It is never easy telling someone you don´t love them, when you know it is not a reciprocal feeling. And yet there he was the other night, doing it. And still the most surprised person in the equation was me.
It seemed I had jumped to a conclusion that because the other person had been very generous and kind to me, and that we had easy relaxed conversations and I enjoyed his company, and that there were so many warm feelings I had towards him bubbling away under the surface that it must be more to it that simply a friendship. And of course all those things are potentially a reason in themselves. But I was seemingly quite wrong and the emotional loss I was feeling after losing a best friend was being misplaced into an even stronger need for an emotional connection with this other person, (lets call him ´Jean Pierre´).
“You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.”― Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
That long tunnel ahead I wrote of previously, contained metaphorical flashing red lights in the darkness for a very good reason. Every thing I wrote before still holds true. As gay men we are indeed often inclined to perceive and view these things under a hetero-normative template. There are indeed many things a man loving a younger man is perceived to be, names can be called, disparaging remarks made. And to feel it, as a gay men with no children, was indeed not something I had experienced before.
But the very novelty of it does not alas make it more solid, it makes it fraught with unexpected emotions, feeling, reactions and ultimately rejection. This is indeed a very big reveal, especially if that other someone is not on that same page with you. And the very fact that even I was not entirely sure how I would have coped with it, had it happened to me, say, three decades ago was another warning sign. Even I thought I might well have run away, as I wrote before, frightened off by the curious notion it presents in its raw form, which doesn’t really fit into any of the societal norms. My needs in this were clear but I don’t think in feeling them, I took into account the needs of the other person involved in this situation. Or perhaps I did but had overlooked them enough to consider that such news might be accepted and dealt with.
And after several emotional outbursts from me, as the person pulled away from me, there followed the dreaded ‘I think this has got out of hand´ note by text. The classic ´´we can still be friends but not now and not in the way you want´´ moment, that every lover dreads. For me it had faint echoes of the Mike moment, decades ago I still remember well even now ´I can only see you every two weeks and not like this´.
And as I process this and strive to accept it, to take it on board and all it entails, a wave of much softer emotion washes over me. As the tightening stomach cramps ease, the need to check the phone for messages, to see whether he has logged on today and not sent any messages, to want to be with him but alone and so on, these ease too, a blessed relief. Along with it comes acceptance of change, and an ability to perceive the situation from an ´other´ point of view. The ´awful´ thing about unrequited love of whatever nature, is that the recipient often feels nothing more than slightly irritated. Irritated that this is hindering him or her doing a myriad of other things which for whatever reason are far more important, more needed, more necessary. And sometimes too, a feeling of pity for the ‘lover’: of weakness, of being let down, of seeing how even the strong are brought down to the ground, on their bended knees by this thing we call love. Is it an illness? Well, some psychologists would suggest so. It has many of the classic signs of some forms of mental illness. Delusion. illusion, confusion. They all exist in this spectrum. And yet we give it pride of place in our world, write countless words, verses, songs and prose in its honour. You´ll feel no doubt I´ve gone to the opposite extreme here and of course in some respects you would be correct. And yet, and yet..
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
And yet, as with all things there is something to be gained by the experience. The wisdom that comes through bitter experience. Bitter, broken love serves often as a reminder that we are fallible, it pricks one and all who experience it, whether rich or poor, man or women, black or white. That empty feeling in your heart is really there, an absence of some of the most potent chemicals that circulate our bodies. Time will heal, will fill this absence as we mend emotionally day by day.
And for me? Well it is indeed a two fold healing process, the loss of two loves at once. Two deaths, if you like. But I am mending well, dark clouds lifting like the early morning fog on a spring day. I really can feel it lifting. And writing words, writing songs is part of that process for me, though others find different ways of helping it lift away. And from it come a few revelations too. The ways freinds can help the pain lift, the huge importance of a simple yet heartfelt hug, above all the realisation that I can still feel such intensity of emotion, even now, unmatched I think in two and a half decades.
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
And if I can indeed get over it reasonably quickly perhaps, as I wrote before, the feeling that I can allow myself to open up to love again, to being loved again should it happen before I pass on. I understand that you may scoff at my notion of preparing for death but I suspect it is a very natural process as we age, after our mid sixties or so. I have a modicum of regret that I did not realise this earlier but nevertheless it is true that ´Jean Philippe´ has given me back my capacity to love and to be loved. And that gift has surely to be priceless. It is also why I will never feel angry or hurt about the situation as it eventually unfolded, as I think I gained, I took, far more than I gave. However, my thoughts still turn to the person in question and I hope he gets what he wants and needs in the future to move forwards, onwards, along wherever his own path leads.
And I marvel too, at the sheer complexity of the patterns we humans weave into our lives.
It is never easy telling someone you love them when you know it is not a reciprocal feeling.
And yet there I was last night doing it. And still the most surprised person in the equation was me. When you´ve bottled up feelings for a long time for fear of exposure, and loss, letting them out publically seems a huge risk, fraught with issues, problems and danger. You start and as you take a breath, a long tunnel appears ahead, all flashing red lights in the darkness.
I think as gay men we are still very often inclined to perceive and view these things under a hetero-normative template. There are so many things a man loving a younger man is perceived to be potentially (although in this case the man is almost forty). So many names we can be called, so many disparaging remarks exist. And of course there are so many different forms of love. ´´What is love´´, as Haddaway sung and indeed the King himself once asked, many eons ago?
I think we sometimes forget though that one version of love, the one society asks us to associate with family, is still very possible outside of that structure. The love of a father for a son is much maligned and I went through a lot of bitter tears, confusion and self doubt decades ago when I was trying to come to terms with it, or perceived lack of it. ´´Don´t talk to me about love´´ is, even now all too often, still the response for a gay man when coming out to his parents, and especially his father. The palpable hurt of such rejection is strong for years, even decades after.
As a gay men with no children, it was not something I had ever experienced before, that particular incarnation of love. Even when it was ongoing, I still didn´t recognise it. I could not quite comprehend its nature. That feeling of warmth towards a person, of wanting to have a duty of care, to hold someone vulnerable simply in an embace of protection, of responsibility. Only after I had told someone the other evening that I thought there was love in my relationship with them, did I truly realise later, at 4am in the morning, what it really was and why it was. Ah! So that´s what it feels like to be a Dad. Salty tears fell for a time, as I processed that knowledge, neither of regret, fear or joy but more because finally I knew what it was, that feeling that was going on. Why there was an intensity of emotion around that person. I didn´t really think I had had that instinct bred into me, an instinct that parents (of all sexualities) perhaps feel, I accept very probably, to an even greater level.
