ASTABGAY BLACKPOOL

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JOHNNY’S JOURNAL

Chapter 17
Subversives On Tap!
 

Over the following months I was pleased to learn how much Brian had come to mean to Steven too. He wasn't just suffering him because of me. Whenever I was away overnight because of business they would often go out together, and have sex and sleep together, always both telling me on my return. That was usually enough for us to all straightaway go upstairs for a threesome, where I would be reimbursed for all that I had missed. There were some people unable to believe how well our strange set-up worked. One even asked: who had the sex and who made the coffee? But it wasn't like that at all, none of us were ever excluded.

We had a lot of fun with Brian's disco, and went out with him on all the jobs, though he didn't take too many bookings - he didn't have to any more and could be choosey. Lumbering the equipment in and out was hard work, especially as it grew at an alarming rate. Not a week would go by without one of us buying something new for it, until it got to the stage where three or four discos could have been made out of it, and so rarely did anything like all of it ever go out. It was hilarious fun, especially the wedding receptions where you would see many a "You've Been Framed" situation. Kelly Marie's: "Feels Like I'm In Love" (charting 16 weeks late 1980) was always very popular, and with two 12" versions we could mix them continuously and have bets on which old-timer would drop first. Wicked!

Every few months we would throw a gay party at the house, having even taken a wall out to accommodate the disco and the dancing, and at other times we would be asked to cart it along to someone else's party. Being on the "party circuit" we had quite a busy social life. Then came Charles and Diana's wedding day celebrations, where we were asked to provide the music locally and took everything out with us to entertain at the street party event on the green behind the Lord Montague. With all the extra amps and lighting, I think we probably entertained half of Denbridge. It was mind-blowing!

These were times when being gay still wasn't accepted like it is today, but everybody had a wonderful time and nobody seemed to object when some of the clan danced together - it was such a special day. Noticeably there were a few faces there we hadn't seen since our housewarming party, which prompted Gloria's David to suggest Denbridge should have its own gay social group. As he pointed out: going to the pub wasn't everybody's cup of tea, some would be frightened of being seen in a place known by others to have a gay reputation, and anyway what about all those that didn't know of it, or where they could go to find like-minded people, what of them?  Steven and I had been there and done that one, some of the others too, so within a few months some of us got together and a gay social group was formed which was discreetly advertised in the local paper and in Gay News.

It was an unequivocal success. Within a few months the Gays Of Denbridge Society (GODS) had more paid up members than the largest number of gays ever seen at the pub. At its peak it amassed 150 members and they came from all walks of life with so many of them having something they could put into it to enhance the group. Mostly guys, but with a quite few gals too, the monthly Diary of Events was always easily filled with something for everyone. From Sunday morning walks in the countryside to the hilarious night hikes, card and board games evenings, cheese and wine dos, barbecues, running dinner parties (a different course at every house), horror video nights, talks with guest speakers, cinema and theatre visits, camping expeditions in the summer to weekend trips to Amsterdam, and countless parties with endless themes, where the occasional  "Come As You Are" surprise party was always guaranteed to find someone in the bath, to name but a few of the events held, there was never a dull moment, and surprisingly more and more people who had never dared venture to the pub before felt confident enough to become regulars there, so even Ron was happy.

Something else that became very important to our gay community between 1980 and 1982 was Doctor Who. We later learned we weren't alone. Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) soon became a gay icon. An off-screen gay twenty-year-old playing an on-screen fourteen-year-old Doctor's assistant, some of us wanted to mother him; others to smother him. Whatever, it was compulsive viewing. The night they killed off his character was unbelievable - you'd have thought one of us had perished.

At work I was kicking a lot of arse around this time, and doing many strange things with which Arnold was finding a lot of difficulty. I was forevermore being sent for to be asked if I knew what I was doing, and I must have told him to trust me more times than a vicar to a choirboy. So when I sold off most of his equipment, and began hiring what we needed as and when we needed it (because that way we could keep up with all the latest technology without making never-ending major investments), the arse-in-the-air's ring-piece tightened so much it nearly healed over. I think he was ready to sack me the morning I turned down a local job worth all of ten grand (quite a lot of money then), but you should have seen his face when I at the same time handed him the contract I had already countersigned, so it just awaited his signature. With a household name of confectioners it was for a quarter-of-a-million smackers. He nearly died on the spot.

