Although I was living in outer London (as I said, in glamorous Teddington to be precise), it didn’t initially occur to me to try and meet people on the pub & club ‘scene’ in central London.
Whilst this wasn’t exactly huge then in the late 70’s in Soho, there was probably the biggest concentration of gay venues outside of New York or San Francisco. However, it wasn’t easy going into such a space and meeting a potential partner on a night, if you weren’t especially confident or got nervous going in there and being by yourself. My experiences on the scene up until then hadn’t been too good either. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure why but I think it was because I had started to be more influenced by the post punk new music scene that was blossoming about in that time. Bands like The Jam, the Specials, the Jets and similar bands. I wanted to meet people who liked them as well. A lot of people on the scene seemed -to me at least- stuck in a sixties timewarp.
I was also more interested in new cinema directions at the time and grew to have a slightly more specific ‘style’ that I searched out in others, as a result. I joined the British Film Institute (BFI) and started going to watch films there, visited the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) gallery on the Mall for its edgy films, installations and bands.
A lot of this was the result of reading a particular London based magazine, that in retrospect I realise I owe a huge debt to; that magazine is of course ‘Time Out’. Although it’s more or less a pastiche now of what it once was, in its glory days Time Out used to be ‘hot’ on the London scene. It had both gay listings -unheard of then- and gay contact ads.. also unheard of in mainstream magazines then. In 1978 it was money very well spent and an essential weekly read for 30 pence. Tony Elliot was its publisher then, having nursed it in various states of health from episode 1 back in 1968 at 1s.6d -old money- a copy.
About the first edition I ever bought however, was when it was already well established and pretty much in its glory days, on number 421, covering April 28th-May 4th 1978 and featuring The Clash and Tom Robinson on its front cover, at a Rock against Fascism benefit gig. Richard Williams was then its editor, with Anny Brackx heading up a section unashamedly called ‘Agitprop’ on p19. There was still a poetry section on p18 and the classified ads were on p64. Some famous names were involved in writing for it, Duncan Campbell heading up its news section with Chris Petit editing its film section. You could be pretty sure most of what you needed to know-or should know-would be covered by it weekly, in mid to late 70’s London.
It wasn’t all hard core though.. it had a section called ‘Discos’ on p46. It also had a section called ‘Stop Press’ to give it a seemingly current vibe long before internet days, on the inside back page and it was edgy enough to have various typo’s too; this particular edition shows that p55 saw its ‘Classica and Opera’ coverage start. It still had a reassuringly hip feel to it, at least to this twenty one year old kid just coming out and starting a long journey towards some kind of awareness of how things meshed together. I may well have bought it for its cover (Tom Robinson..edgy and gay, The Clash, Paul Simenon.. edgy and gorgeous) but soon saw that it covered so much more. I was hooked from the start.
Then there were those personal ads. Did I mention there were gay ones? I soon figured that if someone was edgy enough to read ‘Time Out’, put in a gay personal ad and expect replies they could well be right up my street. Maybe even in my street? Hence began my long love affair with Time Out personal ads. You could more or less say what you wanted (but no swearing). Abbreviations were accepted (so you could add relatively risque things in too if you were careful). It soon became my personal lexiconic challenge to create the perfect twenty seven word ad (words were expensive!) that would attract ‘my type’ of man.
At the time there was a large market for such ways of meeting people. People were already becoming somewhat disillusioned by the commercial gay scene: its mainstream music, it’s perceived seediness, its behind closed doors attitudes and for all these reasons I suspect they wanted a way to create their own agenda when meeting people.
We would arrange to meet in cafes, such as the BFI’s edgily hip cafe on the South Bank, maybe see a film at an alternative venue, like the Scala, at its original Scala Street home or go to a good value self service italian bistro, such as Spaghetti House on St Martins Lane (which was an institution in itself , somehow surviving there until 2016) and then a drink in a pub.. gay or otherwise.
You always (ok, I always..) asked for a photo first too, so as to assess likeability. I felt that I didn’t necessarily need to fancy someone from their photo but if they just looked like someone I could talk to, well, that was good enough. Of course if you fancied them in their photo as well, the game was well and truly on! The letters you’de exchanged already had already covered your mutual interests too, and so you knew there was at least something you could talk about for a hour or two. In the first few years I met probably a few dozen people through such ads, some successful, some less so, and just a few were hopelessly cringeworthy. Five or six became boyfriends and one, Gary, became my first ‘proper’ long term boyfriend, whom I was still regularly in touch with, over forty years later.
My first affair didn’t last too long but thank goodness he was charming, somewhat older than I was, with some experience and took my fumbling nervousness in good spirits. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that although I can picture him -he had glasses, was quite tall with a nice body- I cannot recall his name or surname, and have no idea if he is about today even but I’d like to say a heartfelt thankyou in retrospect, many years later, for showing me that two guys can get it on together, it can feel entirely natural and exciting and there is nothing to be ashamed of. All of those things were not ‘givens’ to me beforehand. I think I was so relieved afterwards, I might have cried.
Maybe things (that is, my life) could be, would be all right, after all? When things went wrong in the next twenty years or so and relationships broke up (and they did..) I would nearly always think (mostly -but not always- after a suitable pause): contact ad. It worked time and time again. It wasn’t tinder or grindr but it was a definite mapped out way forwards again. At one stage I thought of calling this memoir ‘Return to the Contact Ad’. Probably for the best it was ditched as a title.
Sometimes, some unusual magazines paid off handsomely; for a long time the fortnightly Irish music magazine ‘Hot Press‘ accepted gay contact ads, when other music magazines didn’t. The magazine was imported into the UK and available in London newsagents & bookshops and selectively elsewhere. However, somewhere word got out that you could put gay contact ads into it & it became an exceptionally good way of meeting like minded young gay men into cool bands for a time. The first time I put a well crafted ad into it, I was absolutely inundated by replies from very eligible young gay men, which put me in a difficult position, as frankly, I would have been happy to have gone out at least once with nearly all of them. I replied to about half of them with a photo, still got a lot of responses back and worked my way through them. I had to apologise to many though and try and carefully explain that I had had too many replies and suggest they perhaps put an ad in themselves. You had to be careful though, as some of the guys replying were very young. I met a lovely guy called Steve through Hot Press (he was, I recall, a huge Debbie Harry fan) who told me he was sixteen in the letter. Actually, he acted and looked about twenty and so it was a shock to hear, after I had seen him a few times, that he was soon having his 16th birthday in a few weeks, as the age of consent was still 21.
ON to Sex, love and life (The rituals) 2.8 The film that moved me and moved me on
