth?  And perpetually 25?

Whichever way his manhood swings, whether his preference is hetero, homo, or bi (the third possibility that straights and gays, as usual, seem equally keen to overlook), Superman is clearly, alarmingly, metrosexual.

This seems to be the fate of all superheroes when made into contemporary Hollywood Blockbusters.  As I pointed out in a 2002 piece for Salon.com(‘Meet the metrosexual’) about the just-released ‘Spider-Man’, the movie:

…offers us the kinky, fetishistic spectacle of a geeky ordinary young man whom no one notices transformed into a raving metrosexual before our very eyes. Apparently injected with steroids and ecstasy by a gay spider, he admires his new buffed body with widening eyes in the mirror, dresses up in a tight lycra gimp suit and runs around a lot on all fours with his arse in the air, after having setting up (Web?) cameras to record his (s)exploits. Peter Parker/Tobey Maguire employs designer drugs, clothes, perverse sexuality and multimedia technology to get people to look at him as he swings between the billboards and skyscrapers from what appears to be his own hardening jism.

In one memorable bondage/mummification-resonant scene he hangs upside down in his gimp suit while Kirsten Dunst peels off the lower part of his mask to kiss him, before replacing it: a perfect example of the new power dynamic between metrosexual men and women and how metrosexual men have to be the center of attention. We’re supposed to believe that Tobey is motivated by old-fashioned virtues of social concern and love for Kirsten but we don’t believe it for a moment. Nor does, in the end, the movie: Kirsten finally offers herself but Tobey declines, realizing that she would come between him and his real love: his metrosexual alter ego in the Day-Glo gimp suit.

 

Copyright Mark Simpson 2006

 

Why can’t gay men grow up?  Why can’t they get themselves a nice cat instead of behaving like dirty dogs?  Why can’t they listen to Radio Four more instead of trawling the net for sex?  Why don’t they get a pipe and slippers instead of thongs and crystal meth?  Why can’t they stop being so damn undomesticated and be more… lesbian?  

And why oh why can’t gays settle down with nice Simon Fanshawe, especially when he’s done so much for them?  Surely they could have drawn straws and allocated him somebody?  Or maybe set up a rota?

The Trouble With… Gay Men TV polemic presented by Fanshawe recently on BBC3, took ‘gay men’ to task for still ‘behaving like rebellious teenagers’ despite now ‘being accepted as equals by society’ and was one of the funniest programmes I’ve seen in ages.  Unfortunately for comedian-turned-busybody Fanshawe, the humour was all unintentional. 

There’s not really much point in seriously dealing with his argument as there wasn’t one, instead there was just an hour-long Grumpy Old Gay Man Special in which Fanshawe went round London and Brighton’s gay scene feebly tutting and harrumphing at gay men’s vanity, promiscuity, drug-use, and failure to settle down and make curtains – despite all the sterling work people like him and the Stonewall Group have done to make homosexuality respectable and suburban.  At one point, instead of even pretending to offer an argument, Fanshawe merely wandered shiftily around the dodgems on Brighton pier while a lot of headless statistics about gay drug use and STD infection rates were flashed on the screen.  Great telly, that.

Even this witless approach might have worked – after all, no one could seriously deny that the gay scene is founded on questionable habits, and even the keenest hedonist tires of his vices from time to time – but only if Fanshawe hadn’t presented it. 

Hilariously, this middle-aged moral mary moaning about muscle marys was the best argument for a life of untrammelled irresponsibility, superficiality and fleshly obsession.  I’ll bet that after the programme aired the gay gyms, saunas and back-rooms in London had a major rush on, and crystal-meth dealers were working overtime.  Even I, who recently moved to North Yorkshire in part to get away from urban gayness, and also give it a chance to get away from me, felt the urge to change into something less comfortable and take a taxi all the way to Soho.

