Seventies gay earnestness, photo-booth-ready dolls, a new Spanish soap opera, a shortlist, an array of false breasts and a sexy poet

With the mad social whorl of the past few days - the amazing Bowie Prom on Friday rapidly followed by the excesses of my dear sister's fiftieth birthday party last night - it's taken a while to get my head together. However, on Thursday evening I did also troll along to the sunny South Bank for the latest instalment of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari...

Before opening proceedings, our host Mr Paul Burston had some sad news to impart - his mother-in-law, Paolo's dear mum Heidi (who I first met back in 2013) recently died. Such a lovely woman. RIP.

However, the show - dedicated to her - must go on, and thus Mr B introduced our first guest.



Stevan Alcock, making a very welcome return to Polari, read a rather fab passage from his acclaimed debut novel - and Polari First Book Prize nominee - Blood Relatives, which tells the tale of Ricky, growing up gay in Leeds in the 70s against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Although the passage he read (brilliantly) described his teenage protagonist's trepidation as he hovers in a pub prior to attending a typically earnest 70s gay group meeting upstairs, then to his horror encounters by chance a school friend at the bar just as the out-gay punters start arriving, I can't find that extract online. Instead, here is Mr Alcock reading the introductory passage from the novel - written as it is read, in the Yorkshire dialect...

Stevan Alcock - Blood Relatives

Next up was a Polari "newbie", crime-writer Sarah Hilary, who read (as she had promised) a somewhat chilling scene-setting passage from her new work Tastes Like Fear that described the sinister scenario of a disparate group of young girls, a "family of photo-booth-ready dolls, smooth hair down to their waists, new tits under neat shirts", all of them trapped in the mysterious web of a man called "Harm". What's going on? What is his hold over them? What is going to be their fate? I really should read the novel to find out...



However, all thoughts of crime, murder and mystery evaporated with the arrival on stage of the utterly marvellous Mr James Maker (Polari First Prize winner for his autobiography Autofellatio in 2011)! Heaven knows what his plans are for the story he read for us - my vote would be for a television soap-opera-cum-comedy. Set around a small gated community in Spain (the country where until recently Mr Maker was an ex-pat), he introduced a stream of increasingly uproarious camp characters - from the pretentious gay couple hosting the party at which everyone was gathering, one a hysterical mess, the other a dull lothario, to the demandingly snooty wannabe-matriarch of the estate, to whip-wielding estate agent, to the (inevitable) busy-body gossips and unhappily married couples that always inhabit such spaces. With his customarily droll delivery, this was a thoroughly enjoyable and quite hilarious scenario, and I look forward to finding out where it will lead...

Thus cheered, it was time for a fag and a top-up before making my way back to the Fifth Floor Function Room, for part two.



Before our final acts, it was time for VG (Val) Lee to take to the stage to announce the Polari First Book Prize 2016 shortlist. Now in its sixth year, the Prize is awarded annually to a writer whose first book explores the LGBT experience, whether in poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction. The six shortlisted titles are:

• Blood Relatives by Stevan Alcock
• Sugar and Snails by Anne Goodwin
• Trans by Juliet Jacques
• Different for Girls by Jacquie Lawrence
• Physical by Andrew McMillan
• The Good Son by Paul McVeigh

As Mr B said, it's a good job two of the night's readers (who were long-listed) made it to the shortlist, otherwise it may well have been embarrassing. Not least Juliet Jacques, opening part two. She was in fine fettle as she read one of her short stories, which focused on the S&M fantasies of a budding trans woman in Brighton, well, "Hove, actually":

The door felt heavy. As he entered he saw hangers of lingerie, red, black, white and soft pink, PVC nurses and maids’ uniforms, a bin full of eyeliner and lipstick. At the counter there were books and magazines: The Tranny Guide and Utterly Fabulous, with impossibly beautiful people on their covers. A middle-aged man stood behind them, his clean-shaven face caked in foundation, brown eyes with a little mascara on the lashes.
“Can I help you?”
“Do you have any tickets for Divinity?”
“We’ve got a few.” Patrick noticed that the assistant’s hands were also shaved, with clear nail varnish. He moved his gaze to catch the assistant’s eyes. They smiled at each other.
“How many did you want?”
“Just one.”
“£15, please. What are you going to wear?”
“I don’t know . . . I’ve got some heels, tights, a few dresses but I’m not sure they’re right. I was thinking of buying a wig. ”
“We’ve got plenty of those.”