Once the commercial hit the television and cinema screens everybody in the game wanted to know which company had produced it, and Arnold's business never looked back. Within a few months we were turning away work worth untold amounts of money, and not only advertising work but local interest filming for countless locations and news gathering requests too. Arnold, a right stick-in-the-mud was not ready for expansion yet, and I couldn't persuade him - I think he was frightened he might lose control of everything if it became too big -  so my easy life became even easier, and a hell of a lot more financially rewarding. Brian's too - I saw to that!

The gay group continued to prosper, we even had a policewoman amongst our number by then, but it wasn't until a handsome young policeman joined the group as well that we learned an awful truth. As our phone number was one of those advertised for the group, he asked me: had we noticed the midnight "ting"?  He revealed all the advertised numbers were being monitored by the police, and subsequently some of those of friends we regularly called, or who called us. It was unbelievable, but the guy insisted it was the truth - he was one of those that had to sit there for hours to start the recorder when a marked phone came into use. As far as the establishment was concerned, he told us, gays were subversives and needed watching. Strangely the establishment must have believed we subversives couldn't speak between midnight and nine in the morning, as those hours were never monitored - perhaps they thought we all rutted then. Thinking about it, I suppose many of us did!

Apparently it all took place in a building behind a local bingo hall. Hundreds of local lines were "of interest" - most of them Irish, and we had a lot of them in the town. I happened to mention this to Alf on one of our visits. He said he wasn't surprised - his friend, a scrap man, had the job of clearing a lot of equipment from the place when it was updated a year or two back. He thought everyone knew all the Irish phones were monitored because of the IRA threat, and appreciated the ridiculousness of the Home Secretary standing up in Parliament once a year to reveal the number of phones tapped as being in single figures! 

We certainly noticed that "ting" every day around midnight since being told of it, but I still remained a little sceptical until several years later when an excited Alf turned up to drag me along to the building so I could witness for myself all the equipment being removed as with technological advancement tapping had gone automatic, now taking place elsewhere. The untidy lot hadn't even bothered to remove the evidence of it being a police building as folders, papers and notes were to be found strewn everywhere. It also backed up something one of the speakers revealed once at one of our social gatherings when the topic for the night was what would happen in the event of a nuclear war - something frequently discussed in those days of the Cold War. He too claimed gays were classed as subversives. Whether or not they would be rounded up in the event of imminent war was at that time still very debateable, but one thing was for sure - no known homosexuals were supposed to be on the lists of people with places reserved in the few nuclear bunkers that existed for those thought "important" enough to warrant saving. I guess that probably had something to do with our lack of breeding!

Next time: a gay disco night opens at a local nightclub, AIDS raises its ugly head in Denbridge, and we all sit around at safer sex group nights playing with condoms and candles - well, it always started with the candles!

Johnny.

Copyright ©Michael Knell 2008.

JOHNNY’S JOURNAL

Chapter 18
Getting It Up and Rolling It Down!
 

For most of the eighties, I was content with my lot in life. I still had Steven, and with Brian we were a very close unit. The three of us were now sleeping together all the time since the extra large bed arrived. We all had good jobs, with quite a lot of money coming into the house every month. Mind you, we also spent quite a lot of money every month too!

After the way Steven and I had enjoyed the short sleeping around episode just prior to moving here, and once here I had the fling with Brian that thankfully turned out favourably where it so easily could have been a disaster, it was strange that none of us looked for anything outside of our three-way relationship. But that's the way it was. There were plenty of offers for all of us, we were very popular people, and there were no rules made prohibiting it - the only hard and fast rule we had between us was to always be honest with each other, and to hide nothing. Nevertheless, sleeping around just didn't happen.

This was a time when a lot gay people emerged from the closet, many of them not creeping out of it but throwing the door wide-open and screaming to the world: "Here I am, darlings - look at me!"  Suddenly it became fashionable to be gay. All the best pop music, dance music, clothes, and hair-dos were being born out of gay. Even straight people made a point of being seen in the growing number of openly gay venues in our cities, so the rumours could be spread about them. Gay was not only fashionable, it was making some people a lot of money.

So it was no surprise when the Grapevine, a tired and not very popular Denbridge nightclub, started a gay night on Mondays - its least popular time when basically it would otherwise have been empty. After a hesitant start, because the police were caught taking the registration numbers of all the cars in its car park on the first night, it grew in popularity and became a weekly "must" for a lot of people, including us. Many enjoyable Monday nights were spent there, only to be cursed at the next morning as tired and with a hangover we needed to go to work.

