This man must be in his 80s now

I’m dithering about which London gay bar to try out tonight.  Should I try the Excelsior, maybe, or the Arts and Battledress Club, which I’ve heard is members only but will let you in if you look discreetly “musical”.  Or perhaps I should try the Alouette, which being right on Piccadilly Circus is very handy, or possibly the White Bear?  I haven’t got my end away for a while and I’ve heard it’s full of young sailors just gagging to be had, some for free, others for a fee.

They all sound tempting, but there’s a problem: they shut around fifty years ago (I’ve always been a bit late getting to the hippest places).  I heard about these spots, in fact, from an older bloke I met at Gay’s the Word bookshop last night, at a reading from Rupert Smith’s new novel, Man’s World, which charts the lives of two young gay Londoners, one today and one in the 1950s.  If the three chapters I’ve read so far are anything to go by, the book’s a witty page-turner, which unusually looks at today’s neurotically body conscious, image-fixated gays with non-judgemental humour rather than tut-tutting disapproval.

In a word: Phwoar

As Rupert Smith talked about the book’s background and passed his copies of 1950s physique mags (once key texts for a burgeoning underground gay scene) through the audience, it struck me that many of the older men flicking through them were about the same age as the hot young musclestuds on their pages.  Preserved smiling and coyly covered with posing pouches and brylcreem –half-naïve, half-knowing about the erotic effect their gorgeous bodies would have on the viewer – it seemed hard to imagine these buff greasers ever ageing.

But here I was surrounded by men who remembered shoplifting these very same magazines fifty years ago, and cruising 1950s West End nights which, they claim, were absolutely crawling with trade.  It was great to hear that men got up to as much mischief then as now – and helpful to remember that I would one day look much the same as the men I was talking to.

Back in the bad old days, even trousers were rationed

I hardly ever come across gay men over about 50 – there aren’t many places in London to find them beyond the Old Quebec pub behind Marble Arch, with its cruisey toilets and blissfully low noise level. But then they are scarcely visible in mainstream gay culture as a rule, with its fetish for hard-bodied youth (already present in those 1950s physique mags).  The bear scene has managed to crack a chink in this youth fixation, promoting middle aged men as sexy and providing a template for gay men who don’t want to end up trapped in teenage habits and looking like the Picture of Dorian Gray.  After middle age, however, images of older gay men seem to evaporate.

This bothers me – selfishly, because it’s where we’re all heading (if we’re lucky) and while we may live on a long time, we’re liable to disappear publicly in the same way. One day places like Fire and Barcode will sound as quaintly distant as the Alouette and the Arts and Battledress.  We’re most of us bursting with stories of happiness, mishaps and horniness and we all think that our lives are, to an extent, important – is that all going to fade away and become invisible just because our bodies are no longer firm? Just a thought.

Fighting them off

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