Patrick saw stilettos, a room full of wigs on mannequin heads, some white boxes, open, with an array of false breasts, different sizes but all quite large, a few brown, mostly beige. He wondered if the silicone might feel nicer than cotton wool.
“What style were you after?”
“I don’t know . . . ”
“Hmm . . . I reckon light brown, not too long. Try these.”
Patrick tried a brown wig in front of the mirror.
“I think the blonde highlights brings out your eyes.”
“I love it,” said Patrick.
“Now you’ll need a dress.” The assistant shot him a smile. “Are you a top or a bottom?”
“Huh?”
“Are you dominant, or submissive?”

Patrick said nothing.
“You look like a sub to me.”
“How can you tell?”
“You’re just a bit coquettish. Not rocket science, I know.”
“But I don’t want to tie myself to anything.”
“No, but you want someone else to tie you to something.”
They laughed awkwardly.

Quite remarkable what happens in Suburbia...



And finally, it was time for the very gorgeous John McCullough to round off the evening's entertainment. His first collection of poems The Frost Fairs won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012. His new collection of poems Spacecraft has, as he explained, nothing to do with space or sci-fi, but, according to the blurb "the white space of the page and the distance between people". Several use as their allegory Mr MucCullough's musings on the death of his first partner from an AIDS-related illness, not least this one:

In Minnesota, they reeled a sixty ton house
over ice: a caught fish. The tow truck eased

forward, a steel cable stretched and quivered.
Walls crept. Why it sets me thinking of you

I can’t fathom. Who’d rescue your building –
split gutters, bleedings from oxidized pipes?

Still, I picture it skating, its porch nosing
the air. The house where you swallowed

your diagnosis. Where you phoned from, drunk.
It plunges through ice to the lake’s silty floor.

Brown water discovers its rooms.
Algae furs chairs and bedposts,

traces circles on ceilings – the loft crowded
with minnows, a wandering bass.

And with those emotions ringing in our ears, it was curtain-call time, and the end of the show.



All excellent stuff - we adore Polari!

However, our next outing is not until (bizarrely) 7th October - lord alone knows why the lengthy hiatus - when the winner of the Polari First Book Prize will be announced, Paul himself will be reading from his own new crime novel The Black Path, and also on the bill will be Namita Chakrabarty, Alexis Gregory, North Morgan and Amy Acre.

A Lesbian Pam Ayres, Bang-Bang, sex in the corridor, a prize, a perfect black dress and a parental nightmare

photo: krysphotos.co.uk

On a dismal wet Monday, I was the only one of our "gang" to venture out to the latest instalment of "London's peerless gay literary salon" Polari - it may have been dreary outside, but in the confines of the Level 5 Function Room at the Royal Festival Hall, there's always a warm welcome!

And so it was, as our top-hatted hostess-with-the-mostest Paul Burston opened proceedings - with a very welcome return for poet, entertainer and Polari regular Anny Knight. We love Anny - once described, I recall, as "the Lesbian world's answer to Pam Ayres"; no bad thing, given that lady's enduring popularity and success.



Her poetry is always wryly humorous, and never fails to lift the spirits - a perfect opener, methinks:




Next up was successful crime writer (and "adviser on terrorism and extremism to certain departments and think tanks") Charlie Flowers - author of a series of books featuring protagonists Riz Sabir, a former Jihadi now working for the Ministry of Defence, and his wife Bang-Bang. [Yes, "Bang-Bang". Okay...] The extract he read for us was from his newest in the series Murder Most Rural, where these suave urbanites gatecrash a yokels' pub in deepest, darkest Mummersetshire [or somewhere] on some bizarre mission to recruit local anglers to trawl a river for a lost "drone" [are you following this?], and it turns out they are not only spies and former Jihadis, but also a card-sharp and an expert pool player. Of course. They win the games, win over the locals, don't get beaten up, and [I suppose] everything works out fine in the end...

