GSCENE 49
DUNCAN’S
HOMELY
DOMAIN
HOMILY
BY DUNCAN STEWART
BY GLENN STEVENS
TOP BANANA!
LISTOMANIA
The first time I encountered any direct homophobia was when I
returned to higher education in the early 1980s, aged 18, and had a
room on campus at Norwich City College. I had put up posters to start
a Gay Soc, (one person replied, so that project never really got off the
ground). However, one afternoon I returned to my dorm to find under
my door name plate ‘Glenn’, someone had added ‘is gay’. Rather then
remove it, I just wrote ‘So?’
My shopping list included the ingredients for making a moussaka but
the meat on display looked fatty and the aubergines a bit wrinkled,
(not unlike the shopper) so I abandoned my list and we ended up with
chicken casserole. A friend derives so much pleasure from making a list,
crossing off all the items and then discarding it, that he often crosses
off things he has not done and starts a new one with those items at
the top. He is otherwise quite rational.
At this stage in my life I’d already been in two relationships with
men, and was working as chef, cook and bottle washer at Norwich’s
only gay nightclub, The Caribbean, wearing little more than a Miley
Cyrus-style wrecking ball, hot pants and matching vest, (I was 18,
with a six-pack at the time, okay!) so their statement was an obvious
fact to me, not the insult they where hoping for.
The practice of medicine is full of lists, algorithms, guidelines and
protocols such as the recently vilified Liverpool pathway, a guide to
help medical staff caring for the terminally ill. Almost without
exception these are well constructed and well tested memory aids but
they are not so comprehensive as to leave no room for spontaneous
actions in response to the patient’s immediate problems. Lists can
become misleading, oppressive and even hazardous, in the wrong
hands.
A couple of years later I moved
down to Brighton where at the
same time the word ‘queer’ was
being reclaimed by the radicals. I
remember many older gay men
hating the use of the word, as it
had been the main use of abuse for
them for years.
Although the word ‘que