There was one memorable night in its early days when Gloria and Rosie accidentally met up at the bar. I don't know who started it but the cat fight - the first real one I'd seen - was spectacular and went on for many minutes, with the two bouncers unable to stop it. Skin, blood, gore, hair, and pieces of torn clothing were flying off them in all directions, and their profanities almost drowned the music. They were both barred afterwards, of course. At one point, Bebe, a cute and much-loved young theatrical thing with the real name of Daniel, and one we had fully appreciated ourselves several times in our short sleeping around with Gloria era, had asked Steven (quite a local hero since that time he floored Rosie) whether he was going to intervene. His aptly loud reply of: "Am I f##k!" will never be forgotten.

Gay people started moving around a lot in the eighties. They were affluent years, and for the first time car-loads of us would visit gay bars and clubs in all the surrounding towns and cities, even going so far as London. Of course, we had all heard of something that was said to be killing gay men in America, and even knew there had been cases reported in this country too, but like the fatal traffic accident we thought such things only happened to other people - until Bebe became ill. He did not respond to normal medication, withering away in front of our eyes, and the doctors became very concerned. Within just eight months he died, and it was a terrible and painful death for the poor guy, despite all the medical profession tried to do for him. Officially he died of a cancer, but one acquired as an AIDS related illness. The news absolutely stunned Denbridge. Everybody had loved Bebe, and literally so for the many of us who'd been with him.

Some didn't want to know, but most went along to the special clinic at the hospital for a blood test where it took a whole week of waiting before the result of it was known, and even then another test was required after three months of totally abstaining from sex with other people before any all clear was conclusive. Steven, Brian and myself took time off work and visited a clinic in London's Harley Street for our tests, where for no small amount of money we were able to learn the results within a couple of hours. Thankfully, we all tested negative. Even knowing we would not have kept anything from each other, so serious was this that we still repeated the exercise three months later, and were again all found to be okay.

The gay group organisers, and that included us, went overboard to find out everything possible about HIV and AIDS. Safer sex advice was regularly published in the monthly newsletter, along with the latest death toll which was growing at an alarming rate, and every month there would be a safer sex "teach-in" for the guys (normally held at our place) where everybody learned how to unwrap a condom and correctly fit it on a candle - and at times we even used a marrow to prove they would fit all sizes. This was practiced until everyone could do it with the lights off, and as serious as these nights were everybody was encouraged to drink heavily, so they regularly turned into well-attended riotous affairs. The lights would be turned back on each time to find more and more of those present, half-cut and with no inhibitions, would have fitted their condom to the real thing. It was a lot of fun, and of course once everybody could perform the task second nature in the dark even when drunk, we had succeeded in what we set out to achieve.

However one night, once everyone was proficient at correctly putting on the condoms, Gloria, never one to miss a trick, volunteered herself to be the dummy on a mattress in the middle of the floor so that the real thing, the whole sexual act where the essential regular checking of the condom and its proper removal afterwards could be practiced. She obviously couldn't resist the thought of all those members! But after struggling a mattress down the stairs, unfortunately for her - and for us after getting the damn mattress! -  there were no takers. I think, like ourselves, everybody who had ever wanted to had already been there and done that one! Poor Gloria. And poor David too - he alone now was left to demonstrate for us, and then only managing to do it with difficulty. How can you get excited about putting on an old overcoat, he asked, trying hard to get it up for her!

After these uproarious teach-in nights, which were often hard to bring to an end (intended!), the three of us were absolutely cock-eyed by the time we got to bed, so there was always a hell of a lot of sex to be had before we were able to get off to sleep. We would lie awake for hours going over the evening together, appreciating some of what we'd seen - which would start things off again! - and creasing up over other things. Thank God our bedroom wasn't tapped as well as our phone!

Next time we meet Karl, a thirteen-year-old boy who phones the group for help because he's gay.  With the age of consent between gay men still at 21 years, the group go into panic mode. Many of the members are only eighteen, some barely so, and although officially they are not having sex as far we are aware - unofficially we know they are at it like rabbits! Could this be a trap? Guess who has to find out!

Johnny.

Copyright ©Michael Knell 2008.