You can read extracts from the book on Amazon. I didn't buy a copy.



Sunny Singh's Hotel Arcadia was described by The Independent as "not only a page-turning thriller. It is far more than that." The piece she read featured the steamy encounter between closeted gay Abhi (one of the story's narrators) and a German tourist Dieter, in the sinister environs of the eponymous hotel during a terrorist incursion. I reckon that would have been a bit of a passion-killer, myself, but...

Here's the book trailer:

Hotel Arcadia book trailer

Anyway, with part one done and dusted, having replaced the pint of beer that one of the Polari punters had silently kicked over under my chair halfway through - just when I was in need of a drink - and having topped-up my nicotine levels, it was time to return to the packed house for the second half. Thankfully, it was worth the wait...



...there was a very special announcement to make, for a start! Paul introduced one of the panel judges, literary critic Suzi Feay to announce the winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2015. With many of the short-listers (including LaJohn Joseph) in attendance, it was a shame that the winner had to send her publishing agent to accept the prize.

Congratulations this year go to Kirsty Logan, for her début The Rental Heart - which the panel recommended thus: "[Kisrty] writes from a variety of queer perspectives, showing us a range of outsider’s viewpoints. Her characters are compelling, alienated, and trying to find a place themselves in a world with which they are at odds. For a first book 'The Rental Heart and Other Fairy Tales' is remarkably assured. Each tale feels like a work of art in miniature, a controlled experiment in transformative storytelling."

Drinks all round!


photo: krysphotos.co.uk

The last time that Juliet Jacques - trans writer, cultural critic and journalist - appeared at Polari, she was very angry. Thankfully, this time around, she promised that out of ten chapters in her Trans - a Memoir, she would "read an up-beat bit". And the piece she chose was fab - as the young Juliet goes charity-shopping with her close friend, finds the "perfect little black dress" and ventures out on the trans-friendly scene in Brighton for the very first time: worried about whether she'll "pass", why she's the youngest person there, and how to deal with the "tranny-chasers", the drag queens and the boys hanging round on street corners on her way to the taxi rank...

This was fabulous stuff - and Ms Jacques really charmed the audience; her reading ended with rousing applause.



And so it was the turn of our headliner Tom Rob Smith - wearing possibly the ghastliest Pringle tank-top I have ever seen, but I forgive him; he's very cute - author of the internationally acclaimed novel Child 44. Before getting down to literature, he began by expressing how proud he was that his drama television miniseries London Spy, starring Ben Whishaw, with Jim Broadbent, Adrian Lester, Mark Gatiss and Charlotte Rampling (what a bizarre combination), is being broadcast by the BBC later this month. One to look out for!

However, it was to his semi-autobiographical book The Farm that he turned for his reading. A dark tale, its gay narrator Daniel finds himself caught in a nightmarish situation as his mother - who, he has been told by his father, is suffering from a psychiatric disorder - turns up in London with what she says is chilling evidence that his father is involved in a conspiracy back in the family's native Sweden to cover up the circumstances of the disappearance (and possible murder) of a local girl... As a review in the Guardian put it: Who would you believe in a crisis, your mother or your father?

Brief, but thrilling and intriguing, indeed...



Thus, another eclectic and varied evening of literary entertainment drew to a close, with the customary "curtain call".

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STOP PRESS:



Jackie Collins's natural successor Rebecca Chance aka Lauren Henderson, et moi...

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Our next outing for Polari - wouldya believe, celebrating its eighth birthday? (I've been there for seven of them) - is on 28th November 2015 and is part of the Being A Man Festival, featuring Bernardine Evaristo ('Mr Loverman'), Keith Jarrett, Neil Spring and trans man Len Lukowski. Award-winning author Diana Souhami completes the line-up.