But this is nevertheless a very big reveal, if that someone is not on that same page with you. I would imagine potentially quite a scary reveal at that. I´m not entirely sure how I would have coped with the notion if it had happened to me, say, three decades ago. I might well have run away, frightened off by the curious notion it presents in its raw form, which doesn’t really fit into any of the societal norms.
It would also be easy to assume or imagine that this love was somehow ‘tainted´ by physical notions of sexual attraction, and I can understand why. In this case especially, as it did start as an attraction, as yes, the person is quite beautiful. And then, after some, in fact many months, although that went away, a slowly developing love came along with an unwelcome helping of jealousy, when the person was attracted, both sexually and non sexually, to others or they to him. But then, suddenly, one day seemingly jealousy was gone. My heart lifted of that depressing, dull weight. It was a joy to be rid of it. I wanted to see the person engage with others, an internal letting go. And yet still that warmth remained. A need to care, to be supportive, to understand and yes, true, admire the beauty and yet not be burdened by consistent and constant desire for physical satiation within it.
As I realised this, in the middle of the night I felt very calm, a wave of positivity ran across me, of relief at understanding this strange feeling, that for me was quite a new one. I had not expected to feel anything so fundamentally new at my age, apart perhaps from more aches and pains. As I said, the surprise of understanding it took my breath away somewhat. However, it also made me realise that I indeed wanted some deeper connections again, of the form that I had really put aside for so many years. I had thought I could not cope with the pain that nearly always comes with a relationship, again, in its many forms. And yet now I think maybe, just maybe I can. I feel motivated to care for myself, for my body again after years of satiation with junk thoughts, feelings, food, even sex.
Perhaps it was prompted by the death recently of my close freind Amanda, through cancer, very rapidly, a few months from prognosis to her sad, untimely death at 61. I suddenly realised in the middle of the night that she used to call me a ´´gorgeous man´´, in fact as I lay awake I heard her saying it very clearly to me and I realised with a start that I had not really thought about what it meant or indeed if she really felt that but then as I heard her say it, realised yes, I did believe that she meant it.
I feel- finally- confident enough about myself to believe it and strong enough to think it was true. And several other female freinds have said similar things to me in the last few months, and thankyou so much for that, as you have given me back a confidence I really thought I had lost. In the process of ageing we all start to become more invisible to people, and in the process to doubt our own self worth anymore. I really do not think I am alone in feeling this by any means, in fact I think it is an endemic feeling in old age.
Our society (as least own consumer led western society) does not value our wisdom or ability to love, laugh, to make honest and truthful connections anymore, bombarded as we are by societies addiction to youth, beauty, fillers, six packs, botexes, tucks, nips and snips. But beauty comes in many forms and our bodies ability to cope with the demands we place on it throughout our lives is in itself a thing of great beauty, determination, perhaps a form of magic really, in its own way.
And so I am no great beauty anymore but inside I think there is a beating heart that cares deeply about other people, has still a great capacity to love other people, and, now again to love myself for what I am and what I can be. And if I can get there I think, I do suspect, others can too. It is about opening yourself up to the challenge of honesty. I took a risk in telling someone I loved them, as it could mean they will run, run run. But it was worth it just to allow myself to understand it, to admit it openly, to show the real me. To be able to breathe again. It feels good. And if they run, well it happened and at least I will feel I have told my story like it is, like it was. Like it will be. Love without end.
I usually find some time about this period of the year….
to think about going forwards into the next year. And this year is no exception, except that I have decided instead to offer up some words of advice, to those younger than me, as I advance in age! And so, after some initial hesitation, I have come up with three of the things that I think, perhaps, wisdom has offered up to me as I have trodden ‘’each and every byway’’..
The first is to treat your good friends as if they were your own family. Whilst it is true family is often not the greatest of role models I do think that there is something about the innate value of good friends that is priceless and its often only when we have lost contact we realise how much value they can offer us in our lives, both day to day and year on year. When you are in need of comfort, support and understanding good, honest friends are priceless if they take the time to assist you and you -equally- take the time to assist them in a hour or hours of need.Blanch Dubois may have said ´´I have always relied on the comfort of strangers´´ but trust me, good friends are an incomparable resource.
The second is to try to understand and value ageing and the process of ageing. The one thing we all have in common is that we are, all of us, ageing. Every birthday we have to celebrate living is one step towards the inevitable and a reminder that we are a ticking clock. And so sometimes we tend to shun older people as a reminder of this fact. Older people are often marginalised but they have the benefit of decades of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. We can benefit from this if we will listen and offer them a potential role as mentors for us, sharing their understanding of life’s experiences. Our consumer society offers up a million ways of looking younger but seldom promotes the value of the accumulation of wisdom. Allow yourself to value and love your own and others wisdom.
The last is a plea not to skimp the little things. Whether it is giving a euro or two to the homeless man or woman in the street, or giving ourselves a little luxury by spending three euros more on our favourite shampoo or type of food. Enjoying giving to others or ourselves neednt involve spending a lot of money and yet it can still feel special. Learn to love the small things that make life a little more worthwhile, and you will put things in your life into a better, healthier perspective.
And in the meantime in uncertain times value those who wish you a very happy and peaceful New Year.
In December 1989, Neil Tennant was yet to write the lyrics to the song that he felt, in 2020, remains the Pet Shops best song, Being Boring. And it was still to come as I wrote those words above in my diary, and yet, for me, it sums up those days, as we entered the nineties, so perfectly.
Now I sit with different faces In rented rooms and foreign places All the people I was kissing Some are here and some are missing In the nineteen-nineties I never dreamt that I would get to be The creature that I always meant to be But I thought in spite of dreams You’d be sitting somewhere here with me
‘Cause we were never being boring We had too much time to find for ourselves And we were never being boring We dressed up and fought, then thought: “Make amends” And we were never holding back or worried that Time would come to an end We were always hoping that, looking back You could always rely on friends
The next decade was to be, at times, equally as hard as the eighties had been on us all, in our communities. My first entry of the new decade had bad news straight away:
Tuesday 2nd January 1990
Nothing seems to have changed very much. Somehow there is an expectation that a new decade, 1990 will magically change everything. But of course nothing happens. New Years Eve at the Bell was a little bit of letdown; no one there I knew really, except Joe. Its changing I guess, new faces, new crowds, new banter. And my thoughts returned to death today, as I heard that three people had died of AIDS. Two friends of friends, the other the actor Ian Charleston: a sort of semi hero of mine, who played one of the brothers in Derek’s film Jubilee back in 1978. It feels that so many people have died already of AIDS sometimes,that it is impossible that I haven’t too. It’s almost like we take an HIV positive status for granted, as the norm nowadays. It’s difficult not to get mad or upset over the situation at work, where 85 % of the budget goes towards heterosexual prevention.So many people have already made so many sacrifices. All those lives taken by mis education in my life alone.. the suicides in the fifties, sixties, even now continue. People having to give up their fullest lives because of societies predudices and now in the last five years at the mercy of an illness we still know so little about. It is difficult to see bright chinks of light sometimes. How many more sacrifices will we need to make in the nineties?
