The gay map of the world

Gary was gay and in those days we were all part gay, weren't we? According to Gary one-in-four men were gay, and so I thought well, be friends, don't be prejudiced.

He took me round Madrid. "Cibeles", he said, is a gay pick up point." "The Retiro," he said: "is a gay pick up point." "Plaza Espanya," he said is a gay pick up point (in fact it is the symbolic centre of fascism in Spain) ....until my whole map of Madrid became Gary's gay map.

"How would you describe your sexuality", he asked me:

"Well, to some extent, I suppose I am polymorphously perverse." - I was taking the Mickey.

"Aha!" He said. "That means you are gay. The only place they mention that word is in the gay literature."

"Well actually", I said, (my pretentiousness still gongs back to me over the years) "I read it in a book by Freud and not the gay literature."

But what shocked me was this overlaying of maps: "Gay Brighton," "Gay Lebanon," "Gay Manchester," "Gay Cibeles." The all encompassing gay map of the world was surprising to those of us who were new to it.

Gary's flatmate was called Susan. She was a deeply pretentious Australian film director who wore black ski pants. I wish her well now. I hope she has produced many deeply pretentious and successful art films in her life.

She came home one day and Gary carefully closed the door.

Then he said to me: "I'll show you some yoga."

"Alright, let's see." I come from a family of illumined Yoga teachers and experts - Uncle Mike, Dad, David, Felicity.

And he got into a variety of Yoga positions, groaning very loudly as he did so, so that Susan would overhear.

Despite this feint on his part, Susan was not put off. I started going out with her and dropped Gary as a friend. He deserved it. But she was too freckly and Anglo-Saxon. I couldn't take it. Too close to home. When I got back to London I got rid of her. I palmed her off onto my brother's cool London crowd - the ones that can lead deeply uncool Guardian plonks by the nose.

An so Des picked up with her. The great, beautiful Des. Once Des was the King of London. And I ask myself why he took her on. Was it brotherly curiosity? In any event he quickly dumped Susan and said to me in a companionable piss in The Spice of Life Pub:

"Phil, you were well shot of her, mate."

Turned out she hated me because she adored abstract art and was incredibly irritated by the fact that I had said abstract art was funded by the CIA and that I insisted all art should be political. Well, it should, shouldn't it? In any event, it was rather an abstract reason to actively hate someone.

She came all the way back to Madrid to hate me, appearing one morning like a ghost.

"Yes" .... and I took her to the Retiro for a coffee - Hot, black and half torrecfacto, with lots of sugar.

"You are trying to put me in a good mood," she said, suspiciously. "I know you are. Is it the heat the sweetness or the caffeine?"

"Guilty as charged, Susan. Now fuck off back to Australia, please."

But Gary. Well I went to Mexico, met a Mexican, married a Mexican and then on a trip to Madrid with her met the short haired girl (the one sans earlobe) at the grotty baggage collection point in Heathrow Terminal 2.

"My wife, I said". By way of introduction.

"Really!," she said?

And heard her think: "But aren't you gay?"

Obviously Gary had made up a moving story about our "sweet parting" when I our friendship died its natural death.

"Yes, really," I said, looking longingly at her other untouched earlobe.

So I have thought of Gary and sometimes wonder what he is up to. I invited him to a meal with my parents in the Plaza Mayor before I left Spain. They were very accepting. The Ribeiro was excellent and went very well with the fish. Gary was my friend and he did open my eyes to many things and to an unfamiliar gay topography I was unaware of, and I thank him for that.

So I am not surprised Lebanon is "gay" and Shakespeare is "gay." There is the layering effect of reality that puts maps upon maps upon maps, and that ....well that's alright.