More to the point, it became rapidly apparent that this paragon of the community who kept denouncing gay men’s failure to ‘grow up’ was himself suffering from a form of arrested development.  Clearly he’d never progressed beyond the point of being the bossy fat girl at school with the clipboard who thought they were God because they’d be put in charge of the school dinner queue.  And what was all that whining about the lack of ‘role models’?  Why should gay men have someone to copy?  Why should they be so special?  Grow up and do it yourself, like everyone else these days.

Now I’m all in favour of more self-criticism in the gay world, and being beastly to gays is something I’m rather fond of.  After all I did edit Anti-Gay back in 1996, the book which gave a bunch of chippy non-heterosexuals the opportunity to take on the sacred orthodoxies of the gay world and gay identity, or at least the gay press, and generally have a good whinge (and which was, funnily enough, violently denounced by the gay press).

But this programme wasn’t taking on mindless conformity, gay self-censorship, or feelgood propaganda, instead it seemed to be about one middle-aged middle class man’s exasperation at how gays have let him down by being so, well, gay, and his corresponding desperation to prescribe a one-sized-fits-all homo-counties identity.  Fanshawe is only exercised by gay bad habits because he’s so transparently even more desperate for respectability than he is for a boyfriend.  Hence the shameless mugging to camera during his visit to a gay sauna, pretending to be shocked by a sling, or not knowing what ‘watersports’ means.  Who were the appalled-of-Tunbridge-Wells looks for?  The gay men the programme was ostensibly aimed at?  The gay men who apparently spend all their time in saunas like this?  Clearly not.

Ironically, the people that Fanshawe was really addressing – straight TV producers looking for a nice respectable gay presenter and ‘role model’ – also know what slings and watersports are, and in fact were probably lying in one being peed on whilst they watched the programme.

Again and again Fanshawe showed himself as someone with an almost endearing naivety about the real, grown-up world, let alone the gay one, as he went around posing as the adult voice of the reality principle.  Visiting a Mr Gay UK heat he dismissed the oiled-up contestants as ‘superficial’, ‘pathetically deluded’ and ‘vain’.  I wonder if he’s taken a look at young straight men lately.  In fact, it was blindingly obvious that the main problem with the gays he was talking to was not that they were vain, but that they had nothing to be vain about – a skinny bunch of munters who would be laughed out of the gym by most straight lads. 

And what was Fanshawe’s answer to all this vain, promiscuous, drug taking?  An inspirational trip to the feet of ‘role model’ Chief Inspector Brian Paddick, ‘one of the most senior policemen in the country! And he’s gay!’ during which Fanshawe made it embarrassingly clear he’d love nothing more than to be Mrs Paddick and attend the Chief Inspector’s Balls.  Strangely, there was no mention of that troublesome ex who went to the papers to proclaim he and Paddick often took drugs together in the Chief Inspector’s house, and who also claimed that Paddick was a regular visitor to gay saunas (Paddick has denied both these claims). 

Then came the chaste climax of this hour-long programme, the summit of everything that Fanshawe says gays should be aiming for and the answer to all the problems he had decried: two chubby inoffensive gays in a country house choosing what chocolate cake they were going to have at their registration reception. 

Now, I’m sure they’re nice enough fellas, but if they had known that they were going to be flaunted by Fanshawe as the ultimate role models for gays everywhere, the compulsory ideal for all - not simply one option amongst many - and the wonder cure for all that meaningless sex, drug use and existential angst then maybe they would have had second thoughts about appearing on this programme.  Or at least they might have tried to look a bit happier.

The real problem with gay men, even the campest variety, is that they’re men.  Men without wombs in their lives to take responsibility for or slow them down – or give life a point.  But instead, lots of testosterone and spunk and spare time.  It’s this that makes them homo.  Why do so many gay men have so much sex and take so many drugs, often - and this is something Fanshawe utterly failed to acknowledge - even when they are in a relationship?  Because they can. 

I’m not particularly recommending promiscuity or drugs – and who, frankly, gives a flying fuck whether I do or don’t – but I can tell you in no uncertain terms that neither Simon Fanshawe, nor Brian Paddick, nor gay registrations, nor even really expensive chocolate wedding cake are going to persuade homos to become neutered heterosexuals. 
© Mark Simpson