Post a response:
|
The Greek love excerpts from Derek Jarman’s At Your Own Risk are entertaining and perceptive. A gay man both honest and open-minded. No wonder he had to die young. This one’s a ripper: The School Satchel [1940s] 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. [p. 14] * * * More evidence of how an adolescent boy, so prone to getting in trouble, escapes via the blessing of his pederasty gene. But the satchel belongs to a fine tradition. Michael Rocke in Forbidden Friendships describes a popular game in the pederastic free-for-all that was Renaissance Florence. Boys apparently had a cap they regularly wore. And a man who fancied a boy would steal the cap from his head, and only give it back when the boy gave it up. One can only imagine the complex rituals that would have evolved. The plain, neglected boy, sporting ever more exotic plumes in his cap. The boy blessed by looks and station, wearing his cap so tightly and modestly, it broke the hearts and fingernails of the local dignitaries. The female prostitutes, trimmed and capped, trying to get a look in. Donatello’s bronze David: Was it the boy’s exotic headwear that did the lumbering Goliath in? David is nude, but retains his hat, and has stolen Goliath’s masculine potency. Defeated, beheaded, Goliath’s helmet makes one last plumed and ticklish reach upwards. If I could just get hold of the rim... A thrilling sport, the pursuit of the cap, but bring your best game. |