But I really mustn’t get too depressed now. It‘s a new year, a new decade with all the possibilities it holds– and surely that has to be quite exciting?
Looking forwards to the nineteen nineties:
In the nineties it was going to get tougher in some respects. The challenges were going to remain, the pain and the loss was going to continue. The arguments were going to intensify, the doubt was going to go on, divisions would open up – and some things were going to fail. But new organisations were going to be set up, a new generation was going to come onboard and we were still going to have at least some time to party. It was all still to come:
I’d sit with different faces, In rented rooms and foreign places, And of all the people I’d been kissing Some would be there and some would be missing, In my nineteen-nineties
Your insights and experiences concerning the topics discussed in this section are incredibly valuable. I warmly invite you to share your thoughts to help add to the conversation.
So, right at the end of the year and at the very start of the nineties,
I was in a very discursive mood in my diary. Considering all the things that were changing or had changed. Julie Burchill (also in an unusually and reflectively positive mood) was writing about the new Green movement holding out hopes for the future, calling it ‘the safety net for our time, a slow cumbersome non progressive arm of capitalism concerned that the natural resources of this world remain to be re-exploited in the coming centuries’.
I was considering the state of eastern Europe and marvelling at how it was changing so rapidly but wondering if the western capitalist model would not create its own problems for those countries. ‘Things feel like they are changing so rapidly I wrote; small changes on the face of it but with the potential to become major dilemmas. ‘Rivulets that became a part of the torrents of life”(this was the last line of a poem I had written in the seventies called ‘Bluebells,’ reflecting upon leaving my youth behind)
Life path through bluebell woods..
I was also considering what I thought about the gay scene as well at that time. On the Saturday just before Christmas (23rd) I’d been to the Block by myself, already in this reflective mood. I’d enjoyed myself there, having not been for some time and forgetting quite what ‘another world’ it was there, compared to the ‘flatter reality’ of the Bell. ‘That’s the difference’ I write:
The Bell IS reality, the Block is pure fantasy. A place where people exist in a world that they have created, a space they‘ve created with an aura of illusion. It‘s unreal of course, in the sense that the real lives of its clients are not reflected in their mode or behaviour inside. The LA probably worked so well because it somehow managed to fuse that reality and fantasy together. In the ground level bar reality, the bottom, fantasy and that great area where you walked down the stairs between the two, into that seething mass below you, totally immersed in their own illusions (but grande illusions at that). I mourn its demise.
And how does HIV/AIDS fit into all this? Do both fantasy and reality exist here? I don’t think I really know yet what role this disease has to play, even after all these years, in terms of reshaping our lives. This sexual wild card thrown into the pack, seemingly at random. It has torn us apart and brought us (or at least some of us) together again. It is the one word we have as the eighties end, which is most feared and yet is still virtually as unknown as it was at the beginning.
I was being cruised by maybe four or five men at one time when I was there, yet I feel no need to pick up anyone or really even respond in any particular way, to this other world. I understand it now: its signifiers, its meaning, its depths, its imagination. And being a part of it during this last decade has helped me realise now, that the world of my imagination is just as real, as powerful, as the world of supposed reality. I can create a fantasy situation which in effect is every bit as stimulating and exciting (if not more so) than my reality. Or combine both. And nobody can take that away from me.
I suppose if I’d written this when I was twenty one, people would have assumed I was a little loopy:unbalanced. At least, reading it, I think I would have anyway. And yet eleven years later I’m not loopy, just mentally, creatively at a different level. Yet, I was writing things then:’Bluebells’, ‘Desert Rain’ and ‘Chance Encounter’, that I now realise do show a depth of field, a vision that I had no idea I possessed then. Where did that come from? Why and how did I want to write like that then? I was still searching for my heroes, my role models, still eagerly (desperately?) trying to find them. All those writers, poets, artists and scientists, who had the vision to push on creatively, whilst exploring their sexuality at the same time, that I’ve discovered existed, only in the past decade.
As for what the 1990’s will bring me? If I’m not careful it could bring sparse pickings because it’s easy to become ‘regimented’ as you get older, only exploring those avenues which seem absolutely necessary to survival. Creativity gets stunted by arrogance and condemned by increasing cynicism.
To survive I must continue to explore my psyche and the world around me. To explore new ground rather than old pastures. In ten years it will be time to celebrate a new millennium, I can’t quite imagine how I’ll feel then or where I’ll be doing it. Who will still be here, who will have gone from here, from my life?What could it possibly be like to live in the year 2000?
Pulp: Expectations thwarted and Disco 2000.. still a decade away
On Saturday 1st October, I was actually very positive for once,
as BMP had approached another photographer in the same vein as Herb Ritts but who was not quite so established, the french photographer Jean Baptiste Mondino, (who later went on to became most well known commercially for his ‘Le Male’ sailor shots for Jean Paul Gaultier, see below). He brought a more interesting and slightly more ‘subversive’ or maybe edgy feel to the work by focusing on ‘le look‘ between two guys. At the time they were quite original and we thought interesting:
The Mondino shots in on Friday -great shots, though a pretty liberal interpretation of the brief. Why did he want to do them I wonder? He also did the shots with the two women.
´´Mondino men´´ advert 1, (HEA 1989) Good sex is rooted in desire..
It was the first piece of work that I felt was visually striking enough to actually make people want to read the body copy, simply to see what exactly was going on (see final images used in the gay press in 1990, page 223). It got right back to the start of good sex, by rooting it in desire rather than just orgasm (deseo..) and capturing that ‘first look’ we could surely all relate too. ‘They don’t just have safer sex because it’s safer’ read the strap. This was later misunderstood (deliberately or otherwise) by some activists within the gay community. Even as late as September 2020, Matthew Hodson (who had worked for GMFA in the UK, and is now the Executive Director of AIDSMAP) was tweeting (about the Mondino advert):
‘So why the buggery do they have it then. This kind of coy safer sex advertising (late 1980s), airbrushing gay sexual desire, is what happens when people who aren’t gay think they can instruct gays on how to have sex?’
