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Derek Jarman, pro-pederast
Posted by diogenes on 2025-July-18 12:47:43, Friday|
I've been reading Derek Jarman's At Your Own Risk: A Saint's Testament (Vintage, 1993). I'm only a little way through, but here are the references so far to boysex and boysexuality (page references to the Vintage edition): THE SCHOOL SATCHEL First sexual encounters have an arbitrary nature about them. Freddy told me that at sixteen after school he would cross the park in Richmond past the gents. One afternoon he was stopped by a policeman: ‘What are you doing here son?’ Freddy blushed bright scarlet and mumbled some excuse. ‘Don’t let me catch you round here again, son.’ The policeman took his school satchel from him and instructed him to meet him after school the next day at the station, when he would return it. Freddy, terrified, arrived at the station where the policeman was waiting in a car wearing civilian clothes - ‘Jump in,’ he said, drove Freddy home and fucked him before giving him his satchel back. In bed, many years later, Freddy told me it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. (pp. 15-16) SEX AT NINE 1951 I was aware of my sexuality at nine, which makes a nonsense of an age of consent of twenty-one and of the ideas of CONVERSION, PERVERSION and CORRUPTION of youth. I was unsuccessfully trying to fuck the boy in the bed next to mine - quite unaware that I was doing anything out of the ordinary - when the sky fell in as we were ripped apart like two dogs by the headmaster’s wife; and from that day and all the days of my childhood I waited in vain for a man to carry me off and initiate me - rescue me from suburban conformity. This happened to my schoolfriend Robin who had a wild affair that started on his fifteenth birthday - how I regret that I wasn’t seduced. Ian said he told his mother he was a homo at the age of five, and Jimmy told Michael that at twelve he was hanging around Glasgow bus station hoping some man would “shove it up him” - a youth intent on corrupting the middle-aged. (p. 20) MILFORD 1953 What is the world coming to when a peer of the realm can't bugger a commoner? The trial of Edward Montagu from the News Chronicle: A fourteen year old boy scout's account of a serious offence alleged against Lord Montagu of Beaulieu was described yesterday by a forensic expert as extraordinarily impossible. “I’ve studied the boy, he was strong, well built, and if there was any resistance this offence would have been impossible.”My best friend Hugh lived with his parents in an old house next to Palace House in Beaulieu where the twenty-seven year old Lord had offered the fourteen year old a cigarette. In 1953, I was eleven, and looked with excitement tinged with fear at the walls of the wicked palace. (p. 24) My father, as C.O. of Abingdon, would never have known that Johnno, his batman, used to give me rides on his motorcycle round the married quarters, my hands in his pockets playing ‘pocket billiards’. (p. 27) The age of consent should be lowered to fourteen or abolished and problems sorted out on an individual basis. We don’t grow up to fit the laws. So many kids lie about their age, as they are under threat if they are sleeping with an older man. I saw a letter recently from a sixteen year old boy which confirms this: The whole concept of childhood is suspect. I was having sex at twelve. As a child I had no rights. I was seducing people in my school by the time I was thirteen.(p. 28) NASCENT SEXUALITY I have talked to many young men about their sexual experiences. One fact emerges quite clearly. Boys who’ve had the good fortune, at fourteen or fifteen or even earlier, to meet older men are nearly always more at ease with themselves sexually. The old Greek way of men and women initiating adolescents of their own sex, helping them to discover their own sexuality in an atmosphere of responsibility, contained much humane and practical wisdom. I’m unconvinced that any boy’s ‘natural’ inclinations are ever altered by contacts of this kind. The only damage that can be inflicted is the threat of exposure by a ‘morality’ which outlaws innocent and uncomplicated desires, uproots affection at least as valuable as family ties, and affronts the basic freedoms of everyone. (pp. 29-30) I wish I had been given instruction, both physically and mentally, by an older man. That is what teaching is about; it has to have a sexual element. That’s what I like about Tuke. You can see he was in love with his boys. This doesn’t have to manifest itself physically; celibacy can be very radical especially same-sex celibacy. (p. 31) ONE LAST LOOK AROUND THE FIFTIES I was first aware of my sexuality at nine, but I was very isolated. If only I had met someone who could have helped me through my adolescence. I had one schoolfriend who had the fortune (he’s now married with four kids!) to have a long affair with a schoolteacher. This affair continued right until his mid-twenties. (p. 34) I remember [as a 13 year old] putting my hands down a boy’s trouser pockets and touching him up, but that’s all. I might have surreptitiously brought him to orgasm but I can’t remember. (p. 35)  |
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