Book 1 Journey into an epidemic..
Preface: A personal story
What follows in these web pages is, in its way, an intensely personally story: my story. It is not a ‘his story’ (or indeed a her story) and it doesn’t pretend to be a history of the period either before or after HIV/AIDS began to make the news headlines. These stories have been written in the intervening period, from those either professionally or personally involved in the era, or as was often the case, both. Equally, it is not a ‘just’ a memoir or an autobiography! Much of whom I ‘chose’ to become was shaped by the things going on, around me in particular periods and yet I actively sought out a way to understand myself in relation to the past: to identify ‘role models’ if you like. And this was particularly important to me, as I came to understand that there was no clear ‘roadmap’ as such for men who defined as gay in the decades before I was born- or indeed many of the decades after.
If you decide to read it in the order it was written, you´ll find I initially explore in ¨The Backstory¨, some of the many people, places and things that coloured my life, both in its early years and then later. This is in part as I am no longer completely sure who I was back then, in the seventies and eighties. Some part of me was like a jackdaw, collecting coloured pieces of paper, foil and fabric and marvelling at them, arranging them as I liked in a montage of style, form and sculpture to shape, build, my nest. Trying out things to see how well they fitted; were fit for purpose. It was a period when many people were bringing ideas, notions together from the early part of the century and reimagining them, reinventing them for that present moment. Hence much of what I write about in the early sections of this work relates to how I begun to understand and make some kind of sense of the world I was living in, by reference to the past.
Equally, it was difficult to maintain a completely consistent narrative structure in telling this story as by their very nature many of the things that coloured me before my birth were filtered through a variety of prisms: separately they were a spectrum of vivid colours that existed for me then that eventually fused together to form the ‘luz blanca brillante de mi vida‘: that bright light I’ve come to love in my life so much now, settled here in Almeria in the far south east of Andalucia, Spain.
It however does offer three contrasts: my life before involvement in a community, my life within a community, in the section entitled ¨The Rituals¨ and in the third section, ¨The Sacrifice¨ a life professionally and to some extent personally ‘marginalised’ by that community. It looks back at a period at the end of the last century when gay men in particular were angry – very angry– about being marginalised and starts to examine why I think this occurred. You’ll have to bear with me on this, as mostly this -quite complex- latter process occurred in the decade from 1990 and so I primarily plan to cover this in a second book, which I am in the process of writing at this moment (February 2024) covering that period, going through the difficult and for me sometimes traumatising nineteen nineties, but the evolution of that process is covered in the first book, in the final third section. Equally as important though, (to me at least), was my own journey whilst coming to an better understanding of the complexities of the decades that preceded my own birth, unravelling the complex history: my history, his story, her story; the life that those whom we would now call ‘lesbians and gay men’ (or having a queer identity, if you prefer) led in that period, and how western social attitudes were shaped in the twentieth century by events, to allow these complexities to develop and eventually, finally, surge out into the open.
A note about the terminology used in this writing:
It is notoriously difficult to use a common descriptor for what we now (in western Europe) tend to describe as the ‘LGBTQIA+ community’. Quite a mouthful. Those letters stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual, (or sometimes Ally, depending on whom you are, or are not, talking to) and often a plus sign, meant to cover anyone else who’s not included and feels they should be.
The terms that we and others have used to describe ourselves, our communities, have changed again and again throughout the last century and a half. Even now, throughout the world, there is disagreement on the most useful, the most effective words to use. And of course, everywhere, everybody, is a little different. So, in this manuscript, I have usually used the terminology and vocabulary which was used at the time of the events I am writing about. If it is now generally considered ‘offensive’ I have put it in italics. I sincerely hope that no one is offended by this decision; it was certainly not my intention to cause upset.
A note about reading this first book..
Although I have written this book more or less chronologically, it is also quite feasible to dip ‘in and out’ of various chapters and still make sense of it all, if some parts are not of interest to you. After the initial historical section (the Backstory), it takes us from 1957 to 1990 with the period from 1975-1990 covered in most detail (the Rituals, the Sacrifice). It is not meant as a concise history of these times, it is very much about the personal journey I made with friends and lovers through it. Equally, there is a temptation when writing about a sequential period of one’s life to want to ‘tidy it up’ into a neat narrative: I started with ‘A‘ from which then naturally followed ‘B’ and then came ‘C’. Yet, it doesn’t happen like that of course; our lives generally aren’t neat and tidy and this certainly wasn’t a very neat and tidy period in our collective histories anyway.
Equally, as I have reread and rewritten parts of the text in this first book over the last year, I have wondered if I should retract some things. Some of the thoughts that I had in this period, some of the things I have done, some of the types of encounters I have had. It is all quite a long time ago now, and in some respects it is all ‘done and dusted’ now. Generally though I have kept the original text, stuck with the facts, used real Christian names but not added surnames. I have requested permission from people to use certain material and asked others to read particular chapters, to assess initial reactions. On the whole I have kept things in the narrative rather than remove them. Some of the things I say are contentious, then and perhaps still now. I think it is better to be honest though and simply say ‘that was where I was coming from’ at that time. They were often born of living in quite a particular and special period, for which in, the main, I am grateful.
Sometimes the narrative moves quickly on, then pauses and runs back. Equally there were periods of intense activity and periods of calm. And obviously things didn’t just stop in 1990; so I am currently writing a second book about the period from 1990 to the present day; as there was simply too much to be contained in a single volume. As an ardent hispanophile, now living in the far south east of Spain, in Almeria, surrounded by the desert and the sea, I also have plans to write a third volume of stories about Spain, as so much of my life was spent travelling and having a myriad of adventures there, with many people, from as early as 1964 onwards.
I hope it makes some sense to you; if you sometimes feel though that we were making it up as went along, you’re absolutely right. We were.
ON to Sex, love and life : (The backstory) 1.1 Early days, early doors
Leave a Reply