It does make us ponder the question ‘so what is safer sex’? I’m not entirely sure what Hodson understands as ‘desire’ but I’d argue as a group of gay men at the HEA, we understood gay men far, far, better than he suggests, in fact. For us the message was a holistic concept rooted in desire, care, respect and understanding. The advert shows the very start of that key process of desire: eye contact, which we felt was likely to be understood by everyone (and indeed pre testing with groups of gay men across the UK later backed that up). We always wanted a key part of the message to be about using your imagination in sex, whilst a lot of work in that early period was often simply about ‘the act of fucking’: the act of physical penetration, a somewhat heteronormative interpretation of the sex act. We were saying ‘experiment‘ and in my mind the HEA was being by far the more creative thinker here in these early campaigns by rooting safer sex into the concept of desire (always safe).
This was what I’d tried to do in the safer sex shorts my company ‘Cleancut’ had made of course, as well: the fantasy of the Weber image of sailors on leave in Waikiki etc). In fact it’s what GMFA finally went onto do later in their advertising campaigns like ‘Sailors’. However clearly such concepts did not sit well with aspect of ‘authority’ that the HEA was meant to have. It is quite difficult to give ‘black and white’ factual advice about ‘fantasy’. Interestingly, the BMP creative team eventually came up with a proposed solution to this, by producing an advert showing a ‘factual’ medical image of the brain and talking about using your imagination in the strap and copy. It kind of worked but was never especially popular. (see photo )
´´Mondino men´´ advert 2 .. (pretty image but why arent they looking AT each other?) HEA, 1989
There was always tension from those in GMFA about the HEA’s work; it never really went away. In retrospect, even the names give the game away as both organisations were coming from very different places. The HEA was set up to be an authority: something you could trust on a medical level, as if from your doctor. GMFA however was more like an army – the gay men in it were ‘fighting’ AIDS and it viewed the situation in battlefield terms: campaigns needed to be up front, direct, no nonsense and punchy. The two organisations were coming from very different places- the ‘Authority’ was never going to please the ‘Army’ with its cautious, reasoned, more medical approach. Yet, if it had used the conceptual imagery and language of GMFA, it would have lost its authority.
Both had a place in the educational arena surrounding AIDS, both appealing to the very different sensibilities of gay men at the time: the more conservative and the more liberally minded. It was odd for me at first, representing the views of the more conservative ‘Authority’, having felt I was coming at things from a more radical community perspective for the last decade but it was a role I had nevertheless to play. In some respects it was ‘roleplay’, as I never felt truly comfortable in that position, until later when the programme bought into some aspects of community development. That however put it on something of a collision course with those who wanted it to keep its role to the more considered, conservative position of ‘authority’.
Having said that some great work came from GMFA (UK) as time went on, a particular favourite of mine being the one with two men sat on a large cake (one of who happens to be Matthew Hodson) about valuing respecting each other as men, as gay men. Great stuff .
The HEA’s campaigns were sometimes criticised, especially by GMFA, for ‘neutering’ gay men; ‘airbrushing away’ their sexuality, whilst in fact, looking back now retrospectively, I think we were working on and developing more complex ideas about encouraging and using the realities of cruising and fantasy in sex. Interestingly though, whilst these ideas were always accepted and seemingly understood by American gay organisations, they were very much less accepted by the more radical British ones. Whilst the body copy in our advertising talked about using condoms for anal intercourse (recognising it still had be part of the key message at that time) the Mondino advert’s concept was about encouraging desire and fantasy as a key part of ‘safer sex’; nevertheless of course recognising in the end it all comes back to the -sad- reality that anal intercourse in particular was not ‘safe’ sex- it was safer sex.
Looking back now in 2024 on producing ´Safer Sex for Gay men, a leaflet..´
More to the point at the time, on the ground, after spending months back and forwards with the Department about the copy for a leaflet from the HEA aimed at gay men about safer sex, we had finally got it signed off and to the printers to be launched as a package, with the new advertising round (see image of front cover p224). The MESMAC project was also finally getting off the ground and we were ready to decide who should get the funding for the first four key sites around the UK. So by November 9th, I was still feeling pretty positive and writing:
A quiet end to the week but a lot of the new gay work arriving and the leaflet finally back from the printers. The new Mondino work will be out in the gapers (gay papers) next week, Pink, Cap Gay. Really wonder what people will make of it?
And then, by Sunday 18th November
To the ICA tonight to see an evening of safer sex films. All crap I thought, except mine. (What am I like?!) It’s been hard work but generally positive over the last few days with much activity on the MESMAC front, as the possible project sites scramble to get their proposals in before the Friday deadline. Also had a Press briefing for the gay work at the HEA today, not exactly well attended but it went pretty well. Not too many awkward questions, they are softening up on us- just a bit.
Advert for Jean Paul Gautier ´Le Male perfume´ (1997)
Mondinos ´1997 shot for ´Le Male´ perfum ad: I would have liked to have seen something like this from Mondino in 1990 but realistically the brief was coming from a different place and a different client! It was also aimed at a much wider target audience of gay men, than this advert. There would 3 different men and a pack of condoms with the other items. The strap would be ´Always be prepared for every eventuality´.. you could even have the shelf covering their dicks, as here, if it was imposible to go nude. But dream on! It does harp back to the Cleancut ´Taste video´ though a little. If we had continued to make videos (and I sometime wish we had) they would probably have taken on something of this resonance.
Things could change in a few days then though. On Monday 23rd October I am writing:
Susan Perl is a wally and she really riles me sometimes. Joe is a bit low, poor angel (as he says to me). I call him ‘my Poor devil.’
But by the following day I am sweetness and light: Tuesday 24th October:
A flash of warmth for Sue Perl today and suddenly a lot is forgiven. It’s so easy to be ‘pissed off ‘ with people, when communication is lost. A little love and affection goes a long way. In fact Susan went on to write an interesting critique on mass media in a 1991 book, Reflections on using mass media for AIDS public education but I´ll cover this in the next book.
This was very true and often I think working there on a difficult area, with so much bad news about the progress of a disease that there was no cure for, remember: no vaccine, no drug treatment at that time; we all had friends who were being affected by it, it was easy to become quite riled by others, who were also dealing with a range of complications in the work they were developing. As time went by this was recognised by the directors there, who gave us time to go to away days as a team, where we could better get to know each other, share problems and potential solutions and work together. Little by little the team became more supportive of each other and we understood that some things would fail, through no fault of our own. That sometimes failure was ok. This helped to create a less stressful environment and a happier workspace.