Polari website

Pride, murder in mind, Trans identity, missing children and Our Lady of the Underpass

Ah, Polari. How we (Paul, Jim, little Tony, Emma, Toby, Alex, Bryanne, Simon, Marcus, Val, Anni, Jayne and the rest) love it.

On Monday we assembled once more for the first in the new season of "London's premier gay literary salon" (after its brief break for summer hols) with excitement and relief, and as ever we were not disappointed!



Our host Paul Burston proudly congratulated Toby and Emma on their recent (theatrically public) nuptials, welcomed his hubbie Paulo and Mum-in-law Heidi to the evening, and opened proceedings with customary top-hatted aplomb.



First to the podium was another "LGBT literary face" on the London circuit, the (artistically) label-clad Trudy Howson - hostess-with-the-mostest of the long-running "Incite" poetry evenings at the Phoenix Artists' Club, and, as we found, a delightfully pithy poet in her own right. Here she is performing her classic, Pride:

Trudi Howson - Pride

Carole Morin, up next, read for us (in character as "Vivien Lash", the protagonist of her "noir"-ish novel Spying on Strange Men) a most chilling piece.



Our narrator has just received an envelope of photographs (anonymously) that detail her husband's secret affair, and now she is tempted to thoughts of murder:

Knowledge is power. Without information, I can’t get revenge. If I had an address or even a name for, let’s call her Z, I could send a dead chicken in the mail.

But I don’t. So I checked that the maid had gone, peeled off my clothes, and stepped into my bath just in time.

Our wedding picture caught my eye. There’s one in every room, spying on me.

The clarity of his complexion makes him look innocent. In movies, the villain is pockmarked. So in real life good skin has come to mean good faith. Where is he now, that boy I married? Where am I?

Angry in my pink marble bathtub plotting a murder. The bath full of rose petals picked on a moonlit night. He spat on my heart with his betrayal.

Betrayal is a cliché.

Does his romance convert me into a victim? Has he won again, beat me to it, devised his escape route? Bought her presents? Those miscellaneous expenses from shops I haven’t heard of can’t all be surprises for me.

Why would the stinky little slut send me a picture she doesn’t even look that good in? How the fuck does she even know where we live? James is so secretive he has secrets even from himself.

Maybe the ho-bag didn’t intend the picture for me? It’s a present for him. Something to remember her by? A warning? But if the envelope was for him, it would have his name on it.

When I come out of the bath, he’s home.

His heart has no home. He gets nervous when love circles him. Panics when happiness closes in. Should I laugh out loud or bite him?

"Hello Baby," he says, like nothing’s changed. He looks innocent. We are still the perfect couple. "We’re going to the Russian Riviera."

Thrilling stuff!



Collin Kelley - who last landed at Polari from Atlanta, Georgia two years ago - provided us with some much-needed light relief to conclude part 1. His poems about love, lust, growing-up and the vagaries of stupid middle America are always a joy; not least this one - The Virgin Mary Appears in a Highway Underpass:

Colin Kelley - The Virgin Mary Appears in a Highway Underpass

Suitably refreshed after a fag on the moonlit Thames-side terrace, replenished drink in hand, it was time for the "second act".

But before the readers would begin, it was time for judging panel-member Suzi Feay to make an announcement - the shortlist of five for the Polari First Book Prize (which will for the first time be displayed at W.H. Smith travel outlets>:

• I Am Nobody's Nigger by Dean Atta
• Petite Mort by Beatrice Hitchman
• Fairytales for Lost Children by Diriye Osman
• God's Other Children - A London Memoir by Vernal W. Scott
• The Rubbish Lesbian by Sarah Westwood

