For how long had it been like this? Sex and death, death and sex?
It was just after Mark’s funeral that Jeff told me he had fancied me all along. It was too late by then of course. Far too late. How do you come to be talking about fancying someone, straight after a funeral?
It was the big one, Mark’s funeral. The one that we all talked about, even years afterwards. Were you there? What did you expect? Did you see any of the miners? The place was so packed they were standing outside. I had worn a suit, thinking for some woe begotten reason that the dead deserved some kind of suited & booted respect, but I don’t know what I’d expected really about that funeral. Certainly that it would be the first of many -and of course I was pretty much right on that. I just wasn’t sure beforehand that I should even be going there.
Back in the early eighties, long before it all started, I used to go to his flat in Ladbroke Grove to get my hair cut. He did a mean flat top, the distinctive style many of us wore back then. I’d ring the bell and tramp up the narrow stairs to his flat. Knock on the door. I’ll just get the scissors, he’d say. I went as much for the chat as anything. There was always a story to be told, some gossip- something a bit sordid and something religious. On a good day you’de get both together. The flat was full of religious iconography. Crosses, a rosary, Our Mary, little pictures of Jesus. I could never quite work out where the love of a good saint and strong sense of high camp crossed over but with Mark they did. Maybe they do in all good catholic boys? His heart was in the right place though and that’s all that ever really mattered to me, in a good friend. He could natter for Jesus though, that Portrush accent thickening up fast, as he got into his stride.
‘Want some tea? Stay still, cut to here? Number two on the sides yeh? No, he isn’t me, I mean it was a good night but I won’t go back. I’ll put the kettle on then. Hold on… head up a bit. Stay still for fucks sake, these scissors will have your ear off. No, I never thought I could do that (laughing) but no, it was fine. Be right back. Sugar? Drat, milk’s gone off.. ‘
After those times in Ladbroke Grove I suppose we got to know each other pretty well. He had joined the Gay Switchboard (as it was still called then) like me, so we would do shifts together. There was time to natter between calls, swop stories: he always had a good story to tell. And then there were all the marches: you couldn’t keep Mark away from a march. And me I guess as well, those were the glory days when as long as you had a decent banner you could march anywhere, with any cause that took your fancy really.
So we went on marches with the bright yellow and red Switchboard banner. I remember there was a ‘Gays for a Nuclear Free future’ banner we marched under, that was really impressive: we were in awe. I’d imagine Mark marching under lots of other banners though for his various causes, carrying a flag if he wasn’t holding a banner.
However, I’d lost touch with a lot of people in the couple of years before; we had gone our separate ways. I had been studying for my film and video degree down at Farnham, in West Surrey, living there for nearly a year before missing London too much and instead commuting from Hackney each day and back: a slog but a bearable slog. Everything’s bearable in your twenties though. Even ‘tube cruising’ made the journey bearable. How many people can you make flirtatious eye contact with on one journey in one carriage?
Mark would have approved. He was a right royal flirt, that boy. Never a dull moment in that well lived life. But he had died, aged just 26.
I’d had a sudden phone call from my ex, Gary. It was a chilly grey day in mid February.
‘Mark’s dead’ he said. Straight out with it, he was never one to beat around the bush.
‘No! You are kidding me’?
‘Yep, really sudden.. twelve days-AIDS’. We still said AIDS then. Simple and direct, the word still had the power to chill you to the bone.
‘But .. so quick. Mark? How could Mark just.. ‘
‘I know. It’s scary. There’s a funeral next week-Tuesday.
I’m going. You should come’.
‘Yeh, of course, of course. God. But.. I wanna go with you..I need to be with somebody.. you know Gaz’?
‘I know, I know.. there’s a mini bus picking us up from Tulse Hill station, the Communist party have hired it, to go to Lambeth church. With his old friends. I’ll see you there at one’.
I remember we drove past lots of people through the Church gates, right into the church yard, there were mini buses, coaches, cars all parked on the side roads. That’ll be all the miners come down from Wales, Connie said. We sailed past them though, pulled up right outside. Bit weird, felt like some kind of royal party arriving. Walked straight in past everyone outside .. packed already. Like a church. Mark in a church? Not so odd.. he was a good catholic boy that loved the idea of revolution. Workers of the World Unite and Pray. That boy was a huge mass of contradictions but by jesus, he wore them well.
A few nods at familiar faces, many I had no idea. Some Switchboarders: there was Lisa. A lot of men with their wives in hats; solid faced, no nonsense types, I remember thinking. I had been told earlier that Mark had been a big supporter of the miner’s strike a year or so earlier. Made the journey to the South Wales valleys to the miners in Dulais many a time. Now, those same union men and women from their lodges had all come down to pay their last respects to a good comrade. They led the 1985 National Pride march in London & never forgot the support of the -eventually eleven- LGSM’s groups either. The 1985 Labour party conference saw a motion to support equal rights for gay men and lesbians go down to the wire. It was eventually carried only due to the block votes of the National Union of Mineworkers and its allies.
And just about everyone else seemed to be there from his past, at least it seemed that way; he would have been proud of our sudden unification on his behalf. ‘Pride‘? Yep, you bet.
Were we ready to start? People outside a murmur went round, can’t all get in. Extra seats. A hush, a few coughs and we were off. Now, I can’t remember the hymns we sang but I know we sang them well, there were that many Welsh valley people there for whom singing was the release, an emotion shared. I can’t remember what exactly it was that started the tears flowing but I wasn’t alone; my god, I have never seen so many people crying at a funeral before or since. Gary hastily proffered me a paper hankie.
And so it was that, red eyed, we all trooped out of the place forty five minutes later back into our Party mini bus. There was a wake to go to. I think people were just glad it was over. We were hurting. Connie was wisecracking as ever, hiding it well. Jimmy was there too, comforting Mark’s mum. And Jeff, the lovely Jeff. Face like a started doe caught in a spotlight.
Where have you been Dave, not seen anything of you at all recently. Too good for us all now are you?
‘Ran away from your pretty face Jeff’ ..
‘Ha. You should have had me when I said’.
‘You never said.. ‘
‘Never said? What about when I saw you off at the Tube after the April housing co-op meeting, said I didn’t have to go straight home’.
‘That you were going to the pub..? ‘
‘I was giving you the eye all through the meeting’.
‘You never were’?
‘You’re blind ‘.
‘Really? I never knew, really. Never had a clue’.
‘Too late now mister. Far too late now, I’m almost a married man.’
Jeff, I learnt much later, was the official photographer for LGSM, & went on to become a filmmaker and make a rather wonderful low budget documentary about the events in Dulais in 1985 which was part of the inspiration for Pride, a film about Mark (played uncannily well by Ben Schnetzer) and the miners, made many years later and released in 2014. He also went on to shoot a lot of the future films and videos that I would make as well.
The minibus was heading towards Mark’s flat in Elephant and Castle; Gaz went but only stayed for ten minutes because, he told me later, everyone was bawling their eyes out. He said it was the saddest thing he had ever experienced.
‘Let me off at Brixton tube guys. I just need to go home and get some rest’. After a spot of tube cruising that is and as I ponder how I can think about sex so much, at a funeral.
How long has it always been about this- sex and death?
ON to Sex, love and life (The rituals) 2.25 1988 Filming ‘Pride’ for posterity