On a fear of failure : a piece I more recently wrote about our fear of failure in our lives and my life in particular..
However, this wasn’t to happen overnight! By November 1st I was writing:
Pissed off at work again. The bisexual work is off yet again. Or rather delayed. It’s absurd. I’ve realised I wrote on the 30th July how late it was. Little did I know. Do people actually realise that there are people are dying out there? And in an off the cuff remark: I hate getting old, I resolve never to grow old gracefully. It’s going to be spit, spite & sweat all the way. Time just rushes on so fast.
In fact, for a while, it seemed like things were racing downhill again fast. By Sunday, November 12th:
Not very good articles in the gapers this week, Capital Gay headline ‘was knives are out for the HEA‘. Jesus. I‘m going to need police protection at this rate. Our press office trying to play it down but.. depressing to have to work in the middle of it all really.
and on the following day, 13th November:
Feeling low tonight, a hard day at work feeling hassled, I feel and look like something the cats dragged in.The stress and strain of the job is showing. I’m seriously thinking of resigning from the job. It’s too much to handle.
And yet again on the 22nd November:
Bad days at work as we learnt that the AIDS division is to be virtually abolished, so we are all wondering what‘s going to replace it. It‘s in all the papers too. Sigh.
Part of it was to do with a shake-up of the HEA generally, which was felt to be far too radical and left leaning for its own good by the Conservative government at the time. Some of this change was occurring because there was a new Minister for Health, Virginia Bottomley, David Mellor having been moved on and replaced by Mrs T. On the 24th November:
Much coverage in the media of the HEA story. Virginia Bottomley, the new Health Minister is seemingly a ‘rightish wing right winger‘. That‘s all we need. I‘m very concerned about the future of the AIDS programme.
Yet, you did come to realise after a while, that there were people ‘above you’ also working hard to try and smooth things over, friends in high places working also to see how changes might be affected, whilst still keeping the general liberal approach that the Authority had intact.
And so, with Christmas coming up fast again by the 12th December, I was writing:
Things are settling down, feeling a lot better about work, with Derek even talking about a permanent post at long last. So suddenly I seem to want it now after everything negative that’s happened over the last few months. I think I better put a ad in cap gay ‘masochist seeks sensual satisfaction “!
This was so often the way at the HEA: things would seem to go very black for a while, there would be a thunderstorm (when we hoped noone would be zapped by lightning) and then (sometimes almost magically) the skies would clear and the sun would come back out again with everything fresh and sparklingly cleaned by the rain. As I came to understand it better, it actually started to grow on me. I felt this sense of camaraderie develop, where we had all been through so much together, and come out the other end, that we better understood each other. You also started to understand how the different departments there worked together to gel as a cohesive entity.. research, advertising and all the health areas we covered, as HIV/AIDS was just one of many.
Going forward we knew there would always be changes, always be periods when things were difficult but slowly we were better able to support each other through them. As we entered 1990, and a brand new decade, suddenly I was no longer talking of leaving but of new projects and how best to get them off the ground. We knew so much more in just a year or so of how to best use the networks that we had, more effectively. HIV/AIDS had not by any means gone away, some of our friends were still very ill or dying but there seemed to be just the hint of a way through things, that we could get through things, a resolve, that we would get through things.
Back from Ibiza, far too much to say about it, but it’ll wait. Up to the Heath with Joe tonight, there was a great atmosphere, I am realising its quite unique to London. Some insights about the Heath; two types of men cruising 1. for sex 2 for fantasy. Sometimes how we dress is far, far, more important than how we look.
From writing a lot about work, it seems I had actually gone to the opposite extreme by then and wasn’t adding very much at all about it. In retrospect I think things were quieter there for a time- but not for too long. On Sunday 1st July though it gets a small mention:
I can‘t believe the bisexual work will have taken a year before it finally comes out. But that’s it. But on the 14th July: A good debrief from the HEA Research department‘s post testing of the gay work, it went down quite well, actually quite cheering.
and again on Friday 14th July :
Three tiring days at work, particularly today. Lunch with BMP creatives to talk about developing the calendar promotion (we were going to put together a 1990 Safer sex calendar). They’re trying to get Bruce Weber. Some hope, I don’t think he’ll touch ‘gay work ‘ with a bargepole but it would be very nice to be proved wrong.
Both ideas (the calendar & Weber) eventually fell by the wayside. On Monday 17th July:
Up to the Heath tonight and semi off with three guys.The second very sweet and young, 18. Is sucking nipples in or something? Suddenly everybody seems to be automatically doing it now, which they certainly didn’t a few years ago. I blame our posters, haha. Still, a very safe thing to be doing of course, so that may well be part of it. I don’t know why I’m so surprised as, after all, it is what we’ve( Cleancut, HEA) been encouraging people to do for ages!
We got to look at the first bisexual ads from the BMP Creatives today. Picture of a plug with the strap: ‘AC/DC , it isn‘t just an electric current or a rock band’. Oh, please! Just tacky. Try again, we said, and yes, this is 6 months in. It feels like we are banging our heads against a brick wall sometimes. I feel quite depressed tonight, and fed up with getting pilloried at work. It does feel like that at least.
On Friday 21st July:
Gave a talk about planning for the work at the Dept (of Health) today. It seemed to go down really well. Are we making some progress convincing people we have the right strategy finally? Felt generally quite cheered by it.
And on Sunday 23rd July, I was writing about good times:
What a shattering weekend. My 32nd birthday party here in the flat at Somerstown, about 60–70 turned up. It just had to also be the hottest day since 1910 didn‘t it, with a max here of 34.5C. After lots of noise and at one time, ten screaming queens on our balcony, being outrageous, I finally got to bed at 5am. Nothing major broken luckily. Will probably have to apologise to our neighbours tomorrow.
But by Monday 7th August
Didn‘t go in to work today as I said I was feeling low from the weekend. Joe and I went out to Cafe Delancey in Camden for a meal, was nice. But we got ‘bashed on the way home by a group of 6 lads looking for trouble. Joe quite shaken up by it. I got a nervous ache in neck immediately. Could have been a lot worse but still feels shakey.
Back at work things were progressing slowly but surely it seemed; on Thursday 10th August
Tiring but productive days at work, things firming up slowly. Looks as though the leaflet will be ready in about two weeks, the new gay work in September and the Bisexual work (finally) in early October. Tiring meeting as always with the advisory group, no Jonathon Grimshaw, who is still very unwell.
