Chapter 26 - The Alien Does The Arts
Soon after I moved to Trinity St my life opened out in a different way to how I expected when a new arts centre opened in the town. The town's last cinema cinema had closed in 1971, when the last independent cinema house was bought out by an electrical company, who sold and repaired televisions amongst other things. The town had to wait until 1980 for there to be a small theatre that was kept in regular use, and there the building was an old police station last in operation in the 1950's that was restored through volunteer work by the local amateur theatre group. I was an unskilled volunteer on the team that restored the space to being fit for public use. I acted there, small parts only.
The building that housed the arts centre had been sold by the church of England to the council for £1 and much work went into the refurbishing of a large former church building into a theatre rehearsal rooms and exhibition space. I was hungry for culture. I soaked the place up like a sponge. I went to the theatre and the movies as much as I could. The theatre I saw most was touring theatre company Hull Truck Theatre. John Godber, their chief writer, was brilliant at putting a convincing narrative arc into the portrayal of working class lives. At the other extreme was 'Waiting For Godot' with an intentionally warped fifteen foot high mirror for a backdrop. I came away from the production thinking I understood it. I will never know if I actually did. The first film they showed was that year's popular blockbuster 'Jewel of The Nile', which was bland, but it was a film. Mother graciously accepted seeing that film with me. Much better for me were the British independent films that came soon which included Mike Leigh's 'Life is Sweet', a lugubrious comedy about a teenager with Bulimia Nervosa who lived with her family who all led hand to mouth working lives. That film was made all the more enjoyable by it being introduced by Mike Leigh himself who told us a few travellers tales before the film started that sounded less and less likely the more we thought about them after. As good without an introduction was the first partly gay themed film that I saw. 'My Beautiful Laundrette' was three parts comedy thriller about race, crime, and the lack of integration in London, to one part gay love story. I liked it. It was still only a window onto a world I could not imagine being part of. But it set a tone for how I might see myself, the portrayal of homosexuality was slightly scary because of the inter-racial, angle but it conveyed a sense of inclusivity, humour and hope.
The first big homegrown theatre production in the arts centre was a community play. I am sure there is a short but damning political thesis to be written about what putting the word 'community' meant when it was put before the word that came after it, whatever word that was, in the 1980's. From 'community programme' to 'community play' to 'community tax' the trend became ever clearer that local ideas and localism should be mostly supported locally whilst being used to isolate 'the community', where the better supported by the locals anything was locally the more central government could be seen to safely wash their hands of how the locals lived and were losing money that took routes away from them. With the work and theatre schemes that worked, in the short term. Government seed money was used to keep the locals busy doing this and that, locally. But regressively taxing ourselves, based upon who was on the electoral register, for the benefit of the central government was where the modern idea of 'community' hit the buffers and came unstuck.
The subject of the play was far enough away from us in time that it was safe, but it was very much a local play written about once-local people. We did not see ourselves as we were in the script because the subject of the play made it seem to us like we were viewing ourselves through the wrong end of a telescope. But the play took on the theme of localism and that town's historical sense of self importance very well. In the year 1013 for five weeks the town had been the capital of both England and Denmark, until the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard died of food poisoning. Our play was called 'Waves against The Flame' and it went through the Danish invasion, and the travels of the new king to and from his new capital, settling his kingdom. It was a historical pageant, a school play for adults centred around the short lived reign of Sweyn Forkbeard and his son King Cnut who may have bidden the turn back on the local river, but equally he might have bidden other waters turn back, or he might never have done any such thing, somebody else did and their story got tacked onto Cnut's recorded life.
