Saturday of a three-day weekend.
A benefit for the gay rugby team... they're sweet guys, I know I'll go to this thing...
but last night (i.e. Friday of the three-day weekend) I did a presentation for the new student Youth Stop AIDS group (yes, I was clear that I wasn't the 'youth' part) and we went to that good-but-rather-spicy restaurant that serves Stormy Weathers, with serious rum, and which also does a two-drinks-for-one deal, so that's always kind of....
Well anyway. I assume the students recovered more quickly than I did.
Aaaand the last two or three days have been strange anyway: rapid political change, a disturbing sense that British politics is abruptly shifting into a lower, more primitive register – stupid people, stupid decisions, and no safety nets.
Sort of like Trumpland, except this government has no checks and balances, so crazed ideologues do just what they want. And the English merely look... perturbed.
But I don't know what to do with that fear and anger, so... might as well go to a party.
•••
So it's Saturday and it's 11 pm, and I call an Über, but 11 pm on a Saturday in a British city is not an intelligent time to expect any form of service. There are no cars, then there are again no cars, then... no vans, then... okay, well, 'Exec Über' (what the hell is that, a limo?) is available. For a small fee.
No problem, it's not as though my money is going anywhere important these days....
•••
The rugby player benefit is cheerful, with a very casual/local feeling. Several lovely guys I know, more that I don't (one tall guy with a sharply defined face is wearing sunglasses – because they have a Hawaiian theme, did I mention that, so there are a lot of Hawaiian shirts and a few grass skirts – and with those sunglasses, indoors, he looks exactly like a coke addict. Or possibly a contract killer, who can tell at that point).
Fun, nice kids, that sense of the sweetness of everyday guys....
•••
But I've literally arrived in the last twenty minutes of this benefit, which is about to leave the old pub and move to the gay bars. So then a semi-long walk, I get detached from the others, which is okay... I'm actually feeling detached, watching. The kind of evening where I walk through life, among it, not in it.
•••
The bars are fairly, not intensely, busy. Bouncing from one to the other, I settle in the Eagle –
and end up talking to Marco and his partner, which is lovely. Marco knows me from all those public presentations – I've met him but don't remember (which is normal for me of course). But we talk about everything on earth for perhaps two hours, and from now on I know that I will remember.
The relationship of the two of them... again, something with a real sweetness, a trust, a sense of guys whose relationships and emotions matter. The calm solidity of the bears, the best of that class of gay men.
•••
The Bank is noisier and more chaotic, but also bear-oriented tonight (or perhaps I just know a lot of them these days).... and then Switch, which is usually mostly young people. Marco and his boyfriend have led the way, I meet their friends – mostly younger, postgrad students at the uni.
One startles me by saying, of course I know who you are, you're... and he knows my full name.
... When I think I'm invisible or forgotten, do I actually have a public persona that functions in the world?... that is news to me.
Young people, some with birthdays, someone's sister....
•••
In the Bank I'd already seen two guys, handsome – one very handsome; but relaxed. Not like guys who preen: just regular-looking men with weekend beards, who happen to be calmly, quietly beautiful, in an everyday way.
They follow us into Switch, the dance music is going... they buy drinks and talk, seem alert in a relaxed way, looking around – a sense that perhaps they don't come out much, or live a bit far from the city.
And, as it does, that song by Journey comes on – the one that gets played incalculably often, but which always retains its eerily transcendent rising, circular hope, that sense of time stretched and also lost, and extraordinary desire:
just a city boy / born and raised in south Detroit
he took the midnight train / goin' anywhere
... one of the guys is galvanized by this, and who can blame him. They go onto the dance floor, and dance with increasing energy – both of them dancing, like dads, one enthusiastic and slightly awkward, the other more casual; but as he is a handsome man you know that, if he were the person you were living with, you would see this with such a daze of love: his humanity, his easiness, he is happy and dancing, and you'd think: I live with this man, I can see him every day, and there is nothing better to look at in the entire world....
•••
Somewhere in this I think: so, life, meaning, judgment: what if my life right now, just as it is, is... perfect? What if all of this is as wonderful, as extraordinarily beautiful, as it seems during the time of this song?....
it goes on and on and on and on
The song is ending, and I think: no, I should go home after that. I turn to Marco, then his partner, quickly: 'yes, I'm going home, text me', hugs, and also the young hunk who told me it's his birthday, and....
walk out into the night.
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