COMMENT: DESIRE, CONFORMISM AND THE ELUSIVE GREAT DARK MAN

“Oh Alberto, have you heard Shirley Bassey’s new album?” the shrill, camp voice rang out from the right hand toilet cubicle. “No,” grunted the blatantly bored and clearly paid for Alberto from the left hand cubicle. “Oh well, never mind,” sighed the nameless extra from Julian and Sandi. “Come over here and hold my winkle for me.”

It was an interesting moment. In the cramped, grubby confines of Brighton’s Queen’s Arms toilets I was witnessing something quite rare in gay life – the brief, crashing sound of the worlds of camp and sex meeting. It felt awkward.

As much as camp is an integral and vital part of our gay heritage, it has always been taboo to bring it into the scared confines of the boudoir. The two simply don’t seem to mix. To put it bluntly, having Like a Virgin blaring out while you’re going down on the latest piece of trade isn’t considered much of a turn on.

You only have to look at the countless personal adverts in the gay press to get a glimpse of gay men’s attitude to camp. The demand is for everything “straight acting” and “non camp.” There is no room for “fems”, Shirley Bassey lovers or over the top theatre Queens.

Looking at these adverts though you can’t help but wonder what the advertiser himself is like. Is he really some naturally muscled, butch labourer type who spends his weekdays fitting kitchens and his evenings boozing with his burly, beltching straight mates?

Or is he really just another super hyped gym queen, projecting the outward exterior of the gruff, aggressive top, when actually, on the sly he likes nothing better than to sneak home from The Hoist and chill out to Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall concert, lypsynching mournfully to The Man That Got Away while nursing a sweet sherry?

There are many facets to every person, yet all too often on the gay scene we are expected to fit one particular mould. We are supposed to do this effortlessly and completely, naturally embodying one of the prescribed types that we are assured has the ultimate “gay” sex appeal.

I say “gay” sex appeal, because it seems that the categories that are generally considered to have sex appeal on the gay scene are surprisingly narrow. It’s about fitting the stereotype – muscle man, twink, leather queen. There’s nothing very subtle about these groups – their uniforms, postures and types of behaviour are frequently predictable and always highly visible. There is little room for personal touches or the addition of idiosyncrasies – the uniforms have to be bought in their entirety from the gay catalogues – the designer leather chaps, the tightest brand of Aussie Bums, the latest shade of self tan.

Yet all the while we are fervently fashioning ourselves in to super men some part of us knows that there’s another part of this person hidden away. It’s often the part that we know it isn’t fashionable to show. Perhaps it is the part that we worry will make us a less desirable commodity.

This secret part of ourselves has a name – it is called our individuality. Gay men are amazingly adept at wearing different masks. Mask wearing can be empowering and exciting. It can protect us. Sometimes though, the danger is that we begin to select the same two or three masks all the time and our real face is left languishing, forgotten at the bottom of the dressing up box. And there isn’t anything very special about the masks we have chosen if we are also sharing them with thousands of others.

This year has seen the release of the film of Quentin Crisp’s novel An Englishman in New York. Crisp was a man who did not believe in wearing masks at all. He was uniquely himself. While homosexual identity was evolving all around him, unabashed, he refused to change. It caused him problems. It also made him undesirable.

In his first novel, The Naked Civil Servant, Crisp famously fantasised about a figure he called The Great Dark Man, saying:- “If the Great Dark Man met me, he would not love me. If he did love me, he could not be my Great dark man.”

They are melancholy words, seemingly embodying an internalised homophobia that we like to claim belongs to the past. Yet, looking around the gay scene now, these words seem to be just as relevant as they were back then.
As gay men we are so frantic to fit the very limited moulds that we are told will make us desirable that we often lose sight of who we really are, of the person we were when they were growing up and of the dreams we once had.
It is almost as if we are ashamed to show a part of ourselves, the part that makes us stand out as an individual. Perhaps we are frightened that this will stop us finding our own great dark man.

The compulsive, almost psychotic attempts some gay men go to in order to fit these moulds seem to be evidence not only of a severe lack of self esteem, but also of a real sense of shame. It is almost as if we are buying into Crisp’s self-hating words.

Alberto, the rent boy at the Queen’s Arms that night, seemed to embody the great dark man for the camp, older queen who had bought him for however long it was. Perhaps the reason for this was because he was his exact opposite – he was butch, mean and knew nothing about Burley Shassey’s new album.

The man also knew that Alberto did not love him. Yet, as he waxed lyrical about Dame Shirley to the disinterested, petulant beauty, a sadness seemed to lurk behind his camp demeanour. Perhaps what he really craved was for this Latin stud to love him because of his individuality.

The time has come to relegate Crisp’s words to the closet. Gay men need to have the courage to step away from the crowd, to have the self-confidence to get back in touch with their quirkiness and boldly claim that the great dark man they seek will love them and that it is precisely because he loves them that he is their great dark man.

Yet only by discarding the wholly predictable masks of gay conformism can we start to search at the bottom of that dressing up box for our real faces again. How often do you hear gay men complaining that they cannot find their soul mate? Yet the truth is that until we begin to strut down Old Compton Street wearing our own faces, boldly basking in our own individuality and unashamedly sharing our eccentricities with others, we are destined to end up with someone as faceless, uncaring and ultimately as unreachable as  Crisp’s dark man.