The Prowler Press Kama Sutra of Gay Sex, by Bjorn Andersen and Dr Ray Lightbown, was published, according to its colophon, in 1995. In fact, it was a book of photographs by Neal Cavalier-Smith, designed, edited and with text written by me, in 1994. It was the last thing of any significance I did for Prowler, of which Neal -- who I still consider a friend, and who was a significant factor in various things that feed into this site, not least my friendship with Daniel -- was at that time Managing Director.

Although basically a coffee-table wank book, the Kama Sutra stands as one of the few things I've done in my life that I believe was any good. It was slick and sexy, and it genuinely pushed the boundaries of what you could do -- and sell, in bookshops like Waterstone's -- at the time. The sex pics were not particularly arty in themselves, but they became art by virtue of context; and the text -- mostly sloganeering smut -- was not particularly radical, but I stand by every word of it.

This was the afterword:

Stand by. Every word.

Anyway, that's not really what this is all about. This is:

That picture -- taken by Neal, featured in the book -- is of Ian's wedding.

« REWIND «

At the end of 1990, the world was a different place. I was fresh back from the colonies and, from the disjoint season as much as anything, righteously pissed off. There was a new spirit abroad in the land, and that spirit moved me.

Thanks to a perverse mixup in our visas, I arrived back a month after Guy. A Friday morning in December. It was fucking cold, and I was jet-lagged to hell, thoroughly disoriented, penniless, jobless, in a country I despised. A dingy, joyless, hidebound, backward place. Thatcher was just recently gone, and the winds of change were nothing but a bare draught, carrying only the weakest scent of future good.

But on Saturday there was to be a protest march organized by OutRage!, coinciding with the first Winter Pride event at ULU. I was in no fit state to think of such things, but Guy's (straight, female) friend Dessi would brook no argument. It was our duty to be there. It was important. And so we went.

By the end of the day, I was hooked, firmly in the grip of revolutionary fervour. Enough of being the unprotesting whipping-boys of the hetero oligarchy! It was time to show those motherfuckers we meant business! I dragged Guy to the next OutRage! meeting, but he wasn't keen. I, on the other hand, was consumed. If I couldn't be in the beautiful, easy-going place I loved, I would remake the place I was in its image. If I couldn't be a tropical sybarite, I would be a blazing firebrand.

Four years later I was back in the same place; instead of righteous fury, I was riven with despair. Winter Pride, ULU, 1994. Matthew was out of the hospital by then, and had withdrawn to Devon, but those wounds were fresh and bleeding. The Blasé experiment had been a disaster. My Prowler work -- including the Kama Sutra -- had been and gone. I was living at home, with no job and no prospects. My life wasn't working out too well.

And there, naked and miserable in the swimming pool, I met Ian. Again.

When we were in OutRage! we hated each other. We were both outspoken and opinionated, and at loggerheads. I turned myself in at Bow Street police station as a sex criminal; Ian married his then boyfriend in a big ceremony in Trafalgar Square. He was in with the in crowd; I was co-secretary. We cooperated when necessary, but not easily.

Later, when we'd both lost faith and given all that up, we would run into each other occasionally -- at bizarre warehouse nightclubs with a swimming pool, or around a table at the gym with mutual friends -- and the ignoring would be pointed and excruciating.

Of course, he was fucking gorgeous.

For one section of the Kama Sutra, Neal and I went through a lot of his old photos looking for images of courtship, and somehow settled on two completely unrelated pictures that happened to feature Ian very prominently. They're reproduced here. One was from the OutRage! wedding action, the other from some demo I can't identify. In the latter he's accompanied by Toby, his first (but by then ex-) boyfriend, my fellow OutRage! co-secretary, now father to Ian's godson Oliver. I remember seeing Toby on that first wintry Saturday morning and thinking he was so beautiful and committed, so much the angel of righteousness, he represented everything that drew me to the cause. Later, inevitably, I slept with him.

Anyway, there I am, with all that water under the bridge, in the pool at ULU. I feebly breaststroke up to Ian, who's perched on the side, and for some reason hostilities are suspended.

"Hello Matthew," he says.
Posted by matt at October 10, 2003 03:24 AM