The story of the invasion, brief rule of Sweyn, and the son Cnut setting up camp and capital elsewhere were played as straight as we could muster. I am sure the Danes swore far more than we dare and they would have meant it more too. What we performed would have been better adapted as an early version of 'Horrible Histories'. When Sweyn walked off stage at the end of a war council and shouted 'Horse dung' at the people he had just disagreed with when he meant 'Horseshit' didn't sit well. But long before that it was clear that the play lacked any Danish saltiness and authenticity. There were court scenes, eating scenes, romantic interludes, songs, peasants providing plot detail through their gossip about the king's health. Many of us doubled up our parts as the trees of the woodland, which left us closer than we knew to being some odd looking Joyce Grenfell style parody of awkward rather large children performing on stage. It took a large ensemble cast, was a big effort, and it was the second to last time I took to the amateur stage. I enjoyed the experience. With hindsight for all the cheery amateurism there was a certain bathos about how short the time span of being a capital of two countries was, and how long ago it happened.
What the play never went near was the inherently temporary nature of peripatetic capitals being set up in many places amid chaotic wars. Nobody asked how if our town could be a capital back then, then lots of places could have been. Being a temporary capital was nothing special. The self absorption of the town was so much part of the fabric of the play, the town was so much the centre of everything that we could see and hear nothing bound by our own self absorption.
Writing of a lack of self recognition, the female director of 'Waves Against the Flame' nearly 'outed' me as gay to my face in front of others several times during rehearsals, meetings, and prep work for the play. It must have been one of her lighter amusements to herself that she could do this amid the sheer amount of effort of getting the play on. But she did it through humour so the humour was to the fore, the 'outing' was 'incidental'. Were I not half way out already then it would have hurt me and she could not have done it at all. As it was I could only actively engage with the humour and teasing of being 'outed' long after the teasing happened, in private recollection. I coped much better later than I could cope with it openly at the time.
Going on how the government liked putting the word 'community' next to another word, to keep what the other word meant small, self sufficient and distant from the government without being seen to, I could see that if in the 1980's government had talked about the idea of 'a gay community' then that collection of people would be a collection of gay men who knew each other through recognising they were in the closet and who reinforced keeping each other in the closet. Any lesbian community would have been equally low key and self isolating. Shrink them through distance was the government led agenda about communities.
What I wanted to say to somebody, anybody, then but I couldn't say it, was how deeply I wanted to meet another gay man, if not several, with whom I could find more values and ideas in common than just sexuality and sexual expression. But in the sexual experiences lay the traps and trip wires of expectation. If sex was the currency of the closeted gay world then seemingly gay men could not find it in themselves, or the heterosexual monoculture that they could not stop being a part of, to convert what they had into something more sociable, more thoughtful, and more accepted by the larger culture. If the first part of this would be currency conversion process was 'coming out as gay', publicly declaring your sexuality, then the project was doable. The words existed, though maybe the audience for them didn't. The second part, where having something recognised and accepted by straight society that we had always been part of, preferably something that was used money but was not totally monetised and marketized either was where the process ground to a halt. And without the second part, somewhere to 'come out' was missing, which was why I was so slow with the first part.
There was at least one other known gay man in the cast of the play, and he was more at ease with being known to be gay, because, to read between the lines of gossip about him, he took holidays that were essentially sex holidays in lieu of having more regular fuller relationships nearer home. When he lived in the town he lived with his mother, but he was often away. He worked as a traveling DJ with his own disco and self contained transport. His profession provided him the cover he needed for his sexual adventures about which I could not begin to guess. With his easy manner he was very popular with some of the more community minded women who ran playgroups and similar places for children who I also knew. They liked Bruce. He was charismatic and naturally large. He was a young man with a lot of natural charm.
I will never forget the last time I saw him, though, close to where his mother lived and a few minutes walk from the parental house. I saw him walking close ahead of me and I had not seen him for several years. I called out his name. When he turned round and looked at me he was now as thin as a rake and his eyes looked haunted. Both of us saw that he had the acronym A.I.D.S. written all over his very much reduced form.
The look in his eyes said 'It's too late now.'. No words were said. When his eyes met mine my thoughts froze. When my thoughts unfroze they ran between wanting to reach out and connect with him, give him a hug far all that we did not really know each other, and having not the least idea how to reach out. But by then he was gone. Seeing him so close to death when before he had been so full of life was a shock that I'll never forget.
Please find Chapter 27 here.
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