On Wednesday 20th September, as my first anniversary of working there approached, things came to a head and to one of their regular ‘crunches’ however:
Two difficult work days discussing MESMAC and the ad portfolio. Esther Rantzen put her foot down at the Authority meeting yesterday and said ‘No, No, No’ to the Bisexual work. Too humorous and not enough information she said. Sir Donald (Sir Donald Acheson, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) backed her up. Susan Perl & Derek to have lunch with them to try and soften her up a bit.
I thought they were on our side but who knows who got a word in with them first.
The final published version of the ´Men who have sex with men´ Bisexual advert, often criticised by educators but the bottom line is where it was going.. national magazines , personally I STILL don´t like it very much (not many of us did, despite what has been written about how much the HEA supposedly loved it) but it had to be arresting. I´ll cover it in more detail in book 2, as it didnt finally appear until Spring 1990.
By the 14th April, I was back from the American trip: (I didn’t take a diary for the same reason as before: the dratted customs).
I wrote in my diary.
Difficult to write about it now, there are so many thoughts/feeling I have about the time there. I suppose my main thoughts about it now though are:
The ‘SM ‘scene there, with Michael and the ‘pick up’ itself (I had met a guy called Michael in a leather bar there)
The Stud Bar and the blocks around it. Wow!
The heat. So weird. 94F in April! (its highest in 80 years)
Castro Safeways.. massive and open at midnight!
The ‘Yield‘ signs on the freeways. ‘Yield ‘? Isn’t that the amount of milk you get from a herd of cows?
The view coming into SF over Golden Gate Bridge:oh so spectacular.
Fishermans Wharf on a perfectly perfect ‘blue sky day‘ and the sexy policeman putting me in handcuffs.
The workshop on ‘Sex, dating and intimacy‘. Wow!
The hardest thing was saying goodbye and leaving, on a jet plane.
It’s perhaps quite revealing that there wasn’t a huge amount I mentioned about the content of the conference itself. It was a valuable experience and yet strangely, I think we found that as a learning exercise there was not a huge amount there that we didn’t know already. There were no other large scale advertising campaigns ongoing (though the Australians and the Dutch were doing some interesting work, along with well established outreach projects in New York and San Francisco itself) but our work was greeted (surprisingly to us) positively.
We had thought that we would be seen as rather ‘behind the game’ but it turned out not to be case, in fact it seemed in many ways we were rather ahead of it. Perhaps we were being too hard on ourselves?
It was remarkable how many gay magazines BMP was finding to place the ads in,
quite a few I had never heard of. Suddenly, there were to be quite large amounts of cash though, going into a lot of the gay press, as ‘Ritts men’ would be going in, week after week. But I was painfully aware that the Ritts men were quite ‘bland’ in relation to the tastes of many gay men. They were young, white, hairless and looked ‘American’. Very clearly they were not going to be everyone’s taste. So, for some time, a period ensued when I desperately wanted us to develop more creative briefs (maybe Marky Marks) that would portray a wider range of (sexy) images, better representing the real gay community, but this would now need to wait for another year’s budget to become available. Every year we had to submit a plan to the Department of Health for how we intended to spend the budget.
By Wednesday 18th January I am writing:
‘Onwards to the denouncement. The finished gay work went right up to Mellor to be signed off this afternoon via Susan Perl & Spencer Haggard (the Chief Executive of the HEA at that time). I await the comments (probably tomorrow) with trepidation. It‘s pretty high level now and there‘s little more I can do but hope things are ironed out smoothly. Will he ask for anything to be ditched. Will Mrs T be seeing it again? Hectic at work today; there‘s a lot to do in a short time, to prepare for the launch‘.
But it was two steps back on the following day, the 19th January:
‘What a day. Mellor flipped over the gay work, so a complete readjustment is necessary. BMP creatives will not be pleased. We are dropping photos and changing copy left right and centre. I‘m feeling mentally exhausted by it all. I was in fact still working on my own ‘Sex Love and Life’ project in my spare time, in tandem with developing the gay adverts at work. This evening I did the boards for Cleancut‘s tapes to shows at the NOVCAN conference, they look pretty good I think.
Then by Monday 23rd January:
‘A long weekend stint at the conference, with me both showing the ‘Sex, Love and Life’ films to the audience and also (separately) doing a speech about the proposed HEA gay work, both seemed to go down quite well I think’.
The following week I got a break, away to Amsterdam for a long weekend with my boyfriend Joe and we marvelled at how everything was able to be more explicit there, than in the UK.
‘As usual I got searched going through customs again. No major embarrassments as I had deliberately left this diary at home. Still got bad memories when they read half my diary at customs, coming back from Australia. God, I was so furious!’
Then back in the UK and a week later, on Monday 30th January, one step forwards:
Such a relief, we’re running with the press conference at work. We managed to sort all the ministers concerns out in the end without having to water things down a huge amount more, thank god. The gay posters are ready too! Dinner with Philip R, I told him how I used to have a huge crush on him years ago. Glad he finally knows.
Then, just a few days later, two steps back again, by Thursday 2nd February:
Not well yesterday, cancelling things left right and centre. Headache and sore throat. The campaign preparation ploughs ever onwards. Worries about reaction of mainstream media and tacky stories dredged up by The Sun etc. Showing of my ‘SLL’ film at Four Corners tomorrow ( a community based production workshop, in Bethnal Green) .
A week later, on Saturday 11th February I was attending what became a regular event for some time, a one day HIV/AIDS conference in south London, to discuss current trends, update peoples knowledge and look at planned action:
To the all day HIV/AIDS conference at the South Bank Poly here in London, quite interesting with a rather dry, academic keynote speech by Cindy Patton and reports back from Project Sigma’sresearch on gay men, which was really interesting, a really useful piece of research.
The press conference came and duly went on Tuesday 16th February, with no great hitches:
The press conference went quite well today even though Pink and Capital Gay didn‘t turn up. Him, Gaytimes, Bisexual group rep, along with THT and London Lighthouse reps were there. Amanda (Amanda Bradshaw who was heavily involved in helping develop the work in the AIDS division as a consultant for many years) seemed to think it went well enough. Certainly the sandwiches disappeared rapidly enough. Maybe it‘s going to work out well after all?
The work duly started coming out in the gay press, with posters sent to clubs and pubs to use (see images Ritts press ad and poster).
Over the following weekend though I got away from it all for a few days and was away with Joe, seeing Richard and Lisa, the two I’d met in Florence all those years before. They had moved to Norwich and had two lovely children, Alexa and Joseph.’ They‘re a little boisterous but nice kids. Sense of time flying along, it’s been agreed at work that Derek and I will go to the big San Francisco AIDS conference in March now.