Juliet Jacques is very angry. Her account of her experiences of growing up in the wrong gender, and of transition, maltreatment and psychological stress, interspersed with her more recent encounter with radical performance artist Marina Abramović was - admittedly - a challenging thing to listen to, yet she has my ultimate admiration for her intelligent stance on the controversial topic of how trans people and gender identity are brow-beaten even more spitefully by the ultra-feminist Left than by the bullies and bigots of the Right. Just this small extract from her magnum opus on the subject published in the New Statesman earlier this year makes me shudder:

"...so few know any trans people, with the twin problem of family and friends being encouraged to disown them and their feeling that they have to live in stealth. Factor in a media culture that values bad-tempered slanging matches above sensitive exposition, with broadcast slots or word counts too small to allow much beyond familiar soundbites, and the problem is even worse. The tendency of publications and broadcasters towards clickbait-style questions debated by thundering bell-ends is by no means limited to trans people – witness BBC Newsnight’s jaw-dropping decision to ask ‘Is it ever OK to call women sluts?’ and invite Godfrey Bloom, a man shoved off the right-hand edge of the UK Independence Party for his views on women and ethnic minorities, to help them find a consensus. But we’re constantly forced to justify our existence, responding to questions which people aren’t conditioned to see as unreasonable: I got loads on starting transition – usually about my genitalia – but the most difficult was simply “Why?” I don’t know what caused my gender dysphoria – nature, nature or some combination: it just is, and I don’t see why I should bear the responsibility of answering it to anyone who meets or reads me.

When I was a child, I’d go to my grandmother’s house and start writing. When I picked up my pencil, she’d tell me that in her day, left-handers would be forced to write with their right hands, which seemed ridiculous to me. Luckily, those days were over and although my left-handedness is still treated as a curiosity by people who expect me to have terrible script, I can write as I wish – but sometimes I imagine how absurd, not to mention vindictive, a campaign to return to this would look, and wonder if we’ll ever reach a similar point where my transition is quietly accepted as a matter of bodily autonomy."

Whew!

[For a more light-hearted, if just as honest, exploration of gender dysphoria, see yesterday's blog.]



Our headliner Joanna Briscoe - winner of the Commonwealth Betty Trask Prize (for Mothers and Other Lovers in 1994, and partner of fellow award-winning novelist Charlotte Mendelson - had the unenviable job of following that show-stopping monologue, but took to the task with aplomb, reading from her new mysterious Gothic novel Touched.

As Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian put it:

"Touched is a gripping novella, a waking nightmare in the home counties that is both erotic and claustrophobic. There's a woozy atmosphere of menace, a satirical stab at Britain's postwar commuter-belt aspirations, and an elegant, postmodern, cine-literate twist.

Rowena is the beautiful, harassed mother of five young children who has been chivvied by her husband into moving away from London to this sweet little village, a convenient half-hour drive from the capital. They have turfed Rowena's ailing mother-in-law out of her cottage, bought the one next door and are now trying to knock them through to create a family house and commuter base. But the cottage itself seems to resist this proto-yuppification. Haunted with resentment, the walls groan and bulge. Rowena's children start behaving oddly, forming a friendship with the local builder and his wife, Mr and Mrs Pollard – and then they begin to disappear. Rowena finds herself faint with desire for her handsome neighbour Gregory and begins to sense the presence of Freddie, the imaginary friend of her disturbed daughter Evangelina. Is Rowena having a breakdown – or is it something else?

...Touched would make a terrific 1960s black-and-white film."

And that is precisely how I pictured it as she was reading - a perfect story for a film adaptation (or more likely TV, for which Miss Briscoe's previous novel Sleep With Me was adapted in 2009). Spooky, indeed. We were gripped, and were left wanting to find out more.

However, with a final flourish as the assembled artists gathered for their well-deserved applause, it was not to be.

Another marvellously eclectic Polari evening was over for another month.

Next month's event, as part of the London Literature Festival, will be in the prestigious (if somewhat soulless) Purcell Room - as we start our celebration of seven years of LGBT literary fabulousness, and the winner of the Polari First Book Prize is announced. Ali Smith, Mari Hannah Will Davis, Karen Mcleod and Justin David will be on the bill - and, as ever, I can't wait!

Polari