Very little about work for a while which usually meant that things were simply ticking over; on the 8th March:
To my own men’s support group tonight (I was going to a mixed men’s group now, composed of around eight of us): Discussed what are the feelings we don’t allow ourselves to feel? Me: jealousy, envy, sloth, greed, hate and joy. What do we not allow ourselves to show in the group? Me: anger, egotism, lust, despair, boredom, dislike and perversion.
And on Sunday 12th March:
To Brighton yesterday with Joe, Catnips Hotel. Strange name for a place. A bit stoned. Joe thought it was amusing when I said out loud ‘you can always rely on Marks and Spencers‘ wine‘ and some man behind me said ‘Silly Old Queen‘. He said I went scarlet. Dennis has been feeling very depressed this last week about friends of his with AIDS and really worried about what the next couple of years will hold.
However by the 17th March things were coming to a head about my role at the HEA and the duties I was assigned there, highlighted in particular by the seeming impossibility of getting the first gay leaflet (Gay Men and Safer Sex) signed off by the Department in any shape or form that we deemed would be seen as ‘useful’. Derek and I had a long meeting where I aired my concerns about it. Derek summed up our discussion in a paper he copied me into.
The main issues for discussion seem to be around the issue of role and whether or not that provides for autonomy or independence. The best example being the advertisements.
This is clearly the most public of any of our work and as such is the most controversial , along with being the one which prompts most ‘anxiety‘ to officials both inside the HEA and outside. Anxiety is in italics, I don’t think it needed to be.
The contentious matter may well be the imagery used. The problem all project officers have is trying to second guess what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, as such we all operate as individuals without any clear guidance from the DOH. If we are to make any progress at all in terms of evolving a more independent line we must develop the confidence of the Dept demonstrating that we can handle the work without, as they would seeit, causing them embarrassment. Clearly though the final decision lies with Susan (Perl , the AIDS Division head at that time)on these matters and she has some fairly definite ideas in terms of images that should be presented in the current political climate.
The next point relates to discussions around the Gay men’s advisory group and its role within the context of the men‘s project. Firstly, when do we consult them and secondly are they an integral part or on the periphery of the project. Due to the colourful history of this group it‘s appropriate for us now to have a frank exchange of views with its members particularly in view of your desire to extend its membership and enhance its decision making process.
The issues are that you have said a) you would like to involve them more directly, b) you want to increase the membership , c) to see if we can offer consultative payments for the sessions and d) that it must be clear if they represent themselves or organisations. In return we would expect that they understand that we will provide imagery and copy that shows our hopes and aspirations in respect of the Men’s project work but it may not be finally what we can deliver..
He added a proposed schedule for the educational materials we were trying to produce. This included six separate redrafts of copy, the first to cover the SPO’s (Senior Programme Officers- Derek) thoughts, secondly to cover the AIDS divisions thoughts (everyone else), then to the Men’s Advisory group for discussion and comment and then to the Director for a decision about any other external circulation needed, and then to the Dept of Health; then to the Authority heads (Spencer Hagard and the board et al) , to the territorial’s (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and finally (the sixth draft) for that agreed draft to go our publishing department with the agreed text/photos.
This was clearly a laborious process in which the content of the original draft was likely to be amended, watered down, updated, renamed and cut completely. The remarkable thing is perhaps, that we managed to make anything worthwhile come from this convoluted process at all.
However, at the time, this was progress as far as I was concerned, as it clarified the steps we needed to take to get material out and I at least had a process where I could tick these off as it cleared the various hurdles. So actually I regarded this as a positive outcome and as such it’s hardly mentioned in my own diaries. I did tend to note ‘difficulties’ rather than the sweet ‘positives’ in my diary. And anyway, my mind at that time was focused on the international AIDS conference we were about to attend. A week later on Sunday 19th March however, I was still more preoccupied with the goings on whilst out and about ‘on the scene’ in London:
Time speeding by, the San Francisco trip approaches fast. Saturday to the LA wearing Dennis’s leather jacket. I felt super butch in it. Very cruisy there: a guy called Tomas who had been chatting up Joe a few weeks ago was very cruisy and trying to arrange a threesome, Joe not keen though. Fair enough. He’s was great dancer, really hypnotic to watch. I guess he must pick up loads of trade there! Went to the gym today for the first time in ages. Adam was there looking (and perhaps also feeling) super butch too, working out. I’m in lust with him again. Thinking I need to buy a leather jacket of my own!
And yet again, a few days later on Tuesday 21st March:
I ran around like a crazy thing today getting things ‘wrapped up’ before I’m away for two weeks. Bought a nice leather jacket for £85 at High Street Kensington market. Joe, Lisa, to dinner last night with Dennis, who is off to France for two months tomorrow. Everything changes so quickly, sometimes, like the outbreak of a war almost. But everyone adapts back to a routine, to their own normality.
By the 30th October, I was reminiscing about ex boyfriend’s and remembering my relatively relaxed and simple time at Leadale Rd, the final April housing co-op house I had lived in. along with the parties we had held there..
God: that was another world. I was so far away from this. So long ago. I must write a book!
There was going to be a lot of water, running under a hell of a lot more bridges, before I finally got around to that. But it had been a busy October, a busy first month at the HEA and quite different to much of what I’d ever done before. I wasn’t calling any of the shots anymore and that was going to be hard to adjust to. In the following week though, we had a number of further meetings with the creatives at BMP to try and come to some agreement on how to proceed best with the campaign.
The agencies idea, based on what they had presented to us so far, was to get peoples’ attention by using a shot that looked very ‘stylish’, similar to some of the work that Robert Mapplethorpe or Bruce Weber had done. They had asked several photographers if they would do the shoot and the American photographer, Herb Ritts, had offered his services for nothing (or rather to give his fee to charity) as it was an issue he felt strongly about. He also had a reputation for very stylish shoots. He had shot the very famous image at the time of the lean muscled man holding two tires, and indeed a few years later went onto shoot the iconic Calvin Klein ad of ‘Marky Mark’ Wahlberg, holding his cock, clad simply in white Calvin Klein pants (which are still recognised as being iconic images over thirty years later).
He had already worked with everyone who was anyone and a dozen famous brands of the era by creating successful advertising campaigns for Calvin Klein, Chanel, Gianni Versace, Giorgio Armani, Levis, Polo Ralph Lauren and Valentino. Clearly a damn good pedigree then. But we were a bit concerned about whether that ‘americana look’ would work for everyone it was aimed at but I couldn’t be too critical, as I’d already made a safer sex short film myself (Taste) in the SLL trilogy that used one of Bruce Weber’s moody images of the sailors in Waikiki as inspiration. It’s also worth remembering that such imagery was seen as quite innovative and fresh then, whilst now it’s been done to death, in a hundred and one vacuous magazine shoots.
By December 13th though, our Programme Director, Sue Perl, was getting cold feet generally and was thinking about pulling another key campaign that was currently being developed, aimed at heterosexuals. I was worried that if that was contentious, what on earth was the gay work shot by Ritts, going to be seen as. ‘I reckon the axe could fall heavily on all of us’ I wrote. On a better note, I had had a good meeting with Frankie Lynch just starting at the THT that day and found her ‘warm and easy to work with. I want to work for the Trust’ I wrote, ‘perhaps I should suggest it. Trouble is I’ve done nothing as yet to prove I’mworth my salt‘. Retrospectively, I’m not sure this was actually entirely true but perhaps I was being especially hard on myself.
The infamous and iconic Ritts shot of ´Marky Mark´ Wahlberg
On December 16th as Christmas approached we were all invited to the BMP Grand Xmas party at Soho Soho in Frith St. Now long gone. Those were still the days of lavish, no account spared parties, and this was no great exception, I wrote:
‘I gotquite drunk, imbibing far too much champagne/gin and tonic/white wine. Luckily though nothing more embarrassing, like making a pass at anyone straight or-more likely- moaning about their work’.
But by the 20th, just before we broke up for Christmas proper, tensions were ratcheted up as we got a command from above to present a wrap up of ideas so far and I was worried that work was getting on top of me, as we developed further sexual health campaigns:
‘David Mellor (the Minister for Health from July 1988) wanted to see the gay work today, I really hope he’s not going to decide it should be curtailed or restricted. I am starting to feel that anything is possible. Does Sue Perl really have any control over what’s going on?’ ‘Trying to negotiate two campaigns (we had started on a new creative brief for bisexual work, which would go on to be a new nightmare). Both are going to present some real problems I think. I have high hopes, that feel like they are bound to be dashed. Making our own films at Cleancut seems very, very simple in comparison, with far fewer hurdles to jump through’.
However, as can often be the way, with some time off over Christmas, running into the New Year 1989, I was feeling somewhat more optimistic about everything. On the 8th January, I’d been to the Bell with Mark Simpson, who I had known for many years by then.
‘Hot, smoky and difficult to really enjoy‘ I wrote. Mark and I talked about opening up a place for clean living guys to have a good time. I‘d like to see them as safer sex parties, I wonder if I could get the HEA to sponsor them, I feel quite excited by the idea. I think it would go down well , an environment which is sweet, fantasy laden and clean, where it’s easy to talk, and cruise to your heart’s content. (You might wonder what cloud I was on at this point? We were a little too far ahead of the game just then. Interestingly enough, similar ideas were later taken up by some of the outsourced MESMAC groups that we eventually set up) and indeed other organisations that were becoming established then, like Gay Men Fighting AIDS (GMFA).
Cleancut´s ´Sex Mechanics´ concept from 1990 .. an idea developed by MESMAC teams and GMFA et al later(Artwork by Malcolm Turner)
Just into the New Year and back to work. In the event, BMP’s creatives presented us with a moody black and white image of two white, bare chested men, oiled up, vaguely gazing at each other (see below). It wasn’t Marky Mark but it had that Ritts style to it. By producing the image across a double page central spread in gay papers and magazines they hoped it would create enough attention, for the accompanying message to be taken on board by its readers. The advert and body copy went up to the Department of Health and was also shown for information to the Gay Men’s Advisory Group. (With this first advert I think we didn’t ask for proposed changes but just showed it as a finished concept). As this was the very first time the government of the UK had ever aimed an advert specifically at gay men, there was a lot of nervousness about how people might react. Less worry about gay men I think (although that was clearly an important factor), more about the more conservative elements with the ruling Conservative Party. It went to the minister and was approved but it went further up than that, we were told, to Mrs T herself.
Ritts men: Choose Safer Sex poster for gay bars, clubs etc, with nipples(1988)
The message came back that it was too ‘slick and sensual‘. I can even hear her saying it. There was no shock factor (like Volcano & Iceberg) and it seemed that we were encouraging promiscuous sex. Some of the body copy was too explicit as well. The approach, it is true, was certainly tailored to be very different to the earlier ads. We responded by writing a detailed reply, outlining the reasons why we felt this was a more appropriate way of presenting a positive message about the value of safer sex practices. It went back to the DoH and up again to the top. The message duly came back, that ‘ok, we could have it’ as long as we tweaked some of the words and cropped the image above the men’s nipples. This was the very first time I had ever experienced the concept aired that men’s nipples could or should be considered as erogenous zones (though I had known it for decades!) but most bizarrely, I thought, it had come from the British Prime Minister, Mrs T herself!
In the end we got the ‘ok’ to keep the nipples in the glossy posters that we had produced to be sent out to pubs and clubs but not in the magazine adverts. In fact they (the ads not the nipples) did end up going into some other non gay magazines too, like the Face, Time Out and Blitz and I think music papers like the NME. The response to the advert was not too bad from the great and good of the various communities but it was quite negative to me personally from some people, who said it should have been far more explicit, using colloquial language like ‘wank’ and not medical terms like masturbation, as it was about sexual partners and sex acts.
´´If you think Safer Sex sounds dull..´ Ritts men HEA 1988, Image was too passive for the strap, no nipples magazine ads, seen as double page spreads. Interestingly, add that strap to the Marky Mark ad and it works quite well! But there´s no way Mrs T and her pals would have gone with it..
There was an element of this I agreed with but quite interestingly we had found that there were quite a large number of people in the pre-test groups, who said they didn’t want to see images or read language they would regard as ‘pornographic’ in magazines that they might be reading on the train, tube, in a cafe. They also felt it would not send out a ‘good message’ to the population as a whole, if this was the case. I was actually quite surprised that we had such feedback but I had to recognise that as ‘activists’ we -and most of the people I knew- were pretty much on the relatively radical end of the spectrum, with a lot of gay men both more conservative (and Conservative) and more closeted or ‘less out’ than we all were in London. It was an interesting dynamic to come across, but we realised we needed to respect it and as I say, as it turned out, we were not really going to be able to be much more explicit anyway, in those first ads. They were testing the water and generally the reaction was positive (or shall we say ‘muted’ from would be critics). It was, at least, a start. I went into the New Year of 1989 feeling reasonably positive.
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